Fast Fitness - Which Books to Get for Holiday Shopping Black Friday
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - quick, inexpensive holiday gifts, easy to get, helpful to have. Many readers asked which books to get. Thank you everyone who sent me great notes and success stories how the books made their lives strong, fun, and pain free, and requests for more for friends. Here are descriptions and ways to get books and other fun:
All my books have different information. If you get them all you won't go wrong, or repeat the same stuff.
Limited personally signed copies to you or someone else are possible. I can write something special, with different signing for each person on your list. I can mail them all to you for the same postage, or to different people separately. You can also order straight from retailers instead of me. Links follow below (or click items).
A reader wrote a comment, angry that his e-book did not print, and that it hurt his back "sitting at the computer pasting screenshots into into MSWord" to print his e-book on fixing back pain. He must have thought it was "Reprimand your way to my heart" day. E-books don't print. That is why they are called "E" (electronic) books. The book company lawyers told me his pain was divine punishment for copyright violation. Also for not following book instructions on healthy sitting. I am working on getting new editions of e-Books complied and uploaded (buggy slow software is keeping me at the desk many days overtime). New e-books should be ready for Christmas orders. New editions will soon be available for Kindle and other readers. The e-books already on my web site download directly to your computer. For portable print books, get the print editions.
If you can only get one book:
Top choice for athletes is Healthy Martial Arts. It is a treasury for all athletes. It teaches how to live and move and be healthy during all action of body and mind, with over 200 photographs. For regular exercisers, or those who want to start and just be healthy and have fun, a good choice would be Health & Fitness THIRD edition - How To Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest Of Your Life. It's an all-in-one book with thirty-one fun chapters of fitness, nutrition, health, disease prevention, fixing back and neck pain, joint pain, functional exercise, "green" fitness, emotional health, brain health, stretching, and fun facts about the body. (Or as they say, "if you only read one book this year, you should read more...")
Best Combo:
With either Healthy Martial Arts or Health & Fitness THIRD ed., add Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery.
For the Most "Bang for the Buck:"
Get a bunch, above, and throw in a Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier (200 illustrations) and Ab Revolution™ Third Edition expanded (114 drawings and photos). The Ab Revolution™ is described in: Back Pain From Running and Innovation in Abdominal Muscles
"Thank-you for your considerable research and explanations regarding neck and low back pain. Have recently checked out the Stretching Smarter... book you wrote to see if it is better than other posture books. It is infinitely better. Want to buy some books with photos next.
For scuba divers and diving medicine people on your list:
Diving Physiology In Plain English - all my career work and research in the field of decompression and diving science and two books summarizing the entire field of Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine.
All books and descriptions - on my web site BOOKS page.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
I give thanks for wonderful readers who use my work to make their lives better, their friends' and neighbors' lives, and their communities, write me nice notes and stories, send web-photos of their progress, and jokes and help for my website.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Second harvest food distribution photo of community help by scubabix carrying rice by moyerphotos
How to Cope with Pain is a blog focusing on ways to live your life with pain, written by a psychiatrist who has spent years in chronic pain.
She generously writes:
"The Fitness Fixer recommends fixing the underlying causes of pain, instead of continuing bad habits and hoping enough reps of certain exercises will cover up the problem."
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our articles.
Thoughts on Pain:
The idea is not to live with pain, but stop the causes and go on to a happier pain free life. Click for tutorials of readers who fixed pain with Fitness Fixer - readers inspiring stories
Visit the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) where students train to make "health care" healthy, and stop pain caused by counterproductive exercise practices and uncaring medical "care." We teach people and communities how to be healthy in body and actions while having fun - no cost preventive medicine - "green" fitness.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Contest for Children (and Everyone) To Learn What They Live
Friday, November 20, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a contest for your kids, students, co-workers, and teams to reinforce healthy movement, deeds, and thinking as part of normal everyday life. It's one thing to say it, or read it, and better to do it and live it:
Choose something fun and easy from Fitness Fixer. There are over 670 Fitness Fixer posts so far. Use labels under posts to get categories, for example all Fast Fitness articles, or all reader inspiring stories, or use the Fitness Fixer Index.
Have your group (or self) learn one or more of the methods or activities. It can be anything from learning simple good bending to use all the time, or better sitting for the whole class, to preparing healthier meals with good body positioning, to doing good deeds in your neighborhood or home.
Draw pictures or take photos of what everyone learned and did, write your stories, and send them in.
A child who lives with healthy ways learns health as a lifestyle. Use your brain. Have fun. I will post the winners - everyone who tries.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Anton, Alberto (farioreo), and others have asked how many "sets and reps" of exercises and stretches will help. The answer is in a story my Mother told me when I was small:
A young boy in school always made the same mistake in English. Instead of the proper, "I have gone…" he said, "I have went." The teacher told him to stay after school and write 100 times on the chalkboard, "I have gone, I have gone, I have gone…" The boy wrote "I have gone" the required 100 times. When he finished writing, he saw the teacher had stepped outside. He left her a note, "Dear Teacher, I wrote "I have gone" 100 times, and now I have went home."
The answer is that repetitions are not the entire answer - you have to understand and use the result. I am asked the question so many times of how many "reps" (repetitions) of a rehabilitation or training exercise are needed, that it has become a "light bulb" joke - How many (whatever) does it take to change a light bulb?
Readers ask:
Q. How many sets and reps of upper back exercises does it take to straighten rounded forward posture? A. None, you just straighten up right then and hold it. A2. Or you can say one repetition is enough. Then use that one all the time. A3. Or until you actually use it - Note the person slouching (photo right) to measure posture.
Q. How many sets and reps of back exercises does it take before my disc pain stops that I got from bending over wrong to pick up things. A. None if you stop bending wrong to remove the cause. A2. A whole lot more than if you stopped bending wrong.
Q. How many sets and reps of good squats with heels down does it take to get enough stretch in the Achilles tendon to be able to squat well? A. Doesn't matter, if you use good bending in your ordinary day, you will get hundreds of Achilles tendon stretches throughout the day and it will be built in for you. You aren't supposed to stop your day to do a number of repetitions, then go back to heel up squatting, or bending over wrong.
Q. How many sets and reps of squats does it take before I can squat right to bend right? A. Until you do it right.
Q. How many sets and reps of your exercises on Fitness Fixer should I do? A. Until you remember them.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of slouching while measuring posture by Neeta Lind
"Jolie Bookspan, the Fitness Fixer, brings us a detailed post about how to look upward without placing strain on our necks. I like the part about how our necks are not Pez dispensers – good visual image. The article is a good reminder that we need to use proper form in all of our daily activities, not just while we’re at the gym."
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our information.
--- Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Fourth Group Functional Training Exercise, Functional Upper Back Stretch
Friday, November 13, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness from the 2009 Black Belt Hall of Fame. I am here teaching and learning.
In my "Stretching Smarter" workshop here, I teach healthier ways to move and stretch for daily life and sports. One is the fourth Functional Fitness Training (Bookspan Basics). It retrains how you look and reach upward, to reduce neck and shoulder compression and give a built-in stretch for the upper back:
Assemble your group (or yourself) and tell them that when they look upward, to feel the range of motion more from their upper back than neck. Have them feel, notice, and visualize where is their upper back - one way to do this is to watch a person in line ahead of them.
Remind the group that the neck is not a Pez dispenser - the idea is not to pinch the neck back (photo below with yellow hat), but to "unround" and lift upward more from the upper body.
photo shows unhealthful neck compression - pinching back and jutting chin, creating a postural spondylolisthesis.
3. Have everyone look upward by straightening the upper back and by lifting more in the chest (drawing, upper bike rider on water bottle). Repeat while reaching upward with both hands. Make sure not to return to pinching backward at the neck, jutting the chin forward (photo above), or leaning the upper body backward. Get the reach from the shoulders.
Use conscious control to prevent pinching your neck back every time you look and reach upward.
Each new Functional Training (or Bookspan Basic) shows how to teach your groups (or self) how to prevent common musculoskeletal problems during the team season or operational theater. Trainers, Drill Instructors, readers, send in your stories of how you use these in your program.
Good body mechanics are a powerful performance enhancing aid.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification through DrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
She writes, "I didn’t realize that those old school fitness tests may have been all for naught!" Are they? Click Do They Do What They Claim?
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
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Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own.
See if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe, free, click "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, The Fitness Fixer Index andDr. Bookspan's Books. Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
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Image of Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row (Hendrick), Emperor of the Six Nations, via Wikipedia
This weekend we will attend the Black Belt Hall of Fame event hosted by the Eastern USA Martial Arts Association. Paul and I are honored to be invited back this year, and receive awards for Instructor of the Year. I will teach a workshop on Stretching Smarter for Martial Artists.
Why stretch smarter? Many standard stretches work to increase flexibility but don't improve martial arts or other sports, and aren't good for the joints.
Martial artists and other athletes often develop injuries from years of bad stretches. It's understandable to put yourself in harm's way to carry children and elders from a burning building, or suffer cold and hypoxia rescuing a stranded mountaineer. It's silly to injure yourself doing stretches and exercises you think are for your health. In martial arts you can harden your body to withstand blows through difficult and uncomfortable training, but it isn't the point of martial arts or other sports and activities to beat up yourself. I cover the difference between toughening the body and injuring it in the seminar and in my book Healthy Martial Arts.
My workshop teaches functional flexibility - changing your body to work better in real ways needed for daily life and fighting arts.
The hall of Fame event is by invitation only. Contact:
Executive Director Soke Kanzler Eastern U.S.A. International Martial Arts Association 1 (800) 456-3872 EUSAIMAA@aol.com P.O. Box 9642 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15226 USA
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
In the first act of Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote, "Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters."
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Your face shows how you lead your life. In other words, "Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician." How can you improve your face?
Healthy exercise and hard work doing good deeds, benefits your face more than the same time and money spent on artificial makeup.
Stop eating sugar and processed flour. Your skin will improve. Stop fried food and soda. Simple healthy nutrition improves your face and skin more than all the money spent on fast food, expensive "health food," engineered supplements, and skin drugs.
The woman hoeing a field in India doesn't use indulgent face peels. Her dignity and honest work polish her face. Genuine laughter does more than corny face exercises and laugh yoga. The life you live of integrity, thinking of others, and lack of self-absorption, shows more on your face than all the facial exercise gizmos and programs.
Actress Lauren Bacall said, "I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that." Instead of spending on externals, save the money or give it to the poor. Decide how you want your life to look, then go make a face.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
We planted a vegetable garden this Spring in my mother's field. Hard exercise changed a rocky ruined area into beautiful food. It's getting cold now. Readers asked how the garden turned out. Here are stories:
We are harvesting. By afternoon it is dark with a large orange moon overhead lightning our work. The hard work keeps us warm.
When we first cleared the area, we filled the wheelbarrow with concrete slabs, pried and dug from the patch. Paul bent to grasp the wooden handles. When he rose lifting the handles, the barrow was so heavy that both handles snapped, scattering everything. Paul is strong.
We sawed and attached new handles. Much good squatting, bending, rising, lifting, and reloading. Paul bent well (upper body fairly upright, knees bent over heels). At almost seven feet tall, he needed to bend low. When he rose, the wheelbarrow handles were so high in the air, the front of the barrow tipped forward so far that contents spilled everywhere.
Hoeing a field, breaking concrete, digging stumps and rocks, bending and reaching, lifting right, hauling bales of compost, and all the rest that gardening can involve, is more exercise than you can get in a gym. It combines hard natural movement using much of the body at once to give muscular and cardiovascular exercise. To pull weeds, you squat well, both heels down, loosen roots with a digging stick, grasp weeds at the roots, rise pulling slowly. Over and over. Rise and bend. Garden prayer.
We were amused that more grew outside than inside the garden. Outside, tall weedy grasses grew everywhere. Inside, small seedlings grew into low herbs and vegetables. Deer and other animals didn't eat our garden. We had built a 6-foot fence around it, but deer can easily jump that height, and small burrowing groundhogs and rabbits can wiggle through or under. What we had done is leave them a bushy meadow near the garden area, with plenty of food and hiding places. They didn't need to bother the garden. The municipality cited my mother for a violation of some kind for not mowing her "lawn." Sorry Mom! We paid it for her.
Large slabs of concrete lay buried, inches below the surface of much of the area we wanted to plant. We needed to break and remove them. I managed to lift Paul's huge sledgehammer, swinging it with both hands over my head. It came down on the slab and bounced. I tried a wider stronger swing. It was heavier to swing than it looked. It bounced off the concrete each time. I handed it to Paul. He swung it quickly with one arm, splintering the slab. We dug the dozens of new football-sized pieces and made a rock border for the flowers nearby.
We gardened without pesticides or chemicals. We hauled hundreds of pounds of compost that the municipality gives away free at the recycling centers. Thank you recycling center for all the good exercise, compost, and manure. Plants grew healthy and didn't need chemicals to fight insects. They could fight them from their own internal health - people can do the same much of the time from simple good health practices. Plants manufacture their own anti-inflammatories against disease. That is part of why eating vegetables and fruit is good for your own health against inflammation.
The work it took to eak out a few plates of vegetables for each meal reminded us of subsistence farmers - how worrisome it is to have to rely on what you can scratch out of your own soil. If we had to last the winter on what we grew, it would be a long thin winter. Much of the world does not sit around indulgently with fast food in the refrigerator. Many do not have refrigerators. Before spending money on junk food, then complaining you are too heavy, think. Save the money. Improve your health. Refraining from eating does not make anyone fat.
The tomatoes grew tall and long. They grew so much that we could not find the strawberries.
We are saving the seeds from the sweetest cantaloupe, the largest cabbages, and the most wonderful purple peppers and white eggplants for next year.
The wonderful Thai bamboo hoes we brought back with us have shrunk in our colder dryer climate, loosening the heavy metal shovel-heads so they tilt sideways with each overhead swing. We have been fixing them, then going back to hoeing. The ground will soon freeze. Hoeing is more upper back strengthening and work than anything in a gym, even more than all the pushups and handstands that I love. Bend knees, upper back upright, breathe in, swing up, breathe out, swing down. Over and over.
Saturday night was Halloween. The World Series was playing. Paul didn't want to disappoint me by not going out to see the fun going on for Halloween in the city, and would never have said anything. I put on a costume and sat with him to watch the game. It was a great evening. The next day I put on a scarecrow costume and we worked in the garden.
We were just two city kids, who grew up in urban slums. I didn't know about gardening, but we read, worked, learned from mistakes, and sweated under the hot sun and the cold evening air.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Dr. Jolie Bookspan from The Fitness Fixer has been collecting some interesting data about sitting straight up. Read about it here: Fast Fitness - Contest: What Does It Take To Sit Upright? Back health is important, but do you know how to keep your back healthy? The health and fitness industry is another area where health care professionals are finding some interesting non-clinical opportunities.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. Thank you to this week's host Dr. Kim for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
The human body is healthiest and happiest when it moves throughout the day. Reader Paul J sent this video clip of a project in Sweden, reminding people how much movement can be fun: Click > arrow to play:
Medicines prescribed for poor mood and the surprising number of diseases caused by sedentary lifestyle, frequently cause disease and despondency. Real life movement throughout the day has been found more effective than pills and surgery to reduce or solve depression, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, reduce risk and effects of cancer, and other diseases.
Remember to enjoy moving. Go dancing. Skating. Play ball and Frisbee. Do community work. Pick up litter. Help a shut in. Fun doesn't only mean being entertained. Make doing good for yourself and community a positive fun feeling.
What projects can you think of to make real life active, healthy, and fun again, not just artificial movements in a gym? My Academy- the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) teaches people and communities healthier ways to live - both in formal classes and grassroots community projects - click AFEM.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
If you can only get one book:
For the Most "Bang for the Buck:"
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