Recently I read an amazing article from Personal Trainer Tony Books Avilez of The Body House. Tony’s an amazing author and trainer and made some excellent points about the power of the mind when it comes to achieving your health and fitness goals.

Many fitness experts fail to convey this to their clients or people that learn from them.
In fact Tony actually recommends that this is the first place you should start when beginning or continuing a health and fitness program.

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Here s a great question I recently addressed:

I m a personal trainer from Los Angeles and I just disagree with your belief that bodyweight exercises are better or far more effective that free weights or machines. I ve had tremendous success with my clients using free weights and machines. What evidence do you have that leads you to believe that bodyweight exercises are better than free weights or machines?

First of all thank you for your question and I m glad that you take the time to read the information I write about. Secondly I ve never said that bodyweight exercises are better than free weight or machine training. The truth is that I ve used bodyweight training,

free weight training (barbells & dumbbells), machine training, medicine balls, exercise bands and much more to help myself and the people I work with improve. Each one merely represents a tool I have available. One saying I go by is: Tools not Rules . I try to learn as much as I can about each system of exercises because one never knows when one will need it.

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In the past few years I’ve seen a huge transition in the fitness industry. More and more people are using functional training, and some argue it’s the only way to train. The purpose of this article is to give people an understanding of what functional training is, and what it does and does not do.

First, lets look at what functional actually means.

Func.tion.al 1. capable of operating or functioning, 2. capable of serving the purpose for which it was intended (Webster’s Encyclopedia 2nd Edition, 1996)

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Bob Hoffman of York, Pennsylvania, was a highly decorated war hero in the First World War. He was also an Olympic coach and owner of the York Barbell Company. In addition to that he was publisher of Strength and Health magazine for many years. Coach Hoffman has always been a favorite of mine and I had the chance to meet him about fifty years ago at a body building competition.

His publication, Strength and Health was all about what the title indicated. Mr. Hoffman was deeply interested in health, as well as strength. In 1961 some of his thoughts on the benefits of regular exercise were published for the edification of readers the world over who were not only

interested in sports and weightlifting but also in good health.

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Scientific Proof: Meditation And Brain Fitness

After a half-century of meditation propaganda, it is used by less than 1% of us.
The 800-pound gorilla, Transcendental Medication, the darling of Harvard
Medical School and Dr. Herbert Benson, is the real-deal, but relaxation for Americans feels too much like brainwashing and loss of control.

We were sitting in an overheated lecture hall while two snot-nose kids with a blackboard were explaining the steps of how to meditate for health and peace of mind.

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