A Bron Brief: Quick Fitness Tip #1

One of the fastest way to correct your diet is to notice its flaws. Everyone thinks they eat good until they really set aside time to see what goes into their body....So today's fitness tip is to...wait for it....invest in a FITNESS JOURNAL...

Fat Gripz: Your Body Is Only As Strong As Its Weakest Link

The importance of grip strength is nothing new but still often overlooked. Tons of toys and tools have said they can fix your grip but it becomes so tedious that most gyms and clients completely ignore it. If you've read any of my other articles you know how grip strength effects your lifts. ALLL the big lifts need grip strength; deadlifts, rows, bench, even holding a bar during squats. So its still amazing how many people jump right over forearm and overall grip work. Well if this finally opened your eyes, don't run and get a wrist roller or super gripper. Just go to FATGRIPZ and get a few of these blue wonders.

Fat Bars have been around for a while but only the most hardcore and exclusive of gyms usually spent the time to get them. Whats a fat bar? By increasing the diameter of the lifting bar, your forced to grip harder and activate more muscle fibers. But since their so hard to come by, people have tried to rig up their own such as wrapping towels around bars or using squat pads. Fat Gripz had their own ideas. Fat Gripz are a hard rubber that you slip on to any bar or dumbbell (literally almost anybar) and it increased the bars size without any fancy bars or mcgyver towel wraps. As a athlete I had always been trained at places that had fat bars, so while I knew of Fat Gripz, I had never used them. Well I was recently given a pair to try and was quickly put in check. After a few reps you'll probably notice fatigue setting in the thumb areas of your hands. Now if have very big hands and even for myself it was a struggle to just bully these like I thought I was going to. After a routine of bench, lat pulldowns, rows and dips my upper body was shot. Oh and for the record, heavy lat pulldowns with Fat Gripz on are a evil evil exercise. If you doubt me try it yourself and have your friends watch as you struggle with your usual warm up weight. After the workout my hands were sore and I had some weird lobster pinch thing going on when I tried to grab things because my forearms were so tight but it still wasn't the "beware fat grips" type pain I was expecting after reading all the things on the site....until the next day. Me and my gf both were sore the next day. Like the "havn't worked out before, omg why does that muscle hurt" kind of sore. So I was impressed, while I wasn't going as heavy as I normally do because of the Fat Gripz, you couldn't have told my body that the next day. So yes, Fat Gripz work. They work so much that I apologize to any of my old workout buddies and teammates that I didn't have them before for them to use. But I do now so I will be passing on the pain.
SUMMARY
Step 1) Go to FATGRIPZ....Step 2) Buy some Fat Gripz.....Step 3)Have yourself a mans workout and build some muscle...
Train Harder AND Smarter


"The important thing is to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we can become."

Bionic Gloves: Stylish or Effective?

Next on the product review trip is the BIONIC GLOVE.
Bionic Glove is known mostly for their baseball and golf gloves and both are pretty effective. Lucky for me I was able to get my hands on some of their new workout gloves. Would these Gloves have the same standards as their golf and baseball ones?

When they got here the first thing I noticed was the style. I've never golfed but one of my concerns was I'd be working out with some funky looking attention grabbing glove. These are attention grabbers but not in a negative way. I ordered a pair of fingered gloves and cut off gloves just to see the difference.Their sleak look was more reminiscent of my wide receiver gloves from football than bulky lifting gloves or golf gloves. Theres a velcro wrist strap that is strong enough to give you support and keep the glove snug but not get in your way like other gloves. Also each glove has pads/notches built in to press your grip better in certain areas. When you get the gloves their "test" is to pick up a weight with a bare hand and one with the gloved hand. And while it worked and you noticed right away, its not a real test because lifting light dumbbells are not a real struggle for gloves. To spice things up and really push these gloves, I went to a lift that is all about grip strength, the deadlift. Deadlifting can be a struggle for most lifters because your grip goes before the rest of your body is tired. So if your body can deadlift 600, but your hands can only deadlift 300, well your deadlift is 300lbs. So I set up 315 on the bar just to see if the gloves made any difference and after the first rep you could tell. The gloves give a solid grip that would usually lead to your hands aching and stop the bar from rolling in your hands. After a couple sets the gloves were still doing their job. I went up to 405 just to finish up and my hands were still fine. Now my one complaint was that the gloves might be TOO nice. While at 405 the gloves still worked, but the material (suede or leather type stuff) on the glove did have alittle wear from the bar attempting to roll. It was nothing drastic or even really noticable if I wasn't purposly trying to push their limits in the review but it makes me wonder how long they will hold up and still look this nice.

SUMMARY

All in all the BIONIC GLOVES passed with flying colors. They fit nice, gave me added grip without being sticky or needing me to wear wrist straps. Also an important and overlooks glove aspect, they didn't stick after working out. Anyone who has been caught off guard by the smell of their sweat gloves knows what I'm talking about. The gloves performed well and outside of my little nit picking about the scratch the bar left, they were pretty much 100% effective. I'd recommend them to anyone working out looking to get a good grip or just keep their hand modeling career intact. Not to mention the price so its overall a winning situation. Go to BIONIC GLOVES check out all thier styles, maybe even pick up some nice driving gloves next.

"The important thing is to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we can become."

Diet and Starvation: Thin line

When most women talk diet, their first instinct is to stop eatting...EVERYTHING. Now some see results from this eventually but the news flash is, its actually kind of bad for you and pretty counter productive.

Portable Power Jumper: Short Cut to Hops?

LifelineUSA Portable Power Jumper

Now let's start this off with a disclaimer; I am not a beginner. I have played sports on literally every level minus NBA/NFL. I have been dunking since I was 14 and as of the last pro combine I went to, I had a legit 39 inch vertical. So this will not be some review about how power jumpers turned my vertical from 12 to 20 inches. But there in lies the beauty of the product, it works on everyone from soccer mom wanting to just do squats all the way up to advanced athletes. A kind of jumped ahead but had to point it out. You see most vertical leap programs and equipment work wonders for someone who has never touched a weight before but your gains fall into a plateau after your body adjusts to the new stress your putting it other. That's why 90% of testimonials follow the "omg I'm 16 and never dunked before now" template. It's rarely "hey this took my vertical from 35-45." A) Because improving an already astounding vertical is hard as anything. B) Beginners are almost guaranteed results by the simplest of workouts. Think of it fitness wise. Who will drop weight quicker, a obese person who has never worked out or someone who is already in elite shape and wants that last body fat percent drop?

Evidence Based Apparel: Is the the real deal?

I spend most of my mornings before clients get here scouring the net for athletic equipment and new things to add to my training collection. Recently I came across a site called Evidence Based Apparel. Now EBA makes posture apparel to, well....help with your posture. They claim their posture shirts and S3 will improve posture, reduce:neck, back, and shoulder pain, increase shoulder function, improve range of motion and increase strength. Now this all sounds fine and great but rule number one ESPECIALLY in fitness and sports, anything that seems too good to be true usually is. So I searched left and right for some super small "results are not typical and may vary" hidden escape clause that pretty much means you just wasted money on their product but couldn't find one. I reached out to one of their representatives about trying one out and she responded the next day saying sure. Now anyone who has read my other reviews here or on other sites knows, when a company allows someone to review their product for free its usually a HUGE THUMBS UP because it means their confident in their product. No ones going to let you review something for free if they know with explode the second you open the box, well unless your a super hero but i digress. So after a few short days I get the box in the mail and now look to answer the ultimate question....does it work?

Foam Rollers: My Love Hate Relationship

Now when your a professional athlete you get all the perks; money, cars, fame, friends* etc...but another thing you get is the massages...Ooo the massages. Massages, Stim, Ice Baths, Vibration plates. All of these things before and after games speed up recovery so you can live to fight another day and prolong careers. Now for Average Joe weekend warrior, things like massage perks can be a tad bit expensive. So as personal trainers we find ways around that. In to play comes the FOAM ROLLER...

Stretching is one of the most overlooked components of weight training programs. Everyone wants to lift lift lift and stretching gets pushed to the back burner leading to muscle imbalances, poor form and injuries.

Foam Rollers are used for Self-Myofascial Release which may sound a little adult but pretty much just means self massage. When you workout or train your muscles get tight creating lactic acid and "knots'. The foam roller rolls out the knots until they release increasing your circulation, range of motion and promoting overall general healing. Think of it as a rubber, and then tying it into a knot. With that knot, the band cant stretch nearly as far and will break with too much force applied to it. Now by taking the knot out bingo bango, your back to full efficiency.

Now you can find foam rollers on sites like performbetter.com ranging from regular to dense. The denser the roller the deeper the massage it gives and the higher the price ($30+0. You can also save some money and just buy a 5 dollar pvc pipe at your local hardware store and it works great but only keep in mind, pvc pipe has NO give and will be pretty painful to use for someone new to foam rolling. If your really crafty or have a mom with tons of free time, you can bedazzle your own padded foam roller with pvc pipe, foam packaging wrap, and some kind of spandex or Lycra to cover it all in like those old fashion book skins you had in middle school.

Your body has tons of trigger points that you would need to focus on with a foam roller. Your Quads (Front upper area of your legs), Hamstrings (Back upper area of your legs), Calves (Lower back area of your legs), IT Bands (Outer sides of your thighs and VERY important in your known for having knee pains), Glutes and Hip Pockets (General Butt area), and Lats/Traps (Upper back and armpit areas). Theres tons of videos on how to properly work the roller on each area and I'll be posting one myself very soon but these descriptions are the general idea. Work each muscle slowly u if until you find a knot (a pins and needles kind of tingling sensation) and hold pressure on it for 5-10 seconds then roll it out some more. Find, rinse, repeat. Now if your body is built like Frankenstein as mine currently is, your going to find ALOT OF KNOTS. And these knots will be VERY painful but only at first. So suck it up and massage them out. The more often you do it, the less painful there become and the better your body feels.

For those nagging hard to reach places such as shoulder blades and hips, things like tennis balls, softballs, medicine balls work wonders but again, they are very dense and will hurt at first. But for the 20 minutes you fight through all this will pay off in the long run when your days are alot pain free later on during everyday activities.