Nutrition is not a subject that I am remotely passionate about or even particularly interested in, but I’m strongly considering launching a new nutrition website specifically geared towards people, like me, who:

• hate buying groceries
• hate cooking
• hate cleaning dishes
• want to eat healthy, but not obsess about it
• really hate cooking
• passionately hate cleaning dishes

I’ve never been able to find the perfect nutrition resource that addresses all of those things. The closest nutrition resource I’ve found for someone like me is Harley Pasternak’s 5-Factor Diet, but even those recipes, as quick and simple as they are, have proven to be too complicated for me.

I need ultra simple. Ridiculously minimal groceries, ridiculously minimal ingredients, ridiculously minimal preparation and cooking time, and ridiculously minimal dishes dirtied so that there’s ridiculously minimal cleanup. That’s my perfect eating plan.

So since I haven’t found my perfect eating plan anywhere else, I’m thinking I’ll probably make it myself and setup a website to share all of my cooking tips for people who hate cooking. Now I just have to come up with a name for the new website. Hmmm.

The LA Times is reporting that P90X is a good cardio workout:

The P90X workout is an incredibly popular home-based, boot camp-style video exercise program that some fitness fanatics swear by. But does it do the job? A study of the system finds it does improve cardio respiratory function.

Shocking. Next week, the crack team of reporters at the LA Times will blow the cover off another bombshell: that resistance training is an effective way to build muscle.

In A Nutshell: The GoFit Gravity Straps are an inexpensive but extremely high-quality doorway mounted suspension gym that allows you to perform effective suspended bodyweight exercises right in the comfort of your home.

Product Summary: The GoFit Gravity Straps are made of nylon straps that feature well-designed adjustment markers that allow you to quickly and easily adjust the straps using the cam buckles that are attached to the integrated door anchors. The Gravity Straps feature a split design which is ideal for mounting the straps in a configuration that allows for optimal range of motion when performing pressing exercises such as chest press, chest fly, and triceps extensions.

The Good:

• Sewn on adjustment markers are the highest quality and most accurate markers I’ve ever seen on any suspension gym.
• Handles feature rubber grips that make them extremely comfortable and durable.
• Anchors feature soft nylon sleeves that do an outstanding job protecting the door by preventing any hard pieces (stoppers, cam buckles) from coming into direct contact with the door.
• Foot slings are the most comfortable foot slings I’ve ever used on any suspension gym.
• Workout manual includes beginner, intermediate, and advanced workouts with detailed photos and descriptions for each exercise.
• Price is positively unbelievable, making this by far the best value of any exercise product I’ve ever purchased.

The Bad:

• Handles and foot slings are separate pieces, unlike many competitor products that feature combination grips and foot slings.
• The bundled workout DVD is pretty awful. It’s not so much a workout as it is a mishmash of poorly demonstrated exercises. Strangely, the series of exercises shown on the DVD is different from the workouts in the manual.

The Verdict: The GoFit Gravity Straps are a phenomenal product from top to bottom, and the price is unbeatable. Although the DVD is awful, the Gravity Straps (i.e. the equipment, not the bundled content) are without question the best doorway suspension gym currently on the market, at any price. I wholeheartedly recommend the Gravity Straps to anyone looking to purchase a suspension gym for home use.

Click Here To Order GoFit Gravity Straps

More Photos:

I received a question today via YouTube from someone asking me how many calories my 10-minute fat-burning workout burns. My answer:

Sorry, I have no idea how many calories any of my workouts burn. I’ve never worried about trying to track that information for myself, or any of my clients.

The best way to lose weight is to workout regularly, preferably at a high intensity, and make small but maintainable improvements to your diet. They don’t need to be drastic changes. You can start by making small improvements like, say, eliminating pop, cutting down on sweets, reducing portion size, etc. These are simple changes that you can easily maintain.

Don’t stress out about counting calories eaten and trying to estimate how many calories you burn during exercise. That’s a huge pain in the ass and not a habit many people can maintain.

That’s the exact response I sent to the person via YouTube, but I’ll elaborate on some of those points here in this blog post.

First, if you want to lose weight, you should keep in mind that temporary changes in diet will produce a temporary reduction in your weight. Once you return to old habits, you’ll return to your original weight as well. That’s why I think calorie counting is so utterly pointless. Who has the time or interest to count calories every day for the rest of their lives? Certainly not me, and likely not you.

Second, if you want to lose weight, you likely want to see results as fast as possible, and therefore you’re anxious to make drastic changes to your diet to produce rapid results. The problem is that drastic changes are extremely hard to maintain. You’re better off making small changes, trying to maintain those changes, then make some more small changes while still maintaining the previous changes, etc. Over time, many small changes will add up to big changes.

So to summarize, counting calories eaten and/or burned is a huge pain in the ass, so don’t bother doing either. Instead, exercise regularly and improve your diet by making small changes that are maintainable over the long term. If you make one small change to your diet each month this year, and maintain all of those changes, by then end of the year you’ll have a drastic improvement to your diet that’s permanent because you’ll have properly developed the necessary habits to maintain those changes.

At 60 years old, this guy is fitter than most 20 year olds. Unreal.

Dips on parallel bars such as the Lebert Equalizer are awesome. Dips on gymnastics rings are awesome. Dips on a rotational pulley are extremely stupid. Take a look:

I can’t image what possible benefit there is to performing dips on a pulley. Unilateral pushing and pulling movements on the pulley are fun and useful if you want to change things up from traditional (i.e. bilateral) suspension gym training, but using a pulley for dips just seems incredibly pointless and stupid.

And yes, the guy in the video looked like an ass with his feet on the basketball post while he was doing some kind of circus exercise with the pulley.

The LA Times posted a review of suspension gym equipment today. Nice to see suspension gyms getting attention in one of the nation’s largest newspapers, but the review was pretty awful.

The author didn’t waste any time posting inaccurate information. From the first paragraph:

Originally hooked to overhead bars and tree limbs, variations on the theme add doorjamb attachments and a pulley.

Wrong, the original suspension gym is the door mounted Jam Gym. It was invented by Dosho Shifferaw (the guy that invented the Bowflex), and it preceded the TRX Suspension Trainer (which many people incorrectly regard as the original suspension gym).

The author failed to clearly point out that the SKLZ Power Strapz (awful name) require you to open and close the door every time you want to adjust them (i.e. huge, royal, pain in the ass).

He inaccurately described how the pin and pulley system on the CrossCore180 works. Inserting the pin does not convert the device into a regular suspension gym — far from it. Sure, it locks the pulley, but the rope still easily slides across the locked pulley, allowing full rotation at all times.

The “door attachment” on the CrossCore180 is a not exactly a door attachment. It’s just a steel buckle. Might have been useful to clearly point that out, instead of vaguely suggesting that CrossCore should have included a “softer door attachment device”.

And how on earth can the author criticize the Gravity Straps by saying they “lack the simpler, quick-change design of the Power Strapz”. Huh? The Power Straps that require you to open and close the bloody door even time you need to adjust them? For the record, the Gravity Straps include cam buckles and strap markers for quick and easy adjustment without fiddling with the door.

Also, the author uses the Fitness Anywhere trademark “Suspension Training” to broadly refer to all suspended bodyweight exercise. I’m sure Fitness Anywhere really appreciates one of largest newspapers in America genericizing their trademark like that.

Terrible review, but still nice to see suspension gyms getting mentioned in the LA Times.

I’ve noticed a direct correlation between overly receptive workouts and boring workouts. The most miserable workout I’ve ever had the misfortunate of participating in was a super-boring group workout that consisted of doing 50 reps of a few different exercises, and repeating that series ad nauseum for a half hour. Boring, boring, boring. So painfully miserable and completely lacking any fun whatsoever.

The second most miserable workout I’ve ever done was a kickboxing workout where the “instructor” (I use that word in the loosest possible way) had us do the exact same two boring drills for the entire hour. Boring drills suck, but repeating boring drills over and over again is torture. Punch the heavy bag for 10 minutes, kick the heavy bag for 10 minutes, repeat ad nauseum. So unbelievably boring.

The best resistance training workout I’ve ever participated in was a group circuit run by a trainer in Vancouver named Mike Veinot. He setup the entire gym into a big circuit of about 30 different exercises, with signs at each station to remind everyone where and what each exercise was (after he demonstrated the entire circuit), and we rotated around the circuit nearly two full times over the course of the hour workout. Fun, fun, fun! So ridiculously fun.

So if you find exercise boring, it’s probably because the workouts you’ve been doing are in fact boring. Start doing more interesting workouts and you’ll start having more fun and ultimately be more motivated to exercise regularly and get in shape.

Just a quick tip for you about how to have effective home workouts in the least amount of time possible. When you raise the intensity of your workout, you can reduce the time spent exercising.

So while a low intensity resistance training circuit would need to be 45 minutes to an hour in order to be very effective towards at burning much fat, a high intensity circuit that’s 20 to 30 minutes in length can be extremely effective (more effective than a low-intensity workout that lasts an hour).

Furthermore, if you really take the intensity off the charts and go maximum intensity for 10 to 15 minutes, you can have a killer workout that’s just as effective, if not more so, than a high intensity 20 to 30 minute workout.

So if you want to reduce the amount of time you spend exercising, workout at a higher intensity. Instead of pacing yourself for 45 minutes to an hour, up the intensity and workout harder for 25 minutes, or go balls to the wall for 15 minutes.