In my brief time here on this earth, I have learned that most people panic. They lose control of their minds and bodies. They make poor decisions based on limited logic and high emotion. The end result is usually disastrous.

Great leaders and heroes through history are generally known to be calm, cool and collected under pressure. Their ability to size up a situation, regardless of its circumstances, and then make a logical decision is very powerful and practical.

Sometimes these calm decisions won’t always be right, but in most cases they are far better than panicking and making the situation worse.

Hostile Situations

If you are stranded in water, lost in the woods, faced with a predator or any other hostile opponent; the best thing you can do is remain calm and look for the next best move to make.

Flailing in the water, desperately trying to stay afloat, will drain your energy. If you panic in the woods and run in the wrong direction, you could become further lost. Predators have evolved to target the weak, they can smell fear and will always pursue the insecure, isolated or injured.

The first step when faced with a stressful situation is to remove your emotions and irrational fear. If the odds seem insurmountable, which they rarely are, then you must logically calculate your best move for survival.

Calmly, yet without hesitation, observe then analyze the situation. Next, gather key information that will allow you to most effectively react and take control.

Fight or Flight

When we let our emotions run rampant, our hearts and nerves go wild. Our adrenalin starts to rush. Our bodies almost become uncontrollable. This is our instinctual fight or flight defense mechanism kicking in.

Adrenalin allows us to perform at super human levels. Our pain threshold sky rockets, we are at our strongest, and our normal risk aversion is temporarily gone. This response can be a great tool to escape stressful situations.

However,  overtime, this response can be very unhealthy. An adrenalin response is followed by spike of cortisol in our blood. This hormone is damaging; it can lower your immune system, damage the circulatory system and, among other things, cause ulcers.

After calmly assessing the initial situation, we can control our reaction. If we see a logical plan and the steps we must take to complete it; our flight or fight instinct will remain at bay. The key is recognizing your emotions, then getting a grip on them.

Taking a deep breath and quieting the mind will help you stay calm and centered.

Follow Through

Do you know anyone that remains graceful under pressure? How do they handle stressful situations? Most people are not born this way. Fortunately this trait can be acquired through effort.

The ability to remain cool is generally a result of confidence. Confidence is not achieved until experience has been earned through trail, error and conquered failure.

Repeating the process of calmly gathering information, analyzing it, then making the most appropriate maneuver can be repeated until the hostile situation has been handled.

With enough practice, this skill will become second nature. You can, and will, become the person people will look to in a time of stress.

Are you the pack leader?

I’ve noticed, in times of stress, people will instinctively look to the Alpha of the group to see his response. If people turn to you for advice or help, take it as a compliment rather than a nuisance.

Being the Alpha, or the leader, is a position of power and influence. These types of people  get the job done and subsequently get what they want. Losing your cool is a sure fire way to relinquish your power.

Every situation has an absolute best move to make. It is your duty to find it and do it! It could be the difference between success or failure, life or death.

This idea of luck is a comfortable excuse to explain away another person’s triumph. Luck is mostly a matter of preparation, skill and hard work.

If you really think about it, the idea that there is a magical force randomly granting some people luck or favor, while damning others, is outrageous. It all boils doing to statistics and probability. Fortunately for us, these chances can be influenced.

You may object by saying that sometimes people do just get lucky/unlucky and receive something they don’t deserve… and you are right.  There will always be a chance that something unforeseen goes wrong or right. However, the extent to which you can alter the outcome is greater than you may think.

Preparing for Success

Recognizing opportunities and effectively seizing them takes experience and skill. Conversely, walking through life not learning from the past or preparing for the future is a surefire way to keep yourself ‘unlucky’.

Putting your name in as many hats as possible is a habit that yields results over time. The more you are putting it out there, the more of a chance your idea, pitch, or plan has of making traction.

People often fail to put themselves out there in fear of social rejection. With zero risk, comes zero reward. I will elaborate on the art of putting it out there in the future.

Continuing on, the more people you interact with, the more opportunities you will have to connect. You will find ways to connect your goals to others, and others’ goals to your own opportunities. The creation of a mutually beneficial relationship is a beautiful and prosperous thing.

The most successful way of building this type of relationship is to actively seek out ways to help and connect other people. This may seem counter-intuitive; shouldn’t you be searching for ways you can gain?

The short answer is no, and is explained through the statistics of karma.

Statistical Karma

Karma is the eastern belief of cause and effect. Some schools of thought believe a divine force dishes out the fruits of one’s actions, while other schools believe a person is solely responsible for what their actions bring upon them.

From my perspective, karma and the good/bad events in your life boil down to statistics…

The more good deeds you do, the more positive relationships you form. Likewise with bad deeds; the more wrong you do, the less favor you will have with other people.

In other words, each interaction with another person  is an opportunity to create a positive or negative experience. How you chose to carry out that interaction will have a reverberating, or rippling, effect. Possibly unnoticed or realized until far in the future.

The more often you look to bring value to others, the more positive energy and favor you build. With each value-add, you increase the probability of good coming back to you.

This may seem like common sense, but common sense is rarely common and often is uncomfortable to practice.

Application

Recognizing the affects of karma and preparation, we should strive to take every chance to learn, grow and build positive energy.

Put your name in as many hats by actively speaking up when you hear of an opportunity that matches your, or others, interests

With enough practice you will begin creating your own good fortune and positive karma!

Generally, poor decisions and failure occur  because of two controllable variables:

1. Over analysis
2. Emotional complication

Over Analysis

We often slow or halt our learning process by over analysis. In other words, we do not allow our creative  side to grow through abstract trial and error. The time spent researching and analyzing different technical aspects of the goal take away from the time that should be dedicated to practice…

The actual attempt and practice of a skill towards an objective has the most profound effect on your ability. Unfortunately, the fear of failure motivates many people to defer practice. The term used to describe this common affliction is Analysis Paralysis. It can take hold in any facet of life; work, play, or love.

Conversely, a true master of any skill does not think of how we will perform an action. It just comes naturally. All analysis is subconscious, almost as an instinct. This idea is called Flow.

Flow is synonymous with ‘being in the zone.’ You are fully immersed in the task at hand, successfully completing each goal smoothly.  There is total peace of mind, the opposite of panic.

Emotional Complication

Almost all decisions people make have a strong emotional base to them. The best salesmen know this, and have developed skills that build rapport and positive feelings.

The ability to remove your emotions while analyzing a situation is an important concept in personal development. You have to set your ego aside and truly see the environment for what it is. Recognizing the motivation behind your  own and others ego’s is very helpful in directing outcomes.

An action based purely on initial emotions is generally not the wisest. Often times a situation can be viewed in different lights. The mentality behind ‘is the glass is half full or half empty?’ idea.

Actively applying a positive frame on an experience also contributes to favorable outcomes. It puts you on a wavelength of success, pushing you towards your end goals,  keeping you motivated.

The caveat to this is when people shift blame or responsibility to maintain positively feelings. If the fault lies on you, recognize it, then analyze the steps to correct it next time.

Becoming Better

When you balance these two variables correctly in your quest for personal development, optimal achievement can occur. This is the idea behind the learning curve.

Initially you must build a working technical knowledge base to make an attempt (science). After initial analysis and learning, trials can occur. This performance of the skill provides the opportunity to apply creativity and experimentation (art). Learning from analysis and experimentation is a very efficient method on your path to proficiency (personal growth).

Ultimately, the achievement of any goal is the commitment to get it done. The commitment to continued action and subsequent improvement is the basis for achieving your dreams.

You must approach it two fold… as a scientist and an artist.

Are you doing what is necessary to make your personal development dreams come true?

In a study titled “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You: Attentional Adhesion to Mates and Rivals” conducted at FSU, researchers found heterosexual people of both sexes spend most of their attention and eye contact on people they considered a potential mate or competition…

Furthermore, members of both sexes who were in relationships, were found to spend greater time sizing up the potential threat to their relationship. A researcher from this study said “Men tend to worry more about other men being more dominant, funny or charismatic than they are. But when it comes to concerns about infidelity, men are very attentive to highly attractive guys because presumably their wives or girlfriends may be too.”

No Brainer Study

These findings may seem a bit obvious or ‘no-duh’, but its painful how uncommon, common sense really is. I have had many conversations with people about how they are unsure of themselves or don’t know how to react to eye contact from the opposite sex.

Generally, if you have caught someone of the opposite sex looking at you, especially more than once, then they probably consider you a potential mate and have given you the green light to open conversation with them.

If you are out and looking to meet potential love interests there is a rule you should follow. It is called the 3-second rule. It states that within 3-seconds of seeing or making eye contact with someone you deem attractive, you should immediately approach and open them up for conversation.

This rule is for people just beginning to push their comfort boundaries in social situations. The 3-second, no hesitation rule helps you beat analysis by paralysis. Most people will want to talk to a cutie, but will come up with a million little reasons why they shouldn’t or can’t. Take some advice from Nike and just do it!

Most people stress out over the opening sentence way too much. Just say Hi and pick something about the venue to talk about. You should be able to gauge their interest in further conversation with you almost immediately.

If they aren’t friendly or you can’t find a connection, do you really want to spend more time on this rude stranger?

Eye Contact Dominance

When I am out, I like to play a little game with eye contact. If I meet eyes with someone, I will hold their gaze until they look away. Whoever looks away first, loses. It is a competition to see if I can dominate their eyes. If the person looks back to play again, it is practically an invitation to chat.

This little game may sound pretty easy, but depending on who you are fixing your gaze on, it can be pretty nerve racking. If you are a man locking eyes with a beautiful women, and she doesn’t look away after two seconds, things can feel pretty awkward. Your ego will compel you to look away first, but you must not!

If done properly, your eye contact opponent will find you confident and possibly worth talking to. Not many people have the audacity to hold a gaze. You’d be surprised how timid people become when faced with someone they find mate-worthy.

There are a few caveats to this dominance game. You do not want to stare down anyone who may feel threatened by it. Many men will take this as a challenge to physical confrontation. Some people may find it creepy if you grill them without the proper expression on your face. You want to exude welcoming-confidence and fun. Not a challenging, stalker-like glare.

Windows to the Soul

It is amazing how much information is given away by the eyes. The adage that “the eyes are the windows to the soul” is around for a reason. We can detect peoples intentions, emotions, truthfulness and many other qualities just from the eyes.

A lot of communication is done non-verbally and subconsciously. Often times when you have a bad vibe about someone, it is because your subconscious is picking up on incongruent or hazardous non-verbal communication cues. This is why your gut is often right.

It is pretty easy for people to lie with their words. We can consciously chose what we say. Controlling our nonverbal behavior is a different story. If there is a mismatch between what someone is saying and how they are saying it, there is information being withheld.

Knowing this, we should actively notice not just what people are saying, but how they are saying it and what their body is communicating.

There is much research on how the physical body projects one’s inward thoughts and feelings.

Check back in the future because I will be researching and writing more on this interesting topic.

The ability to be fully aware of your surroundings and what is happening in your mind is very important to your well being. It promotes relaxation, mental focus and increases your ability to connect with others.

It has been found that the ability to delay gratification, as opposed to succumbing to instant gratification, directly correlates with success, intelligence and general health.

Marshmallow Experiments

In an experiment, children were offered one marshmallow, but if they could wait for a certain time period before eating it, they would be granted two.

The children who immediately ate the marshmallow, and the others who delayed gratification, were tracked as they grew up. The remarkable results show a very strong, direct correlation with higher test scores, good behavior and overall success in the children who delayed gratification in order to receive two marshmallows.

Continuing this idea of  time orientation, here is a video that explains how to leverage it for an all around better life.

Application

The idea is to cherish the positive memories, learn from your failures, enjoy the pleasures of the present moment, and make decisions based on your goals for the future.

Appreciate your roots. Learn from the past. Enjoy the moment. Walk the path to your dreams.

The examples and rhetoric he uses make it very hard for anyone to disconnect with. He tells stories that force you to agree with in fear of being labeled heartless and uncaring towards suffering people

Obama’s ability to market his ideas and message has rarely been seen before in a President. All marketeers should take lesson in how Obama orchestrated his path to the white house. It was pure marketing and persuasive genius.

These skillful tactics that Obama employs make it easy for people to rally emotion behind. Unfortunately, Obama’s messages seem to be more fantasy than truth. More idealistic than feasible. It seems that more and more people are beginning to discover that there may not be much substance behind his powerful rhetoric, as seen in his tanking public opinion poll numbers.

His promises and plans all seem great when he talks of them. Not once did he explain how his plans will actually work. He only stated his intended outcomes; not the necessary leg work, sacrifices, and risks involved.

Proper health care reform is critical for this country. Unfortunately reform can either take us in two directions. Either to a more efficient and effective method to support our citizens; or towards a more bloated, debt-ridden, corrupt system that burdens our future.

I personally do not know the answer or plan to solve this country’s health care crisis. However, I do recognize that people must learn to pull the wool off their eyes and examine the facts and concrete plans that lie underneath the rhetoric.

I found the GOP response by Rep. Boustany quite interesting and I encourage you to check it out. You can find the video here.

Here is another essay on the Obama’s address last night that examines the promises he made in more detail.

Breaking the law is a pretty serious thing. When was your last time?

You may have broken it and not even noticed…

If you drive above the speed limit, even by a couple MPH, you are breaking the law. If you J-walk, you are breaking the law. If you text while driving, at least in NC, you are breaking the law. There are even laws that have been passed that restrict what sexual positions you can enjoy.

It is a comfortable thought that law enforcement and the government have our best interests in mind. Unfortunately, this complacent thinking could land you in jail. Learn to flex your rights!

Why Do We Have Laws?

Most laws have been enacted to help keep us safe from ourselves and each other. We are all required to follow the law or be potentially face punishment by jail time, fines, or mandatory community service.

We all have the ability and choice to break or not break the law. If you are arrested for something you did or did not do, the only thing that matters is what that jury decides. Innocent people do go to jail. Guilty people do get off. Your future and freedom is not something you want to leave up to chance.

Blind Faith

There are many people out there who blindly follow the law and what the government says. They do not question why there are certain laws. They simply believe that since the government said so, it must be right and in their best interest.

In a perfect world, these faithful people would be right. In reality, this is not a perfect world and the government does not always do things in our best interest. Police officers and government officials are people. People make mistakes. People can have ulterior motives. People can lie…

There is a common belief that most people out there are “good” or have the common interest at heart. This is an optimistic outlook, and I am all for optimism, but the power of positive thinking will not keep you out of jail if the jury or judge finds you guilty.

Why You Should Never Talk To The Police

Here is a 2-part video from a class given at a law school. In the first video, the law professor discusses why you should never talk to the police without seeking counsel from a defense attorney. The second video features a police detective discussing his tactics to obtain confessions from the people he has arrested.

Closing

I am not advocating that you break the law. We should all lead our lives in a way that causes minimal harm to others.

In America, you are innocent until proven guilty. If you ever find yourself in a situation where law enforcement is involved, be aware of  the potential repercussions of talking to the police. If I ever have to face such a situation, I know I will be using my 5th amendment right to silence.

Suggested Reading/Videos From Around The Web

• How Police Interrogation Works
• The Philosophy of Liberty
• Citizen’s Guide to Surviving a Police Encounter
• Traffic Stop Scenario

What if there is a way to shed those fat pounds, increase your lean mass and still eat some of the foods you love!?

The bottom line to losing weight is to burn more calories than we consume. However, the weight we lose, be it fat or lean (muscle) mass, is largely dictated by our diet and exercise regimen. Generally, most people want to retain lean mass and burn fat.

As we age, our metabolisms begin to slow down. Even though I am still relatively young, I have noticed a significant drop in my body’s ability remain fit with little effort. After prolonged times of heavy eating and drinking (alcohol), coupled with inadequate exercise, a beer belly and a second chin begin to grow.

Most of us hate this unsightly increase in body fat.

What can we do to maximize our bodies’ ability to stay fit with minimal effort?

How Our Bodies Burn Calories

Before we dive in to the tactics of how to minimize body fat, I will briefly discuss how our bodies use all those calories we consume.

We all burn calories 3 ways:

1. Resting Metabolic Rate – This is the largest energy consumer in your body. Your body uses energy to maintain itself through its normal functions (cell and tissue repair, brain energy, respiration, cardiovascular processes, etc.) Think of this as the energy your body would burn if you did nothing all day.
2. Physical Activity – This variable is the easiest to control. It is simply the method of burning calories to physically move your body. The rate of calorie consumption is dependent on the intensity, duration, and frequency of activity.
3. Thermic Effect of Food (digestion) – After we eat, our bodies’ ramp up our metabolisms to digest our food, and consequently burn more calories. Depending on how much, how often, and what you eat; you can leverage this effect to assist your diet.

Now that we have an idea of how our bodies use energy, we can come up with a variety of strategies to burn body fat. The rate of fat loss will be dependent on your willingness to manipulate your diet and to exercise.

All Calories Are Not Created Equal

That heading may be a bit misleading; a calorie is just a simple measure of energy. However, what I mean by this statement is WHERE you get your calories matters greatly on how your body uses it.

If you haven’t been under a rock, you have probably heard of low-carb diets. Most people do not know how this diet works or the vital roles fat and protein play in this diet.

American media has touted fat as the great evil of our diets. Low-fat, no-fat foods have flooded the marketplace. What they don’t tell you is that these fat reduced options are pumped up with sugar to help maintain a good flavor.

Fat plays a vital role in many bodily functions. It is the macro-nutrient with the highest energy concentration and it also signals the brain to feel full faster and longer when we eat it. For more information, check out  7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat and Good Fat, Bad Fat.

Protein is also extremely important to your diet. It is the macro-nutrient used to rebuild body tissue. Furthermore, when the body is in a calorie deficit, protein is the first nutrient to be tapped for energy. The importance of this is if you want to retain muscle while burning body fat, you must consume enough protein.

Read more on the power of protein here.

The White Devil

White carbs (white sugars/complex carbohydrates) are your #1 enemy in the fight against body fat. White carbs come from foods such as white bread, sugar, pasta, potatoes, or anything else that is starchy or white colored.

To make a long story short, white carbs cause an insulin spike in your body. Insulin is a hormone that triggers your body to retain energy (increase fat mass). Generally, these white carbs do not satiate hunger and actually trigger your body to want to eat more. Furthermore, since these sugars are burned quickly, it causes a temporary rush of energy, followed quickly by an unpleasant crash.

Complete, or whole, carbohydrates are what you need to focus on. Whole wheat, grains, oats, and vegetables are sources for these “slow burning” carbohydrates.

With all that being said, carbohydrates do play a very positive role in nutrition, especially if you are an athlete. It is the easiest source of energy for your body to consume. However, for the sake of weight-loss, the reduction of carbohydrates relative to protein and fat is important.

You should strive to eat the majority of your carbs after bouts of physical activity and exercise. This will aid in recovering your glycogen (energy stored in your muscles derived from carbs) stores in your muscles.

The Weight-Loss Formula

To lose weight you must do several things…

• Eat Less, Burn More – You must lower your calorie intake below your calorie expenditure. Simply put: Burn more energy than you take in. Either eat less, and/or exercise more.
• Cut Out White Carbs – Attempt to eliminate white carbs. These are sweets, white breads, pasta, and potatoes. If it is white in its original form, it is probably a white carb.
• Increase Protein Intake – Protein is vital in maintaining and building lean muscle mass. When your body is burning more calories than it is consuming, it looks for protein to burn first. Prevent muscle loss by consuming enough protein!
• Include Enough Fat – Fat is critical in many bodily functions. Most importantly, in this diet, it makes you feel full and satisfied even after a lower calorie meal.
• Eat Smaller Portions More Frequently – To capitalize on the thermic effect of food, you should eat smaller meals spaced 4-5 hours apart through out the day.

If you follow these guidelines and include hill sprints in to your regimen, I guarantee your body will begin to shed pounds of fat.

Here is an example of an extreme method to melt away body fat in minimal time… Tim Ferris’ How To Lose 20 lbs of Fat in 30 Days.

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The goal of this essay is to provide a brief, yet informative, overview of the benefits of fat and protein in a weight loss diet. I encourage you to do more research on this topic as new developments are being discovered each day.

Today, I will discuss anti-productivity and getting less done. More importantly, enjoying your (limited) time….

Productive Zombies

Many people out there, who hack their way through the typical 9-5 job,  spend the majority of their waking hours focusing on their job. They are cranking out more widgets, selling more gizmos, calling Mrs. Jones about XYZ, filling out TPS reports, or any other typical work behavior that many adults spend most of their lives doing. Even when they are out of the office, their job stress clouds their mind.

Why do you get up and report to the same place to do the same thing day after day after day? For a paycheck that can buy things you don’t need? Or, do you have certain priorities that require you to trade your time for money?

I’m starting to believe that the life I’ve been conditioned to live is not the right way. The life I speak of is the “American Dream” that goes something like this:  You make good grades in school, so you will get admitted to get to the college, that will allow you to get the job, which will give you the money to buy the house, that you and your spouse can raise your 2.5 kids in,  then teach them the way to do it all over again, after that, you when you are old and gray, you can retire and relax last few years of your life away.

To me that life is boring and predictable. Where is the challenge?  In my old age I want to tell stories of adventure, of triumph and failure, how I had it all, lost it and then got it back again.

Now, if you are one of the lucky ones who loves what they do, cheers to you! Keep doing what you are and love your life.

If you are required to trade your time for money due to things such as bills, debt, a mouth to feed or whatever the case may be, that is understandable but not the only way it has to be.

I am trying to create a life of less. Less TV, less work, less material items. The idea is that hopefully this focusing on less will translate to less debt, less bills, lower stress and more freedom. It will allow me more time to focus on the things that make me happy and are truly important.

We should all lead an enjoyable life. Where the activities you do are intrinsically fulfilling and motivating. You shouldn’t dread getting up in the morning. You shouldn’t have to continue on a zombie-like life.

Being Anti-Productive

Start by trimming all the unimportant things out of your life. Do you really need to buy the latest fashion accessory or that shiny little thing that caught your eye? Can you get by on eating less expensive food? Cutting things out that aren’t necessary will allow you time to be anti-productive, better known as relaxed.

Contrary to what consumerism wants you to believe, you do not have to spend your life going in circles of production then consumption then back again.

More money saved means less money needed to be earned. Thus,  driving down your dependence on your day job. Eventually, if you cut your cost of living down, you will have the ability to do things you truly want to spend your time on.

Having money and material items is not the end all be all. Finding fulfillment in action and experience is what grows true happiness.

The physical and aesthetic benefits of weightlifting and cardio training are obvious. However, the psychological and cognitive effects of exercise are often over looked…

Over-Medicated America

I personally feel that American society today is vastly over medicated. We have pills for anxiety, depression, fat loss, being tired, boner problems, pills to calm you down, to speed you up, to make you focus, ect. The list is endless.

The drug industry is a profitable one. Its obvious if you watch TV; there is a plethora of prescription drug commercials that list every symptom any person could reasonably have and offers a quick fix in a pill. And this marketing method works. They make money hand over fist.

Some of these drugs are valuable, save lives or make life better. However many of these symptoms stem from poor lifestyle choices.

Pharmaceutical companies do not want you to know that a  nutritional diet, proper exercise and adequate rest can cure or prevent a vast majority of diseases and ailments.

I’ll stop my pharmaceutical  rant there…

Reducing Anxiety and Depression

It’s no big secret that running and weight lifting can help you beat stress and feel better about yourself. You may have already heard of a runner’s high or a weight lifter’s pump.

Stress has been linked to many physical and mental ailments; including: immune system deficiencies, balding, sexual performance anxiety and many many more. The bottom line is that if you do not reduce or combat stress, it will hurt your quality of life.

Without writing a research report… exercising has been proven to combat stress in three ways:

1. Rhythmic Therapy – Just about any type of exercise requires a repeated pattern of movement or cadence to be performed, especially cardio workouts. It is theorized that the rhythmic muscle movement calms your brain and quiets cognitive activity associated with anxiety.
2. Thermogenic Effect – This phenomenon is triggered by the hypothalamus (in the brain). It detects  the bodies elevated temperature caused by exercise, and triggers a reaction to reduce certain types of muscle neuron communication. In layman’s terms it allows you to “loosen up.”
3. Beta-Endorphin Release – Your body naturally releases beta-endorphins when under physical strain.  These hormones cause feelings of well being and happiness. This is the runner’s high people talk about after a good run. Due to the half life of this hormone, it sticks around a bit after your exercise.

Those are brief descriptions of how the body’s reaction to exercise can lower stress levels. Physical activity has also been thought to help prevent and treat depression.

Depression can be a very serious mental ailment and is generally treated by a physician. It has been found that in almost all instances that physical activity and exercise has provided some benefit to the depressed individual. Exercise is a good precursor to medical or pharmaceutical treatment because it is cost effective, noninvasive and has no negative side effects. It has been found that proper physical exercise appears to be as effective as medication for individuals experiencing clinical depression.(See: Effects of exercise training on older patients with major depression.1999.)

Depression is correlated with lowered levels of serotonin and norepinephrine. Exercise and resistance training has an anti-depressive effect by increasing these neurotransmitters. There are many other benefits of exercise that can help fight depression including: social interaction, increased confidence, and feelings of independence.

Improving Cognitive Performance

The cognitive benefits of exercise are mainly seen in aging adults. At about age 30, exercising can play a vital role in maintaining brain function. It has been found that reaction time, brain blood flow, dopamine levels, and frontal lobe performance begin to deteriorate with age.

Guess what? Physical activity and exercise promotes recovery of these cognitive deterioration and maintains current brain health!

Personally, I am very fond of my mental capacity and problem solving skills. The fact that physical activity will help me maintain my brain through old age is enough of an argument to keep me pumping iron til the day I die.

Get Off Your Butt and Move!

Work outs do not have to be complex or painful. You do not have to work yourself to complete exhaustion to see these benefits. The premise of effective training is consistent, gradual progression over time. Better yourself each day and you will see great results over the course of your life!