Good Vibes Meditation

Life is this unruly, un-tamable, do-what-it-wants wild thing. It doesn’t really care how you feel, it does what it wants. Sometimes, it is great. Life is on your side, the birds are singing, you got your flow on, and you smile at the world. And then, well, life is moody, so it changes on you in a flash (whether that’s a death, break-up, job loss, or anything else). Where once the birds that sang to you now crap on you and it’s hard not to raise a fist to the world. We’ve learned (through much failure and struggle) that we can’t control life or what happens to us (to a certain degree), but we can change how we react to the world. I love this quote by Maya Angelou:

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.“

And that’s what we’re here to do today. Maybe life is treating you well, maybe you’re on life’s bad side right now, either way, it helps to spread some good energy. So let’s get going on a good vibes meditation.

Mar252018

How to Use Yelp

There’s a good chance that the only time you’ve heard about Yelp, it didn’t help you build trust in their brand. They’ve had a ton of bad publicity and we’ve actually had plenty of negative experiences with them, but let’s focus on the positive. Here in LA, Jonathan Gold’s 101 list is the “gold standard” for where to eat. LA Weekly just came out with a 99 Essential Restaurant list, and we can’t help but think that whoever compiled that list was GREATLY influenced by Gold. Sadly, even here in LA, very few people outside of the food industry know who he is.

It can be hard to find good places to eat and most people aren’t willing to do a ton of research. They don’t want to Google “best food critic in LA” and then read through Gold’s hundreds of reviews over the year. Instead, we look for more convenient options. Whether it is a reflection of our laziness or desire to save time, services that compile reviews have become extremely popular. Rotten Tomatoes is a great resource for movies, Amazon for consumer goods and Metacritic for video games. While Yelp is far from a household name, it does provide that similar service for businesses… especially places to eat!

There are two ways to use Yelp. You can either check out reviews as a guest or you can become a user and review businesses. Technically, a third way exists, as a business owner but we’re not going that direction today. As a guest, you can quickly type in “sushi” in New York and get an idea where the restaurant is, how much it costs, when it is open and what the population thinks about the food. While we don’t necessarily agree with the aggregate scores of certain places, and while we don’t necessarily trust Yelp’s filter, you’re much better off using Yelp than just walking into the first place you see.

Mar172018

More “Wheys” Than One to Supplement Your Training

Sales of protein powder in the USA will reach $7.55 billion dollars by 2020, which is a substantial increase from $47 million dollars in 2016. And with the number of gyms and health clubs continuing to rise, the demand for protein supplements is also expected to continue to grow.

While the demand for protein supplements remains high, there is an increasingly diverse range of products available in the protein supplement range.

Mar162018

Tips on How to Squat

What is the Best Starting Position for Squats?

Do you enjoy learning new ways to exercise? If so, you’re going to love learning about the squat. This is an exciting way to lose weight while strengthening your lower body. Of course, it also helps you lose weight, which certainly lends strength to your upper body as well. But many people have been wondering about where the best starting position for squats may be. As it turns out, it’s exactly where common sense implies that it would be. All you need to do to get started is adopt a standard standing position.

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.

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.