In the game, Help Sterling Hit the Ball

Sterling is a first grader at East Lake Elementary school.  Like most students, Sterling loves going to recess, and hanging out with friends in class.

Spring is coming around and it’s baseball season again.

While talking with his friends, Sterling finds out they signed up for Little League baseball.

Sterling, being very athletic and goal seeking, also young and without many fears, tells Dad that he wants to play baseball with all of his friends who just signed up.

Dad is athletic and very competitive. He is a tough coach, but only because he knows the potential of his players.

Sterling
“Dad?”

Dad
“Yes, son?”

Sterling
“I want to play baseball with all of the kids at school.  They are all on the same team and want me to play.  Can you sign me up?”

Dad
“Of course, you can do anything you want to!”

Sterling
“Yippeee!!”

Help Sterling Hit the Ball

Positive Effects of a Sauna

Healthier Skin

The organ effected most from the heat is your skin (yes your skin is an organ).  Creams, deodorants, oils, dead skin cells, etc. will clog skin pores and lock waste in.  Skin conditions like acne, pimples and blackheads can be caused by clogged and infected pores.  The skin is meant to be a pathway for the elimination of toxins and waste material from your body.  The heat produced in the sauna causes profuse sweating.  Sweating is good, as it helps eliminate toxins from the body and stimulates the function of other organs.

Healthier Heart

The heat causes blood vessels to dilate, increasing blood demand to the skin and thus, relaxation of the muscles.  Muscle relaxation occurs with the increased blood flow and distribution of oxygen.  The increased volume of blood vessels occupied by the same volume of blood causes blood pressure to drop.  Your heart will beat faster and more efficiently to compensate.  This is why time in a sauna includes a mild cardiovascular workout that is comparable to walking.  

Weight Loss
Weight loss from a sauna can be more than temporary.  The increased heart rate in a sauna will burn calories.  Some studies estimate around 300 calories are burned in a 15-20 minute session in the sauna.  Not too bad for just relaxing.

Blood Flow

Blood flow is important in almost every aspect of a functioning body.  If our heart decided to take a break, we would die.

Ways To Increase Blood Vessel Size

There are many ways to do this.  As we know, the harder the heart pumps, the larger our veins and vessels need to be to keep up.  We can easily achieve this through two cardio excercise: swimming and cycling.  You were probably thinking running, right?  Caught ya!  Running is a great excercise to losing weight, both fat and muscle.    There are two reasons for this: muscle weighs three times more than fat given the same volume.  Another is diffusion is extremely slow, and in order to get nutrients to the outermost muscle fibers, the muscles have to be small if going for a long time to keep up with energy output- which is why running over long periods of time that your body actually eats away at your muscles to get the nutrients to the skin faster- which is not a good thing for fat loss, because muscle burns fat.  With cycling and swimming, we are able to get more oxygen to the lungs and burn fat while keeping muscle.  Running doesn't always break down muscle.  Fast spurts of energy in sprinting build muscle as well as a stronger heart, but does not increase vascualar size as easily.  High blood pressure is optimal, only when we can control it.  High blood pressure while working out increases our ability for long term energy and increased vascular size (being with more pressure).

How To Control Blood Flow

Our blood is measured in two ways, usually in a notion such as a number over another.  Our blood pressure increases (going towards our feet) or decreases (towards our head) 10 mmHg per 5.4 inches.  That is a ton of pressure!  Everyone has experienced this- you sit up too fast and... you get light headed and see stars.  This is a result from lack of blood.  Since our blood from laying down to sitting up increased by roughly 50 mmHg our heart has to work very hard to pump the blood back to our brain.  Our blood pressure is taken by wrapping a band around our upper arm (located directly parallel to the heart)  This is to get the best estimate of our hearts blood pressure, the top number.  If you raise your arm to shoulders length, the top number will show roughly 10 mmHg less than what the actual rate is.  Knowing this, we can control blood flow just by moving our body.  Raising your legs up while doing a bench press pushes the blood to give more oxygen to the brain, as well as more blood to chest muscles.  Simple but brilliant tricks that increase strength and performance.

How To Jump a 4-wheeler

Check out my website on the link below.  Any feedback would be great!

How To Jump a 4-wheeler

Benefits of Yoga

Why Yoga?

I am posting this because for one: I am a guy who is not femanine and is very prideful when it comes to girly things such as dancing and singing; and two, I would have not taken this class unless a gorgeous girl sweet talked me into coming.
After this class, I felt like I could float.  It was a big stress releiver, and I felt much happier after the class.  This class definitely burned my core.  The poses we did helped stretch my muscles in many ways- which is crutial for building lean muscle mass- (girls don't worry, no matter how hard you train, your bodies are not built like a guys, or have anything near the testosterone levels to produce faster muscle growth.)

Yoga poses twist the body, which massages the pancreas and adrenal and thyroid glands, boosting blood flow and improving organ functions.

Yoga also loosens chronically tight areas, like hamstrings and hips, and also realigns your body and releases tension from the connective tissue.
I am very glad I took the opportunity to attend a session of Yoga and strongly recommend it for anyone who hasn't yet gone.

Click on the link below to see more scientifically proven bodily cures because of Yoga.

77 Surprising Health Benifits of Yoga

Increase Your Happiness

Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions.

A recent study at Harvard Law on happiness states that we increase our happiness by interacting with people.

The so called "Happiest place on Earth" shown on the Oprah show in January of 2011 is found in a city of California.
What studies found that brought this group of people happiness are simple features such as: No cars, wider sidewalks, locally owned businesses, parks, no drive-throughs at fast-food restaurants.  All of this leads to one thing, "Interaction!"

What are the happiest jobs in America, and how much do they pay?

1.  Travel Agent
2.  Clergy
3.  Special Education Teacher
4.  Fire Fighter
And guess what?  They all pay less than 50k a year.

There is a saying, "Money does not buy happiness."
Coming from a family of money- living across the street from former Utah Jazz coach, Jerry Sloan, and next door neighbors with Mark Yule, owner of Mona-Vie, a multi-billion dollar company- it sure is nice to have the money stability factor.  From experiences of being both rich and poor- living off government funding when I was first born- having a lot money comes responsibility, as well as more stress.
As I noted in a previous post, stress is the factor that cuts off our brains potential to bring out memory.  It also blocks our levels of seratonin, the enzyme that is released creating so called "happiness", or a state of mind that everything is okay.  There are also many wealthy people who are extremely happy because their job is to interact with many people to build and market their business.  Unfortanetely with government issues, this dream is diminishing over time to many people.  Now less than 1% of America makes over half a million dollars a year.

The key to happiness is not necessarily what job you have or how much money you make, but it is with your own attitude as well as INTERACTING WITH OTHERS.

Effects of Sleeping Patterns

Did you know that regular sleeping habits can actually make your day less stressful?

Just by going to bed early and waking up early can result in a more productive day

I'll give you an example.  When you have an assignment, or a project, or anything on your to-do list that hasn't gotten done and you are starting to feel tired, GO TO BED.

Studies show that going to bed then, and waking up earlier to do that thing, you will be able to be more effective.  Let's say your project will take you two hours.  Go to bed, and wake up two hours earlier.  You get the same amount of sleeping time, but with the added energy provided from sleep, you will be able to finish your project even faster.  Amazing right?  Most people call that common sense; although, naturally, we put off that feeling of going to bed on time to wake up early because somehow we feel we won't have the time so we sacrifice our sleep instead.

Sleep is the only time in our day where we grow and produce energy

Not once throughout the day does our body re-cooperate unless we are sleeping.

Sleep provides more energy than food, daily excercise, and caffeine, (which by the way really doesn't give your body evergy).
The next time you come across the two way path of sleep or staying up, GO TO BED.  You might know you have to get your project done, but your body does not.  You might think because it's a Friday night that you can throw off your sleep schedule.
Your body does not recognize the difference from a Monday to a holiday to a Friday night.  Regular sleep will keep you supplied with more energy.  It's not how much sleep you get, it's when you get your sleep.

The power of Creatine and Glutamine

If you are doing the same workout routines and you seem to only achieve mediocre results, why not try my two recommendations to power up your workout?


Creatine Monohydrate
This is one of the least expensive supplements at roughly 10-25 cents a serving.  Creatine is one of the vital binding enzymes in the energy production of your cells.  Creatine, a molecule with a similar phosphorylation potential as ADP, is used to store high-energy phosphates.  Each of our cells is coated with signaling molecules.  Every creatine molecule has a specific "code" for turning on the cell to respond, or in this case activate the cells to produce new myofibrils found inside your muscle tissue for muscle development.  With my choice, I have found the best results from the monohydrate powder, not pill.  Either one works, but I would recommend staying away from the pill form.  Although the pill form is more concentrated, it does not release as fast due to the shell made of starch and other elements.  Remember, creatine is meant for quick use.


L-Glutamine
Like creatine, glutamine is cheap in cost compared to all of the other "name brand supplements" that "supposedly" help you gain muscle and burn fat..  Be sure your glutamine has an "L" in the name, or the supplement is junk.  Glutamine is one of the seven essential amino acids and is naturally found in muscle tissues.  They are called essential for a reason- because only they, "the essentials", have specific shapes to bind to the receptor to promote your muscle development.  Like creatine, this enzyme turns on a kinase which activates the g-protein linked receptor which directly turns on the amino acid receptor to promote a speedy recovery to the re-building of your muscles.  This is also used as a joint recovery supplement.

We know that creatine and glutamine are two of the seven essential amino acids.  The difference between them is glutamine is known as a muscle relaxer (inhibitor) which cause the muscles to loosen and heal.  Creatine is a muscle stimulator which causes your muscles to fire an action potential with the energy created through glycolosis fermentation, the same way sugar is turned into energy.  It is the fastest pathway used to create atp.  When we work out, we use up norepinephrine (stress hormone).  Our body naturally gets rid of this and does so by producing seratonin, the counter-acting enzyme.  This is why working out is great for stress relief.  The thing with creatine and glutamine is they are counter-acting amino acids.  One tells the muscles to relax, while the other tells the muscle to tighten up.  This is why, from physiology, it says take creatine before and glutamine after.  Now if you are taking creatine after to put back the energy your muscles are looking for, hold off on the glutamine.  The best example I can think of to have this make sense is if you decide to take a sleeping pill with caffiene.  They would counter-act each other and be defective.  Another example from Chemistry, which most people who clean know that HCL (hydrochloric acid) and bleach are very strong bases and can clean pretty much anything.  But when mixed together they counter-act each other and produce ammonia gas which does not clean and is very harmful to the body.

Retaining Memory

Last week I talked about how to retrieve memory.  In order to retrieve memory, we first have to have it, right? Here are some ways to first input memory into our brain.

Your brain as well as your muscles have what is called memory.  Each functions off of previous things it has done.  We remember scenarios from our past because of things we see, food we eat, or smells from an object we pass by.  All of these things draw out information-  We have to first figure out how our brain learns.

There are three basic ways of learning: listening, visual, and touch

Think about the things you remember from a previous time and how it was easy for you to remember.  Do you remember things by looking at pictures, or by taking detailed notes?  Do you learn better when you build an object or perform an experiment?

All of us learn differently, which way do YOU learn?

Retrieving Memory

Have you ever studied and studied for a test in school or a presentation you have been assigned to give for a major business, but when it comes time to do either your mind goes blank?

Stress and Cortisol
Stress and depression are the most frequent ways to increase memory loss- hence stressing too much about a the big day.  Stress releases a hormone in your body called cortisol.  Cortisol blocks our ability to retrieve memory that we have previously stored.

Mints & Music
Peppermint is a medicinal herb that helps relax the brain and give you that extra stress reliever to decrease levels of cortisol production.  In a recent study by Harvard University, instrumental music and complete silence for just ten minutes a day has been proven to decrease cortisol levels in the brain; therefore making us "happier". For quick memory enhancements, take in peppermint about a half hour to an hour before your stressful moment, and make time to relax with some silence and music.

Staying Awake and Alert Through the Entire Day

Have you ever wanted to stay awake and alert throughout your entire day?  I have one solution for you- eat right!

Waking up to a meal with high protein and carbohydrates will help aid in the energy for your mental focus.

Caffeinated drinks
Staying away from coffee and caffeinated drinks increases your body's naturally made energy.  If caffeine is consumed on a regular basis, your body will become used to the excess energy and stop making it's own- which is why you might notice- if you have coffee or a soft drink from McDonald's or the local gas station every morning and you forget to one day- you simply can't focus the way you should.  Orange juice- Vitamin C in orange juice helps aid your immune system, making you feel alert and full of energy.

Protein & Cholesterol
Did you know our body consumes 70% of the protein in found egg whites instead of only 20% from a protein shake?  The yoke found in each egg is packed with healthy cholesterol, fat soluble vitamins, and essential fatty acids.  Eating whole grain oatmeal helps lower LDL (bad) cholesterol to stable ones blood pressure and toxicity while still keeping the HDL (good) cholesterol required for a a healthy brain.