General Fitness

X Gym Schools LA Stair Climbers

For those who love to get right to the bottom line, here are the results of my trip to LA on 9/25/09 with Chris Beams to take on the 75 story US Bank Building:

Chris placed 1^st in his age bracket (30-39) and 3^rd overall in the men’s open category. This was his 2nd competitive race.

I placed 1^st in my age bracket and 2^nd overall in the men’s open category. This was my 4th competitive race. For the official results on everyone, click here.

My niece Andrea placed 2nd in her age group and 16th overall. This was her first race!

For those of you who like videos, check out our stair blog at www.flightclubseattle.com.

Now, for those who like stories and details, read on, because it was a heck of a weekend filled with more fun and fitness insanity than I have ever experienced!

Wow! Now that was a hard climb! It was an eye opener too. All those piddly little 60 story practice climbs in Seattle helped a bunch until I got about that high in the US Bank building, but then I bonked. The remaining 15 stories were shockingly brutal! I felt like a little dutch boy in the Sahara dessert, walking up a sand dune wearing 10 pound wooden clogs!

My throat was part of that metaphor too. It got so dry and parched, I was horse for

Burn Fat With Your Brain

Did you know that your brain burns 15-25% of your daily calories? Even though your brain makes up only about 3% of your weight, it accounts for a very big part of your metabolic rate! Most people think of muscles as their only calorie burner, and while they are the main engine for that, the huge amount of energy the brain requires is hardly ever discussed.

The reason this is important is because a healthy brain uses more energy and therefore contributes more to your metabolic rate. Keeping your brain healthy is pretty easy too if you know how. Some of the ways are:

The Side Effects of Fat

I always find it interesting that the drug commercials on TV seem to spend much more time listing the side effects of their medicine than its benefits. Well, if one of those commercials listed only the top 20 side effects of extra body fat, it would have to read somewhat like this blog below (this article is largely adapted from the Scientific Laboratory of Food Intolerance, so I wanted to be sure to give them their props right off the bat).

Carrying around excess weight is becoming an epidemic in North America. While one of the initial concerns with obesity is usually all about how you look and how you feel about yourself as a person, the longer the problem exists for you, the more medical problems are going to arise, some of which can be fatal.

Obesity is a growing concern especially because overweight rates have doubled among children and tripled among adolescents. This increases the number of years that they are exposing themselves to dangerous health risks associated with obesity. While it is difficult to truly predict the future impact of obesity, there is strong scientific agreement that

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Shopping For a Personal Trainer

Seattle personal trainers really are the best in the country. X Gym personal trainers are the best of the best, so when X Gym members have to move out of the area, they always ask me how to find a good personal trainer in their new town. This doesn’t have to be as tough as most people make it, and I’m going to walk you through the 7 easy steps in finding just the right trainer who will help you reach your goals as fast as possible.

1.) Look online and see if any show up in a local search. Just type in your city and “personal trainer”. Don’t bother looking past the first 3 pages on the search results. If they aren’t creative and motivated enough to figure out how to get ranked well, they probably won’t be creative or motivated enough as your exercise coach either. A good rank means they are popular too. They might have a website or a blog. Look for YouTube videos of them or other things they might have done. Once you learn their name, do a separate search that way. Find out their education and/or certifications. See if their body looks like you would want yours to look – which brings me to my second point: