In a review article titled “Hunter-gatherers as Models of Public Health”, Herman Pontzer and his colleagues refute a few of the more broadly accepted assumptions made popular by the Paleo diet and lifestyle movement that became popular in the early 2000’s. It is true that modern day hunter-gatherer and subsistence farmer societies are in much better health overall than Western populations regarding cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. […]
I found something to keep me busy these past several months and I’m happy to say I may actually have something to show for it. Today, I got the green light from my publisher to continue with the development of my book, Fitness without Fear. (Well, maybe that won’tbe the final title, but we’ll work with it.) Outside of my training and coaching practice, I’ve been working as a trainer […]
One of the non-mysteries in health research these days is why fewer and fewer people are exercising despite the known health benefits. People are living longer due to medical interventions, but are actually living longer with chronic diseases associated with inactivity than ever before. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, etc. are crippling many people in their older years and so they live longer, but not well. (1) The health benefits […]
One of the most important pieces to the fitness puzzle is actually paying attention and doing the work. Regularly. Consistently. And for the long haul. This requires a lot of things, but most importantly, motivation. Motivation is a science in and of itself and can derive from any number of sources: rewards, accountability, social obligations, etc. However, there is one source of motivation that I find especially powerful and that […]
Let’s face it. We are stuck at home OR working long hours at a stressful job OR some combination of the two. And what do we tend to do when stressed? Eat. Our bodies tend to interpret stress as a natural disaster so they want lots of salty, fatty carbs to build up those fat stores for the impending famine. And although a lot of us are still able to […]
**I wrote this a few years ago for a magazine. Only about 3 paragraphs were actually published, but I do tend to be long-winded. However, if you want some motivation to get stronger while we are unable to get to the gym, here you go. If you are just getting started, bodyweight movements are good for now, just practice good form. I will publish some more articles here soon that […]
So, I guess I never gave a report on how the Lightweight North American Championship Highland Games went. In a nutshell, it went as well as can be expected. Given the circumstances. A lot of you may know that I lost my mother to an unexpected illness the Saturday before the competition. Losing someone important to you can make a lot of things seem trivial. Losing someone unexpectedly is a […]
Pain inhibition is a very important concept in physical training, but also in living life in general. Another important concept is that pain and fear can often mimic one another. And it can be difficult to discern between the two. So, a few examples for clarification: When I first learned to squat, I got up to a little above bodyweight on the bar and I started to get a lot […]
Isn’t it funny how when you totally give up on a thing, all of a sudden the opportunities pour in. Recently, I’ve had a bunch of people reach out to me about quite a number of projects I had put on the back burner and decided to forget about. It remains to be seen if any of them will pan out, but it will be fun to watch. It’s a […]
