November 2009

Three stretches to improve your posture

November 30, 2009

Imagine if some strange force was preventing you from standing fully erect. We already have gravity to contend with, but you may have another insidious force working against you—your office chair and your desk in general. I call it the sit and slump, and millions of Americans endure it each day. When finished with sitting [...]

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Review: the Pro Fit Iron Gym doorframe pull up bar

November 28, 2009
Thumbnail image for Review: the Pro Fit Iron Gym doorframe pull up bar

If you want to decrease the amount of time it takes to work out, become acquainted with the pull up bar. The pull up simultaneously develops your gripping muscles, your forearms, your biceps, your lats, your shoulders, and your coolness. Telling your office cohorts you can do a pull up is practically guaranteed to receive [...]

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Fixing your posture from the sit and slump

November 25, 2009

Does your job require you to interface with a computer all day long? I don’t suppose you’re exhibiting perfect posture. Most of the people that I see don’t, I don’t, and I’m not even sure it’s reasonable to expect someone to sit that long and be perfect about it—at least not with some serious training. [...]

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Have we lost our edge?

November 22, 2009

Many of us are living in countries where physical survival pressures have disappeared. There’s not a compelling need to gather firewood for the harsh winter. We’re not concerned about finding drinking water. In the desert, we’re not even concerned about wasting water to support artificial lawns. That’s how far we’ve come. But have we lost [...]

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Three skills you develop by exercising (they’re not what you think)

November 19, 2009

Plenty of people maintain active lifestyles, live well, and don’t exercise according to the popular definition of the word. Maybe our “you must exercise for health” culture is still thriving on the idea of torture. In another century, a treadmill would have probably been used to extract information from the enemy. Nowadays it’s one stop [...]

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Use this stretch to counteract all that sitting

November 17, 2009

You sit too much so your hip flexor tightens up. Your hip flexor tightens up and starts tugging on your back, impacting your posture. Your posture is bad and your chest starts caving in and your upper back rounds—your breathing is impacted. Whoa! Put the brakes on all of that and do this hip flexor [...]

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A Cool Concentration Exercise

November 12, 2009

If you are not in control of your attention, you are not in control of your consciousness, and if you are not in control of your consciousness, you are not in control of yourself. Then, for all practical purposes, you are not free; a force other than yourself controls your life. -Red Gold, Grigori Raiport [...]

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Sit a lot? Make sure to stretch your hamstrings

November 7, 2009

As a kid you move and play. As an office worker you sit and walk to the bathroom. No wonder you’re stiff and tight—and probably weak, too. In particular, office workers suffer from short hamstrings, tight hip flexors, and slumped shoulders. These three things affect the way you move and the way you breath, and [...]

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