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

New personal papers from Margaret Thatcher, known as the Iron Lady, reveal the extra-strict diet that she underwent during her campaign for British Prime Minister in 1979.

The papers were discovered among thousands of personal notes, diaries, letters, and other papers which have no become a matter of public record (British law publicizes [...]]]>

image source wikipedia

New personal papers from Margaret Thatcher, known as the Iron Lady, reveal the extra-strict diet that she underwent during her campaign for British Prime Minister in 1979.

The papers were discovered among thousands of personal notes, diaries, letters, and other papers which have no become a matter of public record (British law publicizes these letters after 30 years).

It seems that the Iron Lady was a bit sensitive about her figure and wanted to lose 20 lbs in the final two weeks of her successful 1979 campaign.

The diet plan she embarked upon is not the kind I would recommend to a normal person as it’s very extreme.

The diet included 28 eggs a week, two for breakfast and two for lunch. In addition, there was to be no alcohol unless she also had a steak before hand. Why the meat gave her greater allowance to sip alcohol is not clear, but it’s obvious that she believed that it will.

Her favorite alcholic beverage was Whiskey, and she also made sure to eat a daily salad.

Is this a healthy diet plan?

I doubt it. It includes too much protein and too little healthy carbs. However, for a short time, it may be able to help you shed a few pounds.

Meticulous as ever, Thatcher kept an eating diary and made sure to tick off every item she ate off her list. This is a good move for anyone who wishes to lose weight.

All in all, this sort of crash diet isn’t something that I recommend for anyone who wishes to achieve a real lifestyle change.

For more on this story, read this news item

The General Practices

Most people [...]]]> I would have never known what really counts for weight loss if I hadn’t paid so much attention to my fifth grade math teacher. While most people apply the math they learned in second grade to fat loss, they’re about 3 grades behind in understanding what fat loss is really all about.

The General Practices

Most people look at their weight alone. If you weigh 150 pounds and you go down to 135, then you’ve lost 15 pounds of your weight and you’re doing awesome.

This is a good rule of thumb and weighing yourself is important. However, this is second grade math while you need to apply fifth grade to really determine how well your fat loss process is going.

Fifth Grade Math

The real way to determine how well you’re doing is to calculate percentages, not pounds. I’m talking about your body’s fat loss percentage, the real way to see how lean you are.

When you lose weight you want to make sure you’re losing the right kind of weight: you need to make sure you’re shedding fat, first and foremost, and not too much muscle tissue as well.

After all, you can have very little fat on your but if you’re also short on muscle you will still look weak and flabby.

The key is to lower body fat percentage, not just worry about weight. You need to make sure you lose the weight where it counts, in your fat stores.

For example: say you weigh 200 pounds and 60 pounds of those are made of fat. You have a 30% body fat. Now, you lose 50 pounds which is a quarter of your weight and quite an achievement.

However, you now have 45 pounds of fat on you which is still 25% of your entire body weight. What happened here is that you did lose fat, but you also lost a lot of muscle tissue as well.

All in all, you may be lighter but you still have too much fat in your body. This is because you emplouyed second grade math tools to what is a fifth grade math problem.

The next time you try to lose fat set your goal in terms of body fat percentage, not in your total pounds.

I love my car so much that I take good care of it. I make sure to change the tires, clean it, take it to the shop when it [...]]]> I love my car. Even though it’s close to being 10 years old, not very sexy, and even a little bit beat up, I still love it.

I love my car so much that I take good care of it. I make sure to change the tires, clean it, take it to the shop when it needs fixing, and put into it only the best gas to make sure it runs right.

Then one day it dawned on me that I take better care of my car than I do of my body. I never put anything that’s bad into my car yet I do put bad things into my body.

For instance, I do eat sweets even though they’re full of sugar and empty calories but I would never, ever, no matter what, put anything that’s not the best into my car. No way in Hell!

[ I just love this picture, even though my car is slightly bigger (: ]

I think that I’m not the only one who behaves this way. I’m not the only one who treats his car better than he treats his own body.

How is it with you? Which is more important: your car or your body?

Naturally, I think my body’s more important and I bet you do to, but when I thought about this it got me thinking about all the things we possess and take very good care of:

• We take the time to fold and iron our clothes
• We make sure not to download unknown stuff to our computer
• We keep our house clean at all time
• We take great care not to scratch the Teflon on our pan.
• Need I say more…?

A lot of us take better care of our stuff than of ourselves. We take our body for granted, eat crappy stuff, don’t work out, don’t learn how to treat our body right.

To go back to the car example: most of us would go to the shop the moment our car started making funny noises, but a lot of us won’t go to the doctor for every small ache or start a diet when we’ve gained 5 pounds (we’ll wait until we’ve gained 25).

Why does it have to be this way? I’m not suggesting going to the doctor every time you scratch yourself or never eat chocolate cake again.

All I’m saying is that we need to start thinking of our body as the finest, most expensive, and rarest item we will ever own. Once we do, we’ll do a much better job at taking care of it.

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

This time, it’s for the Shake Weight, a new fitness product that [...]]]> It seems like there is no end to how far reaching the imagination and creativity of advertisers and product designers will go. You may think you’ve seen it all but there is always one more insane or just funny infomercial right around the corner.

This time, it’s for the Shake Weight, a new fitness product that looks like a dumbbell, feels like a dumbbell, but it’s not a dumbbell. In fact, you don’t lift it, but shake it around in all sorts of positions. This is supposed to work your upper body much better than any weight lifting ever could.

It’s supposed to work with something called Dynamic Inertia, a new workout technology for which I could find no reference at all. It just doesn’t exist or at least, it did not exist before the infomercial for the Shake Weight came out. So far, I have not really been able to figure out exactly what it means but it seems to indicate that you get a better workout by doing short range to static exercises like the Shake Weight is supposed to produce.

I won’t hide my own opinion of this product. I don’t like it. It seems fishy to me. I haven’t tried it myself and, unless someone hands it to me, never will. I don’t think I need to try it to say that it won’t work as well as advertised for a couple of reasons:

1. I don’t think short range of motion exercises are better than full range of motions ones.

2. I find some of the claims on the Shake Weight site to be contradictory if not outright false.

The thing I find most offensive is what seems to me to be a marketing ploy which is employed once for the women’s products and once for the men’s. On the ad for the women’s version of this product, it says that it helps you avoid getting bulky muscles.

As you may know, women like to have lean muscles and not bulky ones. The claim is that using the ShakeWeight can somehow help you achieve that.

I don’t believe this is true and for proof, I bring before you the claim for the men’s version which promises that you’d be able to get big muscles with it.

The truth is that your genetic makeup pretty much determines how easy or hard it is for you to get bulky muscles. Not this workout method or another will really make the difference. To bulk up you need to work with a lot of weight, which is something any woman or man can control fully.

Shake Weight reviews are still few and far between as this is a new product. However, I’ve seen at least one fitness professional who agrees with me that this is not the next fitness miracle. Far from it. You’ve been warned.

Plus, you can win up to $1000 in the Transformation Contest just for losing your belly fat, so here are 4 [...]]]>

3) Download your copy of Turbulence Training and all of the workout bonuses and start using the workouts and nutrition advice today to lose that holiday blubber and get a headstart on your New Year’s fat
loss program.

4) Create your username and password for the TT Member’s area.

I’ve had such a day recently and I couldn’t help but feel guilty about it. After [...]]]> Let’s face it, you don’t feel like working out on each and every day. You know that you’re supposed to but you just too tired to head on to the gym and lift some weights or run on the treadmill.

I’ve had such a day recently and I couldn’t help but feel guilty about it. After all, I know too well the slipper slope of excuses. It’s so easy to begin finding all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t workout, but once you get in the habit of succumbing to excuses, it may become very hard to overcome them in the future.

But what can you do?

I try to ask myself this question and be truthful about it: am I really tired or do I just not feel like it? I try to figure out if there’s any real reason why I should feel so tired: am I sick, haven’t I slept well last night, did I workout too much recently? If I can’t answer any of these questions with a resounding yes then I pick myself up and head out to the gym.

I’ve discovered that once I’m in my car that it’s much easier to think about the coming workout. I no longer feel as tired as I did before.

More often than not, what you’re feeling shouldn’t stop you from doing a regular, intensive, workout. But there are some cases when your body really does need a rest. However, you don’t want to skip a workout because you know too well how important it is to be as active as possible as a routine.

I found that when I’m too tired to do my regular workout, a 45–60 minute fast walk on the treadmill is a great way for me to burn some calories, keep up my workout routine, but not to push my body too hard for how I’m feeling at that time.

I found that walking can be a lot of fun, if you have the right kind of workout music, or if there’s a good show on TV that you can watch. The time passes quickly, you build up a nice sweat, and you finish the workout pleased with yourself for not having giving in to excuses.

So, the next time you feel tired, consider walking. It’s a great way to remain active without pushing yourself too far.

Today I want to share a video by nutritionist Isabel De Los Rios which talks about how protein can actually help you to burn off body fat.

I found the video very interesting and I’m sure you will too. Check it out:

You can also get more tips from Isabel De Los Rios here: Fat Loss Tips [...]]]> Hi,

Today I want to share a video by nutritionist Isabel De Los Rios which talks about how protein can actually help you to burn off body fat.

I found the video very interesting and I’m sure you will too. Check it out:

You can also get more tips from Isabel De Los Rios here: Fat Loss Tips From Isabel