Probably the most motivational video you'll see this week

Why Eating Fruits Is So Good For Martial Arts

Why Fruits are Healthy

Fruits are healthy, but over the past few years I have seen a certain misplaced stigma loom over the consumption of fruit.  It was subtle at first where articles would suggest forgoing fruit as a snack before bed.  Over time the subtly turned direct as more and more articles began to suggest limiting the amount of fruit you ate per day.  Then the day came where it was being suggested that fruits should not be consumed at all.  The culprit to this seeming conspiracy against fruit is sugar.

Let’s break it down

Before I continue any further let’s break down the iffy subject revolved around sugar.  When I say the word “sugar” it’s likely the first images that enter your mind are; white sugar, cookies, soda, chocolate bars, candy, ice cream, and so forth.  To be frank, yes that stuff is bad for you and your health.  Not only is it bad for you; it’s not even food or even derived from food sources.

So how did fruits suddenly get tossed into the same boat as soda and candy bars?  I don’t have that answer and frankly I don’t care.  I think we can all agree that it is a bit silly to believe that an apple is just as bad for you as a snickers bar.

Fruits are Healthy, Yes! Benefits of Eating Fruit

What about white sugar?

I remember as a child I had the awesome chance to eat a stock of cane sugar.  I was young maybe 10 years old and I sat with that cane stock for the entire day enjoying the sweet taste of the treat.  It literally took me the entire day to go through it.  Sugar Cane is where the ingredient sugar is derived from.  (Not fruits, Sugar Cane) If you have ever seen the pure sugar that is extracted from Sugar Cane it comes in visible cubes and has a tan or brown tint to it.  So what’s the white stuff you ask?

See realistically, pure cane sugar isn’t very sweet; it also does not dissolve quickly which can make it a little more difficult to bake or cook with.  White sugar takes care of these problems.  The pure cane sugar is processed down into fine easy dissolve, high concentrated granules, and bleached.  That is why white sugar and all ingredients or products derived from it are so sweet.  The process completely changes the sugar into something that body has great difficulty processing and thus all the negative side effects from consuming sugar.

Fruits are not sugar

It was easy to put the blame on fruit; seeing as many people didn’t consume them to begin with.  Fruits however are one of the best foods you can eat along with vegetables.  Fruits are an amazing source of energy which; unlike processed sugar and sugar products, is easily digested by the body.

On top of it being a great source of clean energy; fruits are also rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals which give them anti-cancer and anti-aging affects.  That’s right eating fruits keeps your body in tip top shape and running like a fine tuned vehicle.

What makes fruit such a clean source of energy and nutrients is that they are comprised of living cells; which means you are consuming them at their purest form without decay and without being overly processed.

How to enjoy your fruits

I have always enjoyed fruits as snacks. Fruits are one of the easiest snacks; you just pick them up and go.  They offer you a great boost in energy and keep your metabolism high.

Fruits are also great things to eat before training and exercise; but as with any food don’t eat too much fruit before training or exercise or you may feel nauseated.

Personally I always eat a banana or two before I begin training in the mornings.  They offer me quick carbs to keep me fueled and potassium to make sure that my muscles are reactive and responsive.

Fruits also make great side dishes and are a great addition to your breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Fruits are also make great desserts; they taste great and are very healthy for you.  Fruits with plain Greek style yogurt are one of my favorite ways to enjoy a healthy dessert.

In a nut shell

Fruits are not unhealthy foods and they should not be avoided or placed in the same category as a donut or a Slurpee.  Fruits are a great and essential addition to you healthy diet and exercise routine.  Fruits are easy to fit in any time of the day and make one of the best snacks you can get your hands on.  Fruits are also fresh and real foods and you always want to make sure you’re putting in the best fuel for your body.

I personally eat a large amount of fruit when they are available.  Training requires high demands from my body so I need to make sure that it has the best fuel to ensure that I am healthy, responsive, focused, strong, and full of energy.  It is not unusual for me to eat 10 or more servings of fruit each day along with other food; but that is for performance, for the everyday person you’ll be fine with much less.

Tai Chi for Beginners Starring Chris Pei (2011) (full DVD)

The ancient practice of Tai Chi Is clinically proven to be one of the most effective exercises to improve health, fitness and relaxation. Tai Chi consists of fluid, gentle and relaxed movements suitable for anyone and can be practiced almost anywhere. After an introduction about tai chi,
 the contents and the benefits you can gain from learning Tai Chi for Beginners, you will be taught four Qigong exercises for energy and relaxation and foundational movements designed to ease you into the tai chi set.

Monetize your site!

Shaolin Kung Fu Masters

Shaolin Documentary

If you  practice martial arts you must to see this video documentary!

Monetize your site!

Long Term Benefits and Life Lessons of the Martial Arts

• Article BY: WILLIAM DUGGAN

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  1. Wherewithal: This is a benefit of years of practice. You learn that years of hard work give you the ability to be patient enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel for years beyond, but to be patient enough to keep working for a long term goal. This is what I mean by wherewithal. Some people go through life for the short term benefits, but really can’t cope with long range goals. Martial Arts gives us that patience to see through the short term to the long term.
  
  
  2. Lessons in Pain: If you practice the arts, expect pain. The same is true of life. If you live, expect pain. In the martial arts we make a conscious decision often times to accept pain, because it is going to happen and then the pain will be over and things will go back to normal. This overlaps in life as life throws all sorts of painful situations at you, that you will live through and adapt to and overcome and then it will be like it never happened.
  3. Ups, Downs and Stagnation: Life is filled with exactly that, ups, downs and stagnant spots. In martial arts this is a very visible and unavoidable truth. Some arts require you to spend years doing one form, then moving on only after perfecting it. There is also a period within the arts where we will make great physical strides, but mental change may not happen, then it wall all happen like a flash of lightning. The fact that we are so immersed with these theories enables us to have the patience to see this truth in life and have the knowledge and wisdom to be able accept that. That said, it also gives us the knowledge that it is sometimes us who have to adjust to promote a change from down to up or from stagnation to motion.
  4. Health Benefits/ Balance: This is kind of a no brainer. People, who are physically active, typically lead healthier, happier and longer lives.
  5. Flexibility: Although it is not always true, most systems require that the pupils become as flexible as possible to deal with the twisting, turning, jumping, kicking, rolling, et cetera. So much so, that I at 30 now, can still kick higher than my own head, and this is not uncommon amongst dedicated martial artists.
  6. Stability: We spend so much time in strange positions and transitioning from one position to the next that we gain an ability to be off balance, but so comfortable (and confident) with it that it is not off balance but complete stability.
  7. Knowledge of how to heal: In the Martial Arts we spend most of our time learning to harm, but if you pay attention, by learning to harm, you also learn to heal. They are intertwined and reversible concepts.
  8. The grand overlap: I hate to sound like Mr. Miyagi, but Martial Arts is everything and everything is Martial Arts. Martial arts teaches us so much, if you stick with it, that you begin to see that life, business, health, anticipation of future things, and experience of past, protection of self and loved one, healing and hurting, teaching and learning, learning as a teacher, and many other aspects all over lap with Martial Arts and vice versa. This concept may be hard to grasp, but the more time you invest the more likely you are to see it.
  
  
  
  9. Friendships and Contacts: We gain lifelong contacts through our friendships and acquaintances that we make in our travels and in dojos.
  
  
  
  
  
  10. Expansion of Mind: In Martial Arts we are forced to adapt our mind, bodies, personalities; as a result our minds are wired to evolve and change; to expand and contract. This is not to say that non-martial artists do not share this. I am merely saying that the exposures and experiences associated with the Martial Arts make this more possible in the mind of the martial artist. This is like saying the sniper is more likely to hit the target than the average person because he has had more experience with a weapon.
  11: Self Esteem: This is an expansion of the “Expansion of Mind”. As a result of our constant adaptation, we learn that we are capable of such constant adaptation. To bite on the military term of “adapt and overcome”, we spend a lot of time doing exactly that. The average person sees a brick; I see something to break. When I started out I could break no bricks; with technique, I learned to break stacks of bricks. I earned many aches and pains as a result, which is part of cause and effect. Brick breaking put more stress on my joints. But that is another story for another article. The point here is that we begin to learn that were are capable of either accepting our preexisting expectations or we can chose to tackle an obstacle and overcome it, and by such, we begin to rely on ourselves and gain self esteem. The dangerous part here is not to become over confident or cocky which is always a real threat, to anyone.
  
  
  
  
  12. Leadership Skills: I use this term loosely here. But what I mean to say is that the Martial Arts exposes you to many more conditions that make you aware that you are responsible for your own actions and that you must take responsibility for those results. The key to leadership is the recognition of this unavoidable truth that in some way we are all responsible for our conditions and the results thereof. “Every action has an equal or opposite reaction” no matter how mundane the effect: this is a scientific fact that has resounded through multiple cultures, religions and philosophies the world over and throughout history. The average person however has a tendency to forget this and oft takes the standpoint to pass the buck, per se. The first step to becoming a leader is to become responsible.
  13. The Chameleon Effect: I alluded to adaptation of mind, body and personality above. What I mean here, is to expand on that. In life, nothing is hard and fast and at the same time everything is hard and fast. We are forced to constantly adapt and change our expressions, our dress, our life, our outward appearance to adjust to our constantly changing environment and the impermanence of all things. Because of constant exposure of such conditions within the Martial Arts, the martial artists mind is adapted and therefore more dexterous in this sense. You quickly become a Chameleon of Life adapting to changes and looking for resolutions to problems without the cumbersomeness and stress that the average person has over simple and mundane issues.
  *** The above list is of course not a complete list, and it is of course not the end all be all on the subject. The Martial Arts are a very personal thing that is highly subjective to our own experience, teachers, fellow pupils and other factors. Everybody experiences something different. It should also be noted that some people develop more or less, and are constantly changing, so one person may see the above points, while others will not, and others may see more points than I have listed here. What I have done, is merely to list some of the major points that have affected me in my life, which I see now at the time I am writing this article. Next year my opinions may change as my experiences will have changed me. ***
  

Kickboxing Cardio Sculpt & Burn Workout

Live you long time: Dr. Jeffry Life's quest to conquer "getting old"

Story by Max Plenke

The secret to longevity? Exercise, diet — and hormone injections? A man named Dr. Life (really!) explains

Dr. Jeffry Life can kick me in the face. He tells me this at 6 in the morning, before the sun and my eyelids are fully up, before the second-to-last set of his morning weight-lifting routine at a Las Vegas Athletic Club near Summerlin. I’ve been told this before. But never in such a friendly tone — and never from a man in his 70s.

“I never used to be able to kick higher than this,” he says, lifting his foot a few inches above the ground. “But my instructor told me a flexible man is a sexual man. She has a lifelong client now.”

The high kick is the product of Life’s blue belt degree in Tae Kwon Do, something he practices three times a week after work. I should be more surprised by the statement — both the threat to my jaw and some old man practicing martial arts half of every week. But I’ve spent the last few minutes watching Life lift more than my body weight in multiple positions and repetitions, and looking at his weekly exercise regimen. He lifts weights with Rod, his ex-military trainer of four years, who looks like he was born when two Sherman tanks collided.

“This is what we do every morning,” Rod says. “He’s getting better with age, which is contrary to most people.”

The Doc uses pump-up phrases like “Let’s rock ‘n’ roll” when he’s ready for another set. Beautiful women in their 30s stop to watch him push and pull, at which point he starts talking more about his wife of 12 years, who’s almost two decades his junior. Maybe they’re impressed; he is, after all, old enough to be their father or grandfather, and probably in better shape than most of their boyfriends.

Or maybe they recognize him as the poster boy from that ad. You know the one: It’s on numerous health websites, LVAC video screens and billboards around town. The one brandishing a ripped, beaming bald guy with the frame of a USC defensive tackle, advertising age management medicine — the 21st century’s next step toward the fountain of youth.

“I’m not against aging,” Life says later at his office overlooking the Strip. “Everything ages. I’m against getting old. Age management medicine is about not getting old. It’s about doing all the things you need to do to maintain optimal health and vitality and not lose your sexual function or muscle mass or energy levels.”

Life’s full of these reassuring, quippy phrases. He sounds like a self-help smartphone app at times, interspersed with little grandfatherly stories about people recognizing him at the airport — these are the only times he seems his age.

[HEAR MORE: What are your options when you get older on KNPR's "State of Nevada."]

The injection connection

At work, Life walks around like the rooster of the coop: Strutting, his jacket and tie hung up, multiple buttons of his dress shirt undone, exposing man-cleavage that should belong to a 30-year-old pool boy. Maintenance men call him sir. He calls them by their first names, asks them how they’re doing in the calm, deliberate voice he uses for everything. Studio-quality photos of his torso and arms are plastered on the walls of the office lobby, the ultimate hybrid of hubris and client motivation. Stacks and stacks of his book, The Life Plan, are on most surfaces, housing his two young, astonishingly cute secretaries in self-help castles. The book is the reason he’s showing up everywhere lately, and why his schedule, in between personal fitness and celebrity and executive client consultations, is full of interviews and video shoots.

In his book, he writes almost obsessively about nutrition, exercise and the benefits of the injections Life swears by and has been taking himself for years. It’s the superlative power-sell, starting with the typical health book concepts (Eat clean! Get enough sleep! Track your workouts!) and then ending with a bang: A third of the book covers vitamins, disease-prevention and hormones — all of which Life’s medical practice offers. That last one — hormones — is what sets him apart from many longevity docs, and not without controversy.

The building blocks

In the middle of the day, Bret FitzGerald, the LVAC vice president, walks in wearing cut-off sweatpants and a T-shirt. It’s a little surreal seeing a man worth more than the city’s foreclosed houses sweating in his slummin’-it wardrobe. He’s coming for the equivalent of a check-up; a workout that tests everything from flexibility to strength to resting heart rate.

Like Life, he’s energetic for an older guy. He joined the program a year ago when he found himself getting tired and losing energy, unable to keep up with his kid — what Life calls a decline in his zest for life. After hours with Life’s trainer, FitzGerald and Life sit down to talk about how he’s been over the past few months — not necessarily his mood, but his building blocks: His blood. His muscles. His overall stamina. They’re getting better. But it always takes more effort, especially to hit the goal — Dr. Life.

“My big plan of getting older but being younger is working,” FitzGerald says. “This program is my way to live as long as I can and continuing to snowboard, mountain bike and do triathlons until I’m 85 or 90.”

It doesn’t come cheap. The reason most of Life’s clients are executive types and celebrities is because they’re the ones who can afford to pay the initial $3,995 evaluation cost and $1,000 a month for tests, medicines and supplements — none of which are covered by any insurance plan. Life’s been on the program for 13 years and takes what he calls a handful of pills daily — what actually comes out to around 30 a day, plus testosterone twice a week. Even before that, Life won the Body for Life contest in 1998 for his age group; he was already a buff old man after a doctor’s visit (and the threat of diabetes) scared him into the gym.

But according to Life, even eating well and working out hard can’t sustain you through old age. That’s when he started working with Cenegenics, the big local age-management medicine practitioners, and got himself on a regimen of injections that gave him the testosterone levels of a man half his age — which eventually led to him donning a Cenegenics lab coat.

“Dr. Jeff Life has been the quintessential physician — passionate for medicine, dedicated to patient care and consistently striving for medical excellence,” writes Cenegenics COO Kristy Berry in an email. “His longstanding commitment to age management medicine, from his medical practice to his personal health and lifestyle, are nothing short of inspirational.”

Playing God? Heck yeah

If “Age Management” sounds like playing God, that’s essentially what’s happening, whether or not the doctors who practice want to admit it: Life and doctors like him promote the idea of healthy aging by injecting testosterone and, in some cases, Human Growth Hormone (HGH), raising the levels of testosterone that diminish as we age. Not all medical professionals think it’s such a great idea. For example, a 2010 New England Journal of Medicine study found adverse side effects — high rates of cardiac, respiratory and dermatologic events, the former of which Life’s working to reverse in himself — that made their own test come to a halt.

“I think (human growth hormone) is dangerous, expensive, and inappropriately used all across the board,” says another skeptic, Walter M. Bortz II at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who focuses his practice on longevity and healthy aging. “I’m categorically opposed to the use of growth hormone except for dwarf kids, that’s the only reason for it.” And he says any benefits of additional testosterone are outweighed by the increased risk of prostate cancer it introduces.

But Dr. Life says it’s a no-brainer for him.

“I don’t feel the least bit bad knowing what I have to do to keep this quality of life and this level of energy and fitness,” he says. “As people get older, their quality of life declines until they’re put in a personal care home, then a nursing home, and then they die. My whole goal is to sustain that quality of life that people have at age 40 and keep that going as long as possible, and not have your death dragged out over years.”

High on kicks

Weeks later, Life isn’t dragging anything, especially his feet. It’s Tae Kwon Do day, and his instructor’s making him high-kick his way through the office’s empty lobby area. His marketing manager, his trainer, his astonishingly cute secretaries: all gone for the day. In a thick European accent, the instructor commands him through a regimen of kicks and stretches, making him visibly exhausted for the first time since I met him.

“At the end of the day, look at all these women telling me what to do,” he says, half-grinning, half-grimacing after delivering a particularly high kick to the pad, one I can practically feel in my molars, legitimizing his lighthearted threat from weeks ago. As his instructor puts the pads away, Life cleans up and, for the first time that day, pats himself on the back.

“If someone told me, when I won the Body for Life contest in 1998, that 13 years later I’d look better, feel better, be healthier and be doing all this stuff, I wouldn’t have believed it. People tell me they’re amazed at how I look. But no one’s more amazed by it than I am.”