A Good Night's Sleep

Everyone needs a good nap now and then.

Last night I slept really well.

And I know why. I set my alarm clock ahead an hour so it went off at 8 AM instead of my normal 7 AM.

That extra hour of sleep made a world of difference in my opinion.

Now I understand not everyone has the convenience of being able to sleep in an extra hour whenever they want to, being a personal trainer in Toronto most of my clients are not expecting me to meet them for a personal training session until 10 or 11 AM at the earliest. Very rarely do I take on a client who wants a 9 AM workout.

But if you do have the convenience of being able to sleep in an extra hour - and you are currently suffering problems sleeping, I strongly recommend getting that extra hour to see if you can reset your biological clock.

Technically I didn't even wake to the alarm. I got up at 7:40 feeling well rested (and needing to urinate) and then I showered and I am now feeling the best I have felt in a week at least.

I am also a big fan of taking naps / siestas when your schedule permits it. A short 30 to 45 minute nap shortly after lunch is great for boosting your energy levels.

Sleep, as scientists will tell you, is extremely important to your overall health. A good night's sleep keeps you from packing on the pounds (lack of sleep causes people to overeat, especially sugary things, in order to boost energy levels), builds extra muscle (you build / regenerate approx. 80% of your muscle tissue while sleeping), and quality sleep boosts various "happy" hormone levels, which act as painkillers, antidepressants, and increase your metabolism levels so you regenerate damaged tissue faster (eg. fights back against cancer, heals injuries). The boosted metabolism even fights back against aging.

Thus quality sleep makes you slimmer, stronger, happier, healthier and younger.

Good sleep, healthy food, lots of exercise
and you will live a long and healthy life.

What is worse is that fatigue causes your body to start producing hormones that blocks your blood from drawing upon fat reserves for energy. This means that when fatigued you can only get energy from food - which means that exercising while fatigued you are drawing upon only food energy and not stored fat energy. So if you want to be burning fat then you really need to be well-rested before you exercise.

So if you are falling asleep at your desk then clearly you are not getting enough sleep. And if you are trying to lose weight by exercising, then you won't be seeing much results because you will feel fatigued all the time, unenergetic, and exercising without any results.

So if you want to see weight loss results, you need good quality sleep.

See Also

Sleeping Positions and How they Effect your Health

How to Reduce Stress using Exercise, Diet and Sleep

Get Better Sleep and Sleep Healthier

The Importance of Rest Periods

Easy Hangover Cure

So you tied one on last night and now have a hangover?

Well the good news is that there is a hangover cure, and it is a relatively simple cure. Water + Green Vegetables + 1 Hour.

That is it.

Alcohol upsets your body chemistry and makes you dehydrated. Start by drinking a litre of water to counteract the effects of dehydration.

Next make yourself a BIG SALAD. Green vegetables such as lettuce, green peppers, broccoli, etc. Go ahead and add some salad dressing and croutons too if you want, those won't hurt. Feel free to toss some potatoes or red peppers or carrots in there too. The more nutrients (and the more variety of nutrients) the better. [Some people also swear by bananas as a hangover cure, so try experimenting with that too.]

The green vegetables works to detoxify your body and give you some much needed nutrients. You don't have to make it a salad, but making a salad is pretty quick and easy. You could also make a veggie smoothie - which might taste weird, but it will work the same.

For best results drink the water and eat green veggies soon after your bout of drinking, before you go to bed. If you go to bed without drinking at least some water you will wake up in the morning rather dehydrated.

You don't need to drink massive quantities of water or eat a massive salad. 750 - 1000 ml of water will be enough, and approx. two servings worth of salad will be enough.

The last component here is 1 Hour. Within an hour after eating and drinking you will feel dramatically better. Your hangover might not be gone completely, but it will be sharply reduced since you have counteracted the dehydration and toxins in your system.

You can achieve similar results by drinking water and eating a large breakfast. The effect will be slower because most breakfast foods don't do much to counteract toxins.

Myth Busting Caffeine

Large doses of caffeine doesn't really help as much as people think. Strong coffee for example, the water helps a little but it is offset by the caffeine which also dehydrates you. The caffeine will perk you up however, but it is basically just acting as a pain killer.

Thus if you have used a big breakfast plus strong coffee before in the past as a hangover cure, you know it is going to be a slow cure. It will work but if you want faster results plain water and green veggies will rehydrate you and get rid of the toxins faster.

Five Quick Archery Tips

Hey Toronto, want to try archery?

Well if you want to get a degree of accuracy the best thing you can do is read up on every archery source you can get your hands on before scheduling an archery lesson. The book I recommend the most is "Precision Archery" by Steve Ruis and Claudia Stevenson.

But barring that, here is 5 quick tips for getting better accuracy.

#1. When in doubt, aim low.

Why? Beginners often overshoot the target because they don't have a clue of where to aim. Chances are likely that if you are a beginner you are aiming at a target within 10 or 20 yards away and the arrow will arc up on its way to the target - and not have any chance to arc back down.

#2. Pull back to an anchor spot on your face.

An anchor spot is a fixed spot on your face (under your dominant eye) which you pull back to each time you shoot. Always pulling to the same spot on your face ensures the angle of the arrow will be the same when shooting at the target repeatedly. Assuming good form and a tight anchor spot, you should experience tight clusters of arrows like in the photo further above. Observe below:

North Anchor / High Anchor Spot

South Anchor / Low Anchor

#3. Stand facing 90 degrees away from the target.

And always use the same stance when shooting. Stand up straight, avoid leaning to the side or backwards away from the bow. If you lean away from the bow, your arrow will go higher than expected because the angle will be higher up.

#4. Breathe into your belly while you aim.

Breathing into your chest will raise your shoulders upwards and mess with your ability to aim. You can hold yourself more still if you breathe into your belly. For best results, try doing yogic breathing exercises. This is a more advanced skill, but if you can learn how to hold yourself perfectly still while aiming then you can achieve a greater degree of accuracy.

#5. Learn from your mistakes.

A person who doesn't learn from their mistakes is doomed to repeat them. Archery, as a sport of perfectionism, doesn't tolerate mistakes. Thus contemplating what you did wrong, learning over time how you failed (eg. you jerked your arm during the release, you botched the release, you aimed too high, you overcompensated, you gripped the bow too tightly, etc.) will allow you to correct your mistakes by making active efforts to correct your common shooting faults.

HAPPY SHOOTING!

The Myths of Spot Reduction

Everyone stores fat differently.

And when it comes to losing weight, many people find a stubborn pocket of fat that they cannot get rid of.

So what do you do?

Most exercisers are familiar with the concept of "spot reduction", but what many people don't know is that spot reduction is a myth and doesn't work.

The idea behind spot reduction is the concept of exercising a specific part of your body in an effort to make that body part lose fat. In reality what happens is the spot gets bigger as you grow more muscle tissue in that area, and the fat doesn't go away.

So for example this means someone doing only crunches in an attempt to slim their waist, or for example performing just squats because, "All I want is a smaller butt!"

And then what happens is their ab muscles get bigger from doing crunches, and their glutes (butt muscles) get bigger when doing squats.

So regardless of what exercise you are doing, if you are trying to reduce fat you need to be thinking cardio instead. Cardio cuts fat all over your body - which means wherever your body is storing fat (belly, thighs, sides, etc) then your body will take the fat, use it as energy during the cardio exercises, and your special problem area will be reduced noticeably over time.

So why does Spot Reduction not work???

When exercising your body uses sugar in your blood to fuel your activities. When your blood sugar levels start to get low (like during jogging, cycling, etc) then your body absorbs fat into your blood to provide extra energy, and it absorbs it from ALL OVER your body. Wherever your body is storing fat, that is where the fat will be drained from.

When doing weight lifting / body weight exercises like squats and crunches you are actually doing muscle building exercises - which uses very little energy in comparison to a cardio activity like jogging. That means you aren't using very much blood sugar. So you are not going to lose much fat because the exercise simply isn't using that much energy.

Your muscles will feel tired, because your muscles are not used to being used that way during crunches and squats, but that is primarily due to muscle fatigue.

A better way of determining whether you are actually burning fat is seeing whether you can maintain a conversation. If you are gasping for breath and unable to talk - like someone who is jogging - then you are likely burning fat. If you can talk easily, you really are not exercising that much.

What about Spot Creation???

Weight lifters often want bigger biceps, bigger pecs, bigger abs. Yes, they can achieve some results by focusing only on specific body parts - like the guy who got into professional arm wrestling and only exercised his one arm.

However most people don't want freakishly big Popeye arms.

The thing is muscle building and toning, similar to cardio, doesn't actually happen one muscle at a time - it is a whole set of muscles that are co-dependent.

It is the fact that muscle groups are co-dependent that often causes confusion, because people don't realize that an "all over approach" often builds muscles faster because it targets muscles groups as a whole instead of just one specific part.

For swimmers, cyclists, gymnasts, etc these results will be more obvious to them as they are often targeting muscle groups - cyclists for example tend to get really strong legs. Like the photo below of a man with freakishly big legs.

So what have we learned here?

#1. Spot reduction doesn't work. If you want to reduce fat from a specific spot, go jogging and do cardio exercises to reduce fat all over your body.

#2. Spot creation does work, but if you want better results you are better off doing large muscle groups exercises because they are co-dependent on each other.

HAPPY MYTH BUSTING!

10 Tips for People who want to get into Competitive Archery

So, you want to go to archery competitions eh?

There are plenty of recurve, compound and traditional archery competitions to choose from. Whatever your chosen field of archery you can succeed at it if you are properly motivated and work hard to achieve your success.

Here is some handy advice on how you can achieve archery success faster by giving yourself a physical and mental edge.

#1. Start exercising more often - every day or every 2 days ideally. Focus on a full body routine will build strength, balance, endurance and hone your body from head to toe. Even professional golfers these days now exercise because they have realized it gives them a physical edge in the sport. Gone are the days when overweight golfers like Arnold Palmer could get by in golf without exercising. Today's golfers like Tiger Woods have carefully designed exercise routines to help them get a physical edge.

#2. Hire an archery coach / personal trainer. (Hint hint!) An archery instructor will be able to tell you what you are doing wrong and help you to correct your mistakes faster than anything you could do on your own.

#3. Healthy diet. If you are going to take archery seriously as a sport then you need to be training and eating like an athlete in any other sport. Eating healthy means a good balanced diet with lots of vitamins, nutrients, minerals and a fair dose of protein. An archer who ignores this aspect of their physical conditioning and does the exercises without adding the extra quality fuel to build stronger muscles will be shooting themselves in the foot metaphorically because they simply weren't getting enough of the building blocks they need to turn their body into a well-oiled machine.

#4. Daily or thrice weekly practice. At a bare minimum you should be honing your archery skills three times per week. Every day or every second day. Break days are good to have so your muscles have time to build and recover.

#5. Sleep. Your body needs rest in order to build new muscle tissue. Sleep + quality food + strength building exercises = More muscle!

#6. Yoga. I cannot stress this enough. Regardless of what you might think of yoga, I swear by it. Yoga gives archers better balance, better physical coordination, better core upper body strength. These are all things archers need.

#7. Yogic breathing. Two reasons. First, because yogic breathing helps you to control your breathing while you are shooting. Less shoulder movement = more accuracy. Second, yogic breathing has a calming effect on you and disciplines your mind. This is exceptionally useful during a competition when you may be nervous, stressed or distracted.

#8. Seriousness. If you want to get into competitive archery then you need to take the sport seriously and be religious about it. Skipping out on practice, skipping your daily exercises, ignoring your dietary needs... these are all signs you are not taking the sport seriously and you are just doing it out of pride / ambition.

#9. Humility. This is something you will learn anyway when you go to archery competitions expecting to win and instead you get metaphorically stomped on by other archers who are way more experienced and better than you are. You are better off going into the competition feeling humble and remind yourself to just try your best. If you do your best then you will never be ashamed of what you do, and if you are humble enough to realize that there is always someone better than you, then you stand a good chance of surviving your first several competitions without having your ego crushed.

#10. Perseverance. Don't give up on archery competitions just because you don't win the first competition, the second competition or even the 10th competition you go to. When you lose it just means you need to go back and keep practicing. Never give up.