Here’s a recap of the best health and fitness articles I’ve read over the past week.
Q&A: Is Static Stretching Good?
Here’s a very detailed post about the different types of stretching and when you should do them. I almost always do dynamic stretches, but I think I’ll start trying to work in static and even some EQI’s, which I’ve actually never heard of before.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Vegan Dieting
Here’s a great follow-up to the interview that FitBodyHype did with Channa Serenity a couple of weeks ago. Channa makes two claims that I’ve never heard before, and I read a lot when it comes to nutrition. She says that you should never eat fruit with other foods and you shouldn’t drink water during meals. Interesting.
This article provides a lot of information a vegan athlete should think about when it comes to their diet and what they should and should not be consuming. I’ve been a huge fan of Ben Greenfield for a while, but some of my respect has been lost after reading one of his comments in this article. He says one of his reasons for not going vegan is that he “likes meat.” What a fucking terrible and selfish excuse.
Weight Training Program – Why It Should Be Part Of Your Routine
This one will cater more to the ladies. I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard a woman tell me that they don’t want to lift weights because they don’t want to get huge and muscular. Well, it doesn’t work that way. Building muscle burns more calories and can get a female body into great shape, without causing bulk. There are plenty of other benefits too, as you’ll find out from reading this article.
The 50 Best Free Health & Fitness Courses on the Web (Voting Open!)
This is one of the coolest curated resources I’ve ever seen online. I wish there was a way for me to print out every single program with one click. There are so many great programs here, it’s not likely you’ll ever get bored in the gym. I can’t believe Stronglifts isn’t in this list though!
Ways To Burn Fat: 1 Insanely Powerful Dietary Change
It took a looooong time for this article to get to the point that we should cut wheat and gluten from our diets, but once the “secret” is finally revealed, there really is a lot of good information here about the negative effects that gluten has in our bodies and why we should remove it from our diets. With all of the research coming out about gluten and wheat these days, I’m thinking about cutting it out of my diet too.
Easy Ways to Give Any Meal a Powerful Nutritional Boost
This is great stuff, because these are foods that most people don’t even know about. What’s funny is that when I went vegan, these highly nutritional foods seemed to be in just about every vegan cookbook I own. If you want to take your nutrition to an even higher level, check out Thrive Foods from Brendan Brazier.
Pullovers: Bodybuilding’s Most Controversial Exercise
I’ve seen lots of articles for and against the pullover. I don’t currently do pullovers, but not for any reason specifically. I really like this move. If you need to be coerced into adding it into your routine, read this article.
Highly Effective Old School Back Training
Here’s another article talking about a classic exercise that we should be including in our weight lifting routines. I wish I had a better bar to do this one, but a straight bar will have to do. I can feel this exercise just by looking at the photos.
How To Breathe When Working Out
This is one of those things that a lot of us forget – breathe out when pushing or pulling the weight and breathe in when releasing. Even if you forget when to breathe in and out, it’s better than holding your breath. Don’t hold your breath when lifting! Read this article to learn why.
Vegan Diets, Critical Thinking, and 9 Blogs You Need to Read
If you haven’t heard of “The Vegan R.D” blog by Ginny Messina, you’re missing out and should definitely subscribe. She promotes an evidence-based approach to vegan advocacy and this great post links to nine other blogs which take a similar approach. I’ve subscribed to all of them!
The myth of the eight-hour sleep
There are lots of articles on the internet about hacking sleeping patterns, many of which I’ve read, but I’ve never come across something that explains this part of our history and sleeping. This is great stuff! I have problems with sleep myself, often waking up in the middle of the night, laying in bed and then falling asleep again. Maybe it’s not a problem after all, and it’s just the way my body is meant to work. I don’t know how much I believe that though, because it seems like it would be difficult to reach REM sleep within only four hours.
Antibiotic Use Causes Superbugs
It’s been long argued that antibiotic use could result in drug-resistant infections, yet farmers continued to use antibiotics anyway. Now a drug-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus is in nearly half of all meat in the U.S. Nice…