Happy Fourth of July!

Hey guys, nothing like a shot of adrenaline to wake you up in the morning!

My buddy, Mike, and I went out really early the morning of the 4th of July and celebrated our freedom by mountain bikin' on some single tracks up in Elk River. There were some fast down hills, windy up hills, and trees everywhere you looked - even in your way! We had spokes breakin', bones being knocked out of place, lungs crying for mercy, and legs on fire; some of us falling off bridges, going up and over tee-ter-totter’s, jumping off big rocks, flying over "rock gardens" and a few inconvenient tip overs. We donated some blood and skin to local weeds as we felt necessary along the way. I am awake now!!

What a great day to be alive and be an American citizen!

May God bless you and your family the way that he has blessed mine!

And keep our troops in your prayers. They need our love and support!

Enjoy the day!

Hey, where is the BBQ at? I’m hungry.

Burn fat by gaining muscle

Everybody wants to lose weight. The question is what kind of weight are you losing? Is it body fat? Is it water weight? Or is it lean muscle tissue? Those of you who know me or train with me know I am a very strong supporter of retaining lean muscle or even gaining lean muscle tissue. Why is that? Because the average person burns an extra 35-50 calories per day for each pound of lean muscle tissue gained. So if someone gained 10 lbs. of lean muscle tissue, that would be an extra 350-500 calories burned per day by doing absolutely nothing! That is equal to a 45 minute cardio session! Think about it for a second, who wouldn't want to burn all those calories by doing nothing. I do. That's why I always preach to my clients and friends about the importance of keeping lean muscle tissue. Now you are thinking to yourself how do I do that? 1st and foremost you have to eat enough calories to SUPPORT the lean muscle tissue. If you exercise intensely 5-7 days a week (which I do and I tell all my clients to do) and are not eating enough healthy calories you WILL NOT keep lean tissue and you will not increase you metabolism (which is how many calories you body burns). You see your body is like a wood furnace. If the furnace is not getting enough wood (the fuel) the fire will slow down and go out. If your body does not get enough nutrition or calories (its fuel) it will slow down and go out which leads to sickness and disease. Excessive exercise and a lack of nutrients will always fail to develop lean muscle tissue. 2nd, focus on resistance training with moderate cardio. Resistance training can be done 3-6 days per week depending on the individual (no longer than 45 minutes) and cadio sessions are to be kept between 20-40 minutes max 5-7 days per week. Over 40 minutes of cardio actually will destroy lean muscle tissue. And 3rd is sleep. 8 hours per night is the goal. Muscle actually is built during rest not by working out. So there it is 3 simply things to remember to help burn fat. My motto is: You Cannot Out Exercise Poor Nutrition! Please comment, Email or call me with some feedback and questions. Yours In Health, Michael.

The importance of your Nervous System

Well here is my very 1st blog. Never thought I would be doing one. I thought I would start with something people hardly ever think about: The Nervous System. Maybe I should have labeled this blog the importance of taking care of your nervous system. What is your Nervous System? Great question. Basically your Nervous System is your brain, your spine(or vertebrae) and your nerves. It is the communication center of your body. It is how your body communicates. If something disrupts the communication or flow of your brain sending messages to the rest of your body, either pain or sickness arises. So say you are in a car accident, the result is trauma to your spine, your vertebrae resulting in what is called a subluxation. If the trauma or subluxation is not taken care of pain and/or sickness will result. And it WILL be recurring. How do you take care of the subluxtions? Another great question! See a good chiropractor. Don't know of one? I know several great chiropractors. Please, please, please ask me. I want to see you healthy and functioning on an optimal level. Feel free to post a comment, call me, email me or talk to me about this subject. Until next time people.

I hate Michael!

I hate Michael!

Who else is with me?

Yesterday I had the jerk stretch out my shoulder because it was hurting me, and he did a fantastic job of doing so, but in the process of him laying the smack down on me, he was telling me things that I shouldn't do so I wouldn’t irritate my shoulder.

I didn't ask him what I should or should not do for my shoulder. I just asked him to stretch me out since he's the master at that, so I kept telling him "I'm gonna keep doing the things that bother my shoulder and I will just have you fix it." He said okay and we did a few more stretches on it to take care what was ailing me. But he didn't even care that it was killing me! I mean that really hurt and I don't think he cared how much it was hurting me.

So who's with me? We can have buttons and T-shirts and who knows also what, who's with me?

Summer Vacation

I have a busy summer planned, how about you?

Where do I start with my list of activities that I plan on doing?

Let's just start in the month of May. The family and I are going camping up north on the North Shore for a four-day weekend. This also generally starts when we can go mountain biking on the trails - yay! So I will be doing a lot of mountain biking come May. My Tuesday night bike ride will finally have started up by then. Every Tuesday night we do 34 miles up and down hills in about one hour and 45 minutes. This is also the month when I start riding a dirt bike and racing!

Then comes June. My wife is having a family reunion back home. The last one was about 10 years ago. The whole family I will be flying back home for that. And I will also be biking the MS 150 in June. I am also looking for a triathlon to do. I'll be dirt biking a weekend or two as well.

In July I planned a few mountain bike runs with my wife over at Lebanon hills and then, of course, eating afterwards - huge amounts of food! My buddies and I have planned a bike ride up to Duluth and back over the weekend - that should be fun.

August is the Turtle Man Triathlon, an annual event that I normally do with my buddies. I'll be heading down to Millville to watch the pro-dirt bikers ride around the track in the dirt and that is always a good time. My beautiful wife and I will be taken up for a weekend to go dirt biking ourselves as she needs an excuse to get out of the house so I thought that would be a good one.

In September I'll probably be doing the Stillwater Triathlon with more of my friends. October bring more camping up on the North Shore (man, it is beautiful up there.)

And all this in addition to constantly workout 4 to 5 times a week; yup, eating for me is never a problem, unless there is not enough to eat, then there’s a problem!
I still have a few weekends open if you have some good ideas make sure to let me know!

What do you have planned for the summer?

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Almost every morning I take my little doggie for a walk (Hershey is a 55 pound chocolate lab, 3½ years old).

It was 28 degrees below zero the other day. (Don't believe me? I snapped this picture of our thermometer!)

So, I got up and it's 28 degrees below zero and and I had the same thought that most of you guys did, “how many pairs of extra clothes and I going to have to put on to go on my walk today?”

That is your attitude, isn't it? It's not so much a question of bad weather as it is a statement of bad gear or having the wrong kind of gear for the type of weather; or simply put, it's not crappy weather - it's crappy gear!

So I threw on a turtle neck and my spyder turtleneck thing (not sure what they actually call it) and then my spyder coat. I threw on some long johns, some sweatpants and put on my spyder snow pants-zipped up my collar, threw on a face mask, put on a hat, snapped on my hood and me and my doggie went for our daily walk.

We had a great time! We only went for about a mile because I had to come back and get ready to go to work, but both of us would've loved to stay out little bit longer than just the 15-20 minutes that it was.

Yup, my kids and I have a saying. If it’s bad/crappy weather outside that goes like this -- "it looks pretty spydery outside today."

Gotta love Minnesota, eh?

Tomorrow morning, I'm gonna see if I can take a picture of Michael biking into work; it’s supposed to be even colder than it was this morning. Oh wait never mind, that guys biking into work at 530 in the morning -- yes I said biking. The main thing to remember here is: I can get a picture him biking back home, so I don't have to be there so early in the morning. Now that's good thinking! Am I smart or what!?

The Prescription Drug Antidote: Exercise

So I was watching the today show the other day - or was it yesterday? Anyhoo, one of the topics of the day was about kids getting high off prescription drugs. These kids would get the prescription drugs from their parents or from the Internet (which is pretty easy to use, I guess). What shocked me the most is that the stats on how many of us Americans are on prescription drugs when the majority of ailments could be corrected with daily exercise and better eating.

Guys, come on here! Are you kidding me? I mean, are you kidding me?!?! Why would we pay through the nose for prescription pain meds and other prescriptions here and there when we can just exercise and get rid of the root of the problem. When we fix the core problem, we don't need medications for the symptoms anymore. As it turns out, we are not only hurting ourselves, but we're hurting our kids too!

These kids go into the parents' medicine cabinet and steal their pain pills or other prescription meds with the sole objective of getting high. They feel the need to be high just to cope with the stress of whatever they're going through and the easiest way to do that is to grab some prescription meds from the 'rents. The shocking part here is they know what to grab and what not to grab. Some of the meds were of no value to the kids because it could not get them high.

If these kids couldn't get what they wanted out of their parents' medicine chest, they went to the Internet. According to the teenagers interviewed, it is pretty easy to get meds over the Internet. Who knows where they come from. The kids don't care! The point is they were able to get them with their parents' credit card. We're not even going to talk about the invitation to credit card theft and identity theft! That, by itself, is an all too common problem.

We have a bunch of things wrong with this whole situation.

One: By becoming lazy and using prescription meds we are missing out on the health benefits of having a healthy body and a healthy mind.

Two: We are demonstrating the wrong lifestyle to our kid.

Three: Our kids now feel compelled to be on prescription drugs so they can “cope" with their problems and get by from day to day.

Four: Our kids are learning from us adults that exercising and proper eating just isn't that important because we can just get some pills for that.

So what do we learn from all this? (Besides making me hungry!) Llet's try to increase our daily exercise in our lives so we can become better people and set a better example for our kids. Its one thing to choose to screw up our lives, but let's not screw up our kids lives also. (I mean anymore than by just parenting them -- but that's a whole other issue there).

So how do we get more exercise in our lives? Wake up three minutes earlier in the morning and do it three minutes of cardio in the morning. Yes, just three minutes! What kind of cardio, you ask? Who cares. Just do something! It could consist of put on a pair shorts and walking down the stairs then back up the flight of stairs – Done. For some of you, that was your morning cardio. Depending on where you are physical fitness is, you might have to do less than that, or maybe more than that; but the important thing is just to do something, they key word here is, something.

It won't be long before you can start building on that! So this is how that works:

This week: walk up and down the stairs in the morning. Done.

Next week: walk up another set of stairs twice, and then consider yourself done.

Week #3: walk up and down the stairs 3 to 4 times for that week, then consider yourself done.

Can you see where I'm going with this? The main thing here is to build on our successes. Notice I didn't say get up in the morning jog 5 miles or else you can count it as cardio. I also did not say that if you don't do 20 minutes in the morning it doesn't come as cardio. I also did not say that your heart rate must be above a certain beat to come as cardio. The point here is to do something and then build upon that.

Well that was pretty easy! What's next? I think maybe next we should tackle the whole world peace or global warming issue myself!