Formosa Fitness

I hate Supersize Me. Not that I'm a McDonald's lover cause I'm not. It's junk "cooked" by teenagers and endorsed by a clown. But excuse me for saying this but Spurlock was a pretentious jerk with his Landrover and "vegan chef" girlfriend. Yeah I guess if we all could afford a Landrover then we might be able to afford to eat out at places more expensive than McDonald's. I guess we all needed to see an extended shot of his vomit, too. Real classy.

Now there's a new documentary that shares my hate and the hate is good. Very good. It's called Fathead. Check this out:

I highly recommend all the clips he put up. They have lots of good info, some that will really surprise you -- like him eating at McDonald's every day for 30 days and LOSING weight!

In covering kettlebell workout methods, I now move from ladders to breathing ladders. The video above is just an intro. And i should have pulled my shoulders back more. But I'm not re-doing it. Haha.

To do breathing ladders, pick a technique and do one rep, then breath once, do two reps, breath twice, etc. I worked up to 10 in the clip doing two-handed swings with the 28kg KB.

A great article on how to really use breathing ladders is here. Just doing one set as I'm doing in the video may not do much unless you work with a really heavy KB or double KBs. But the clip was just to give you an idea.

I hope it's obvious that all these methods can be mixed. You might use a circuit as your main workout and then top it off with a ladder or breathing ladder for swings with a heavy KB. Or you can make each method the workout of the day.

Enjoy.

There's still no central location that lists the kettlebell workout methods for some reason. You have to search around and read through the jargon to figure out how to use it. That's not so good. So I'm taking it upon myself to introduce the methods in a series of posts. Hopefully beginners will find this useful.

This is a video intro to ladders. The idea is to pick a technique, do it with one hand, do it with the other hand, switch hands and do two, switch hands and do two again, three, three, etc. 

The buildup looks like this: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. But you can stop any where along that progression you want. This is an ascending ladder.

There's also ascending and descending, obviously a much tougher workout with twice the reps: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.

I show in this clip an ascending and descending clean ladder with the 20kg kettlebell.

I like this method since you can build some impressive numbers and go constantly for a longer time without damaging your hands. The constant hand switching helps.

Let me know if this is useful.

我給你們介紹一個壺鈴健身方法 -- 梯子ladder. 你要選一個壺鈴技巧,用左手做一個,換右手做一個,換左手做兩個,換右手做兩個等等.

梯子有兩重;
上梯子 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

上/下梯子 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

上梯子=108 reps 上/下梯子=216
這裡我做了clean和用上/下梯子的方法, 20kg 壺鈴.

Steroid use is more rampant than most people realize, especially in places that bill themselves as being hardcore. So let's say you're interested in weightlifting and you go to a forum or website and pick up a program that looks good or you approach the hardest core guy in your gym.

Let me ask you this: if someone is telling you that a certain volume of weightlifting is doable based on their experience, then wouldn't you want to know if that person is or has been on drugs?

It's stupidly obvious, isn't it? And yet we often don't think about this when we look around for fitness advice.

You need to be very, very careful about where you get your information. More people than you know are juicing and then telling the world how big or whatever you can get on their program. If they do steroids and you don't or won't, then you're setting yourself up for failure. Why take advice from the drug guy if you're planning on staying drug free?

It just doesn't make sense.

Be smart about where you pick your programs and info and you'll stay safe.

I gave this to a client today (without weights) and then decided to try it myself:

walking lunges w/30lbs. dumbells -- 12

box squats w/30lbs. dumbells -- 20

step ups on short box 1:00

20:00

I made 8 reps of the circuit.

Doing lunges with weights really hammers home the idea of having stability in the knee. You need to get the pattern as correct as possible with body weight first but them switch to weighted lunges to hammer out issues with form. What happens is the weight really forces you to push off the front leg and make that front knee stable. Try it out.

My gym isn't just that, it's the lab where I work on myself. So I'm part mad scientist, part monster. Haha. This is why I believe that trainers should be in shape themselves. We should be testing material out on ourselves, thinking, and growing in the gym right along with clients.

A lot of programs look good on paper but actually doing them shows how they often need to be tweaked. If you don't do them, how could you recommend them to clients? When I recommend something to clients it's because I've done it personally and I know it works. Clients can be confident that they're getting a safe and effective program that I can tweak to suit their needs. And there are a ton of programs out there. Pick smart!

So I've been doing the escalating density training (EDT) lately. Here's what I did yesterday:

workout 1

Remedial warmup (more on this later)

L-sits 10x:06

Tucks 10x:06

EDT 15:00 double 24kg KB military presses and double rows -- 60 reps each accomplished

Abs: superset 5 reverse crunches/5 crunches x3

workout2

20:00 jump rope

I was bummed after the EDT session because I knew I didn't have it in me to do a second session of pullups and pushups. And then when I calculated my numbers and compared them to the first time I did EDT, the numbers hadn't changed a bit (60). So I felt pretty depressed for a few minutes.

Then I went back and checked my notes: the first EDT session was 20:00, this one was 15:00!!! I did the same number of reps in 25% less time. Definite improvement.

So in the "lab," EDT is working very well. Go experiment and enjoy.

This is a marketing series that I'm doing. I'm trying to clearly communicate the benefits of kettlebell training. I would appreciate comments if you have any.

People that want to lose weight often think that they need to do hours of constant running, walking or bicycling to achieve fat loss. But many people find those activities boring. How can you get off the treadmill to no where?

Kettlebell training allows you to avoid the boredom associated with cardio training by challenging your whole body through different exercises. The variety of movements engages your mind because you have to move the kettlebell through the movement patterns, requiring you to pay attention to what you're doing. In fact, kettlebell training demands that you pay attention to the kettlebell because it's a weight that you're moving it. Don't pay attention to what you're doing and the kettlebell will let you know very quickly!

So if you're tired of boring cardio workouts, challenge yourself with kettlebell training!

How much time do you have to work out? Not much, right? We all have busy lives from trying to balance work, family, and other responsibilities. And yet everyone knows that they need to work out. And most everyone knows that doing strength training and cardio training is the winning combination if you want to perform and look your best. But doing both of those takes lots of time. So how to get the best workout in the shortest time possible?

Kettlebell training provides you the benefits of strength and cardio training at the same time so your total workout time is less than doing each of those separately. You get this benefit from kettlebells because they build strength/endurance. Training strength/endurance means taking a weight and moving it for many repetitions over time. You get the benefits of cardio because you’re moving constantly throughout the workout, which taxes your heart and lungs causing them to improve function. You also get the benefit of strength training because you’re moving a weight instead of just using body weight, as in cardio exercise. The body has to work harder because of the extra weight that you’re holding.

Getting twice the benefit in half the time is perfect for busy people who have other things to do with their time. Businessmen, housewives, students, everyone can benefit from these more efficient workouts.

Invest in a kettlebell today and start maximizing your workout time!

I consider myself a functional fitness guy and since I'm doing kettlebells a lot, I guess that's a given. But the functional fitness community really likes to throw stuff under the train sometimes. Take this dumb idea that ab flexion isn't functional, for example.

First of all, one of the primary functions of the rectus abdominus is flexion, right or wrong? Let's just keep it simple with no hemming and hawing. The answer is right, so please explain to me how then ab flexion is somehow non-functional? How can a natural function of a muscle be non-functional?

Second, it's non-functional for who? Do you get out of bed every morning? How do you do it? I flex my abs, how about you? Pretty functional, huh? Do you play with your kids on the floor and need to get up? If so, how are you going to do that without ab flexion?

The rise of MMA and BJJ should also have made it abundantly clear by now that getting up off the floor from a lying position is a real need for those guys. They functionally need ab flexion.

One of the main arguments against ab flexion is that people hurt their backs and this is one of my pet peeves -- if something is hurting your back, then fix your back! Yes, a whole plethora (I love that word) of moves are bad for you if you have a bad back. The solution isn't to avoid them, but fix the problem -- your back.

When I started fixing my back problems, all sorts of exercise pains went away. And kettlebells are one of the best tools for fixing backs. Then ab flexion exercises all become accessable.

Honestly, ALL my favorite ab exercises are flexion-based. That doesn't mean I ignore anti-rotation or rotation (the latest functional under-the-train fatality), but I place an emphasis these days on flexion.

BTW, the old Health for Life Legendary Abs course is still one of the best you can get and it's all ab flexion. Get the outline here. Supplement it with some back training and some other core work, and you're good to go.