Results matching “bodybuilder”

For Valentine's Day, help her be as strong as your love. Here's a guide to goodies for your beloved fitness-oriented girl - ahem, grrrl - that will keep you at the top of her list.

Foodies

Chocolate. You better believe grrrls want chocolate. Chocolate that won't sit in our stomachs during a work out, give us a sugar crash, make us feel fat, guilty, or like we have to brush our teeth. We're talking whole food chocolate. This mind-blowing stuff is made with just cocoa, nuts, dates, maybe a little fruit - stuff like that, and it tastes amazing. I love Labarar's delectable Jocalat bars and the similar Clif Nectar bars.

A blender. As Krista Scott says, generally one has to tread carefully when getting household items for women for romantic occasions, but pair it with a big jug of protein powder and you should be cool. The Kitchen Aid commercial blender is the Cadillac.

And/or a blender bottle - not the kind with a motor, but this innovative and effective low-tech one with a wire whisk-like ball inside.

Boxing Gear

Whether you are a grrrl, or have a sister or daughter, you know that grrls like to hit things. Give her something to beat on besides you. Any grrl will be delighted with the right bag to punch or kick. Check Title Boxing or Everlast for a variety of heavy bags, speed bags, and martial arts bags. If she's into cardio kickboxing, she's probably used to a freestanding bag with a water-filled base.

Everlast Evergel Glove Wraps rock. She can wear them under bag gloves as a convenient and more protective alternative to handwraps, or alone for light bag work, mitts, speed bag, grappling and more.

Then get her a real pair of G&S bag gloves, instead of those cheap ones from the sports store. Twelve ounces should be fine, and they're very helpful in figuring out fit if you call.

Via Stumptuous : Legendary bodybuilder Cory Everson. 50? Really?

Via Stumptuous : Legendary bodybuilder Cory Everson. 50? Really?

This is a guest post by bodybuilder, writer and weightlifting aficionado Kat 'The Mighty Kat' Ricker - DIY Band Crossover Rig. Enjoy.

Bands are great tools for resistance training - flexible, portable, lightweight, inexpensive, infinitely useful. Anchoring them at ground level puts them ready for any number of exercises, and you can fix the the anchor points at your optimum distance for crossover moves, like a customized cable crossover machine. There are so many exercises you can do on your crossover rig - chest press, tricep ext., bicep curls, lat rows - you're limited only by your imagination (and biomechanics).

At my studio, we bolted two rounded garage door handles into the concrete garage floor. They needed to clear more height in order for the handles to fit undernearth easily, so we stacked washers under each end. This works great! And nobody's ever going to move them or block them.

This is a guest post by bodybuilder, writer and lover of all forms of fitness - Kat 'The Mighty Kat' Ricker.
Lift with Your Head.


Lift with Your Head: The Training and Movement Philosophies of the Physical Subculture is anything but "just one more fitness book" to jam onto the shelf. Whether you're toying with the idea of starting out, getting back into shape, or whether you're a fitness fanatic, this is one book you can get into and get a lot out of.

Author Chip Conrad (owner of Body Tribe Fitness, a private gym in Sacramento that hosts art exhibits and speakers such as Found Magazine folks) has a snappy, down-to-earth, buoyant voice that belies his pleasure in a physically fit lifestyle. But he offers so much more than smart, unconventional exercises and diet advice. The first half of this book is alive with his philosophy on working out, living physically, and ... life.

So many books merely offer instruction. Lift with your Head offers insight and reflection. If deep down you've always had the inkling that we should play and have fun in order to live well, this book will articulate why that's valid, even vital. If you hanker for recess in your adult life, if you are turned off by today's corporately-run gyms, if you want to feel better without all the drudgery of "three 12-rep sets" and 12-week programs, this book will oxygenate a flame in you that has been quietly flickering. Passage after passage, Chip's thinking certainly resonates with mine.

The nuts and bolts? At the risk of cheapening it by spitting out some gems out of context - cleans, windmills, farmer's walk, deadlifts, beating tractor tires; dumbbells, kettlebells, clubbells, sandbags.

I must give props to the page design. Every clean, tidy, page is loaded with images - of real people enjoying using their bodies, not the soft-porn types of images you find in many fitness books.

I've got a lot of fitness books jammed onto my shelf. This is one of the few I'm taking from the bedside into the gym.

Lift with your Head is self-published and available only through the Physical Subculture Web site, for $21.95.

This review also appears over on Kat's site, The Mighty Fit Review. Pop over and say hello.

This is a guest post by bodybuilder, writer and weightlifting aficionado Kat 'The Mighty Kat' Ricker - DIY Hanging Handles, Psuedo "Rings". Enjoy.


For the gym that has everything, and for the space that has nothing but could become training space for a tool that gives great bang for the buck and takes up modest space: handles on chains, staple equipment for me.


Most exercises that involve body suspension are situated in stable structures - pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, that kind of thing. There are also bodyweight exercises situated in stable structures which could become suspension activities with the right structure - push-ups, inverse flys, scapular retraction and depression exercises.

When these exercises are performed correctly in unstable environments, the benefits are exponential. The direct demand and load are increased, plus the instability introduces new angles of force and makes new demands on both large and very small muscle groups. By nature, core strength must develop in order to perform, and overall muscular coordination must develop as well.

Enter handles hung on chains. These are more versatile than their more glamorous cousin - the rings - because they can easily be adjusted into every possibly degree of proximity to one another, and their level of suspension from the floor can easily be manipulated as well. They're not just fixed into a ceiling beam for time immemorial. You can move them as often as you like, even during a work out.

You'll need either one 6' length of chain or two 3' lengths of chain just heavy enough to support your bodyweight (which means they can be surprisingly thin, thanks to modern chain technology), four to six carabiners, and two handles.

You have some selection to decide on with handles. While they'll likely be flat rods across your palm, you can choose whether to have square, round or strap tops. I prefer the kind in which the handle rolls freely over a strap loop; they're the most unstable, lightweight, and inexpensive.