I want to provide everyone with a summary of my 10 fitness principles. If you follow these health and fitness concepts you’ll be on your way to living a more active healthy lifestyle. When reading these principles, it is more important to understand the overall philosophy of them as opposed to following them to the letter. You can read the full article about each principle by clicking the highlighted links.

Ten Fitness Principles

1-    Don’t control your weight with exercise

Trying to control your weight with a lot of exercise is a losing battle. Eventually you will wind up burned out, unhealthy and have a number of over use injuries. You have to learn how to control your weight with your diet.

2-    Avoid processed foods

I can confidently say that if you eat heavily processed foods on a regular basis you will be shortening your life. Research has found that being over weight is responsible for 216,000 premature deaths each year and the over consumption of processed foods are a major contributor to the obesity epidemic in the US.

3-    Live an active lifestyle

If I had to choose between working out in the gym for an hour a day and them sitting behind a desk as opposed to living an active lifestyle by moving around all day long, I would pick an active lifestyle hands down for good health.

4-    Hard work should be short in duration

I’ve been telling my personal training clients for years that “when you workout hard it should be short and when you workout long it should be easy”. Yet this is a common sense concept that most fitness enthusiasts can’t accept. One of the biggest mistakes you can make with your exercise program is to have the mind set that more or harder is always better.

5-    Eat lots of vegetables with some protein and fat

The best way to eat everyday is to consume lots of vegetables, a couple of fruits, some animal protein, an egg or two, some nuts and seeds, and plenty of healthy fat. I know there are so many schools of thought when it comes to the ideal diet. The last 20 years could not be any more confusing for the average person looking to lose some weight and eat healthy. After studying nutrition in school, then reading just about every best selling diet book that was published and finally using my experience working with a few hundred personal training clients over the years, I have concluded that eating whole natural foods are the way to go.

6-    Do easy aerobics on a regular basis

Besides doing your short hard strength and interval work-outs you need to do easy longer aerobic work-outs on a regular basis. This principle can blend into living an active lifestyle (Principle #3) but an active lifestyle can be stop and go, while easy aerobics should be continuous.

7-    Get adequate sleep

We all know how important it is to get adequate sleep but so few of us do get enough. Your body can’t function at an optimal level if you are always sleep deprived because many important reactions happen to our bodies when you are asleep. Vital hormones are released when you are asleep that help your brain function, immune system and can even help you to lose weight. Check out this article I wrote called Lack of Sleep Leads to Weight Gain.

8-    Lift weights

We all need some form of weight lifting for good health. It can be your own body weight, free weights or any type of resistance that makes you push, pull and just work hard. I’m not that concerned what type of resistance you choose as long as you workout relatively hard and keep it short in duration.

9-    Cut down on sodium

You have to cut down on sodium to have a healthy diet. Most people in America eat an average of 3,400 mg of sodium a day while the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is less than 2,400 mg which is just about a teaspoon of table salt. I recommend you limit your sodium to no more than 1,500 mg per day and even less, if you have high blood pressure. I try to eat less than 1,000 mg of sodium per day.

10- Have outdoor play time

The older we get the less time we seem to spend outside. When we were kids all we wanted to do was go outside and have some fun. We would play hopscotch or get a ball game going with some of our friends or just run around. I think we all miss that now. One of the unhealthiest things you can do as an adult is spend all day inside.

Give these principles a try. They don’t involve spending 6 or 7 days in the gym overtraining. They’re just based on a lifestyle philosophy that involves being active, eating right and training smart. You can have that great body and feel years younger if you follow these principles.

If you haven’t already, make sure you get my free “Forever 27″ workout and diet plan. In this report, I explain to you the strategies I teach my clients to have a 20-something body, regardless of their age.

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Best-Mike

I started my fitness blog Fitness Contrarian about 2.5 years ago. I really enjoy doing research and seem to spend half my time reading other people’s health and fitness blogs. When I first started blogging I had no idea how many websites were out there in the fitness niche.  However, over time I seem to keep going back to just a handful of great sites so I wanted to put together my list of the best fitness blogs for 2011.

Best Fitness Blogs 2011

Fitness Black Book: Rusty Moore’s site is one of my favorites when it comes to building a lean healthy body. His workout and diet approach is all based on getting the “Hollywood body” as opposed to the bulky overly muscular look. Whenever I want a fresh point of view about dropping some body fat or building lean muscle I find myself reading Rusty’s blog.

Marks Daily Apple: Mark Sisson’s site is all about living primal in a modern world. One great thing about Mark’s site is he posts everyday so there is a never-ending stream of new content. He believes in and writes about a diet and lifestyle similar to our primal ancestors. He does a lot of good research and really goes in depth about nutrition and how to stay healthy in the toxic world we live in. Mark also manufactures what I consider to be the best multivitamin and protein powder on the market today.

Zen Habits: Leo Babauta’s site is one of the most popular blogs on the Internet with over 230,000 subscribers. Leo writes about living a simple life while avoiding the chaos that is all around us. He doesn’t just write about health and fitness, he covers a variety of topics that can help you live a happier stress-free life. What I like about his blog is that most of the articles can be read in less than 5 minutes. Leo continually gives you new perspectives on how to go about your day in a positive light.

There’s also another blog site similar to Zen Habits, which I should mention called Zen to Fitness. Chris from Zen to Fitness takes a similar writing approach to Leo’s blog site while sticking more to just the topics of health and fitness. I really enjoy reading Chris’s site as well.

Lean Gains: Martin Berkhan is an expert when it comes to intermittent fasting and maintaining low body fat levels all year round. His site Lean Gains gives very scientific and research based information on how to get very lean while building muscle. I have found that many other bloggers including myself follow a lot of Martin’s advice. His site is more for the serious fitness enthusiast or bodybuilder who is interested in the science behind getting lean.

Rob Wolf: Rob is the New York Times best-selling author of the Paleo Solution- The Original Human Diet. I really enjoyed reading Rob’s book Paleo Solution. Rob’s site overlaps Marks Daily Apple a little when it come to nutrition but he’s a former research biochemist, which helps him explain his point of view with solid research. As you can tell, I’m definitely a believer in the Paleo diet. My diet philosophy is somewhat based on these principles.

Robertson Training Systems: Mike Robertson is a premier sports training coach. His site is great for learning how to do movement correctly like deadlifts, squats and an endless number of movements. He explains things very effectively through videos. If you need some advice on exercise technique, check out his site.

JCD Fitness:  JC gives great advice for the 20 and 30 something crowd who want to build muscle and get lean safely and efficiently. I like JC’s writing style; he backs everything he says up with research and one can tell that he takes his training very seriously. He references Alan Aragon’s blog all the time which is also a great blog when it comes to nutrition and training. Alan has a paid subscription called Alan Aragon’s Research Reviews. I think it’s about $10 a month but well worth the money if you like to analyze the latest research.

I can keep going on and on, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many fitness blogs to check out. Let me know which one of these are your favorite or tell me your list of the top health and fitness blogs by leaving a comment.

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Best-Mike Cola

We all know that fruits are a good source of vitamins and minerals but when it comes to weight loss you have to remember they also contain sugar. My approach to losing weight is based on a low sugar model so I recommend that you limit your fruit consumption to no more then two per day.

I have had many personal training clients that would pick on fruit all day thinking they are doing a good thing but when it came to losing weight they had a hard time. As soon as they cut back on the amount of fruit they were consuming; however, they started to lose some weight.

Obviously fruits are a better choice of carbohydrates then cake and cookies but in my experience you still have to keep an eye on how many fruits you eat if you want to lose weight. I really believe that your best weight lose option is cutting carbs.

Why Fruits are not Good for Weight Loss

Look at it like this, diabetics are told to limit their fruits because they are high in sugar. When you consume too much sugar many bad things can happen. One has to do with insulin. I wrote a whole post about it here called Insulin will Not Let You Burn Fat. When you consume a lot of breads, pasta, grain, soda and fruit your body tries to store the carbohydrates (sugars) in your muscle and liver for later energy use and insulin is the storage hormone that gets the job done. But if you keep eating too much sugar all the time, the insulin will stop working and you wind up overweight and with health problems like diabetes.

Fruits are a much better choice then processed carbs like breads, cookies and cake but you still have to keep an eye on how much fruit you eat. I would much rather you eat vegetables all day and cut back on the fruit. Vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals and are much lower in sugar than fruit.

I have never had a personal training client in 25 years gain weight from eating too many vegetables.

Best Fruits for Good Health

It is also important to vary the one or two fruits you eat each day. Try to eat all different colors when choosing your fruits.   Blueberries have a different nutritional make up than oranges so mix it up. Don’t make the mistake of eating your favorite fruit everyday; experiment and try something new.

Don’t get the wrong idea from this post. I do think that fruit is good for you as long as you don’t over do it.  As always, too much of a good thing can get all of us in trouble.

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Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog

Muscle hypertrophy (muscle cell enlargement) is an area of great debate in the fitness industry. Everyone has their opinion on how to overload the muscular system to produce growth and there are new studies coming out every week proving one method is better then another. But how do you resistance train if your goal is to get stronger and leaner while avoiding that overly developed bodybuilding look? Most of my personal training clients want more of that ripped athletic look but also want to be as strong as possible.

There are two basic ways a muscle cell gets bigger. One is called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and the other is called myofibrillar hypertrophy. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is when there is an increase of fluid and noncontractile connective tissue within the muscle while myofibrillar hypertrophy is an increase in the size of the contractile muscle fiber (actine and myosin).

Traditional body builders do higher volume resistance training while lifting moderately heavy weights for 10 to 12 reps. It is not uncommon for a body builder to spend 30 to 40 minutes just training their chest while a power lifter will lift very heavy weights for only 1,2 or 3 reps.

A typical body builder is more muscular then a power lifter but not as strong; therefore, the higher rep and higher volume of training will contribute more to sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Now keep in mind that there is always some carry over. Whenever you resistance train you will get both sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and myofibrillar hypertrophy.

The secret to getting strong and lean is using the right combination of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and myofibrillar hypertrophy. A good friend of mine Rusty Moore did a great video explaining the whole concept below.

Rusty is known for his fitness blog called Fitness Black Book which gets over 300,000 visitors per month.  The whole site is devoted to a training approach that will teach you how to get the lean “Hollywood Look”.

Let me know what you think about the video and if you checked out Rusty’s site.

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Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog

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. My wife and I saw that play too and it was great.

Last night he talked about how he has to start lifting weights to muscle up for the upcoming Wolverine movie that he will be filming soon. He looked about 20 pounds lighter on stage compared to his usual muscular body as Wolverine. Don’t get me wrong he stilled looked muscular and fit but not overly muscular.

I got the feeling from him last night that he prefers himself thinner and was not necessarily looking forward to lifting all those weights to put on size. He talked about how he loves to swim in the ocean every morning when he is in Australia.

It really shows that you don’t have to lift weight year round to stay in great shape. Maybe that is why Hugh looks so good. He cycles in and out of weight lifting while cross training with dancing, swimming and an active lifestyle. I sure he is very disciplined with his diet when he wants to gain or lose weight, as well.

When we were driving home from the show my wife was saying how talented and charismatic he is. We are thinking about going back to see the show with our kids. I think my son who is a big fan of X-Men should see Hugh Jackman singing and dancing on stage. It might be hard to get tickets though because it is only a ten week engagement. However, it is such a hit maybe he will bring it back one day.

Now since this is a fitness blog I want to talk about a muscle-building program that can give you a body like Hugh Jackman. The name of the program is Visual Impact for Men or Visual Impact for Woman. The programs are specially designed to put some muscle on your body without overly bulking you up like a body builder. I have followed the program myself and always put on a few pounds of lean muscle. If you want that lean muscular look like Hugh Jackman in Back on Broadway give it a go.

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Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog