Today, I did a home workout that lasted for less than 15 minutes. I [...]]]> I try to have my workouts in the early morning. I found that when I train during the morning, my energy level jumps up and I am more focused and relaxed. I’m able to work better and I’m less tired. It’s great.

Today, I did a home workout that lasted for less than 15 minutes. I only used my body weight and two dumbbells of 15 pounds each. That didn’t stop me from creating a workout that made me grunt like crazy. I was sweating profusely by the time I was wrapping up the exercises.

Here are the exercises I did:

Jumping Jacks - This exercise was my warm up. I wanted to get my heart rate up and to get my body ready for the exertion I had planned for it.

Forward lunge with bicep curl - This is a powerful exercise for the upper and lower body together. You hold a dumbbell in each hand (I used my 15 pounders). You take a step forward for the lunge and curl both dumbbells together. You return to the starting position and repeat. Don’t forget to train both legs.

Burpees - An ultimate favorite and one which is still causing me trouble. I find this exercise very hard to do. To perform the burpess you begin with a squat. Place both palms on the floor. Jump with both legs backwards until you’re in a push-up position. Do a push up. Jump with both legs back to the squat position. Stand up and jump high. Try to do 10 of those. I dare you.

Side step squat with dumbbell hold - Hold a dumbbell with both hands at the center of your body with both arms curled. Stand with both legs together. Take a step to the right with your right leg and go into a squat. Go back to the starting position. Repeat with the left leg. Do as many as you can.

Horizontal dumbbell swings – This works the shoulders but it’s much less intensive than the previous exercises. Take a dumbbell in each hand. Stand with your feet slightly apart. Swing both dumbbells to the side. Make sure to focus on how your shoulders feel and play into the exercise.

That’s it. It takes a few minutes and it can be really intensive. I learned some of these exercises and combos from Dr. Kareem Samhouri, a fitness expert I admire. Dr. K has allowed me to offer you a free report in which he shares a unique fat loss formula.

Fat loss formula (free download) <=== Click here to download

Today I want to share with you a nice and short article by Craig Ballantyne, fitness expert and creator of the TT for Abs program

Enjoy…

If you’ve been struggling to get flat, sexy abs and burn belly fat with traditional workouts, then you are going to love these 5 weird abdominal [...]]]> Hi,

Today I want to share with you a nice and short article by Craig Ballantyne, fitness expert and creator of the TT for Abs program

Enjoy…

5 weird flat abs fitness tips

If you’ve been struggling to get flat, sexy abs and burn belly fat with traditional workouts, then you are going to love these 5 weird abdominal exercise and diet tips.

Over the last 13 years as a trainer and athlete, I’ve been studying every expert and research study I can find about the best way to get flat abs.

Today, you’ll discover 5 weird tips you might not know when it comes
to getting a flat stomach and firm abs.
#1 – The best interval training work-to-rest ratio for losing belly fat might be 1-to-1.5.

In an Australian study, researchers found that doing intervals for 8 seconds followed by 12 seconds of rest resulted in significantly more belly fat burning than long slow cardio.

Now I know that 8 seconds on and 12 seconds off sounds a little annoying (just try doing that on a machine), but the good news is that these researchers found that going for 24 seconds followed by a 36 second rest works just as well for boosting fat burning hormones.

#2 – Dr. Chris Mohr’s #1 weird diet tip is…

I just finished up a fat loss nutrition interview with Dr. Mohr and he told me that his simple, yet slightly weird #1 diet tip for fat loss is…

“Get almost all of your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables.”

I really liked that tip because I’ve been telling people this for years, and it’s part of the Fat Loss Foundation you’ll discover in my Simple Nutrition manual & DVD.

#3 – You need to be able to do a Plank exercise for 2 minutes.

Dr. Stuart McGill, the world’s leading expert on low back health, says in his book that a person with fit abs should be able to do a plank exercise for 2 minutes straight.

If you can’t do the plank for 2 minutes, then you need to lose belly fat and you need to get an abdominal workout DVD program that works
your abs properly.

Here are the best abdominal exercises DVDs you can get:

=> TT for Abs program

#4 – New research shows that supersets training burns more calories than traditional straight set resistance training.

And that’s exactly what you’ll get in every short, burst exercise workout.

The short, burst superset programs save you time (getting you done in half the time of a traditional resistance workout) while helping you burn more fat.

#5 – To see your abs, a man will need to be close to 10% fat and a woman will need to be at about 16% fat.

Of course, the more muscle you have, the easier it will be too see your abs, so you’ll still be able to see a 4-pack on muscular guys when they have 12-13% fat.

But the bottom line is that you need to use the Simple Nutrition plan combined with the short, burst exercise workouts to burn belly fat to see your sexy abs.

BONUS Tip – A great way to work your abs harder than normal planks is the Stability Ball Plank.

Research reported in Men’s Health magazine reported this exercise to be 30% harder on your abs than a regular plank.

And last Friday I used an interesting technique with this exercise that caused my abs to be sore for days. But that’s another story for another weird abdominal exercise article – coming soon!

Remember, for the best flat abdominal exercises and belly fat burning circuits, you need the TT for Abs Home Exercise DVDs & Simple Nutrition plan from this website:

==>>  TT for Abs program

= End of Article =

I hope you enjoyed the article and that you see just how much Craig Ballantyne knows about what it takes to burn fat fast.

Craig is holding a special limited time sale on his TT for Abs program which includes workout DVDs and more resources.

The sale ends tomorrow.

Knowing how great Craig’s material is, I decided to award those of you who decide to wage war on their belly fat by offering my own 3 bonuses for those who decide to order the TT for Abs program today.

The bonuses include:

- the How to Boost Your Metabolism guide, a special manual with easy to do tricks and tips to turn your body into a fat burning machine.

- The Maintain Don’t Gain Guide, that will help you maintain the new body you get with the TT for Abs program. No more yo-yo dieting for you.

- The Losing Weight without Starving guide that will show you how it’s possible to shed weight without depriving yourself silly in the process.

To get all these bonuses you need to take these steps:

1. Order Craig Ballantyne’s program from this link: TT for Abs program

2. You will get a receipt to your email. Just email that receipt to me to
john [ a t] burnmybellyfat.com  for verification.

3. I will email the 3 bonuses for you straight away.

I wouldn’t be offering these great bonuses at no cost to you if I didn’t
firmly believe in Craig Ballantyne’s awesome TT for Abs program
It’s one of the best ways to get flat abs.

Take the first step to flat abs today. My bonuses will help.

You can use this to burn fat at home with little or no equipment, and join in the spirit of the inspirational Olympic Games [...]]]> The Winter Olympics are the hottest event in the world right now, and fitness expert Craig Ballantyne has  created a special workout for you so that you can join in the excitement.

You can use this to burn fat at home with little or no equipment, and join in the spirit of the inspirational Olympic Games at the same time. Enjoy!

Over to Craig for the workout…

We’ll start with the Moguls Warmup.

I chose the moguls for warm-up, because that’s where the skiers do all those crazy moves and look really mobile. One of the coolest events, for sure.

1. Jumping Jacks – 20 reps
2. Duck Unders – 6 reps per side
(You’ll step to the side squat down and duck under as you move)
3. Stickups – 10 reps
4. Seal Jumps – 20 reps
(These are like jumping jacks, but cross your arms in front of you)
5. Pushups -10 reps
(Let’s pretend you wiped out so you have to do pushups to get back up)

Next, we move into the first event…

The Ski Jump
Do a 10 second hold in the bottom of squat and then do a vertical jump Repeat 3 times, then move to…

The Downhill Ski Race
1 Long Jump
10 Bodyweight Squats
1 Long Jump
6 Walking Diagonal Lunges per side
1 Long Jump
20-30 second squat hold in bottom position
Repeat 3 times.

Next up, we move to Speed Skating Strength Training

1. Skater Jumps or Lateral Lunges – 8 reps per side
(Beginners must do the lateral lunges)
2. Spiderman Pushups or Elevated Pushups – 8 reps per side
(Let’s pretend we’ve had another wipe-out…so we need to do
some pushups to practice getting up)
3. 1-leg Squats or Reverse Lunges – 12 reps per side
(Beginners must do the reverse lunges)

Take a water break here, and then move to more strength training, this time courtesy of a weird sport…Curling.

The Curling Strength Circuit
1. Lunges – 15 reps per side (you can use weights if you want)
2. Spiderman Climbs – 10 reps per side
3. Close-grip Pushups – 20 reps
4. Biceps Curls – 10 reps per side
(Why curls? Because curlers love to drink beer, so you can do
dumbbell curls to practice for post-game beverages)

Take another water break.

Optional: Hockey Strength Circuit (Use dumbbells or kettlebells)

1. Split squat – 8 reps per side
(to build strong skating muscles)
2. 1-Arm Standing Shoulder Press – 8 reps per side
(to practice raising your stick in the air after you score a goal)
3. DB Row – 8 reps per side
(to strengthen your upper body & grip for hockey fights)

Figure Skating Bodyweight Strength Circuit

Now we combine bodyweight exercises for strength and finesse…

1. Reaching Lunge – 10 reps per side
2. 1-Leg RDL – 8 reps per side
3. Pushup or Dip or Overhead Press – 8 reps

Take another water break.

Sliding Sports Circuit (bobsled & luge)

1. Bobsled Push – 20 seconds
(For this, you’ll need a “prowler sled” or a punching bag or weight plate that can be pushed across the floor to simulate the start of the bobsled race…or you could just do a 20 second sprint)

2. Stability Ball Plank or Plank – 45 seconds
(to simulate holding your body in the luge position)

3. Side Planks – 25 seconds per side

Next up, the plain ol’ weird Biathlon (a combination of cross-country
skiing and shooting). We’ll modify it so that we do:

1. Shuttle Sprints – 15 seconds
2. Plank – 60 seconds
(to simulate the shooting position)

And if possible, add in some type of skill component to simulate the shooting…maybe shoot some basketball free throws…or shoot a Supersoaker at a target on the wall…no wait, bad idea.

But I’m sure you can come up with something. (Safety first!)

And that’s it.

Finish with a water break, cool down, awarding of some gold medals, and closing ceremonies.

Hope you enjoyed that fun workout!

To find out more about these unique workouts and exercises, visit: Turbulence Training Workout

Q: I’m here with Scott Sonnon, creator of the Tacfit Commando program. Thanks for being here, Scott and taking the time to answer a few questions. I’m sure we’re all interested in knowing what your training experience and credentials are, so why don’t you tell us a little about yourself and your [...]]]>

us soldiers fighting

Q: I’m here with Scott Sonnon, creator of the Tacfit Commando program. Thanks for being here, Scott and taking the time to answer a few questions. I’m sure we’re all interested in knowing what your training experience and credentials are, so why don’t you tell us a little about yourself and your major areas of expertise?

A: Like my motto, I was born to fail but made to succeed. Swimming upstream from the shallow end of the gene pool, I had to exploit every training and technological advantage due to my physical challenges (like osteochondrosis, obesity, etc.) and learning disabilities (several forms of severe dyslexia).

I could not only not perform conventional skills like average kids due to motor skill acquisition problems, but traditional exercise shredded my connective tissue and left me in a corset of agony, requiring my mother to spend long nights forcing liniment into my joints to be able to sleep.

We had no money, so the hi-tech options were out; so I had to seek out alternative movement educational methods such Total Physical Response, Chisanbop and others. But the realization that there were alternatives was the true discovery.

This led me down a long path of martial art study, which I devoured voraciously. I discovered I learned more quickly than my peers, or perhaps I just invested many more hours a day than them. But my genetic challenges became my allies, as I had no ego involved in merely getting bigger; I had to become better as well.

My diligence paid off in huge dividends, as I earned my spot on the US National Team for the Russian national sport of Sambo submission fighting in only 2 years, competing at World Games, winning grand national and international championships, and the attention of my former Soviet counter-parts.

After years of petitioning, I was accepted to become the first foreigner to formally intern behind the “iron curtain” in the “think-tank” of special forces and national trainers at the RETAL Center (Russian Scientific Consultant Practical Training Center) – officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Sport and the Olympic Committee as the exclusive representative of martial art in xUSSR.

It was in those 6 years back and forth and across the former Soviet Union that I was exposed to their training technologies which gave me the practical edge in fighting efficacy, and allowed me to come out of retirement in 2005 and win an international kickboxing championship (in Chinese Sanshou).

I now share these peak performance training methods with people around the world – from the real-life action-heroes putting it on the line daily, to those on the homefront looking to transform the world by transforming themselves.

tacfit commando package

Q: What would you say are the main principles of Tacfit Commando workouts?

A: Efficiency – Portability – Adaptability – Waving Intensity – Rapid Recovery.

Q: Which units, armies, and agencies did you get to train during your career?

A: To put it into perspective, my martial art coach is a Russian General. There, martial art is a military art. Physical culture is a political platform. Their special forces were also their national champion athletes, so billions of rubles were invested. Personnel from so many that it’s hard to remember some days… but the ones people like to hear about the most are often Belorussian Spetsnaz Alpha, Russian Spetsnaz Condor, OMON, GRU, Latvian special tactics police, Ukranian special police, Lithuanian frontier guards and special police, Estonian Spetsnaz, Russian and Ukranian Cossack militia and more recently Israeli Lotar counter-terrorism and Sayeret Matkal special forces, as well as secret service, Italian counter-terrorism and bodyguards to the Prime Minister’s family, as well as US personnel such as the Dept of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, Office of Air and Marine…

Q: Watching the Tacfit Workouts you released on the web, I saw that some of the exercises are not the sort people do in gyms. How easy is the transition from regular workouts to the ones in your program?

A: Instant. The body craves complexity. It wants to be masterful. We’re neurological predators and it thrives upon challenge and dies without it, since aging and atrophy are a process of losing complexity.

Q: Why does recovery take up a dedicated part of your program?

A: Recovery is King – Exercise is Queen. Most people (most professionals) get that backwards, if they get it at all. Think of it this way: you don’t grow muscle exercising – you grow after exercise while you recover. If you don’t recover properly (if at all) you cannibalize all of your gains, and begin to regress and shrink.

Due to my genetic challenges, and the fact that fitness is a necessity for my job of fighting – and a demand for those I train for whom fitness could mean the difference between getting home to their families safely or not – I discovered technologies to maximize the speed of recovery and the percentage of growth / progress you earn from the exercise you do.

Most of the professional athletes I’ve trained were under-recovered, and as a result sub-prime conditioning. They didn’t even know their ultimate potential – and they were professionals. Most average gym goers have no idea how much intensity they can recruit, because they wander through the purgatory of endless plateaus besieged with a constant assault of aches, pains, injuries and illnesses… which are exercise induced.

Imagine what would happen if that were not the case. Imagine how much benefit you could reap from even one perfect repetition. Imagine if you could perform at your true peak performance several times a week! That’s what recovery methods can do for you.

Q: What would you say the benefits of Tacfit are over other, more traditional fitness plans?

A: TACFIT Commando -

• has no monthly memberships,
• it can fit in your pocket on your phone or a piece of paper and be taken anywhere,
• it can be performed at any moment – in an office, yard,  park, beach, desert, tundra, jungle, hotel or living room,
• it doesn’t require any equipment but gravity and your own bodyweight,
• it requires only 20-30 minutes
• it doesn’t just grow functional muscle and blowtorch the fat, it makes you a better neurological master… it is the martial art of exercise.
• it makes you mentally tougher and emotionally stronger
• And it scares off the neighbors.

Q: Who would you say is this program for, who’s right for it, and who shouldn’t use it?

It’s not for people who merely want show muscle and not GO muscle. So if you’re a bodybuilder who prefers the suffocation of everlasting swole, or if you’re an athlete who believes that only by feeling like a trainwreck have you trained enough, TACFIT Commando isn’t for you.

Don’t attempt TACFIT Commando if you don’t want to confront the reality of your weaknesses. If you prefer to wallow in the comforts of your strengths and keep that dirty basement light off, then stay far, far away. You cannot perform TACFIT Commando without dying a little bit every day.

To succeed in training, you must die a little bit everyday. The ego cannot pass thru the firewall of transformation. Every time you encounter its willingness to quit, and choose to continue forward one more step with good form, the ego dies. Each day we are reborn a purer version by liberating ourselves from the oppression of its weaknesses.

TACFIT Commando is for those brave enough to face the elephant, and move forward.

Q: Can you give us 3 tips to do better with your program?

A: 1.  Exhale with the effort phase of the movement. The goal is to connect the core to the Earth through the power of your appendages. Some people have panty-wasted abs and have trouble fighting sleep, much less bad guys. Core Activation means “crushing the can” – not merely resisting extension with the rectus, but pulling down the ribs with the obliques, tightening up the corset with the TvA, pushing the diaphragm down while pulling up the pelvic wall to supercharge the “inner unit” of the core – the intrinsic muscles such as the mutlifidus to stabilize the spine for absorbing impact and expressing power.

2.  Practice being elastic like a rubber band, rather than solid as a plank. Use your knees and hips, elbows and shoulders to absorb and load the arrow of your trunk’s bow so that you can absorb and retranslate that power back into the Earth, or into the unwanton advance of a would-be aggressor. The body isn’t robotic, but made of endless spirals of spring-steel fibers (the myofascial matrix). Coil your body into movements and explode rather than merely pushing or pulling.

3.  That said, the tighter – the lighter. To perform more “quality quantity” you must make accessory muscles as tight as possible, such as in something as simple as the basic pushup. Training military, firefighters and LEO to obliterate their PT exams in pushups is often merely about technique: quads fixed tight, tailbone slightly tucked glutes strong, knees locked kicking heels backward pulling toes to shins, abs pulled strong crushing the can, elbows driving back to hips and pinched to ribs to pack the shoulders down, chin down crown driving away from the heels, pushing the Earth away driving the elbow hollow directly opposite the feet with an exhale. The tighter – the lighter. Not only does this technique supercharge the volume, but it means greater exercise value in every repetition – for with greater understanding of the intrinsic technique comes greater neuromuscular adaptation: in other words, better technique = more growth. Quality quantity.

Q: Even though I train regularly at the gym, I still found the exercises super-challenging. Is this a New type of fitness, one which most people are hardly aware of? How is it different from regular gym exercises?

No, it’s not new. Thousands of years old. The way we have been taught to train at a gym is the new kid on the block. Conventional gym training evolved out of the Victorian era at the turn of the 20th Century Britain. Whole bodily movement was considered “grotesque and vulgar” – so hips, legs and core were fixed rigidly in place as you can see from conventional calisthenics.

Then bodybuilding erupted out creating selectorized machines which could keep the body suspended while isolating one muscle group for growth. Taking it to its logical (far) extreme, we discovered quickly that the power of the human athlete is far greater than the sum of its parts, and the “functional training” renaissance began several decades ago.

But then we became a bit silly in our circus of performance tricks, standing on stability balls while pressing kettlebells and playing the didgeridoo. Reality was required. Sobering reality. What were we “fit for”? That’s the ultimate question that we finally came around asking. Fit-ness demands answering – “fit for what?”

Martial artists for thousands of years had an answer to that question. They believe(d) that the physical readiness to respond to the most challenging predator in the history of the world – Man – was what they were becoming “fit for.”

And in our world of over-populated crises, we have now required the answer of tactical fitness again… TACFIT is defined as having the goal of “being able to acquire, refine and resolve any physical challenge with ease and imagination.” It doesn’t mean just hand to hand fighting, though for the real-life action-guys, that’s a definite issue. TACFIT prepares you for mentally, emotionally as well as physically navigating successfully through any physical crisis… to transcend being a neurological predator and become the master of one’s own physical excellence.

Q: What kind of support do you give people who get Tacfit Commando?

A: “I am not your friend. I am your brother.” This is the credo of our TACFIT Team Leaders around the world. 24/7/365 somewhere in the world, one of us is online, manning the frontier towers of our website and the gates of our forum to help escort you safely through the wilderness of tactical fitness.

Q: I want to thank you for this interview, Scott, and for taking the time to answer all these questions.

For more on Scott Sonnon’s military fitness program, visit TacfitCommando.com

Let’s see some of the excuses I had to face during this winter: