First I’ll say this; you will not be bored on this blog! You could spend a day on it reading a wide variety of articles ranging from “How to Give Up Coffee” to “The Meaning of Life.” The articles are generally well written and are frequently backed with Steve’s experience on the subject.

One of the articles I found particularly interesting was “30 Days to Success.” It’s one of those things that you read and think, “It’s so simple! Why didn’t I think of that?” Basically Steve suggests that major changes in your life should have a 30 day trial period. Have you been thinking of starting a new diet? It can be a daunting task to change the way you eat forever, but if you just want to stick with the diet for 30 days, it becomes much less of a mental hurdle. The beauty of this principle is that new habits take about 30 days to form so if you find that you’re reaping health benefits from your new diet after the 30 day mark, you’re much more likely to continue. See what I mean? The principle presented is simple, yet powerful.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some things Steve writes about that I’d recommend a lot more research on before trying. One such idea is polyphasic sleep. Polyphasic sleep is taking many naps throughout the day rather than sleeping in one long span of time. Steve suggests that this is possible because you train yourself to enter REM sleep faster. That statement caused little alarms to go off in the part of my brain that holds a psychology degree. I remember reading that a person will go directly to REM sleep if they’re sleep deprived and exhausted. I don’t think people trying this sleeping method are really training themselves. I just think they reach a point where they’re so exhausted they go right into REM sleep. Polyphasic sleep also seems to ignore thermal fluctuations that your body goes through during wake/sleep cycles. For me, polyphasic sleep left too many questions.

The truth is you don’t have to agree with everything Steve Pavlina writes in order to benefit from his site. There are plenty of good ideas there and it’s definitely worth your time to check it out and play around for a couple of hours. Who knows? One of Steve’s ideas may change your life!

Relaxation allows you to take some time for yourself so you can analyse what as been going on for the last few days. By taking some time to review your day, you can prepare things or see the good/bad of the day so you make sure they are repeated or not. Relaxation is a time saving activity, simply because your mind as time to restructurate everything that went on today and will be coming soon towards you. Relaxation is pretty much like giving your mind time to create an agenda and store the information you have to know in order.

Relaxation also help you to deal with physical tension and other physical stresses. It’s always better to perform a task when you’re calm because you know you can take your time to analyse everything before you choose an option. When you’re stressed, you’ll generally go with the first idea that comes in mind without verifying what will happen when the idea is applied. You thus give you more risk and this return in the form of even more stress to deal with because things weren’t done meticulously.

Relaxation can take as little as five (5) minutes of your time daily. That’s 35 minutes per week. Here are some examples of what you could consider doing:

1. Deep breathing
2. Exercise
3. Humor
4. Listening to music
5. Massage
6. Meditation
7. Prayer
8. Self-hypnosis
9. Visualization
10. Yoga

Doing one of these 10 possible technique will enhance your life tremendiously, and it’s not hard to do. It just require some of your time and the results you’ll get from doing it will help you deal with everything in your life much more easily.

If you have anything in mind you’d like to take care of, say, problems you have or things you’ll like to be able to do, take some time and focus on it. Find what it is that you want to be achieved and give your mind the time to look for solution of this achivement to become reality. When you get that solution, “just do it”. You’ll thanks your mind later.

Self-esteem is deeply connected with our self-image, which is our mental image of ourself. The higher our self-esteem is, the better our self-image is. Self-esteem is our declaration of being able/unable to do things. It’s in some sort, our limits, or what we believe are our limits. We are unlimited beings, the mind is our only limiter. If you believe everything is possible, then it will, if you don’t, you won’t believe it’s possible.

Working on your self-esteem is easy if you believe it is, so think like that. What you want to do is to accept everything the way it is and to stop trying to change already accomplished events because it is impossible to do so (for the moment). Then you have to act like everything is reachable. Never limit yourself or say no to opportunities. Seek those opportunities and enjoy them. If someone invites you to play a sport you know you’re not that good at it, don’t refuse because of self-esteem corruption. Accept and see the event as a way to ameliorate your skills and enjoy doing it. If you do, others will as well. When you act like you would others to, they will respond to that mood and will act like you. This is called mirroring.

Always seek every opportunity under a positive light. If you’re having boring conversations with your mates ask yourself why. Is it because you don’t participate or is it because the subject is not interesting to you or even BOTH of you? If it’s any of these, change subject or tell the other person you’re not interested. Don’t waste your time and energy on unwanted material, although see the “boring” conversations interesting by finding ways to control them, seek possibilities for you to turn it into something enjoyable, try different speech speed, pitch, expressiveness, etc. Even the worst topics can be interesting if you give some of your energy into it.

One important thing about self-esteem is that we often value it by how others perceive us. Self-esteem should be OUR estimation of ourself not OTHER-esteem. Stop relying on others to judge you, because you’ll only find ways to lower yourself which is the mind primary behavior because it defends the organism against future attacks. Believe EVERYTHING you BELIEVE. Make it rock solid. Sure, sometimes you beliefs aren’t strong enough but look for all the possibilities and then establish yourself. What is vital to remember is that no one should define you. Only you should be doing that. Create yourself based upon YOUR choice, not the others. By doing so, you’ll increase your self-esteem and self-image tremendously.

1. Preparation
Like in anything you’ll do in your life, preparation is always a good step, physically and psychologically. Confidence is a huge factor in how you’ll be able to accomplish the task that’s awaiting you.

Resume: Eat enough, try to avoid fast food at all cost, eat correctly (not too much), drink plenty of water (8 x 8 oz).

2. Daily Routine
The daily routine will make sure you get into a good physical cycle by keeping you working each and every day. Cardio activities such as jogging or rope-jumping will help you burn the fat and will also improve your heart muscle. If you’re looking to burn fat, you should do low intensity cardio which means you jog at 65%-75% of your maximum heart beat for the longest period of time. You should know that dropping 2-3 pounds max/per week is safe and higher will cause loose skin.

Resume: Warm up, cardio, Cooling down.

3. The Workout
Working on every muscle separately is a great way to improve your fitness. Not only will it improve your health in general but it will allow you to perform a lot better in the sports you do.

Resume: The 5 BX method will get you to work muscle everyone wants to be in shape: pectorals, abs, legs and arms. The exercises will take you less than 11 minutes to accomplish and are done in a specific order which will produce the best results. (no warm up needed as it is part of the work out)

4. The Sport
The sport is the best way to enjoy your strenght and agility while having fun at the same time. Sports also improve our fitness in many way and increase our coordination.

Resume: Do a bit of cardio to warm yourself, some stretching (specifically dynamic movements related to the sport) and cool down at the end of your session. Don’t forget to drink water before and after, water in-between can result in cramps.

5. Stretching: all covered
Stretching is an important part of any physical activity. You do not want your muscle to rip while performing your activities. Stretching allows you to improve the range of your movements and also prepares your body to physical performances.

Resume: Stretch should not fatigue you. Try doing the morning routine if you’re looking to improve your flexibility.

6. Supplements
Since only eating cannot provide all the nutrients our body need, we have to look somewhere else for that amount we carve in. Post-workout shakes are the best method to get your body back in shape after and hard and long period of work.

Resume: Post-workout shakes will give your body the nutrients he needs to repair the micro-tears in your muscles. As proteins is the main ingredient to muscle reparation and growth, a shake containing an high amount of it will give your body more than enough to repair and grow (exactly what we’re looking for).

Stay motivated

Our mind control everything about us. Staying motivated is the most important step to your workout and your sport since it will keep you doing it. Find ways to enjoy these activities and what is their return into your life. Logging your progress is a great way to keep you motivated especially in times where you think you’re going nowhere. Look back at your log each time you feel no more confident about yourself and you’ll see that results are still showing up.

Conclusion

The program comes to an end. I hope you’ve enjoyed the information I gave you through the whole 7 days and that you will continue to work with your body because it is the only thing we’ll own until our death so we must take care of it. Physical health will ameliorate your life in many way and will result in a more interesting lifestyle. Enjoy it.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

SUPPLEMENTS

Post-workout shakes recipe (Protein shakes)
BodyBuilding Protein shakes recipes
When: After your workout (post-workout)
Benefits: Provide the nutrients the body needs to get your muscle to grow, especially useful after after muscles have been worked out.

Recommanded proteins

Optimum 100% Whey Protein
Flavors:Chocolate, Chocolate Mint, Cookies N’ Cream (not recommanded), Rocky Road, Strawberry, Tropical Punch
and Vanilla

I’d recommand you buy the 5 lbs deal because of the low price per portion and also because you might/will want to change in the future.

Here are the information about the 5lbs of whey from Optimum Nutrition
Price per portion: 0.38$
Number of servings: 77
Price: $43.99 $28.89

Best source of whey supply for the lowest price: BodyBuilding.com

BodyBuilding.com recommands
1. Optimum 100% Whey Protein
2. Higher Power 100% Whey Power
3. Prolab N-Large II
4. CytoSport Cyto Gainer
5. Dymatize Elite Whey

You can use their protein finders, which is a simple search engine on their website which allows you to filter by price, grams protein, grams carbs and grams fat. They also have an advanced search feature which allows you to filter even more specifics.

Water

Even though water isn’t a supplements, I’d like to remind you that you should drink at least 8 glasses of it daily. This will help you keep your inside clean while preventing things such as fatigue. If possible, you should also add things which are high in fiber such as apples. They will help your intestine remove all the toxins and will allow you to absorb more water which will also help you remove toxins and bad stuff in your blood which is filtred through the kidneys.

See you tomorrow for day 7.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

STRETCHING: ALL COVERED

Once again, I’d recommand reading Tricks Tutorial Developing flexibility guide. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you could also read STRETCHING AND FLEXIBILITY: Everything you never wanted to know by Brad Appleton. Here’s I’ll be discussing about the important step of a good stretching session.

1. Stretching should not get you exausted. If you’re getting exausted, you’re putting too much strenght in it and it is not good because it will reduce your range of motion and will set your nervous system alert at this range, thus reducing your flexibility which isn’t what you’re looking for.
2. I’d suggest you do the morning routine they suggest on Tricks Tutorial as flexibility exercises are easier when you just woke up.
3. Like I’ve said many times, stretchings are to be perform at two different moment in your training session or your sport. At the beginning in the warm up session and at the end in the cooling down session. Each kind of stretching will provide specific advantages to your activities as the pre-session is used to prepare the muscles to perform and the post-session is used to make sure the muscle will recover faster from their hard work.

The WHYs of STRECHING

1. Static stretches help to speed up your recovery
2. Stretching reduce the possibilities of getting easily injured during and after your physical activities.
3. Stretching helps you recover from injuries faster
4. Dynamic stretching is a good warm up method as it involves movements, but don’t forget to do cardio also.

See you tomorrow for day 6.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

Doing a sport is important in itself because it will stimulate more muscles at once and it will also help you improve your coordination. When you are exercising, you do not have to look at a ball coming toward you and to get ready to hit it with what happen to be in your hands. This increases the difficulty just a bit more. But since you’ve exercised, your reflexes will be boosted as you’ve gained more physical power.

THE SPORT

Warm up like before any physical exercise or performance. Do a bit of cardio and warm up the muscles that will be triggered the most during your activity. You’re now ready to perform your sport and get the most out of it.

IF you have no sport in mind or you’re not doing sport currently I would suggest you find one. If you can’t decide which one to do, try them all, see what you like. If none interests you, I’d suggest you take swimming. Swimming is great because it’s one of the best sport to improve your cardio while working pretty much every muscles on your body. If you already have one sport, then you might want to do swimming also because of it’s great benefits. You can check the Wikipedia List of Sports for a list of possible sport that might interest you.

Be sure you’ve hydrated yourself before the activity because if you drink while you’re in the middle of it, you might get cramps. Drinking water will help you to keep your saliva liquid for a longer period of time. When we perform intensive activities such as running for an extended period of time, our saliva start to become more sticky and turn into mucus which doesn’t feel good in your mouth.

Tips to get the most out of your sport

1. Warm up before performing, this include doing dynamic stretching in order to increase the temperature of your muscle and their effectiveness
2. Do your sport using your brain. If it’s a team sport, play with your team, not alone.
3. Cool down a after your performing in order to prevent soreness and other pain
4. Stretch while you are cooling down to gain flexibility

I’ll keep this article short because there are so many sport and each of them have specifics tips that can help you improve your abilities to perform them. What I’ll suggest you is that you take 30 minutes of your time for the rest of this serie of articles (today + 3 days left = 2 hours) to look online for tips on how to perform your sport correctly.

See you tomorrow for day 5.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

The parts of the body that require special attention are the muscles of the shoulder and arms, abdomen and back, legs, and the heart, lungs and blood vessels.

It is recomanded to isolate each muscle you want to train in order to get the maximum results. This mean you should only be using force on a specific area of your body for that particular moment.

As we aren’t going to go to the gymnasium as it’s not everyone that can access one, we’ll use our own body weight to train ourself. Yes, this method is worth doing, Pavel Tsatsouline even wrote a book called The Naked Warrior where he teaches various exercises using your own body weight. You could, for example, do push-ups hand and feet on ground (basic push-ups) and move to handstand push-ups (where all your weight would be applied). When this would be done, you’d be doing one hand push-ups and then increase inclinasion until you do one handstand push-ups.

The basic idea of this method is to increase the % of your body weight that you use in order to increase the difficulty. But for now, we won’t use his method but the 5BX method. If you are a girl, you might want to use the XBX method instead. While The Naked Warrior is simply a shift in difficulty by using more of your own body weight (the more you inclinate your body the more of your body weight you use), the 5BX method increases the difficulty by increasing the difficulty of the form thus making it look like a completely different exercise.

If you haven’t read 7 days to a Better Body : Day 2, you should do that now. There are important steps to do before going for the workout. At this moment you should have already warmed up and have done a bit a cardio.

THE WORKOUT

Both 5BX and XBX method can be downloaded:
5BX – XBX

If you do not want to download this document, you can go to Getting Fit 5BX guide. You’ll find all the images and chart you need to perform the exercises.

A bit of explaination about the workout, the 5BX method
This method is called 5BX because it is composed of 5 Basics Exercises. You’ll be performing these 5 exercises under 11 minutes. The program is divided in levels and charts. There are 12 levels and 6 charts. You begin at D- and you go your way up to A+ and then you can go to the next chart. The difficulties of the exercises increase with each new chart, the 6th chart qualifying you has a champion athelete if you are able to perform them PROPERLY and IN 11 minutes.

Each exercises is to be done under a certain time restriction which will stay the same for each 6 charts: 2 minutes, 1 minutes, 1 minutes, 1 minutes and 6 minutes. Each exercise work on specific muscles, pretty much like when you are working in a gym. Exercise 1 aim to work you abs while exercise 4 aim your pectorals and your arms. Exercise 5 is there to help you to do some cardio work. There you have done 5 exercises under 11 minutes, you have the rest of the day to do whatever you want. Isn’t that wonderful?

Let say we were to do one level each day. To get to the 5th chart we would have to do 4 x 12 = 48 days of exercises. Simple exercises yet they will help you get and maintain an healthy lifestyle if you take your 11 minutes a day to do them properly because form is important.

For those who would like to use machines
You also have the possibility to use machines if you have access to them but I won’t get into details about it because this serie of articles is about getting a healthy lifestyle, not how to shape yourself like a god or whatever extraordinary. Yes, you’ll get great results, results that will improve the way you live and how you feel in general, you’ll have a better cardio, will be able to perform a lot more in physical activities but it’s not about appearance, it’s about feelings. You will be confident that you can perform physical activities even though you did not in the past.

General advice to those who does use machines to do their workout: You should be exercising 3 times per week, generally monday, wednesday and friday. You MUST ABSOLUTELY give yourself time to recover in order to not overwork your muscle and so that you get the benefits of your workout. On your day off, you’ll still be invited to do cardio activities because those are always beneficial.

I can’t comment about specific exercises you should do because everyone is different and everyone has different goals: some want to lose weight, some want to gain weight, gain muscle mass, work their arms, work their legs, work their whole body, get a 6-pack abs (which is often not showing because of non-proper nutrition, too high Body Fat %), etc.

You’re now done with the workout. You should now proceed to the cooling down step in order to get better recovery from this session.

See you tomorrow for day 4.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

THE DAILY ROUTINE

WARM UP
This step is important in order to activate your body and prepare it for intense workout. It helps to increase blood flow and warm up the muscle. If you don’t warm up, it’s possible that during your workout you could strain, pull or tear your muscle which isn’t good.

When you’ve warmed up, your muscle will be more apt to extreme conditions but this doesn’t mean you should attempt doing them. This will just prevent from any accident to occur if you weren’t warmed up. Warm up is used to increase the intensity of your physical activity because you do not want to jump from none to an extreme one.

The benefits of the warm up are numerous: higher effectiveness of your workout, higher muscle temperature which allows better elasticity and extensibility and increase of the heart rate.

A warm up could be:

1. Jogging or jump-rope

This stage will get your heart rate up and will increase your body temperature.

2. Calisthenic (dynamic) active stretches

This stage prepares your body to do various movements. You should get your muscle to work on their full range. Press-ups, lunges and squat thrusts are good for this.

3. Sport-related exercise.

This stage involve repeating the same movement in order to heat specific areas which are used a lot in the sport you practice. If for example you play soccer, you’d prepare your kick by kicking the ball back and forth to a partner.

CARDIO
In this part you have the choice between running or biking. You can also do specific training such as Air Alert 3 (AA3) or High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

If you’re on a day were you practice your sport, this would be the moment you’d be playing your game or doing whatever the sport is. Your body is now ready to accomplish what you want him to. If you haven’t been warmed up to swim, you might have some trouble at the beginning to feel great in the water. If you have warmed up, swimming benefits will be at their maximums.

COOLING DOWN
The cooling down step is important because it will help your body to remove the lactic acid waste created by the exercise. When you feel sore after exercising, this is most likely because you didn’t took the time to cool down. Stopping suddenly to do an intense activity will leave this acid in your muscle and this is why it hurts. The idea here is to slowly reduce the intensity of your sport. Say you’ve been running for a while, now start jogging, then walk. Then you can stop.

Once again, you’ll be performing stretching, but this time static active and static passive stretching. The goal of this type of stretching is to improve and facilitate your flexibility and the muscle will be quite warm at the moment. It will at the same time help your to relax as there’s no more cardiovascular activities going on.

KEEP TRACK (DAILY LOG)
This is part of day one idea. In order to keep you motivated, you must absolutely log your progress to see them increase. This will push you to do even more as you see you can.

Your log should contain:

1. The date
2. Your weight
3. The exercice name
If it’s in sets
1. The number of repetitions in each set
2. The difficulty level of the exercise
If it’s on a period of time
1. The lenght of the period
2. The difficulty level of the exercise
4. How you felt at the beginning of the workout
5. How you felt at the end of the workout

I generally leave a mark beside the exercise I feel I can do more than what I’ve done that day. This way I know that tomorrow I’ll be doing more than what’s written there.

Here’s an example of an Excel sheet that would contain this information. Log example
It’s up to you to design your own if you don’t like this one.

Resume

WARM UP: Jogging or jump-rope, dynamic active stretching, sport related exercise.
CARDIO: Jogging or AA3 or HIIT or biking.
COOLING DOWN: Slow down the activity, static active and passive stretching.
LOGGING: Log your progress.

For stretching examples, I recommand Tricks Tutorial Developing flexibility. (Contain images)

A daily routine is important as it helps you keep the flow going on. When it’s installed, it’s a really good thing. When you’ll see the results, you’ll just want to keep going.

See you tomorrow for day 3.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

To begin our journey, we must follow some important guidelines. I’ll try to keep it short and give you the most important things to consider.

1. The most important thing about exercising is what you eat and when you eat.
1. If you don’t eat enough

If you don’t eat enough, well, you’ll have trouble going through exercising as you’ll feel tired quite fast. Exercising burn your fat, but it also burns your calories first, this is why there are some joggers who jog in the morning before eating. This way, they run on an empty stomach which will help them burn calories and then they’ll eat, generally a protein shake or something which contains lots of energy.

2. If you eat unhealthy food aka Fast Food

Fast Food is known to be the biggest cause of obesity in America. The problem with Fast Food mentality is that it fills one primary need: it has to be quick. But we have to pay the price: all the stuff that is used to allow fast food cooking is not good for our health.

What I would suggest, like many dietist would, is that you stop as much as possible to take Fast Food. This might be something really hard for many but it is a step to take in order to make sure you’ll be on the way to get a better body.

3. If you’re always eating

If you’re always eating, there’s a problem. Your stomach needs time to digest and if you keep food coming in, it’ll have problems filtering the junk stuff and keeping the good stuff. Like a muscle, it needs time to recover and prepare itself for the next food intake, but if it’s constant, it’ll get tired and that’s when you’ll feel tired too.

4. You have a low water intake

This one is crazy. Most of us think we don’t need to drink water if we don’t feel thirsty but in fact we should take around 8 glasses of water of 8 oz per day. There’s a simply formula to calculate approximately how much water you should take based on your weight:
Weight/16 = Number of 8 oz glasses of water OR Weight/2 = Number of oz of water

So for somehow who weight 128 pounds, he’d be taking 8 glasses per day. Note that there are some modification when the weather is hot or for various reasons. This should be a basic guideline.

5. Recommanded

Eating is just a question of portion control, containing carbs, proteins and good fats. Being awake generally for 16 hours, you should eat every 3 hours, which is about 5 (small) meals per day. This will give your stomach enough time to digest and it will give it at the same time the opportunity to absorb everything from each meal. Don’t forget to drink water everyday.

Good food would be:
Protein: lean cut meats, eggs, fish, dairy
Carbs: whole grain breads, brown rice, oatmeal, yams, sweet potatoes, cream of wheat
Good Fats : olive oil, canola oil, fish and flax seed oil, hemp seed oil, almonds, egg yolks

In order to know what should be your daily consommation, we’ll use the Harris-Benedict formula, which is available in a calculator format.

2. Motivation is one of the biggest reason people stop exercising

So in order to prevent anything related to motivation I’d recommand you fix yourself goals that you know can be reach soon (those will be called short term goals) and goals which will be on a long term period (long term goals). The reason we have to use short term goals is because we are all looking for quick gratification, so in order to get some, we’ll fix ourselves some easy goals. It doesn’t need to be “I want to lose 10 pounds in the next month” but something like, I’ll drink a water of glass each time I wake up in the morning” or “I’ll wait 2 hours until I eat once again”. When you’ll realise you’ve been able to do these, you’ll be amazed at your capacities and will want to progress.

Physical training is hard without any motivation, pretty much like anything else. I’ve once heard this: “If I were to give you 1 million dollar to do some thing you really don’t like to do, would you do it?” Well, pretty much everyone would do it? Here’s another one: “If you had to run as fast as you could in order to not get killed by wolfs, would you?” Those questions pretty much answers themselves. This is the mentality you want to have. You want to be able to tell yourself, “I can and I WANT to do this until the end, no matter how easy or hard it will be because I want the results!” Now we’re talking the same language

These are the basic pre-requisites you must follow if you want to see results fast. They should be respected at least for the 7 days you’ll follow this course and if possible, for the rest of your life. They will help you maintain a good health without having to stress yourself too much with the hows and what to eat.

See you tomorrow for day 2.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7