WorkoutBrothers.com

Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs takes a reader’s question about staying in shape on the road.

Here’s me doing 105 of them (video sped up):

Burpees In The Living Room from Russ Hutto on Vimeo.

Most people will get you started doing Descending Reps starting with 10 Reps. Do 10 Burpees, recover, do 9, recover, do 8, recover, and so 0n. Recovery should be about 60 seconds.

A VERY tough variation of this is to do 20 Burpees in descending sets.

• Start with a set of 20 Burpees
• Rest/recover for a short bit (like a minute or two)
• Do 19 Burpees
• Rest/recover
• Do 18 Burpees

…and so on. You will be destroyed by this workout (in a good way!).

Brad Bose, PhD, the man in charge of training Robert Downey, Jr. for Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes, and Iron Man 2 put him on a “functional fitness” regimen that included all sorts of unorthodox exercises and routines.

Functional fitness is an approach to fitness that utilizes REAL LIFE ranges of motion instead of repetitive, robotic machine motions (like body building). There is less focus on isolating individual muscles and more focus on working out the entire body. The end result is a lean, muscly body that performs at it’s peak across a wide range of activities (not just lifting). The result of traditional body building and “cardio” exercising is peak performance (if you can even call it that) in one or two activities (lifting, flexing, or running on a treadmill).

They had just 3 months to get Downey into Tony Stark form after he had dropped 20 lbs to play Sherlock Holmes.

His workouts included exercises and techniques  such as Indian Clubs, Meels, Wheelbarrows, Fire Hoses, Sled, Giant Tires, Sledgehammers, and more unorthodox workout routines.

Downey was tired of the regular routine of hitting the gym and just lifting weights and said, “If I have to get underneath a bench press or [do] a squat, I’m going to shoot myself. I just don’t have the motivation.” So, Bose put him on this functional fitness regimen that really “shock and awed” his body.

If you want proof that there’s something to working out out in a non-traditional, non-body building way just take a look at Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man 2. He built that physique in 3 months using functional fitness workouts.

For more information and the details of each workout element see the full article at WebMD.

For the last couple of years I have had horrible pain between my shoulder blades. I have known for some time that it was a result of my kyphosis-or an excessive kyphotic curve resulting in rounded shoulders and forward head. It is what most people call slouching or humpback. It started when I was a kid, probably from carrying a 50 lb backpack everyday from class to class, and from having poor posture for so many years. read more »

Conventional dietary advice for the last 30 years has been something like this: “Eat less fats.”

Well, for over 30 years Americans have been cutting out saturated fats and the result? More obesity, more diabetes, and more heart disease. Recent studies are showing that the “health professionals” who decided to pick saturated fats as the culprit for many of our ailments and weight problems, might have the wrong target in their sights.

A recent article in Scientific American says,

Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year.

A study published on the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (March 2010) reported in a study that consumption of saturated fats had no association with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease.

And conclusions like this from studies in recent years seems to indicate that the refined carbohydrates that most Americans eat in place of saturated fats might be the culprit linked to coronary heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular disease.

Most low-fat refined carbs cause us to be more hungry and eat more which in turn leads to weight gain, not weight loss. Those same carbs also stimulate fat storage and inflammation, and can mess with our insulin sensitivity.

Now, I’m not advocating that you go out and gorge yourself on saturated fats, but I do think there is something to dig into in this whole “eat fat to lose fat” notion.

Yesterday I completed a workout that involved doing 100 pull ups (total).

The workout was 4 rounds (for time) of 25 pull ups and 25 wall ball squats. I completed mine in 38 minutes. Keith was around the 19 minute mark I think.

Now, my overall time isn’t anything to write home about, especially if you compare it to seasoned CrossFitters or Primal workout-ers, but I’m most excited about the fact that I actually DID 100 Pull Ups!!

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