Brunos Fitness

Archive for February, 2010

Whether you already row or are considering rowing to keep in shape, lose weight, cross-train for another sport, compete on the water or rehabilitate from injury or surgery, rowing is the complete exercise for you.

Arms, legs, chest, back, abs—even your mind. Your whole body gets a complete workout from the efficient, rhythmic motion of rowing. Rowing is such a great exercise in so many different ways.

* Low-impact (easy on the knees and ankles)
* High calorie burner (because it uses so many muscle groups)
* Great for joint health (joints move through a wide range of motion)
* Upper body (completes the stroke)
* Lower body (the legs initiate the drive)
* Works the back and abs too!
* Superb aerobic fitness (great for cardiovascular fitness)
* Relieves Stress (for overall health and well-being)

This is different from the rowing you may have done as a kid in a rowboat. The difference lies in the sliding seat. Your legs compress and extend with every stroke—in addition to the more obvious work being done by the back and arms.

Legs: You begin each stroke with your legs compressed and your shins vertical. You initiate the drive with the powerful muscles of your legs, and finish with your legs fully extended. Rowing promotes both strength and flexibility through this wide range of leg motion.

Arms: At the catch, your arms are outstretched; at the finish of the stroke, they have pulled the handle into your abdomen. As with the legs, this range of motion promotes both strength and flexibility.

Core: chest, back, abs: At the start of the stroke, the power of the legs is connected to the handle by means of the arms and the core muscles of the body. Then the back is more fully involved as it swings open through the middle of the stroke. Finally, the body is stabilized at the finish by the abdominal muscles.

I use Overload in order to train my legs into big, solid, lean, functional legs.
This Leg Workout I designed was meant to help me build up my legs, for power, size and strength.
Here is my leg routine, I call it the 6-6-6 leg workout.
Its easy, simple to remember and it actually works!
6 sets, 6 reps, and 60 second recovery between sets.

6 sets Squats
6 sets Dead lifts
6 sets Standing Calve Raises

If your goal is to become a fighter or to be able to defend yourself completely, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu has significant advantages over most other martial arts. It remains the only single style that addresses all areas of fighting completely without the need for cross-training. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu was designed as a fighting style to defeat other martial arts, where styles like Boxing, Karate, Kung Fu and Tae Kwon Do all specialize in striking someone, none of them present solutions for someone who is pinned on the ground; conversely, Jiu-jitsu offers solutions for defending against striking attacks while standing and on the ground in addition to all methods of grappling attacks. With the popularity of contests like the Ultimate Fighting Championship, you will see people naming their styles as Wrestling or Kickboxing, but they all (and must) supplement their training with Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. To this day, there are still fighters entering the cage with Brazilian Jiu-jitsu as their only method of training to ensure their victories.

The Military has recognized the effectiveness of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu as a martial art not only for sportive contests, but in the real world as well. America’s Army cannot afford to buy into theories or Hollywood myths about martial arts; for a soldier, knowledge of martial arts is life and death, not a hobby or a film script. Through a scientific method, trial and error and process of elimination, The United States Army chose Brazilian Jiu-jitsu to be the core of their Combatives Program. In 2002, SFC Matthew Larson re-wrote the Army Combatives Manual (FM 3-25.150) and made Brazilian Jiu-jitsu the backbone for the entire work. Today, it is hard to find any elite Military or Law Enforcement agency that does not incorporate Brazilian Jiu-jitsu as a serious part of their doctrine.

12 reasons why Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is great for your mind and body:

1. Losing weight and gaining a ripped functional body

2. Helps release stress through riveting physical activity

3. Teaches you to protect yourself and your loved ones

4. Surprise yourself with what you’re capable of achieving

5. Avoid confusion and unnecessary situations

6. Make lifelong friends

7. Gain greater vigor and energy throughout the day

8. Quit cigarettes and other bad habits

9. Become full of self-confidence and self-love

10. Learn ways to change what you don’t like about your life!

11. Jiu Jitsu teaches you to move and to use your body improving your coordination

12. Gives you another goal to achieve in life, should you choose to master the art or achieve success in competition

Bodybuilding enthusiasts and athletes looking to gain an inside competitive advantage constantly battle with the temptation to take steroids or not. Deciding to body build naturally is much better than taking the steroid route. There are a number of good reasons to support this statement.

First off, have you ever seen what happens to a bodybuilder when they go off muscle enhancing anabolic steroids? Two words that muscle building enthusiasts never want to hear, atrophy (get small), and strength lose.

The fact is a steroid induced bodybuilder shouldn’t stay on steroids day in and day out for years on end. It is suggested to cycle your administration, say, 6-10 weeks at a time, and then go off for an extended period of time before starting again. Weeks following going off tend to equal muscle atrophy, decreased strength, and even depression.

Natural bodybuilding may not elicit that huge, rapid spike in muscle growth in a super short time, but illustrate a long term, stable growth curve. It may take longer to develop muscle strength and size, but when you have it, you have it as long as you keep training at an intense level. However, as witnessed many times by former steroid users, a rapid shrink in size and strength occur to levels sometimes below the natural bodybuilder’s production. How much fun is that?

Take, for instance, a professional baseball player who administers generous amounts of steroids one year and hits 58 home runs, but is only able to hit 16 during his next, steroid free season.

Since we all want instant results, steroids may be attractive, but the medical side effects don’t quite seem worth it.

Is adding ten pounds of muscle more important than increasing heart disease risk, cancer risk, or manipulating your natural hormonal balance? This question is only for you to answer, not me. In my opinion,
the risks far outweigh the benefits which are only visible when you are taking steroids. Size and strength quickly decrease after ceasing steroid use.

Steroid users seem to have a greater risk of injury from the muscle tissue growing faster than the, trying to adapt, connective tissue. The workloads are more aggressive, more frequent, and with faster muscle building recovery times. Once again, do you want the injury prone “quick fix,” or the slow, but steady wins the race approach? Just remember, the natural bodybuilder will probably show better results compared to the steroid user who has not used steroids in years. Are all the health risks worth it?

Anabolic steroids are illegal if not administered by a physician. I known people who have died, and even been thrown in jail for using, and selling anabolic steroids. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

There can also be a sense of addiction for the non-natural bodybuilders. The performance enhancing, drug user gets a very good feeling when their bodies are pumped up and buff. However, the opposite happens when they stop the steroids, and the muscle shrinking process begins. Imagine the feeling these athletes get. Their body image quickly erodes, and thoughts of the next muscle producing cycle are rolling around in their heads.

Aside from the health, and legal risks, it also costs quite a bit of money to take muscle enhancing drugs.

Hopefully, I convinced you to not take the performance enhancing pathway, but to use your resources, and energy into training smarter. If you are a natural bodybuilder, and want an advantage, you must train in an intelligent manner. That means providing the proper intensity of muscle producing stimulus, followed by adequate rest. The natural bodybuilder must pay extra close attention to sound training practices, in order to continue that gradual, continuous climb up the muscle development ladder.

Just remember to be patient and think long term results, not quick, short term, hi-risk muscular development. If you make a chart listing all the positives versus the negatives when it comes to natural bodybuilding versus steroid induced training, the natural bodybuilding positives far outweigh the drug induced positives. Therefore, in my eyes, natural bodybuilding is a much better training system than anabolic induced bodybuilding.

By Jim O’Connor- Exercise Physiologist

Thanks to all my clients, I have been away on holidays for just over 1 month. I would just like to take this time to wish all my clients, all the very best for now, and in the future. For anyone else out there interested in my services, my testimonials speak for themselves.

Love you all,

Your trainer and Friend,

Bruno

P.S.
Future blogs are on there way, I am back in buisness.

Also
You can have a look at my photo gallery and progress results at
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/Scarfdaddy/