Health

Mar142018

How Did I Build Muscle in High School?

The short answer to that “how did I build muscle in high school?” is… I didn’t, but allow me to expand on that. As an athlete who played almost exclusively team sports, I was used to focusing most of my time working with my team. Whether it was tennis, baseball, basketball or soccer, you were constantly practicing with your teammates, and even though you can work on skills independently, there are only so many hours in the day. Before the age of social media, you had far fewer influencers in your life (for better or for worse) so you were heavily dependent on your coaches and parents.

Fortunately for me, I was lifting weights at an extremely early age with my mother. She would take me to the gym and we would perform aerobics at home, but I’d never touch anything heavy or load up barbells with plates. I wouldn’t use selectorized strength equipment either, not until my high school soccer coach brought us into the school’s modest weight room to use the leg press machine. My father, who was a very competitive athlete himself, focused more on spending time “on the court.” That could mean hundreds of lay-ups and free-throws every day, lots of batting practice and volleying on the tennis court.

Hungry on the far right

Mar082018

Why I Train and How I Train

This is going to be a very bloggy blog… if that makes any sense. Sorry for the few days off; it has been a crazier-than-normal past week or so.

As you can see from the picture below, last week, I was “forced” into action when we were taking Noke for her morning walk. A genius couple decided to “tie” their 120+ lb Great Pyrenees to a ~15lb garden table that wasn’t anchored to anything, while they went inside together to get their morning coffee. The dog must’ve planned on greeting Noke, even though we tried to avoid her, and everything went downhill quickly from there. When the table hit the ground, Daisy (the huge white cloud of fur) ran and, thinking that the table was chasing her, wouldn’t stop. The male owner ran outside the coffee shop, freaked out and started chasing her.

Please consider that this is happening on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood (Los Angeles, California) so the chance that Daisy ran into the street and got hit (by a car) was extremely high. They had a 3-5 second head start before Fit gave me that look and told me I had to help. With my torn calf and handful of other injuries (I’ve only been doing PT and rehab exercises the past three months) I chased after Daisy and the table she was pulling down the sidewalk. It took about two seconds to pass her owner and caught up to her a few seconds after she turned onto a side street that leads up to the Hollywood Hills… phew! Unfortunately, the table provided a barrier between us and when I reached to grab her, I fell THROUGH THE TABLE and onto the concrete.

Mar022018

Meditate With Your Pets!

Animals are the joys of our lives and our constant companions. Whether they’re a cat, dog, or a snake, they’re usually by our side and present daily in our lives. However, when it comes to things like meditation, they can be a bit of a pest. Either they’re meowing in your ear, nudging your hand for pets, or jumping in your lap, pets can be darned distracting during meditation! You’re trying to find your breath and oomph there goes the cat jumping on your lap or the dog barking. Yeah, we love ’em, but pets can be annoying in situations like these. This meditation is to challenge that. The other day, I did a short meditation early in the morning before Hungry was awake. The animals were either on the couch next to me or somewhere close, hoping it was close to breakfast time. And somewhere between their pining and my peace-seeking, I found a balance and it was really great.

I focused on companionship. The unconditional love you can get from your animals is a powerful thing. When it feels like the whole world is against you and nobody really likes you, you can still get plenty of face licks from your dog. She will sit with you forever and never get tired of you. To me, animals exhibit and teach us true love and also how to love. We can learn a lot from observing them and reflecting on them. So that’s just what I did for this meditation. Even if you don’t have your own pet, think of an animal you love–that will still work for this meditation. This can be a short meditation if you wish it to, but don’t rush it if you can. Enjoy.

Feb282018

Master of Modification: Adaptive Athlete and CrossFit Sensation Lindsay Hilton

This is a guest post from Carole Klein. She is the manager of social media and content for Unique Fitness Concepts located at their headquarters in Vernon Hills, IL. She has a B.S. in exercise physiology and is a fitness industry expert with more than 20 years of experience as a competitor and personal trainer.

It might be tempting to think that being born without arms or legs would pretty much make it impossible to become a fitness inspiration to the entire world. However, that’s exactly what incredible adaptive athlete Lindsay Hilton has done. Hilton first grabbed people’s attention when a video of her working out went positively viral in 2016. Since then, she’s become a CrossFit sensation and a serious inspiration to people all over the world.

She continues to influence athletes and fitness enthusiasts all over the world as she sets (and accomplishes) new goals, and we personally can’t wait to see what she does next. Here, we’ll take a closer look at Lindsay Hilton and her amazing journey as an athlete. We’ll touch on some of her most noteworthy achievements. We’ll go over a few useful lessons we can all learn by watching Lindsay set the fitness world on fire, as well.

Feb232018

How to Keep Up Your Workout Routine When Traveling (MOTIVATION!)

This doesn’t include one of our notorious hotel workouts. This doesn’t have a ton of exercises and numbers. You won’t find any programming here: No sets, reps, rest, etc. This is strictly motivational and completely intended to help you remember that you can make up as many excuses as you want, but you can also take them away. It is all on you.

Feb212018

3 Benefits to Drinking Lemon Water

Did you know that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are at least 2 billion people around the world that are exposed to contaminated drinking water? And did you also know that contaminated water causes 800,000 – 1,000,000 deaths around the world? In case you don’t know, contaminated water doesn’t just cause an upset stomach or diarrhea, it can actually cause some serious and fatal diseases such as cholera, dengue, dysentery, typhoid fevers, and polio. And with how much pollution grows every day, coupled with the chemical wastes coming from factories and plantations, it is estimated that by 2025, half of the world’s population will be living with potentially contaminated water. You can just imagine how exposed you and your family will be to the various diseases brought about by contaminated water. If you don’t want to deal with the eventual threat of contaminated water to you and your family, then it would be a great idea to start drinking lemon water today. Lemon water provides a lot of health benefits to our bodies in addition to having the usual nutrients and minerals found in safe drinking water. Here are the top 3 benefits of drinking lemon water that will surely convince you to start practicing the habit.

Feb142018

Meditation All About Love

Happy Valentine’s Day (or: Single Awareness Day)! To speak plainly, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have that special someone in your life. Love is not always about another person, and even when it is, it doesn’t necessarily need to be romantic. You can love your dog, or your friend, or your coworker, or yourself! Love doesn’t even need to be directed towards a being. Love can just be love. It doesn’t need to be cute or mushy or gross. Love at its barest form is pure and unabashed–without flowers or chocolates or obligations. It’s a powerful force that binds the world together (ignore the slight Star Wars reference). Let’s try just taking a moment today to focus on love and find what good it can do for you. Below is a short meditation all about love to get you in the right mindset today.

Feb112018

How To Take Care of Yourself

This was originally going to be a “review” of my recent trip to High Five Hand Therapy, but let’s talk about something much more important. I think we’re all really bad, or out of touch, when it comes to recognizing our physical and mental/emotional well-being. There are so many people who try to talk themselves into their condition being worse than it is and there are others who try to convince themselves that something serious isn’t so bad. As a result of our extremism in this realm, we often end up ignoring our issues and failing to deal with them properly. At the end of the day, that lack of awareness turns into negligence and eventually makes our problems worse, often creating even more problems.

As a professional in this field, this is always on my mind, but it can be hard to communicate with clients since so many people can take it the wrong way. Instead of being reasonable and level-headed, in an effort to create a sound plan to reach a goal, most people take offense to any kind of feedback and in the end, they end up suffering more. We’re all victims of it, to a certain degree, myself included. This was made aware to me, or more aware, during and after my trip to this therapy spot in Garden Grove, CA, which is really far from where we live. Still, since health is an important investment, I decided to take the time and money to go, and I’m glad I did.

Feb062018

5 Tips to Choosing the Best Pillow

Sleeping is an essential part of our day. That is why people put great importance in looking for a good mattress to sleep on, and so it should be in choosing the best pillow to match. Nowadays, there are many different types of pillows to choose from depending on the material used, size, and your preferred sleep position. Some pillows can address snoring problems. You can now look for the best pillows for snoring people who are specially made to cure that problem. Looking for the best pillow that would work for you is not a hard task. But here are five tips to guide you choose the best pillow to achieve that uninterrupted sleep.

Choose the material.

Feb052018

Hungry & Fit Meditation Series

This year seems to be full of fun changes and projects. One you already know about–LA’s Must-Visit Restaurants of 2018 series. After months of putting it off, we are finally bringing you another project that you can hopefully benefit from. I first got into meditation during college and, since then, it’s become an important grounding part of my life even if I don’t do it as much as I should. In the past, you’ve seen written meditations come from us. We taught you the basics of meditation, how to use it for positivity, and for love. If I listed all of the ones we’ve published, I would probably be here for a long time. If you want to look some up, just type in ‘meditation’ in our search bar to find them. We’ve heard great positive feedback from you on these meditations so we wanted to bring you something even better.