Fitness Contrarian

It’s Thanksgiving morning and I just saw Hugh Jackman Back on Broadway last night. My wife and I loved the show and would recommend it highly. What struck be about Hugh is how easily he can gain and lose muscle for different projects. He even referenced it in the show.

He said the movie producers of Wolverine get very nervous when I want to do Broadway because I lose weight so easily when I’m up here singing and dancing. He then showed a movie clip of himself very muscular as Wolverine and another picture of himself when he was very thin from the Broadway musical Boy From Oz when he was portraying Peter Allen(…)

Living a healthy life style can be simple if you do these ten things every day. We are all very busy and seem to let the days fly by without taking time to do what is really important for mental and physical health. Living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be difficult but can be simple if you do these ten things every day(…)

What has helped my joints and whole body feel so much better over the past year is incorporating joint mobility movements into my workout program. I personally think that joint mobility or mobility movements are going to be the next buzzword in the fitness industry just like core training or functional training was 10 years ago.

Joint mobility drills are simple movements that bring lubrication to the joints, which can help heal and rejuvenate them. You almost have to look at your joints as separate from your muscular system even though they are all connected. When you are doing these movements you’re not trying to stretch your muscles(…)

In the last few months I have been very busy opening a new personal training studio so I have not had too much time to train. I have cut back on my resistance training to only two days per week and have been doing hard aerobics only once a week. I’ve been filling in the gaps with some easy aerobics and joint mobility exercises whenever I can.

Since I don’t burn too many calories exercising I have been skipping breakfast on most days and fasting for 24 hours every couple of weeks.

I wanted to write this article and post a picture of myself to show you that you don’t have to kill yourself with long hard workouts every day to stay in decent shape. I just took this picture about an hour before sitting down to write this post. Now I know I don’t look ripped or in amazing shape for a 49 year old but I did not prepare for this photo. I’m not following a well thought out program because I have been too involved with opening up a new gym(…)

One of the hardest things for me to get across to my new personal training clients is that too much exercise can be toxic to your body. For example, I just had a new client come to my gym last week that was in her 30’s with low body fat and apparently in good shape. I asked her how she keeps herself looking so fit and she said “I like to workout a lot so I can eat whatever I want”.

My 25 years of experience as a personal trainer has showed me that trying to control your weight with long hard daily workouts is an approach that will one day get you into a lot of trouble physiologically. I know it is hard to convince a 35 year old that too much hard exercise is not good for them especially when they have been controlling their weight so well with long hard spinning classes, long runs and body scripting classes on a daily basis. However,(…)