Let’s be honest. You don’t get all your fitness information from FitHacks. If you did, you’d probably be pretty starved over the last month. But that’s OK. Life goes in cycles. And it’s good to know that even when I’m not posting fitness information disguised as a metaphor, there are those who are. Below are a few of my favorite fitness blogs that you should be following as well.

NerdFitness

GymJunkies

ZenToFitness

MarksDailyApple

UltiTraining

My wife and I recently completed Dave Ramsey’s personal finance course called Financial Peace University. Overall, I thought it was a great course with a ton of valuable information regarding personal money management, investing and getting out of debt. Throughout the course, I was struck with how similar the ideas of debt management and fitness really are. In both aspects of your life you have to make budgets (money or calories), utilize personal discipline, and have the ability to maintain motivation for an extended period of time.

A particularly unique idea of Ramsey’s was the “debt snowball”. This was his preferred method of digging yourself out of debt by paying down the smallest debts you owed first then rolling the money that you were using to pay that bill into the next smallest debt owed. This way you would systematically eliminate all your outstanding bills one at a time from the smallest to largest.

While this method of debt elimination is fantastic, I think the idea also holds water in other areas of life management as well. Lately, as you can probably tell from the frequency of my latest blog postings, I’m struggling somewhat in my personal time management. I have a full time job, I’m pursuing a Master’s degree, I have a two year old son and a brand new baby girl. So in an attempt to get my growing “to do” list back to a manageable size, I tried Ramsey’s debt snowball method for time management.

1) I listed out everything that I had to do in the next few weeks on a sheet of paper. Some of these things were simple phone calls I needed to make. Others were long time annoyances that have been on my mind for months.

2) Next, I went through and mentally arranged them in order from “simplest to complete” to “most complex”

3) I systematically began making myself complete the simplest tasks first even if they weren’t due for another two weeks. I did this for a few reasons. One, I could now release the brain power that I had been spending on that simple task and roll it into thinking about the other items. Two, I could use the momentum from marking something off my list as extra motivation to get more things done. It’s funny how satisfying crossing off an annoying task can really be.

4) Finally, I continue this process until only the major things are left. The cleared “to do” list builds my confidence to continue accomplishing things. Plus, all the time I would have spent on worrying about the smaller tasks can now be devoted to productive thinking about the big items.

You may think this is a silly yet obviously application of the “debt snowball” but the idea has genuinely proved productive for me the last couple of days. If you are like me and currently find yourself swamped in small “to do” items progress through them systematically from easiest to hardest and let me know how it works for you.

(photo by Ivan Walsh)

Recently I was allowed access to review a great new fitness iPhone app called Fitness Builder from PumpOne. The app aims to be your one-stop shop for all your exercising needs. It contains hundreds and hundreds of unique workouts designed by professional fitness trainers, stat tracking of your own various fitness measurements and even allows you to monitor your physical progress. The workouts seem to be designed for any goal in mind, whether you want to target certain muscle groups, improve your sports performance or have limited access to equipment.

The workout routines themselves are easily accessed via the intuitive user interface and feature well illustrated exercises with pictures, text and video. Once a workout has been selected, you can simply swipe through the exercises one at a time. There is also a timer to keep your rest periods to a minimum.

After you have completed a workout, you can log your activities into the app’s database to track your progress over time. If you so desire you can also share your workouts via Twitter or Facebook.

Overall, I think the app is wonderfully designed and contains an amazing amount of information for the beginner to intermediate fitness enthusiast.

What I liked: I think that Fitness Builder is particularly great at supplementing an established fitness routine. Often times I find myself searching online for new exercises to target certain muscles groups. This app contains literally hundreds of illustrated exercises that have helped me add new elements into my workouts on just such occasions.

What I didn’t like: Even though Fitness Builder had a wealth of information and described many different workouts to target the areas you were wanting to focus on, I would hesitate to use this as your only source of training advice. Unless you systematically and regularly worked through every workout in the app, you may be left with a somewhat unbalanced fitness plan. I’d say if you just want some great new routines to try to incorporate into your already existing program or want a simple way to create and log your own routines, you may still find the $9.99 price justifiable.

link – Fitness Builder

When it comes to your personal fitness it is no one’s responsibility but your own. You can hire a trainer or enlist friends and family to support you but ultimately you are the one in charge. If your body was a company, it’s well being would rest solely on your shoulders. You are the CEO, stakeholder, owner, manager and employee. Your initiative (or lack thereof) will bring about the success you want to see or the failure you try so hard to avoid. Thinking in these terms has often helped me put my personal progress in black and white business terms that most entrepreneurs can relate to. Ownership, initiative, and creativity are some very entrepreneurial aspects that are easy to apply to the fitness realm. Here are some practical points to help you think about fitness like an entrepreneur.

Invest in yourself: This is the ultimate goal isn’t it? You are your own greatest asset. If you don’t take care of your body through proper diet and nutrition, you will suffer for it. Spend time on developing yourself into the person you want to be. Again, the buck stops with you.

(photo by kevindooley)

As the 200th post on FitHacks.com, I’d like to show the sweet picture that longtime FH reader Butch has sent in. Yes, that is the FitHacks iPhone app running on the shiny new iPad. I can honestly say that this blog has never looked so beautiful.

Happy Bicentennial FitHacks (and thanks for the image of the day, Butch).

With my last few weeks being totally out of whack, I feel like it’s time to reset my focus and make some concrete goals. I love exercising but if I don’t set specific goals, I often find myself drifting along the path of least resistance. Sure I’ll still go running a few times a week and manage to do some strength training here and there, but without any focus it all seems arbitrary and random. When I can set my sights on a given goal, everything in my life becomes much more focused and purposeful.

1) Define the goal. Choose something you’ve wanted to accomplish and write it down. Writing your thoughts down is almost magical. It makes them much more real in your life and really forces you to take stock of them. Nothing sucks more than staring down an unfulfilled to do list or an unreached goal.

2) Set the time frame. If this is going to be a real and traceable goal, it’s going to have to have a time frame. Someday will never be today. I try to keep most goals short term: 30-90 days max. This helps me guard against burn out and allows me to up the intensity of the task I’m aiming to accomplish.

3) Train your butt off. You have a target in your sights and you have the timeline established. The only thing left is to execute on it. This may seem like the hard part, but if you have put time into planning the goal out, all you are basically doing is going through the motions. Keep your intensity up and see this through. When you finish, it’s just time to set another goal.

(photo by JoF)

My daughter is almost two weeks old now and I’m about to have to return to the real world. I’ve had two weeks of long nights, and twice the diaper changes I’m used to, but I’ve also had two weeks of awesome as I’ve been getting to know the new member of our family.

A few things I’ve learned:

-Staying at home all day is disastrous to productivity. I haven’t blogged, coded, or even done any yard work the whole time I’ve been off of work.  This is probably due to being incredibly tired and busy with a newborn but sometimes all I want to do is lay around and watch Law and Order reruns.

-Having a home gym is crucial. Even if you don’t have a full set of weights or a squat rack, I think it is very important to have something set up in your home that will allow you to just get away for a few minutes and stay active. My IronGym pullup bar has definitely gotten a lot of use these past two weeks. I’ve also been working on gathering other components for my home gym that I’ll post about soon.

-Get out whenever possible. I’ve bargained with my wife to let me get a few miles in throughout the last few days. Getting time to myself on the jogging trail has been great. I love being with family but burning through an hour in my running shoes is important for my sanity.

How do you keep sane or focused on fitness when life is otherwise out of whack?

Wow. Lots. Going. On.

First, some personal matters to attend to. This weekend marked the birth of our first daughter, Caroline! She was born early Friday morning which means that we have spent almost 4 straight days in the hospital. Actually, as I’m writing this post now we are still waiting to be discharged. We are all exhausted, unkempt, and insanely tired of eating hospital food, but we’re immensely grateful to have mom and baby healthy and doing well.  Obligatory baby photo in 3…2…1…

During our incredibly long 4-day hospital stay, I learned that maintaining a healthy diet and active workouts is next to impossible without access to anything more than the cafeteria and vending machines. Also, with only getting 2-3 hours of sleep at a time, you generally don’t really feel up to doing sprints down the maternity ward or stair sets in the hospital stairwells. Praise God that we are finally getting discharged today.

This week, as part of adjusting to my new life as a father to a little girl, I’m going to be trying super hard to reincorporate sprinting, long runs, and strength training back into my life.

Now, on to the important stuff. Some of you may remember that last week we held a little contest for the Sony W-Series Walkman. Well, all the submissions have been accepted and the random winner has been selected. Without further ado, the owner of the brand new MP3 player is…

Chris Denbow!

Congrats, Chris and thanks to everyone who participated. Hopefully, I’ll be able to host more of these giveaways in the following weeks. The articles may be coming a little slower than usual this week but I promise, I’m still here… somewhere… under mounds of dirty diapers.

To enter the FitHacks subscriber contest copy and paste the following code into a comment on the contest announcement post.

That’s it! Thanks for playing

contest code: fit22365

For many in today’s culture, apathy is the biggest enemy of fitness. Sure everyone wants to “get in shape” but it seems that few actually work up the will to make any significant change in their lives. We as a generation, are overweight, unhealthy, and are dying young. As you may have guessed, the problem is only getting worse. Recent obesity statistics have shown that 1/3 of the adult population in the United States is currently obese. That’s just insane.

Why are we this way? What has made us become so lethargic that we don’t even care that we are slowly killing ourselves? Maybe people are too busy and don’t have time to exercise. Perhaps people can’t afford the “healthy food”. Maybe, it’s genetic or the result of greedy fast food companies trying to get us all addicted to their high calorie meals. Sure, maybe it is all of the above to some degree. But the bottom line is that we, as individuals, are just too apathetic to make the change we really need to see in our own lives.  In general, I believe the root of our apathy boils down to this: we are ignorant about proper health and nutrition, we are dishonest with ourselves about the effects our lifestyles are having on us, and we are far too easily distracted from the real problems at hand.

Ignorant: At some point I’m sure we’ve all thought about losing a few pounds, putting on some muscle or just trying to get in better general shape. However, if you have tried at fitness and failed, what happened? Was it too hard to stick with? Was it too difficult to eat right? Chances are you just didn’t know what to do. I know that this was my problem. I dreamed about getting in shape for years but until I actually began doing research into what steps were necessary to lose weight, it was always a pipe dream. I’d eat a salad or two and get frustrated that I hadn’t dropped any weight on the scale. I was ignorant of the realities of calorie restriction and exercise in bringing about real and sustainable change.

If you don’t know how to begin a process of weight loss and successfully implement a fitness plan feel free to check out my 5 Fitness Baby Steps. This is how I got started and the exact steps I took to get back on track.

Dishonest: I think it is important to admit that to some degree, we have all been a little dishonest with ourselves. We know that the fast food that we casually pickup on the way home isn’t the best choice for us. We know that if we don’t make exercise a priority it isn’t going to happen on its own. We also know that we don’t want to remain out of shape forever. Simply put, this isn’t how we were made to live. It’s OK to let yourself hear some harsh truths every now and then.

Distracted: With family, work, school, church and personal time, our responsibilities can stretch us all a little thin. However, when you also add TV, internet, Xbox, blogging, twitter, facebook, etc it can quickly become ridiculously overwhelming. It is OK to unplug every once in awhile. With a continuous flood of information vying for your attention it’s difficult not to become distracted from the things in life that really matter.

The next time you feel the need to make a change in your life, act on it. Don’t wait until the next commercial break.

(photo by CCC)