Oprah Winfrey is a talk show host and celebrity with a loyal following. In her latest issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, she states that she has let her weight balloon back up to 200 lbs. Check out this podcast to hear my thoughts about Oprah Winfrey’s massive fat gain:

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I’m going away to India in February for my cousin’s wedding. I like to call it the “Land of Tea” because everywhere you go, you are offered “Chai” or Tea. In fact, after my first visit to India (as a teenager), I became addicted to Indian Chai.

One of the problems I always have is maintaining my weight. Last time I went to India I had gained a tremendous amount of weight due to horrible food choices and lack of exercise. I have prepared a video to explain what went wrong and how I plan to remedy the situation in the future:

How to Design an Effective Vacation Training Program

Creating a vacation program is easy once you have the right tools in front of you. So before you leave for your vacation I want you to do three things:

Step One: Determine the type of training equipment you have access to. If you do not have access to a gym, then you can create a bodyweight or resistance band training program. If you do have access to a gym, try to figure out what kind of equipment will be in that gym.

Step Two: Determine the amount of time you have to exercise. Be practical here. Try to figure out what your itinerary is ahead of time. If you have a family like mine, there won’t be any itinerary. In that case, prepare for the worst.

Step Three: Use the methods below to develop your training program.

3 Methods to Training on Vacation

It’s a good idea to have a “bag of tricks” while you’re on vacation. Here are three more tricks to add:

Max Rounds in 20 minutes – This is classic density training and something that’s been repeated several times on this website. I’m repeating it again because not enough people use this format of workout design.

• When you’re on vacation, you have limited time. You may have 10-20-or 30 minutes to workout before you leave for some enchanted getaway tour bus. I know for myself, I’ll be needed in more places than I can pronounce.
• The main idea is to set up a circuit and perform it as many times as you can within a given time frame.

Tabata Training – Here is another training method I’ve talked about numerous times on my site. I think people are too scared to try this method. But I’m telling you, it’ll save you a lot of time and prevent you from gaining any vacation weight.

• Tabata training revolves around intervals of 20 seconds work, and 10 seconds rest. Traditionally, you perform 8 rounds for a total of 4 minutes, and then you’re done. Most people will choose 3-5 exercises for a 12 to 20 minute workout.
• Create a Tabata routine based on the amount of time you have. Don’t be afraid of modifying already established training protocols.

One of the best ways to help you with your intervals is to use the GymBoss Interval Timer. It costs just $19.95, and you can program it to help you keep track of any sort of intervals you may use. Click here to grab yours today.

Singles for Strength – Here is something I have never talked about on this site. If you get a chance to hit a gym with a lot of free weights (most hotel gyms just have machines), then you can perform something called Singles Training.

• Choose one barbell exercise and perform anywhere between 5 to 10 sets of singles. You can gradually add weight to the bar as you progress, or just start off with 80-90% of your maximum and perform 10 sets of singles. (By the way, singles means performing just 1 repetition)
• Singles are a great way to maintain or even boost your strength levels while on vacation. If you have just ten minutes to workout, then perform 5 singles with 60 seconds of rest between each set.

What a Great Way to Workout while on Vacation! – Image by tinatinatinatinatinaBodyweight Training Resources

I’ve come across a lot of great bodyweight training resources along the years. Check out these two resources before embarking on your journey:

Workout Without Weights – This is an eBook written by Coach Lomax. It has taught me pretty much everything I know about bodyweight training. The eBook is concise and easy to follow. It comes with six “mini” eBooks for additional information. One of the mini eBooks is a full 4-week Tabata training program. This may end up being your full program for you vacation. Check it out here.

BodyweightCulture.com – Bodyweight Culture is a no nonsense forum with a lot of people who are genuinely there to help you out. If you’re a complete beginner to bodyweight training, no one will yell out you (the way they do on various other forums – I won’t mention any names), but instead they’ll kindly ask you to use the search function for your question. The information is GOLD and the people are NICE. Check it out here.

Fitting Exercise into Your Busy Itinerary

As mentioned earlier, when you’re with my family, anything can happen at any time. I have thought of some survival techniques to help you fit in at least three workouts per week while you’re on vacation:

Technique #1: Exercise First Thing In The Morning – Before anyone can tell you to do something, or before that tour bus leaves, just get up a few minutes early and perform a quick workout.

Technique #2: Get it Done on the Side of the Road – When your family or tour bus makes a rest stop find a good park bench or open area and start cranking out pushups, jumping on benches, and pulling on tree branches.

Technique #3: Make it an Event – If you’re going to be with cousins or friends, then get them to workout with you. If they’re not interested offer to teach them, or make a compromise. Say, “Your Art Museum on Sunday, and my Gym on Monday.”

Relaxing While on Vacation

Most often when you’re on vacation, you want to get so much done in such a short amount of time that you forget to relax. I’ve had my best memories when I’m with my family, all sitting around at the dinner table, or playing cards at 2 in the morning, or with my cousins lounging around at a hookah bar. Don’t forget that you’re there to see family and old friends, not just to take some picture of the Eiffel Tower.

Relax, Have some Chai – Image by Veralyn AdeyinkaRelaxing your body is important. If you want stress, then go to work. But if you’re going to spend money on a plane ticket to a distant land, do it stress free. If you are extremely limited on time and need to choose between relaxing and exercising, choose the former. You can always get back into the groove when you come back home.

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Welcome to the Last Month of the 12-Week Advanced Strength Program. This month we’re only performing two exercises per workout. Why? Cuz it’s gonna hurt. Here is what the schedule looks like:

Workout A:

• Bench Press
• Deadlift

Continue reading

When your hard work and dedication to improving your body and mind does not pay off, you start to second guess yourself. You start to wonder what you did wrong and how you can go about fixing it. You start to wonder if you actually did work hard, or were you just going through the motions?

What’s the solution? The solution is training to failure. The following video explains my personal philosophy on training to failure:

The rest of this article can be found in the Members Section.

We all have obstacles in our lives that prevent us from doing certain things. What I want to know is, what is your biggest obstacle when it comes to improving your health and fitness. What’s really keeping you from achieving your goals?

I would love to hear your responses. Please post your thoughts to comments, and I will respond and try to give you advice if you want me to. Thank you!

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Training Frustration is when you are unable to reach your goals. This may happen for a number reasons:

1. You were unable to meet your fat loss goal.
2. Your training session was not as intense as you’d liked.
3. You’re stressed out with your life.
4. Your nutrition was not perfect due to a negative environment.

The reasons are numerous, but when the going gets tough, you need to be reminded of a few principles that will prevent training frustration:

Principle One: Analyze your Weaknesses

Each time you fail, you’re one step closer to succeeding. For example, did you just try two hours of cardio, five days a week? Why was this program a failure for you? Did any part of it work? Did you lose even one pound of fat? Did you gain any weight? What kind of diet did you follow?

Analyze your mistakes and move forward. This is how I discovered quick, intense workouts. I realized that cardio did actually work for me, but it was just that I did not enjoy it very much, and so was never able to stick to a cardio program for more than two weeks at a time. It took a lot of false starts to realize what I was doing wrong, and figure out what I can do different to get results.

Principle Two: Find your Reason

Motivation stems from intention. Find the right reason, and you’ll never lose motivation.

At first I thought my goal was to lose weight. But one day, as I was watching my grandmother struggling to walk up a short flight of stairs, I realized what fitness really meant to me. It meant being as agile and strong at 75 years old, as I was now. All of a sudden, I no longer cared about every single calorie, or how much weight I was lifting, or what the size of my waist was.

I started looking into mobility. I want to be able MOVE when I’m 75 years old. I began to focus my attention on figuring out which activities, movements, and programs I could perform that would enhance my mobility and athleticism.There was a criteria I used in determining how my program would change:

1. The program needs to be exciting, so that I’d never get bored
2. The program needs to be something that I can accomplish even if I have very little time on my hands
3. I need to able to perform the workouts anywhere, even if I have no equipment
4. The movements need to be safe and simple

This new found reason to exercise allowed me to develop the type of programs I develop right now. I’m actually able to maintain a lower body fat percentage and weight than before, without any sort of insane caloric restriction diets.

Principle Three: Challenge Yourself

Once you’ve found the right program and right motivation, it’s time move forward with it. The idea is to consistently push yourself to new levels.

Functional fitness revolves around being able to move in daily life. Dead lifting 200+lbs and being able to do 50 push ups in a row really goes beyond the necessities of daily fitness.

So then why do we do it?

We do it to push ourselves. Remember the first criteria: “The program need to be exciting.”

Challenge = excitement.

Think about it. When are you most bored? When you’re doing the same thing over and over again, and when the activity you perform becomes too easy. Find a way to challenge yourself, and you’ll not only make progress with your program, you’ll have fun with it!

Think about these principles the next time you face training frustration. What are you doing wrong and how can you fix it? Are you training for the right reason? Are you challenging yourself?.

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The recent attacks in Mumbai really made me wonder if I am prepared to face such a situation. What would I do if I were in that hotel? What would I do if I were held at gunpoint?My spiritual background preaches Ahimsa, or Non-Violence. But there are two questions that’s pop up into my mind: 1) How can you be non-violent in a violent world, and 2) are you prepared for violence?

How Can You be Non-Violent in a Violent World?

Violence is the exertion of force so as to injure or abuse. There needs to be a motive for harm. If the injury that you inflict is caused by shear anger, then I would call that a pure violent act. However, if the injury that you inflict is caused by a motive for self-defense, then I would no consider it pure violent act. This is simply my opinion and do not agree with complete and utter non-violence.

If my family or any other human being is around me, I will attempt to protect them. If there is something that I can do, I will do it.

Are you Prepared for Violence?

When you have a trained killer ready to blow your brains out, the only thing you should be looking for is a way to escape. Most of the time, if you do nothing but sit silently, you’ll be just fine. But it’s the psychological games inside your head that are really going to hurt you.

As I was watching the Mumbai story unfold on CNN, I kept thinking about how I would react. Would I start screaming out in panic? Would I just sit there and worry? Would I sit there, stay calm, and try to find the best solution possible?

I’m hoping I’d choose option three, but the truth is that you never really know. Lets assume I choose option three. The goal isn’t really to fight off these terrorists, the goal is to run. Perhaps I’d need to jump over some thing, dart past other things, lifts things in my way, etc. etc. etc.

In such a situation, a variety of fitness qualities are needed: running, jumping, lifting, darting. Do you see any need for big arms or the ability to jog 24 miles at a time? I don’t. I’m not really sure what you guys are thinking, but here’s what I see as very valuable methods of preparing yourself for such a worst-case scenario:

• Running Sprints
• Jumping Drills/Plyometrics
• Lifting things Overhead
• Lifting things off the ground

Image by matt.hintsa

Is your Fitness Program Up to Speed?

I’m not going to sit here and say that I can train a military to combat terrorism. I can’t, nor do I wish to. But what I am saying is that the average person needs to be in better shape to handle these situations. They can occur at any time and at any place.

You really can’t be absolutely prepared for violence, however you can be better prepared for violence. There is no SWAT team or Military unit out there that is absolutely prepared for a situation, however their training better prepares them for a situation.

I’m not telling you to be paranoid here, I’m just trying to make your realize how important it is for you to be able to do simple things, such as (let me repeat) sprint, jump, and lift. And (let me repeat), the average person is unable to do such things.

I was watching a show on the History Channel called “Shoot Out.” They were talking about a hostage situation where the gunman had a shotgun pointing at and taped to a guy’s back. The gunmen and the hostage were outside, with SWAT surrounding them, and the gunman was doing a countdown. He stated that when he said “0″ he would shoot the hostage.

As the countdown progressed towards 0, the SWAT guys came closer and closer, but not one of them did anything. Finally, the hostage decided to save his own life and lashed out at the gunman, when the gunman came to the number “2.” The gunman and the hostage wrestled with each other until finally a sniper was able to take down the gunman.

The more stories I hear, and the more news I watch I’m convinced that the only person that can save you is yourself. But are you prepared?

Most trainees believe that training for muscle mass is the same as training for strength. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is some correlation between the two. If you train for strength, you will put on a little bit of muscle mass, and if you train for mass, you’re likely to gain some strength. But this only occurs when a “training crossover” takes place. More about this later. Read more.