Monthly Archives: November 2008

RandomThanks

Posted on by
Reply

Good morning!

I just got back from a walk to the beach. It was a great morning. Truly special. Why? Because I live in the city and it was suburban quiet. No hustle and bustle, no traffic, less cars parked, different people (less commuters, more run/walkers), simply a treasure of a morning. You could even hear the seagulls before you got to the beach AND I saw a Turkey flying. Just kidding it was an eagle, which was weird to see. Do they even stick around for the winter?

Well with all the quiet I began thinking about all the things I am grateful for and thought I’d share my thanks with you.

It’s been a great 2008 even though it hasn’t been an easy one.

My thanks are in no particular order.

I’m thank for…

  • getting to live with my brother and cousin. Two great and different guys who are fun to be around.
  • my parents. For unconditional love, “free advice” and always giving. Thank you for being there.
  • my new neighbors. Two awesome guys, who are good people and have great stories to share. Lucky to have you both.
  • my friends. You can never have enough friends and I’m grateful for all my lifelong friends and all my new friends.
  • my health. You read, see or hear about poor health all the time and I’m grateful to be healthy and for egg white omelets. Had a spinach, ground beef, zucchini and squash omelet today. Hmmm.
  • my sisters. It’s a pleasure to be your big bro and watch you grow. Armpit alert anyone?
  • my clients who followed me. Thank you for your business, your confidence and your loyalty. I feel lucky to be a part of your lives and help to make them better.
  • my new clients. Thank you also for your business. I look forward to exceeding your expectations, delivering you fast results and becoming your go to ACE for Health & Fitness.
  • the boys & girls club of Newton. You provided your gym free of charge and I was able to host 3 events and meet a lot of great people and help out local charities. Today, 208lbs of turkey is being served because you allowed me to use your gym. Giving feels good.
  • pumpkin workout/turkey toss participants. You provided the donations and made the charity workouts a success. It was a huge adrenaline rush to take you through the fat loss workouts. Hope you received your free copy of the Pumpkin Workout. It’s ready. Anyone can contact me if you’d like a copy.
  • relationships. They make life more full. I am grateful for all of them.
  • invitations. I was very lucky to be invited to 3 different dinners and if you know me, I hate to say no to an invite, especially to food. Thank you for thinking of me, and I wish you a memorable Thanksgiving.
  • BSC. It didn’t work out in the end, but you did provide a home for me the last 7 years and an environment for me to develop and grow my talents.
  • mistakes. I used to hate making them and sometimes still do, but it can be one of the best ways to learn fast. Things have always come easy to me b/c I’ve worked hard, been lucky or had natural talents and now being a businessman I learn a lot faster. 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving, especially to the cooks that make today probably the greatest holiday of them all.

Cheers,

Mike Alves


Earn and Burn Baby!

Posted on by
1

Thanksgiving is upon us and boy am I ready for some cheesecake. Yup, I said it. I heart cheesecake. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is on the “bad” list, its a splurge meal, its part of the 10% cheat meal, etc…, but I know a secret that I’ve shared with my clients and I’ll share with you. It’s called earn and burn. Catchy isn’t it. 🙂

Earn & Burn

Earn and Burn simply means to earn your calories by burning your calories. Create a caloric deficit before, enjoy your meals and expend additional calories after. Get it? It’s simple right? Most people either have never thought about this or if they did, weren’t really sure how to do it.

Enter…the Mastuh Trainuh! 🙂

Here’s what you do. Call your friends, family or loved ones you’ll be spending Turkey day with and ask them if they’d like to join you in an “earn & burn”. Decide what you want to do. It could be a long, looping walk around town, a 5k (3mile) Turkey Trot or a 30-45minute Fat Loss Workout. It can be something else too, just remember it should either be of long duration or highly exertional. If you choose the walk, shoot for an hour looping walk. If you choose the run, have fun and make sure to warm up & cool down. The more calories burnt the better. If you choose a fat loss workout, intensity with minimal rest is key.

What’s a fat loss workout? Great question.

A fat loss workout is a high intensity interval training workout. It can be done anywhere, anytime with most any object.

Wanna see a fat loss workout in action? Click play to watch the video.

Did you see people just like you in the video? Most anyone can do this workout. Use more weight if you’re in better shape, use less weight or none if you’re out of shape. Rest if you need to. Not too intimidating and maybe it even looked interesting or dare I say, “fun”. 🙂

Back to earn & burn.

Next comes the holiday meal we’ve all been waiting for. Mmmmm, mmmm, look at all the good food. Go and enjoy your dinner and your company, savor each forkful and leave room for dessert, if that’s your thing, just don’t eat the cheesecake, I heard it was gross. (wink)

The final burn

After the big meal, go for a “Last Name” family Walk. We do an “Alves Family Walk” and because its New England we’re all bundled up. Doesn’t stop us though. It’s tradition. Sometimes we even do it before dessert, o.k. we maybe did that once, but we tried it. Not every one joins us, but the majority do. We go for a big walk, everyone together, little circles form talking about who knows what. Then we come back and fight over seats on the sofa. 🙂 Sound familiar?

So do you think you can do an earn & burn this year?

Would you like a fat loss workout to do and share Thanksgiving morning?

If you said yes, you’re in luck.

Fat Loss Workout

The Freaky Fat Loss PUMP-kin Workout is finally done and ready to be shared. It was supposed to be a copy and grew to a mini e-book, but its ready and I’m excited to share it with you, free of charge. To receive it, just comment below “More PUMP-kin Workout Please” with your e-mail address written like this: username(at)domain(dot)com. I’ll e-mail it to you asap.

That’s it. No strings, just my way of giving back and fighting fat.

(I’m still hoping to post it for easy download, but all of the pictures, descriptions and content has made it too large to host on my website. E-mail works fine as I’ve already sent it to myself).

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Your personal coach,

Mike Alves

www.mikealves.com

PS if you take the leftovers, keep earning & burning through the weekend.

PPS this is my first e-book, so feedback is very welcome.

PPPS Change Your Body Boot Camps begins Monday, December 1st. To learn more visit, http://mikealves.wpengine.com/cybbc.html


Gobble, Gobble Turkey Toss, Give to Hungry, Learn Fat Loss-TM

Posted on by
Reply

Just a heads up. 7 Days until the Turkey Toss Workout.

What: Gobble, Gobble Turkey Toss, Give to Hungry Learn Fat Loss

When: 7pm sharp (arrive 6:45), Thursday, November 20, 2008

Where: John M. Barry Boys & Girls Club of Newton

Why: Fight Holiday Season Fatness, teach you an anytime, anywhere with any object fat loss routine and support the Soup Kitchens of Waltham.

Who: You of course. Yes your friends can come to. Yes there is an age limit,14 and up. No you don’t have to be in great shape, just healthy and free from injury.

How: Because your generosity, combined with my generosity will create something really special and help a ton of people.

Here’s what you need to do:

  • bring frozen turkey to donate in labeled cooler (you keep cooler)
  • bring weighted back to exercise with (books, weights, canned goods, or feathers weighing 8-15 lbs for females and 15-30lbs for males) 🙂
  • bring water bottle, gloves (hands get cold tossing turkeys), waiver form
  • wear fitness attire
  • rsvp to mike(at)mikealves(dot)com

The workout is 30-35minutes long.

The charity is the Bristol Lodge Soup Kitchen of Waltham.

You can learn more by visiting, http://mikealves.wpengine.com/gobble-gobble/

See you soon,

Mike

www.mikealves.com

p.s. Here’s the newspaper article the Newton Tab wrote about last months Pumpkin Workout. You don’t want to miss this.


Preseason Conditioning for High School Basketball Players

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday I ran a conditioning clinic for high school basketball players and much to the athletes surprise we didn’t pick up a basketball. It was a tough 60, dense minutes with every second accounted for. Towards the end I thought they weren’t going to make it, so I asked them, “we can stretch now, or we can do 1 more conditioning drill. It’s going to be 4 minutes of continuous work and you’re running suicides.” One kid was silent, meaning he didn’t want to do it, but the rest wanted the challenge. Majority rules.

It reminded me of my superstar clients. They tell me what they want, ask what to do and do it. Doesn’t matter how high the wall or how huge the obstacle. They run through it, hurdle it or jump it. They’ll lift heavy weights, run sprints, train “X” number of hours per week, or keep a nutrition log. Eyes on the prize all the way.

Back to basketball. Here’s the outline we followed. If you’re a client of mine, you’ll see similarities to what you do and maybe start to see a pattern.

High School Preseason Conditioning Clinic for Basketball Players

Warm Up-22min

  • Jog Perimeter of Gym-4min
  • Joint Mobes/Mobility Exercises-7min
  • Movement Preparation/Light Agility Movements-11min

Core: 3min

  • Planks

Plyometrics (elasticity)-9min

  • Landing-3min
  • Jumping-3min
  • Quick Feet-3min

Agility cone Drills-6min

  • Lateral movements-3min
  • Cutting-3min

Conditioning (same formula for fat loss, can even be same exercises)-10min

  • 4 station interval circuit-6min
  • Finisher-suicides-4min

Regeneration/Stretching-10min

  • Good ‘ol fashioned total body static stretching

*rest periods were built into each section and I occasionally added extra rest

Desire and determination. My superstar clients have it, these kids have it, I have it, do you have it?


Dynamic Stretching vs Static Stretching

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an e-mail I received from a gym friend that you may enjoy.

“Hey Mike,

I came across an interesting article on the NYTimes website which discusses dynamic vs. static stretching:
What are your thoughts on the matter?”
Mischa

My response:

“Hi Mischa,

Great article. I’ve been warming up like that for the last 10 years +. People make fun of me all the time for my unorthodox warm ups. It really is a superior way to prepare yourself. In addition to all the benefits they mention, it also makes you more aggressive and focused.

I liked the movements they showed too. I do all of them and some others. I have stopped doing the scorpion b/c you get excessive lumbar rotation and you really want to resist lumbar rotation to prevent injuries. Instead I would do side-lying thoracic rotations and hip swings to loosen up the same muscles. Attached are some photos.

Thanks for asking the question.

Mike”

Here’s a photo of Side-Lying Thoracic Shoulder Rolls.

You can do 1 set of 5-20 reps as a warm up.

And here’s a photo of Hips Swings or Leg Swings. The first 2 photos are sagittal plane or forwards and backwards swings and the last 2 photos are frontal plane or side to side swings. Again you can do 1 set of 5-20 reps as a warm up.


Not only do I use dynamic stretching as a warm up, but I also have my clients use it. We give it an even fancier name too. We call it movement prep (preparation).

Here are some benefits to dynamic stretching:

  • increased heart rate
  • increased core temperature
  • increased muscle elasticity
  • increased motor coordination
  • increased mental alertness
  • increased aggressiveness
  • increased mobility
  • increased flexibility
  • increased nervous system rate of muscle firing
  • decreased risk of injury

Now just because it makes sense to use dynamic stretching as a warm up, it also makes sense to use static stretching as a cool down. Here are some reasons why:

  • increased flexibility
  • increased muscle pliability and ability to be lengthened post workout
  • increased level of calmness
  • increased circulation
  • decreased heart rate
  • decreased blood pressure
  • decreased risk of injury
  • decreased aggressiveness

Last, here are 2 videos from my recent pumpkin workout showing both a dynamic warm up and a static cool down.

Have you ever tried a dynamic warm up?

How does it make you feel?

Cheers,

Mike Alves

www.mikealves.com

p.s. Turkey Workout for Charity, Thursday, November 20 @ 7pm. Come join me and support a good cause if you think you can hang.

p.p.s. visit, www.mikealves.com/gobble.html