The High Cost of Piracy
The urge to buy or download pirated copies of expensive workout products is strong. If you have the technical savvy, or have found somebody online who's willing to sell you a knocked off copy for half price, then what's not to like? Get the quality goods, save cash, workout and get the body you want, all without breaking the bank. Smart? Actually, no, and not just because we retail these products. Read on to discover some very real dangers involved with these activities, and then ask yourself--is it really worth it?
INSANITY has exploded into the fitness world. Everybody is trying it out, trying to get ripped, trying to make it through those sixty days. Nobody can make 15 minute's worth of exercise as excruciating and painful and amazingly awesome as Shaun T, and the number of people trying INSANITY can attest to that. But what about the man himself? Does Shaun T really motivate people to get moving, or is he just a guy with some fancy moves and an annoying attitude? If you're going to be spending an hour a day with him, it helps if he doesn't drive you crazy. So--in this post we'll take a look at Shaun T, and ask--does he have the goods?
The consumption of fats has been a controversial topic ever since the American Heart Association linked it to heart disease in the 1950’s. At first all fats were condemned, and then only saturated fat, and today we have a host of different guidelines, ranging for urgings to consume healthy omega-3’s to the avoidance of all red meats. One of the most popular oils and sources of fat are polyunsaturated fats, which can naturally be found in nuts, seeds, fish, algae, leafy greens and krill. However, by the far the greatest source of PUFA’s in most American diets come from vegetable oils such as canola and sunflower oil. People consume these oils in great quantities—but is this a good idea?
In 1977, a series of tariffs and quotas imposed by the United States on the importation of cane sugar caused sugar prices to rise and US producers to seek another source of sweetener. Simultaneously, farm subsidies sponsored by the US Government ensured that the price of corn dropped, resulting in a huge incentive for those same producers to use high-fructose corn syrup, an artificially derived product that was vastly cheaper than table sugar. Coincidentally, obesity rates began to rise precipitously over the course of the last three decades, with about 59 million Americans now reportedly obese, which is classified as 30lbs or more over their healthy weight. Statistics show that if this trend continues, 2 in 5 Americans will be obese within the next five years.
The biceps are widely regarded by serious weight lifters as ‘vanity’ muscles, since relative to the other muscles in the body they perform a very specific and limited job. Other muscles such as the hamstrings, deltoids, lats or glutes are used extensively in compound exercises, but biceps are almost incidental to such major exercises such as the squat or dead lift, and get plenty of exercise when done in a power clean or bench press. However, across the world, hundreds of thousands of people focus on the biceps, curling away like mad before mirrors, seeking to gain bulging biceps like Arnold Schwarznegger. Since everybody insists on doing this exercise despite its limited benefits to strength, power, or explosiveness, it’s at least worth trying to do correctly.
If you’ve spent any time in a commercial gym, you’ll inevitably have run across weird, malformed pieces of metal that other people seem to think are normal pieces of equipment. This ranges from a host of different grips for cable exercises (strange triangles, V’s of knotted rope, knurled bars only a foot long) and barbells that seem to have been run over by strange tractors, their forms all bent and warped. What are all these bizarre devices, and should you investigate them further, learn how to use them? One in particular gets a lot of usage, and that’s the EZ Curl Bar, the warped and twisted barbell. You’ll see people doing bicep curls with them all day long. Should you?
Why is everybody so excited about Super Greens? What are Super Greens, and just why are they so super? If you're like me, you've probably occasionally strayed into the supplement aisle (aisles) of a Whole Foods store or the like, and seen endless bottles and boxes and tubs of all sorts of enigmatic and obscure supplements. A whole bunch of them fall under the 'Super Greens' label, and include such suspicious sounding substances like 'Spirulina' or 'Chlorella'. Green powders, basically, and people claim they can work miracles. Others sound pretty mundane, like 'Wheat Grass' or 'Wild Barley', and are common additives to smoothies and shakes. So why are they so popular with people who seem to be in the know?
As December comes to a close, as New Year's Eve looms and everybody here at Extreme Fitness Results gets ready to go out and celebrate, we'd like to extend a huge thank you to everybody who has helped get this Blog off the ground, from fellow bloggers dropping by to people who have distributed our posts on other platforms. We'd like to thank all the customers who have made 2009 such a fantastic year for 2009, and promise to do much, much more in 2010! From more blog posts, to greater community participation, from the launching of a fully realized Reviews section to other exciting features, things promise to be increasingly awesome for us here at EFR.
While there’s not much you can do to your face without the help of a surgeon, you can definitely change the shape of your posterior through exercise and diet. By just adding one little exercise to your routine, you can enhance the attractiveness of your butt, and that exercise is the Romanian Deadlift, or RDL.
America is a nation of beef eaters. From massive burgers oozing fat over our fingers to thick ribeye steaks lying heavy on the plate to meatballs to hotdogs to Bolognese sauces to beef stir fries, we eat beef in all its flavorful, near infinite variations. Entire restaurant chains are dedicated to beef, from Ruth Chris to Morton’s Steakhouse, to the best restaurants in NYC such as Del Frisco’s or Peter Luger’s. Cowboys are an iconic American image, as is the independent rancher watching his herds out West, eyes always on the horizon. Beef is an American pastime, lover affair and obsession. However, nothing we have comes close to the fanaticism that the Japanese approach their Kobe beef with. What is Kobe beef, why is it so expensive, and is it worth the price?