As someone who’s worked out for well over 35 years now at many different gyms, I can say that the franchise has improved dramatically over the years to the point where it’s now competitive with many hardcore gyms in what it offers. It’s finally a great option for more serious workouts, which is good, because there are tons of locations, including one that I go to that’s just a little over 10 minutes from my house. Given the price point, it’s worth checking out a location near you.

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Available in six different colors and patterns, I’m reviewing the Blur Tie Dye [sic?]. When the bottle holds cold liquid, it changes from a light background to a dark one. It’s not a dramatic effect by any means, but certainly looks interesting.

The cap is easy to screw on and off, as well as pop open with a button to take a sip. At only 17.5 ounces of capacity, however, this water bottle is definitely on the smaller side in the category.

With the cap off, the lid opening is similarly small, making it all but impossible to get a regular-sized ice cube inside the bottle. Fortunately, my fridge has crushed ice, which mostly works for this type of bottle, but it would be better if the opening could accommodate a normal ice cube.

If you don’t mind the smaller size and extra weight from the silicone-coated Pyrex, the look, feel, and function of this water bottle is definitely premium. For everyday use, you’re probably better off with a less expensive option, but for something a bit different that fits well in a dishwasher, this is a fine choice.

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The IRONCK is attractive and well-constructed, with a sufficiently wide 21 inch platform. On the underside is a PVC non-slip bottom and on top is bumped PVC leather. Sandwiched in-between is PU foam and plywood, which provide decent cushioning and bounce.

A product like this is definitely for standing desk veterans and fitness enthusiasts. Upon first and early usage, you’ll likely fatigue fairly quickly in your glutes and feet and then eventually in your core as you strive to maintain balance and have your feet work against the surface bumps. Over time, you’ll definitely build up resistance and tolerance, but this is not really a product to replace a standard stationary padded standing desk mat (I like this one) full-time. If you understand the limitations, this is a wonderful addition to a standing desk setup and an overall healthier life.

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Build quality is excellent. The material is a strong nylon and there’s plenty of solid foam padding. The hook and loop (“velcro”) grip system creates a super tight hold around the olympic bar. Finally, if you use this behind your neck, the sponge pad works great. With that said, while I’d recommend this universally for hip thrusts, keep in mind that the extra thick padding may cause issues for some people placing a bar across their shoulder girdle, so this may not be the most ideal solution for squats (the Manta Ray offers a pad-free alternative that I like).

It’s a simple product done with commercial-level quality and at a great price. If you need something like this, the AutSport should be a first choice.

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The first advantage is that these have no interior cage, so your hand grabs the dumbbell bar like any other traditional dumbbell. The rounded shape also provides more stability for the selected weight plates. Finally, instead of removing and placing a selector pin or turning a weight selector on each end of the dumbbell, with the JOVNO’s you simply twist the handle to select the desired weight. It works and feels great and is an amazing design overall.

With a simple twist, you can choose between 11LB/5KG, 22LB/10KG, 33LB/15KG, 44LB/20KG, and 55LB/25KG. While a choice of five different weights is not as flexible as other adjustable dumbbells, it’s still a great range. Even better, it has an asymmetrical design that lets you place the dumbbell back in any direction and it will still lock in place and let you select another weight.

If you’re looking for a good adjustable dumbbell, this is a great choice if the weight range meets your needs. It’s high quality and looks and feels like a fixed dumbbell without any of the limitations.

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While the Manueklear is lighter weight and doesn’t have the original’s leather straps, it still performs the same basic function. There are no instructions, but it’s easy enough to adjust the straps for a perfect fit. I happen to like to have the bottom of my elbows hanging slightly below the bottom of the neoprene elbow padding. It’s definitely comfortable when curling, although I think I would have preferred the neoprene neck brace to have the strap side face out rather than in when on my neck. 

Ultimately, this is not heavy duty workout equipment, but it really doesn’t have to be. It feels like it will hold up well for its intended purpose and it’s hard to beat the price. This is the type of equipment that not every home gym needs, but is fantastic if you’re ready to expand your arm training options.

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I’ve always been a big believer in respecting both my body and mind. For my body, I’ve been lifting weights and doing related performance training for usually at least five days a week for well over 30 years. Even now in my late 40s, I continue to look for ways to physically improve. While I know training like this (and eating reasonably well) won’t necessarily extend my lifespan, I do feel like it will help me maintain a higher quality of life for longer (aka, extend my healthspan). Of course, the stress-reducing benefits of exercise are well-known, but less well-known are some of its other benefits. These other benefits include increased mental performance and giving you the tools, like discipline, to overcome other common life challenges, e.g., setting and meeting various goals. 

For my mind, I’m similarly on the lookout for ways to improve both my knowledge and overall performance. For example, I try to read as much as I can, and, when watching TV, view more than my fair share of documentaries, educational programming, and related content. As a cord cutter, my viewing habits are as much app-based as they are programming-based. One such app is CuriosityStream, which specializes in documentaries of various lengths on a wide range of topics. 

One CuriosityStream documentary that I started a few months back is called Redesign My Brain, a three episode Australian series from 2013 starring Todd Sampson. The basic premise of this short series is that Sampson tries out various brain training techniques and tests the results of his efforts by engaging in extreme mental and physical challenges. It was a fun, inspiring series. One brain training technique that caught my eye in the first episode was juggling. Apparently, it’s a great way to gain greater focus and mental clarity. Intrigued, and having wanted to learn in the past, I decided to give it a real try this time.

Of course, I didn’t know the first thing about learning how to juggle. First, I did some simple research on juggling balls. It seems that the heavier, the better, because beginners tend to overthrow the balls if they’re too light. I settled on the 4.2 oz speevers Xballs, which are pretty much the heaviest available and had excellent reviews.

My next step was to find a good tutorial video. I settled on Josh Horton’s HOW TO JUGGLE 3 BALLS – Tutorial, which proved to be excellent.

The first step was to learn body positioning. The second step was to practice throwing one ball in the correct arc. The third step was to practice throwing two balls in the correct arc. Finally, was the three balls. Due to my natural lack of coordination, it took me about a week of daily practice, but I eventually got proficient with juggling three balls correctly, albeit not always continuously. I continue to practice at least a few minutes every day with the eventual goal of juggling continuously and smoothly and then try my hand at juggling clubs and rings. I think I’ll stop short of anything on fire or with a motor, like a chainsaw, but I’ll try and keep my options open.

For me, this was a good lesson in identifying a skill I wanted to learn for many years – probably since childhood – and never figuring out how to start. With determination and follow-through, I was not only able to start, but also do something my natural skillset makes difficult. While it’s too early to tell if it has improved my mental state or cognitive abilities, it has at least seemingly helped enhance my coordination, which was probably important for the next part of my story.

A bit more recently – this past weekend in fact – I was inspired to learn piano. If you really know me, you would know this is nothing new. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to learn an instrument, usually guitar and piano. I still have the electric guitar and various versions of Rocksmith, but have yet to give it a proper commitment. Similarly, I had various electronic pianos and tutorials, most of which – save for one 61-key Casio – I got rid of in my great collection purge of 2018. The one Casio keyboard that was saved is actually my mother-in-law’s, which resides in our dining room, and was kept because my middle daughter, who, like my oldest daughter, already plays another instrument, was doing Intro to Keyboarding in middle school.

So, I had the piano, I just needed a good way to learn how to work it. As you can imagine, there are quite a few popular apps for smartphones and tablets for doing just this thing. I decided to use my Apple iPad Pro 9.7 and chose three highly rated apps to trial: Online Pianist, Piano Academy, and Simply Piano.

Now, right off, Online Pianist was a no-go. It just appeared to be a way to play some songs on the piano without any tutorial or other profound guidance. In contrast, Piano Academy was tutorial-based, so it seemed like it was just what I needed. While I was able to play some basic notes and follow along on my first try, something I didn’t notice until I moved onto Simply Piano was that Piano Academy didn’t seem to have an early step to tell you where to place your fingers. Either because of its absence or just because I somehow overlooked it, I was playing the songs with the wrong fingers, and in fact the wrong hand! While I was having fun and felt like I was learning a little, I knew something wasn’t quite right.

Finally, there was Simply Piano. The third time, as they say, was the charm. This had a similar tutorial approach as Piano Academy, but actually made sure I was using the right hand (and literal right hand to start) and right fingers. A few hours in on the first day I not only learned how to play with all five fingers on my right hand and all five fingers on my left hand, but also learned how to read sheet music. That latter achievement is particularly notable, because like so many other things when it comes to music and me wanting to learn, I never was able to grasp the concepts of properly reading sheet music before. That to me is the highest possible praise I can give an educational app of this type. Simply put, it worked for me and my natural limitations.

On the second day of use, I continued to run left hand drills. It’s a bit of a challenge to coordinate both my thumb, which is squat, and my pinkie, with my other fingers, but more often than not I’m actually able to pull it off. Surely the juggling helped at least a little bit with improving my coordination and ability to remember where things are spatially versus the past. I finished the second day with some attempts at songs to keep right hand usage fresh in my mind after so much work on my left hand, although this proved a bit of a struggle due to my poor memory retention, which again I think should improve over time the more I work with tasks like this.

So yeah, after two days of self-directed piano practice, I’m hardly a maestro, but I’m amazed at the progress I made in such an incredibly short amount of time and see a lot of potential for playing full songs in the not-too-distant-future (Next Sunday, A.D., maybe). Between the juggling tutorial on YouTube and the powerful app that can actually hear the notes you’re playing on the keyboard thanks to the iPad’s microphone (I do have a MIDI cable and better piano stickers on the way), there’s a lot to love about the educational potential about today’s technology. I know for me it got me through some decades-long blocks and false-starts, and I look forward to finding similar paths forward for the countless other skills I wish to learn, like card tricks, high-volume memorization, electric guitar, electronics and engineering work, etc.

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You can check out Part 01 here.

Even though in the last entry I just took a look at the exterior front and back covers and was hoping to get into something a bit more meaty in this entry, the first two interior ads, the one on the other side of the front cover and the one on the opposite page before the Contents and Shows and Events schedule page, were similarly interesting and worthy of its own entry.

That’s obviously a great shot of Bob Hoffman, most likely at or around his physical peak. I’ve only really seen photos of him when he was much older and didn’t look like he trained much, if at all. In any case, the testimonials are interesting to read. I also did a quick Google search for “The Road to Super Strength!” booklet, but it doesn’t appear to be online. This was being sold well into the 1940s, though, it seems, as a different ad appears in Popular Science from March, 1946. I wonder if it was updated much, if at all, 8 years later.

This is a strange one. I never really heard of the “Perfect Voice Institute,” but sure enough, some form of the company and information is still around, even though the original is from 80 years ago! Based on this Yahoo! Answers entry, the technique was implemented by Eugene Feuchtinger in 1932. You can actually see Feuchtinger’s booklet at that Perfect Voice link!

The post What can we learn from a fitness magazine from March 1938? – Part 02 appeared first on fullSTEAMahead365.

Before we dive into the contents in future blog posts, I thought it would be nice to see the front and back covers.

As you can see, the same teaser style featured here on the front cover of this magazine from the 1930s is still in vogue today (aka, clickbait).

According to the inside cover, the man on the cover is Jimmy “Muscles” Jackson of the Jamous (sic?) Jackson Trio. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with him, but his physique is definitely impressive regardless of era, just with the somewhat lackluster legs that would be the standard into roughly the mid- to late-1960s.

As would be the standard practice for fitness publications even into the modern era, the magazine was a showcase for the publisher’s products, in this case, Hoffman’s York Barbell company products, which, like this magazine, was founded in 1932.

Hoffman always had a preference for weightlifting over pure bodybuilding, so that’s of course what’s often emphasized in the magazine and here in the ads, but, save for the iron boots, this ad and its products wouldn’t look too out of place today.

As related to my earlier statement about legs and the lack of relative development and emphasis at the time, the exercise demonstrated in the upper right appears to be a freestanding version of a leg extension. I suspect this setup would be even better for freestanding leg curls, however. Otherwise, it’s a very 1930s way to focus on leg development outside of the core weightlifting exercises in the upper- and lower-left photos.

Finally, note the use of the term “SUPERMEN,” along with other superlatives. Comic book hero Superman would make his debut on newsstands on April 18, 1938, which would be one month after the cover date of this magazine. Coincidence? Of course, but it goes to show that it was probably a common term at the time, so it’s only natural that a really strong guy in a comic would be called a Superman.

See you soon in Part 02, where we’ll dive into the interior of this fascinating historical magazine.

The post What can we learn from a fitness magazine from March 1938? – Part 01 appeared first on fullSTEAMahead365.

While my focus has always been and continues to be on bodybuilding, i.e., lifting weights in a healthy and intelligent manner to build the best body my genetics and age allow, I still make time for a wide variety of other related fitness activities, including Cardio, Yoga, CrossFit, and Plyometrics. To me, that’s the first key: Make sure you’re at a gym that allows for a wide range of different fitness activities. Don’t just stick with cardio. Don’t just stick with weights. Mix it up. You’ll not only be healthier and more capable, but you’ll also maintain your motivation.

The second key is: Don’t pay too much. This is the golden age of gyms and gym memberships. In many areas, the choices of gyms are overwhelming. I presently go to a place called The Edge, and it’s only slightly more expensive than a place like Planet Fitness, yet offers many times the equipment and options, including child care (with a nice bonus of actually letting the kids do supervised workouts!). This ties in nicely to the third key: Don’t compromise. Shop around and make sure the gym can grow with your needs. If not, make sure you’re not locked into a long-term contract in case you find you need more.

There is one bonus key that I’ll also provide… With all other things being equal, the only difference between those who are fit and those who aren’t fit is consistency. The fit ones keep a regular workout schedule. So, ultimately, whether you workout at home or go to a fancy commercial gym, what really matters is making sure your workouts are reasonably intense and reasonably consistent to go along with a reasonable diet. Most exercise and diet programs are effective, but they need to be utilized to work.

The post What to Look for in a Gym in 2019 – Three Keys appeared first on fullSTEAMahead365.