After weeks of hard work I direct your attention to www.higher-endeavors.com.

From this point forward I direct you to this site to get all of the new information I will provide. I am excited about all of the new content I can provide to you through this updated site.

ENJOY!

I know I had said the website would be ready by now and theoretically it probably could be. However, I am leaving tomorrow to go to Jamaica to get married. It didn’t seem wise to unveil a new website and then leave the country without having the ability to fix any issues that came up.

So, upon returning on May 14th the final touches will be added to the website it will be ready to go public. I am sorry for the delay and hope you have been staying on track towards your goals.

Well I may have been a little over ambitious with my previous update. The new website is coming along well, there are just a few more issues to resolve before making the conversion. Hopefully the site will be up and running in the coming week, maybe two. Trust me the wait will be worth it. I am very excited about the new layout and possibilities.

I am getting ready to make a big transition with the website in the coming days. The website will be completely overhauled offering more features and a new layout. For that reason I have been unable and will be unable to post any new content this week. If all goes well the transition should take place early next week at which point I will resume posting new content. Until then continuing working hard and I look forward to the possibilities with the upcoming site.

I will be up front and say that it sure is hard to know who to believe these days when trying to get information. The government says one thing, your friend says another, and your spouse disagrees with both. How can there be so much conflict on one simple topic. I have covered this idea in the majority of my articles because I feel it is one of the major problems preventing people from truly achieving their goals.

For the most part, people in the fitness industry are beginning to agree on the major aspects of exercise. It is now common knowledge that freeweight training is better than machine based training. Hopefully the majority of people now realize that long bouts of steady-state cardio are a complete waste of time. Nutrition information is a completely different story. Dieticians will disagree amongst themselves. Then you will have scientists producing studies that are extremely conflicting. Add to that the diet gurus who make all sorts of ridiculous claims. To this day there are still too many misconceptions on the basics of nutrition. Hopefully after reading this you may have a little better idea of what to believe and what to ignore. [more…]

Look at any gym’s class schedule and you are sure to find at least one yoga and one Pilates class. They are the hottest forms of exercise right now. So hot that you will even find men in the classes. Whether that is because men are trying to pick up women or they are actually interested in the class is hard to tell. One thing is for sure though; most people who take Pilates or yoga are extremely passionate about it and will claim it cures everything short of cancer.

The question is, does yoga or Pilates really justify all the excitement and hype? You may be shocked to find out that I for one don’t believe yoga and Pilates are all they are cracked up to be. I know that yoga and Pilates are not the most effective weighs to lose weight and I know pilates and yoga are not the most effective ways to tone your muscles. Yoga and Pilates have a few beneficial aspects to them, but they are definitely not the only solution to all of your fitness needs. [more…]

Gatorade started a huge trend in the fitness world. The idea of consuming a beverage to replenish your energy and electrolyte stores after a workout revolutionized the idea of exercise nutrition. Athletic teams all over the country were quickly implementing their product into their training regimens and had the big orange cooler prominently displayed on the sideline to help hydrate athletes as the came of the field or court. The idea behind Gatorade and other similar fitness oriented drinks is sound; however people have gotten way too carried away with their use.

The typical Gatorade or similar drink is full of lots of simple sugars and electrolytes, like sodium and potassium, which are intended to replenish all of the energy you burn and the electrolytes you sweat out. This is extremely beneficial for people who burn high amounts of energy and sweat off lots of electrolytes. But last time I checked few people who exercise meet those two criteria. It is amazing to watch people walk on the treadmill for 20 minutes while steadily drinking their 32 ounce Fruit Punch Gatorade. Then a few weeks later they wonder why they haven’t lost any weight. By incorporating the right beverages at the right times you can greatly enhance your performance while also improving your results. [more…]

Large populations of Americans view walking and other forms of low intensity activity as forms of exercise. People will begin to walk more in hopes of losing mass amounts of weight. Unfortunately walking isn’t a realistic long-term activity to help anyone lose large amounts of body fat.

Walking falls into the category of non-exercise physical activity, or NEPA for short. The issue is that activities such as walking have very low energy requirements. An average individual weighing 200 pounds walking at a comfortable pace, roughly 3.0 mph, will burn 183 calories in 30 minutes. In order to burn one pound of body fat it would require approximately 10 hours of continuous walking. That doesn’t seem like a very effective way to lose weight. However NEPA does have its role in your daily life. [more…]

Ask someone the one thing they would like to change about themselves and a large percentage will say they want to have a flat stomach. If people manage to workout they usually spend a lot of time doing cardio and hundreds of sit-ups in hopes of achieving six-pack abs. In the past I have examined the ineffectiveness of these ideas; long steady state cardio doesn’t work nor does spot reducing exercises. Instead of wasting your precious time performing pointless exercises why not become more educated and apply the effort towards something that will really work.

The major factor in having six-pack abs is body fat. If you have a high body fat percentage, no matter how many sit-ups you do, you won’t have the desired look you are after. In order to reduce your body fat through exercise it’s important to lift progressively heavier weights because that adds muscle and muscle is very metabolically active, meaning the more muscle you have the more calories you will naturally burn. For the women out there don’t worry, you don’t have to look like Arnold in his prime to get metabolic results. Also supplementing your resistance training with interval style cardio will help fire up your metabolism to help burn body fat. But all of that is old news; I’ve covered all of that before. What happens for the people whose workouts are near perfect, but they still don’t have the desired six-pack? Are they doomed to have a mediocre looking midsection? The good news is that there are a few things you can do on top of the exercise to help reduce your abdominal body fat. [more…]

I am guilty of neglecting to provide regular content on my blog. Prioritizing and time management are two of the most important skills that one can use to accomplish tasks and be successful. It becomes habit for people to say, “there just isn’t enough time in the day.” I am guilty of using that phrase myself. However, if you were to sit down at the end of the day and account for every minute of the day I am sure you can find lot’s of empty or wasted time. I know I have lots of idle time throughout the day that I could use more effectively and more productively.

I have been using Microsoft Outlook for the past few months to schedule my days so I don’t neglect to complete certain tasks. As you may have guessed it isn’t 100% effective. Scheduling my days using Outlook has definitely improved my productivity, but I know I can still improve a little more. In order to become even more efficient I am going to begin using a dry erase board to organize my daily tasks. Hopefully by having a big board sitting over the computer I will be more likely to remember various tasks.

This whole process can and should apply to everyone. So many people use the excuse of time when explaining why they don’t workout or why they don’t cook their own meals.  Scheduling your time is extremely important to producing dramatic results. Spend some time in the next few days evaluating what you are doing right now to plan your life and how much time you are losing because of your present method. Then brainstorm to come up with some various ideas that can improve your productivity throughout the day. A life of accomplishment is so much more rewarding than a life trying to keep a half-step ahead of the impending deadlines.

I think it is extremely important to set goals for yourself and it’s even more important to write them down. What better way to establish a goal than to write it for the world to see. It is my goal to provide consistent content on this blog, ideally a little something everyday. I know that by managing my time better I can create the time to spend providing information to help others accomplish their goals. Wish me luck.