Justin G. Walls, Certified Personal Athletic Trainer

Rituals make our food more flavorful - some simple gestures, not necessarily related to the food, make our involvement, and therefore our enjoyment, of the food, much higher. Nutrients are better on a plate than in a bottle - the food-first approach is everyone's best recommendation. Living on pills isn't. Get Informed! - know what to look for and what to know about supplementing your diet without risk of side effects or wasting your money on stuff that won't get absorbed. Get the app! -  have all your nutritional information on your smart phone Another "things you might be getting wrong" list - this focuses on weight perception and weight loss Best points about meals and weight loss: Only eat when you know what you're eating- so try to make the food yourself  Foods higher in fiber and higher in flavor go best together- like broccoli and garbanzos Watch the dressings on your salads- vinegar and olive oil are best bets for low calorie fla...

Use Breathing to Relieve Stress Ever notice how athletes will take a breath or two before going for the big play? Breathing is one of the easiest ways to relieve stress. You can read up on stress and the different forms of relief at this great article on Bodybuilding.com . I want to focus on a simple technique to reduce stress and light anxiety. Firstly, breathing is a stress response as part of our natural "fight or flight" response. However, we are able to access this response and slow our own breathing to reduce the hormone secretion during a stress response. Controlling breathing will also regulate heart rate and blood pressure. Combining breathing techniques with exercise is an added effective technique at changing our overall pathology of stress relief which usually manifests itself as neck and shoulder pain, which can be relieved through good old fashioned "talking about your stress". Research has shown that punching a bag, for example, my actually reli...

In a fascinating piece of survival economics, Howard Schneider asks in a WaPo fitness column as to whom we could expect to survive and lead in a "World War Z" scenario. The question is: is it better to be really fit and lean with little body fat, have lots of fat because food will be scarce, or somewhere in between? Brad Pitt- fit to survive! It basically boiled down to striking a balance between fitness and body fat reserves. A person with low body fat reserves will likely find it difficult to survive in a post-apocalyptic Earth due to the need to consume more calories each day. However, a person with high fat reserves would probably be too slow to effectively run away from danger. Don't rest too long!   We have discussed body fat percent in a previous post . It really is a better assessment of fitness than weight alone. So from now on, think of yourself not as being the most fit looking, but as being the winner in the survival of the fittest!

New Five minute Workout! For a longer workout, do this multiple times! Warm- up with :20 Jumping Jacks, :20 High Knees, and :20 Jump Squats Find a couch and let's do tricep dips for :30 Drop to the floor, and do some mountain climbers for :30 Move those legs fast! Let's do some pause push-ups for 1:00 At the bottom of your push-up, keep your chest a few inches from the floor, arms bent, count to 5 SLOWLY, then press up We're half way there! Let's stand up and do some walking lunges, prisoner style for 1:00 Find a box somewhere in your house, or just stack a bunch of books and get ready to do deadlifts for :30 It is important to maintain proper form. Keep you back straight and push your hips back for full leverage.  Stand up straight to complete the movement.                                     ...

Parkour for the rest of us: a gym in Alexandria, VA challenges regular people to attempt some forms of the street gymnastics called parkour to help awaken parts of the body rarely used in daily life Is there such a thing as "the least amount of exercise"? ACSM struggles with the issue of how little exercise can people get away with if they won't meet their standards for regular exercise. "Really doc, how much exercise do I have to do?" Stay AWAY from DMAA:  The FDA has seized a large number of GNC products containing DMAA, as its side effects have caused serious illness and death in people found to have taken the dietary supplement Best tasting Fitness Shake  I have switched to this shake because it not only has great vitamin, mineral, fiber, and protein content- it also tastes FANTASTIC mixed just with water. Contact me to get the best pricing Some Very Earthy Extracts Some are claiming that certain extracts taken from rocks have some amazing positiv...

In an excellent social experiment,  TCU scientists  discovered that people were less likely to overeat when confronted with how long it would take to "walk off" the food they were eating. The study comes in the wake of the Affordable Care Act requiring calories be displayed on the food. The journal article can be found  here This image is from Scientific American's article on the subject. You can see how the calories "jump off the page" when confronted with the prospect of having to walk off everything you just ate. You can use this  exercise calorie calculator  to see how long it can take you to burn off breakfast lunch or dinner with a large variety of exercises

Simple, five minute workout when you can't get to the gym I actually use this workout as part of the warm up to my kickboxing class It hits pretty much every major muscle group, and gets your body loose for hours afterwards 5 Exercises, 5 minutes 1. 15 push-ups When  I say push-ups , I mean solid ones. Like the ones in this video. Body is straight. You go down straight. You come up straight. 2. 45 seconds Mountain Climbers Quick transition from push-ups, because it is in the same plank position Increase your speed for more intensity 3. Alternating Side Planks   Great Way to fire up your core for rotation. Engage, and then switch sides You can either time this for 30 seconds, or do ten on each side 4. 15 Squats   These need to be squats that bring your thighs parallel with the floor     5. 15 Lunges, left leg and right leg   Legs should be set at right angles, pelvis at a neutral position, moving fixed up and down in a strai...