Muscles Gym Quotes

As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.

Some can be more intelligent than others in a structured environment—in fact school has a selection bias as it favors those quicker in such an environment, and like anything competitive, at the expense of performance outside it. Although I was not yet familiar with gyms, my idea of knowledge was as follows. People who build their strength using these modern expensive gym machines can lift extremely large weights, show great numbers and develop impressive-looking muscles, but fail to lift a stone; they get completely hammered in a street fight by someone trained in more disorderly settings. Their strength is extremely domain-specific and their domain doesn't exist outside of ludic—extremely organized—constructs. In fact their strength, as with over-specialized athletes, is the result of a deformity. I thought it was the same with people who were selected for trying to get high grades in a small number of subjects rather than follow their curiosity: try taking them slightly away from what they studied and watch their decomposition, loss of confidence, and denial. (Just like corporate executives are selected for their ability to put up with the boredom of meetings, many of these people were selected for their ability to concentrate on boring material.) I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same should be true of college. A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.

Huge biceps are an unattractive-uneducated-underpaid man's last attempt to be seen as worthy of dating, or, sleeping with.

Of course, she should have known better than to go out with one of the muscle heads from her gym...It was a shame that a brain was optional equipment on his model, and he had not paid for the upgrade.

He was the most perfectly formed man she'd ever imagined. He was movie stars, men in underwear commercials, guys at the gym, the construction worker in the red T-shirt who'd whistled at her but she'd pretended she hadn't heard; he was the men in three-piece suits whose brains were as sexy as their bodies; he was lazy, indolent seventeen-year-old boys whose muscles bulged out of their clothes, rodeo stars, and those smooth-cheeked, eyeglassed men who held their children tenderly. He was all of them.

I can remember only one thing. I want to be bigger. I want to be better. I want - people -, to need me.

The rise of gyms, factories of cosmetic muscle, is partly down to an increased desire to sculpt an idealised body - a body not formed by experience, but to fulfil a well-marketed visual stereotype

On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

He pressed the blade of his sword into the ground. As he pulled his arm over his head for a stretch, a bead of sweat trickled down his neck and over a row of muscles on his stomach. I swallowed hard. The window's edge dug into my skin but I refused to move an inch. The tiny droplet disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. I had seen plenty of guys in gym class with their shirts off, but none of them looked like...that. He was physical perfection - a living work of art. I sat on my knees with my chin relaxed on my crossed arms, unable to look away. "Enjoying the view?" he said, eyes suddenly on me. His chiseled face wore an overly confident grin. Clearly he was used to being admired. My cheeks burned. I stood, pretending to check out the scenery. "Not much to see." He raised an eyebrow, letting me know he knew I was full of crap.

Where's the elevator?" Mike asked, sheathing his weapon. Tallow felt a little better telling Mike there wasn't an elevator and watching his face. But then Mike picked up the dolly, boxes and all, with one hand, took the kit bag from Sophie with the other, and started jogging up the stairs with"Third floor, right?" "There," said Scarly, "goes a man who has names for all his muscles." "I was just thinking that," Tallow said. "Serious gym rat." "No, I mean he's named all his muscles. That's a man who calls one of his muscles Steve.

Some people who have been working out regularly for months or even years are still out of shape because the number of cheat days they have in a week exceeds six.

The gym was the one place I had control. I didn’t have to speak, I didn’t have to listen. I just had to push or pull. It was so much simpler, so much more satisfying than life outside. I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to care. I didn’t have to feel. I simply had to lift.

Some men’s chests are more buttlike than some women’s butts.

Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.

Every time the mind wanders away from the awareness of the breath, notice that it has wandered and bring your awareness back to the breath. This can be likened to a rep in the gym—every time you bring your mind back, you are building your "muscle" of attention.

In the front was a man he knew only as “Samson,” a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street.

More often than not, expecting to lose weight without first losing the diet that made the weight loss necessary is like expecting a pig to be spotless after hosing it down while it was still rolling in mud.

Meditation is a lot like doing reps at a gym. It strengthens your attention muscle.

It feels good pulling on these muscles, it feels better than worrying about who is watching.

The gym where I work out in Tokyo has a poster that says, “Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose.” A painful reality, but a reality all the same.

Goddamn golf shirts and gym memberships and fake muscles and tans and cell phones and new cars. Trevor didn't care about any of that garbage. All he wanted was a garden. Isn't that funny?

The average gym junkie today is all about appearance, not ability. Flash, not function. These men may have big, artificially pumped up limbs, but all that the size is in the muscle tissue; their tendons and joints are weak . Ask the average muscleman to do a deep one-leg squat-ass-to-floor-style-and his knee ligaments would probably snap in two. What strength most bodybuilders do have, they cannot use in a coordinated way; if you asked them to walk on their hands they'd fall flat on their faces.

People believe they lack will power, but will power is not something you either have or don’t, like blue eyes. Instead, it’s a skill, like tennis or typing. You have to train your nervous system as you would train your muscles and reflexes. You have to take yourself to the psychic gym—but with the certainty that each time you practice an alternative behavior, you’ve made it easier to do next time.

a system is overloaded—worked beyond capacity—the result can be profound deterioration, disorganization, and dysfunction whether you are overworking your back muscles at the gym or your brain’s stress networks when confronted with traumatic stress.

Tag was a tall man, towering well over six feet two if she had to hasten a guess. She’d seen him working out in boxing shorts many times, so didn’t have to speculate at his body type. It was fit and lean with muscles. Definition on every limb, not an ounce of body fat, many would drool over. Not her. She looked at him—not as a woman would—and saw how his jawline was sharp and curved into a strong chin. Dusted in fine wheat colored hair to match that on top of his head. He wore it in the style she’d seen a lot of men wearing here at the gym. Shaved around the sides with a step to the longer hair on top. He kept it neat and swept off to one side. Being in Tag’s presence always put an anxious gallop into her heart. It raced through her chest, and she forced her feet to hold before she skittered off like a lunatic. Lord, she was pathetic to get this worked up over a man who’d been nothing but kind.

He leaves every morning and he kisses me. The type of kisses that should be goddamn illegal, Rose. And he's getting hotter. How is that possible? He's started hitting the gym again and there are muscles and his stomach and his hair's like... I don't even... and the kisses.

The body that isn't used to. maybe the ninth, tenth... eleventh, and twelfth rep with a certain weight. So that makes the body grow, then. Going through this pain barrier. Experiencing pain in your muscles and aching... and just go on and go on. And this last two or three or four repetitions... that's what makes the muscle then grow. And that divides one from a champion and one from not being a champion. lf you can go through this pain barrier, you may get to be a champion. lf you can't go through, forget it. And that's what most people lack, is having the guts. The guts to go in and just say, ''l'll go through and l don't care what happens.'' lt aches, and if l fall down.... l have no fear of fainting in a gym... because l know it could happen. l threw up many times while l was working out. But it doesn't matter, because it's all worth it.

I wish every woman could have as a lover at some point in her life a man who never smoked or drank too much or became jaded from kissing too many girls or looking at porn, someone with the gracious muscles that come from honest work and not from the gym, someone unashamed of the animal side of human nature.

These hormonal extracts, which probably come from Russia, are sometimes still found in gyms, where they are used by bodybuilders who want to increase muscle mass.

You lose fat at the table and build muscle in the gym. Never forget that.

So, you’d be the muscle in this scenario?” Nick sputtered, still laughing. “Hey! I’ll have you know that I recently joined a gym and have very good intentions of going sometime. Soon

You have a visitors," Maximus stated. His face was impassive, but I still cringed, trying to discreetly tug my hand out of Vlad's. He let me go and folded his arms, smiling in that scary, pleasant way at Maximus. “And they are so important that you had to find me at once and enter without knocking?” I heard the threat behind those words and blanched. He wasn’t about to throw down on Maximus over this, was he? Don’t, I sent him, not adding the please only because I knew the word didn’t work on him. “Forgive me, but it’s Mencheres and his co-ruler,” Maximus stated, not sounding apologetic even though he bowed. “Their wives as well.” I started to slink away, sanity returning now that I wasn’t caught up by Vlad’s mesmerizing nearness. What had I been doing? Nothing smart, that was for sure. “Leila Stop,” Vlad said I kept heading for the door. “You have company, so I’ll just make myself scarce-“ “Stop” I did at his commanding tone, and then cursed. I wasn’t one of his employees-he had no right to order me around. “NO,” I said defiantly. “I’m sweaty, and bloody and I want to take a shower, so whatever you have to say, it can wait.” Maximus lost his impassive expression and looked at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted a second head. Vlad’s brow drew together and he opened his mouth, but before he could speak, laughter rang out from the hallway. “I simply must meet whoever has put you in your place so thoroughly, Tepesh,” an unfamiliar British voice stated. “Did I mention they were on their way down?” Maximus muttered before the gym door swung open and four people entered. The first was a short-haired brunet whose grin made me assume he was the one who’d greeted Vlad with the taunt. He was also handsome in a too-pretty way that made me think with less muscles, a wig, and some makeup he’d look great in a dress. Vlad’s scowl vanished into a smile as the brunet’s gaze swung in my direction as though he’d somehow heard that. “Looks as though she’s put you in your place as well, Bones,” Vlad drawled. “So it seems.” Bones replied, winking at me.” “But while I’ve worn many disguises, I draw the line at a dress.” My mouth dropped another mind reader?

At Takamatsu Station I take a bus to the fitness club. I change into my gym clothes in the locker room, then do some circuit training, plugged into my Walkman, Prince blasting away. It’s been a while and my muscles complain, but I manage. It’s the body’s normal reaction—muscles screaming out, resisting the extra burden put on them. Listening to “Little Red Corvette,” I try to soothe that reaction, suppress it. I take a deep breath, hold it, exhale. Inhale, hold, exhale. Even breathing, over and over. One by one I push my muscles to the limit. I’m sweating like crazy, my shirt’s soaked and heavy. I have to go over to the cooler a few times to gulp down water.

More than six thousand people reported which sporting activities would make a member of the opposite sex more attractive. Results revealed that 57 percent of women found climbing attractive, making it the sexiest sport from a female perspective. This was closely followed by extreme sports (56 percent), soccer (52 percent), and hiking (51 percent). At the bottom of the list came aerobics and golf, with just 9 percent and 13 percent of the vote, respectively. In contrast, men were most attracted to women who did aerobics (70 percent), followed by those who took yoga (65 percent), and those who went to the gym (64 percent). At the bottom of their list came golf (18 percent), rugby (6 percent), and bodybuilding (5 percent). Women’s choices appeared to reflect the type of psychological qualities that they find attractive, such as bravery and a willingness to take on challenges, while men appeared to be looking for a woman who was physically fit without appearing muscle-bound. No one, it seemed, was attracted to golfers.

true wealth consists in worriless sleeping, clear conscience, reciprocal gratitude, absence of envy, good appetite, muscle strength, physical energy, frequent laughs, no meals alone, no gym class, some physical labor (or hobby), good bowel movements, no meeting rooms, and periodic surprises, then it is largely subtractive (elimination of iatrogenics).

At the gym that his father built on the second-floor porch, young Roosevelt proceeded to work out feverishly every day for the next five years, slowly building muscle and strengthening his upper body against his weak lungs and for the future. By his early twenties the battle against asthma was essentially over, he’d worked—almost literally—that weakness out of his body.

I'd compare college tuition to paying for a personal trainer at an athletic club. We professors play the roles of trainers, giving people access to the equipment (books, labs, our expertise) and after that, it is our job to be demanding. We need to make sure that our students are exerting themselves. We need to praise them when they deserve it and to tell them honestly when they have it in them to work harder. Most importantly, we need to let them know how to judge for themselves how they're coming along. The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same should be true of college. A professor's job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.

Exercising an unfit muscle causes soreness, which is followed by improved muscle function and increased resistance of that muscle to become sore. In that sense, soreness after exercise is good (as long as it lasts less than a week and doesn’t come back). Sore joints, on the other hand, are collateral damage (see above). Most people think that if they do an intense workout (say 90 minutes of circuit training in a gym) that they should lose weight. And indeed, if you weigh before and right after such a workout, the scale goes down because of sweating and water weight loss. However, if it makes you sore for the next few days don’t be surprised to see the scale go up. That’s because muscle soreness indicates that your muscles are temporarily inflamed, and inflammation causes fluid retention and swelling in that muscle. Once again, don’t let the scale make you crazy. Once the soreness is gone, the swelling is gone, and the scale comes back down where it’s supposed to be.

Recovery" is everything you do outside the gym to take care of yourself: eating, sleeping, stretching, managing stress. Another oversight of the "workout"-based type of exercise is that it does not teach us to care at all about this stuff. If you're like me, you might have even been conditioned to believe, for instance, that eating a nice big meal after a workout would be "wasting the workout." In reality, the *opposite* is true: if you don't eat enough, you are only setting yourself up for an unfair and unnecessary amount of soreness. And this is true of all recovery dimensions: if you don't sleep, or if you don't manage your stress, you will be miserable trying to build muscle.

No longer kneeling at the foot of the bed, knees on the hard wood of the gym floor, Aunt Elizabeth standing by the double doors, arms folded, cattle prod hung on her belt, while Aunt Lydia strides along the rows of kneeling nightgowned women, hitting our backs or feet or bums or arms lightly, just a flick, a tap, with her wooden pointer if we slouch or slacken. She wanted our heads bowed just right, our toes together and pointed, our elbows at the proper angle. Part of her interest in this was aesthetic: she liked the look of the thing. She wanted us to look like something Anglo-Saxon, carved on a tomb; or Christmas card angels, regimented in our robes of purity. But she knew too the spiritual value of bodily rigidity, of muscle strain: a little pain cleans out the mind, she’d say.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew that the main house was about a quarter mile up the drive. I could leave my car here and walk it. See what’s what. But what would be the point? I hadn’t been up here in six years. The retreat probably sold the land, and the new owner probably craved privacy. That might explain all this. Still it didn’t feel right. What would be the harm, I thought, in going up and knocking on the door of the main house? Then again, the thick chain and no trespassing signs were not exactly welcome mats. I was still trying to decide what to do when a Kraftboro police cruiser pulled up next to me. Two officers got out. One was short and stocky with bloated gym muscles. The other was tall and thin with slicked-back hair and the small mustache of a guy in a silent movie. Both wore aviator sunglasses, so you couldn’t see their eyes. Short and Stocky hitched up his pants a bit and said, “Can I help you?” They both gave me hard stares. Or at least I think they were hard stares. I mean, I couldn’t see their eyes. “I

KNEE SURGERY I’D FIRST HURT MY KNEES IN FALLUJAH WHEN THE WALL FELL on me. Cortisone shots helped for a while, but the pain kept coming back and getting worse. The docs told me I needed to have my legs operated on, but doing that would have meant I would have to take time off and miss the war. So I kept putting it off. I settled into a routine where I’d go to the doc, get a shot, go back to work. The time between shots became shorter and shorter. It got down to every two months, then every month. I made it through Ramadi, but just barely. My knees started locking and it was difficult to get down the stairs. I no longer had a choice, so, soon after I got home in 2007, I went under the knife. The surgeons cut my tendons to relieve pressure so my kneecaps would slide back over. They had to shave down my kneecaps because I had worn grooves in them. They injected synthetic cartilage material and shaved the meniscus. Somewhere along the way they also repaired an ACL. I was like a racing car, being repaired from the ground up. When they were done, they sent me to see Jason, a physical therapist who specializes in working with SEALs. He’d been a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After 9/11, he decided to devote himself to helping the country. He chose to do that by working with the military. He took a massive pay cut to help put us back together. I DIDN’T KNOW ALL THAT THE FIRST DAY WE MET. ALL I WANTED to hear was how long it was going to take to rehab. He gave me a pensive look. “This surgery—civilians need a year to get back,” he said finally. “Football players, they’re out eight months. SEALs—it’s hard to say. You hate being out of action and will punish yourselves to get back.” He finally predicted six months. I think we did it in five. But I thought I would surely die along the way. JASON PUT ME INTO A MACHINE THAT WOULD STRETCH MY knee. Every day I had to see how much further I could adjust it. I would sweat up a storm as it bent my knee. I finally got it to ninety degrees. “That’s outstanding,” he told me. “Now get more.” “More?” “More!” He also had a machine that sent a shock to my muscle through electrodes. Depending on the muscle, I would have to stretch and point my toes up and down. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is clearly a form of torture that should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, even for use on SEALs. Naturally, Jason kept upping the voltage. But the worst of all was the simplest: the exercise. I had to do more, more, more. I remember calling Taya many times and telling her I was sure I was going to puke if not die before the day was out. She seemed sympathetic but, come to think of it in retrospect, she and Jason may have been in on it together. There was a stretch where Jason had me doing crazy amounts of ab exercises and other things to my core muscles. “Do you understand it’s my knees that were operated on?” I asked him one day when I thought I’d reached my limit. He just laughed. He had a scientific explanation about how everything in the body depends on strong core muscles, but I think he just liked kicking my ass around the gym. I swear I heard a bullwhip crack over my head any time I started to slack. I always thought the best shape I was ever in was straight out of BUD/S. But I was in far better shape after spending five months with him. Not only were my knees okay, the rest of me was in top condition. When I came back to my platoon, they all asked if I had been taking steroids.

The date rape drug he’d intended to give me has knocked him out so hard he’s barely even flinched, despite being dragged to the top of a twelve-storey building, stripped naked and bound to a post. His head lolls towards his chest. I stand back to admire him, taking in his slumped frame as he wilts against the pressure of his rope bindings. He looks Christ-like, vulnerable. His skin is grey in the murky moonlight. His body is incredible. Hardly surprising, since he seems to spend half his life at the gym. His stomach is taut, rippled with abs. His pecs are straight from a swimwear ad, his broad shoulders and ripped arms are built like a boxer’s. His biceps are strong, lined with veins that will soon cease to pump blood. He has the kind of arms that could pin you down so tightly you wouldn’t be able to move a muscle. His hands are large – the least attractive part of him: dry, thick, stubby. They’re the type of hands that could grip your wrists and stifle screams. Hands that could have killed me tonight. Hands that would have hurt me. Hands that would have held me in place while he raped me. I let my eyes wander down to his cock, which would probably have been pounding away inside me around now if things had gone his way. I could tell pretty early into our date that he was a predator. Perhaps it takes one to know one, but I could see it in his dark eyes and sly glances, the hungry way he took in my body, the type of questions he asked, his eagerness to buy me drinks. He probably didn’t think I had it in me to notice. Of course he didn’t. He just saw my shiny, sweeping hair, my lashes, my clothes, my smile. He saw what everybody else sees: my mask.

Dear Jon, A real Dear Jon let­ter, how per­fect is that?! Who knew you’d get dumped twice in the same amount of months. See, I’m one para­graph in and I’ve al­ready fucked this. I’m writ­ing this be­cause I can’t say any of this to you face-to-face. I’ve spent the last few months ques­tion­ing a lot of my friend­ships and won­der­ing what their pur­pose is, if not to work through big emo­tional things to­gether. But I now re­al­ize: I don’t want that. And I know you’ve all been there for me in other ways. Maybe not in the lit­eral sense, but I know you all would have done any­thing to fix me other than lis­ten­ing to me talk and al­low­ing me to be sad with­out so­lu­tions. And now I am writ­ing this let­ter rather than pick­ing up the phone and talk­ing to you be­cause, de­spite every thing I know, I just don’t want to, and I don’t think you want me to ei­ther. I lost my mind when Jen broke up with me. I’m pretty sure it’s been the sub­ject of a few of your What­sApp con­ver­sa­tions and more power to you, be­cause I would need to vent about me if I’d been friends with me for the last six months. I don’t want it to have been in vain, and I wanted to tell you what I’ve learnt. If you do a high-fat, high-pro­tein, low-carb diet and join a gym, it will be a good dis­trac­tion for a while and you will lose fat and gain mus­cle, but you will run out of steam and eat nor­mally again and put all the weight back on. So maybe don’t bother. Drunk­en­ness is an­other idea. I was in black­out for most of the first two months and I think that’s fine, it got me through the evenings (and the oc­ca­sional af­ter­noon). You’ll have to do a lot of it on your own, though, be­cause no one is free to meet up any more. I think that’s fine for a bit. It was for me un­til some­one walked past me drink­ing from a whisky minia­ture while I waited for a night bus, put five quid in my hand and told me to keep warm. You’re the only per­son I’ve ever told this story. None of your mates will be ex­cited that you’re sin­gle again. I’m prob­a­bly your only sin­gle mate and even I’m not that ex­cited. Gen­er­ally the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing sin­gle at thirty-five will feel dif­fer­ent to any other time you’ve been sin­gle and that’s no bad thing. When your ex moves on, you might be­come ob­sessed with the bloke in a way that is al­most sex­ual. Don’t worry, you don’t want to fuck him, even though it will feel a bit like you do some­times. If you open up to me or one of the other boys, it will feel good in the mo­ment and then you’ll get an emo­tional hang­over the next day. You’ll wish you could take it all back. You may even feel like we’ve en­joyed see­ing you so low. Or that we feel smug be­cause we’re win­ning at some­thing and you’re los­ing. Re­member that none of us feel that. You may be­come ob­sessed with work­ing out why ex­actly she broke up with you and you are likely to go fully, fully nuts in your bid to find a sat­is­fy­ing an­swer. I can save you a lot of time by let­ting you know that you may well never work it out. And even if you did work it out, what’s the pur­pose of it? Soon enough, some girl is go­ing to be crazy about you for some un­de­fin­able rea­son and you’re not go­ing to be in­ter­ested in her for some un­de­fin­able rea­son. It’s all so ran­dom and un­fair – the peo­ple we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the peo­ple who want to be with us are not the peo­ple we want to be with. Re­ally, the thing that’s go­ing to hurt a lot is the fact that some­one doesn’t want to be with you any more. Feel­ing the ab­sence of some­one’s com­pany and the ab­sence of their love are two dif­fer­ent things. I wish I’d known that ear­lier. I wish I’d known that it isn’t any­body’s job to stay in a re­la­tion­ship they don’t want to be in just so some­one else doesn’t feel bad about them­selves. Any­way. That’s all. You’re go­ing to be okay, mate. Andy

Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefore deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home. But now isn't simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until--later or sooner-- perhaps--no, not perhaps--quite certainly: it will come. Fear tweaks the vagus nerve. A sickish shrinking from what waits, somewhere out there, dead ahead. But meanwhile the cortex, that grim disciplinarian, has taken its place at the central controls and has been testing them, one after another: the legs stretch, the lower back is arched, the fingers clench and relax. And now, over the entire intercommunication system, is issued the first general order of the day: UP. Obediently the body levers itself out of bed--wincing from twinges in the arthritic thumbs and the left knee, mildly nauseated by the pylorus in a state of spasm--and shambles naked into the bathroom, where its bladder is emptied and it is weighed: still a bit over 150 pounds, in spite of all that toiling at the gym! Then to the mirror. What it sees there isn’t much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here’s what it has done to itself, here’s the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into the during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds. The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping. The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops. Not because it is heroic. It can imagine no alternative. Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face—the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man—all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us—we have died—what is there to be afraid of? It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I’m afraid of being rushed. It stares and stares. Its lips part. It struggles to breathe through its mouth. Until the cortex orders it impatiently to wash, to shave, to brush its hair. Its nakedness has to be covered. It must be dressed up in the clothes because it is going outside, into the world of the other people; and these others must be able to identify it. Its behavior must be acceptable to them. Obediently, it washes, shaves, brushes its hair, for it accepts its responsibilities to the others. It is even glad that it has its place among them. It knows what is expected of it. It knows its name. It is called George.

10 Best Weight Loss Exercises The best exercises to lose weight in the gym are aerobics, for example: 1. Hiit Training The hit workout burns about 400 calories per hour and consists of a set of high intensity workouts that eliminate localized fat in just 30 minutes per day in a faster and fun way. The exercises are performed intensively to raise your heart rate a lot and so it is more suitable for those who already practice some kind of physical activity, although there are beginner hit exercises, but they consist of a series of exercises 'easier'. 2. Cross fit Training Cross fit training is also quite intense and burns about 700 calories per hour, however, this type of workout is quite different from the bodybuilding workout that people are more accustomed to seeing in gyms. Different weights are used, ropes, tires and often the exercises are performed, outside the gym, outdoors. 3. Dance Classes Dancing is a great way to strengthen muscles and burn some calories, 1 hour of ballroom dancing burns approximately 300 calories, and the person still increases flexibility and has fun, having a greater contact with other students. In this type of activity besides cardio respiratory benefits, and to lose weight, it is still possible to promote socialization. The university is a very lively type of dance, where you can burn about 400 calories per hour, in a fun way. In the buzz you can burn up to 800 kcal per hour. 5. Muay Thai Muay Thai is a type of intense martial art, where you can burn about 700 calories per hour. The workouts are very intense and also strengthen the muscles, as well as help increase self-esteem and self-defense. 6. Spinning The spinning classes are done in different intensities, but always on top of a bicycle, in a classroom with at least 5 bikes. The classes are very intense and promote the burning of about 600 calories per hour, and still strengthens the legs very much, being great to burn the fat of the legs and strengthen the thighs. 7. Swimming A swimming lesson can burn up to 400 calories per hour as long as the student does not slow down and keeps moving. Although the strokes are not too strong to reach the other side of the pool faster, it takes a constant effort, with few stops. When the goal is to lose weight, one should not only reach the other side of the pool, it is necessary to maintain a constant and strong rhythm, that is, one can cross the swimming pool crawl and turn back, for example, as a form of 'rest' . 8. Hydrogeology Water aerobics is also great for slimming, but to burn about 500 calories per hour you should always keep moving, enough to keep your breath away. As the water relaxes the tendency is to slow down, but if you want to lose weight, the ideal is to be in a group with this same purpose, because doing exercises at a pace for the elderly to stay healthy may not be enough to burn fat. 9. Race The workouts are excellent to burn fat, being possible to burn about 600 to 700 calories per hour, provided that a good pace is respected, without pauses, and with an effort able to leave the person breathless, unable to talk during the race . You can start at a slower pace, on the treadmill or outdoors, but each week you must increase the intensity to achieve better goals. Here's how to start running to lose weight. 10. Body pump Body pump classes are a great way to burn fat because it burns about 500 calories per hour. This is a class made with weights and step, which strengthens the muscles, working the main muscle groups. These are some examples of exercises that help you to lose weight fast, but that should be performed under professional guidance, to be performed correctly and to avoid injuries to muscles and joints.

This South is nothing like the South in which I used to live, with its manicured lawns and gated country clubs. Even that South has changed. Over the years, Nashville has gotten bigger and more complex. The relatively modest, adolescent city in which I was born had grown into an adult with a tailored suit and gym-toned thighs, all glamour and muscle. It is part of the New South. In that South, there is no place for my daydreams. My true South, this South, is old, and deep, well into the belly of the region, far below the Mason-Dixon Line.

I have a friend from my graduate school days at The Ohio State University whom we nicknamed Aladdin. Aladdin and I took a number of Arabic classes together. Every now and then, we would play pick-up basketball at the university gym. Aladdin couldn’t shoot, but he was one of the quickest, most intense defenders I have ever seen. One day, he went high up for a layup at 100 mph, bumped a defender, and fell square on his head. Aladdin lay there motionless for a few minutes before gingerly getting up. He had apparently suffered a concussion. We drove him to the ER, before he decided in the reception that he felt okay enough to go home. I’ll never forget, while we were leaving the gym and during the car ride, Aladdin kept asking people to speak Arabic to him. I probably heard the phrase “Speak Arabic to me, Binyamin! [my Arabic name]” at least two dozen times. Aladdin, in his dizzied and confused state, waiting to be seen for a potentially serious injury, was afraid that he had forgotten Arabic. The next day Aladdin texted everyone saying he felt fine. In hindsight, this story is a comical illustration of every language learner’s worst fear: losing the skills they worked so hard to acquire. As it turns out, Aladdin didn’t forget Arabic and currently lives in Dubai.

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” ~Anthony Trollope

In the same way you create stress and tension you also can create relaxation. The goal of relaxation training is to teach you how to recognize the early warning signs of tension and to counter or replace them with the sensations of relaxation. Interestingly, one way to relax tense muscles is first to tighten them more. If your shoulders feel like coiled springs, draw them up and squeeze those muscles. Hold the pose for five to ten seconds. Feel the stress and study the sensation. Then release and relax the muscles completely.

I tried running roads, hung out with road runners. But it's not for me. Being on the road means people will see you, so your outfit matters and you can't blow your nose and wipe it with your hands and brush your hands on the pavement. It's like going to the gym. Sweat, odor, athleisure fashion, being self-conscious—none of those matter in the mountains. You'd slam your shoes across rivers and slap your ass on muddy trails and swing your dick out while running. Pee on the run because stopping to pee takes too much time. You don't bother with trivial matters. Instead, you thank the universe you didn't fall off that cliff or your knees didn't collapse or you finished the race with only calluses, maybe a cut here and there, sore and stiff muscles, but alive and without broken bones. You're in the moment. It's more fun that way.

His gym shorts clung to his ass and I swear, you could bounce a quarter off of that thing. He probably did squats. Lots and lots of squats.

Break it to build it; be it muscle, be it road to dreams.

Like fueling muscles, from breakdown to synthesis to recovery, nourish mind.

It takes about 10 calories a day just to keep one pound of muscle alive, for both men and women, even if you are completely inactive. An extra five pounds of muscle can burn up to 1500 calories in a month–that’s the equivalent of 5 pounds of fat per year, which more than reverses the negative affects of aging on your metabolism. But with consistent aerobic exercise, over time, you’re far more likely to burn five pounds of muscle. That means your body will burn about 50 less calories a day. And as your body becomes more efficient at running, that 195 calories you burn on the treadmill will decrease to about 125. So let’s do the math: You burn 125 calories above your resting metabolic rate each day you do aerobic exercise. Then subtract the 50 calories you do not burn due to muscle loss caused by this exercise. After all your huffing and puffing you are only burning 75 calories more than if you were sitting in front of the tube, doing nothing at all. That’s undone by drinking half a Coke or “rehydrating” with 12 ounces of Gatorade. This is the reason why millions of people, at gyms across the world, are unable to look and perform as they’d like after countless hours of “cardio.

Interval training is the repeated performance of high-intensity exercises, for set periods, followed by set periods of rest. Intervals can consist of any variety of movements with any variation of work and rest times. It burns far more calories and produces positive changes in body composition with much less time than aerobic training. This is not only because of the muscle it builds, but also the effect it has on the metabolism following the workouts. Strength training creates enough stress on the body’s homeostasis that a large energy (calorie) expenditure is required long after the exercise has stopped. During low-intensity aerobic exercise, fat oxidation occurs while exercising and stops upon completion. During high-intensity exercise your body oxidizes carbs for energy, not fat. Then, for a long time afterward, fat oxidation takes place to return systems to normal: to restore depleted carbohydrates, creatine phosphate, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), circulatory hormones, re-oxygenate the blood, and decrease body temperature, ventilation and heart rate. Not to mention the longer term demands: strengthening tendons and ligaments, increasing bone density, forming new capillaries, motor skill adaptation, repairing muscle tissue and building new muscle. And the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you are able to burn during and after exercise.

Thus strength training gives your metabolism a boost far beyond the duration of the actual workout, for as long as 48 hours. In contrast, after aerobic training your metabolism returns to normal almost immediately. So with interval training we’re not only building muscle, but we’re also able to kick up our metabolism long after–even when sleeping! Many people believe aerobic activity strengthens their heart, and decreases the chance of things like coronary artery disease. Yet, after much research, even U.S. Air Force Cardiologist Dr. Kenneth Cooper–the very man who coined the term “aerobics”–now believes there is no correlation between aerobic performance and health, longevity, or protection against heart disease. On the other hand, aerobic activities do carry with them a great risk of injury. Most, even so-called “low impact” classes or activities like stationary cycling, are not necessarily low-force. And things like running are extremely high-force, damaging to your knees, hips and back. Aerobic dance is even worse. Sure, you’ll hear the occasional genetic exception declare that they’ve never ever been injured doing these exercises. But overuse injuries are cumulative and often build undetected over years until it’s too late, leading to a decrease or loss of mobility as you age, which, in turn, too often leads to a shortened lifespan.

POWER: The amount of force you can exert in a specific amount of time. Power = Work/Time. If Tarzan and Jane are both able to perform only one Pull Up with their maximal efforts, but Jane is able to perform that one Pull Up faster, then she has more power even though they have the same strength. MUSCULAR ENDURANCE: How long you can exert a specific force. Jane and Tarzan could compare their muscular endurance by seeing who can hold the peak position of the Pull Up the longest. CARDIOVASCULAR ENDURANCE: Your body’s ability to supply working muscles with oxygen during prolonged activity. Jane and Tarzan challenge and improve their cardiovascular endurance by performing 200 non-stop Squats together. SPEED: Your ability to rapidly and repeatedly execute a movement or series of movements. If Jane can do 45 lunges in 30 seconds and Tarzan can do only 25, then Jane has greater speed. COORDINATION: Your ability to combine more than one movement to create a single, distinct movement. For example, performing a simple jump requires that you coordinate several movements. The bend at the waist, knees, and ankles and then the correct extension of those joints must all be combined into a single movement. Your ability to combine these movements, with the proper timing, into one movement determines your coordination, and in turn, how well you can do the exercise. BALANCE: Your ability to maintain control of your body’s center of gravity. FLEXIBILITY: Your range of motion. If Jane, while doing a squat and using good form, can go down until her butt touches her heels, and Tarzan can only go until his thighs are parallel to the ground, then Jane has greater flexibility. Simply put, fitness is the degree to which a person possesses these seven qualities.

More bad news for aerobic activity: Whether it’s running, cycling, or a step class, the main reason it gets easier the more you do it, is not because of improved cardiovascular conditioning, but because of improved economy of motion. For the most part, it doesn’t get easier because of muscular endurance, but because your body is becoming more efficient at that particular movement. You require less strength and oxygen than you did before, because your body’s nervous system is adapting. Wasted movements are eliminated, necessary movements are refined, and muscles that don’t need to be tensed are relaxed and eventually atrophied. This is why marathon runners will huff and puff if they cycle for the first time in years.

Aerobic training actually causes muscle wasting because the body is programmed to adapt to whatever demands we place on it. Long low-intensity aerobic training only requires the smallest and weakest, “slow-twitch” muscle fibers to fire off again and again. The other, stronger and larger, “fast-twitch” muscle fibers are not necessary for the task and become a burden to carry and supply with oxygen. The body has no demand for extra muscle beyond what is needed to perform a relatively easy movement over and over. So your body adapts by actually burning muscle. Even if you perform steady state training in conjunction with strength training, it will diminish any potential increase in lean body mass, especially in your legs. Aerobic training should only be used to develop movement proficiency when you are training for a specific sport or event, such as a 5k run, triathlon, or particular military fitness assessment. I address these needs on MarkLauren.com.

The reason many people gain weight as they age, especially beginning in their 30s, is because they have less muscle than they had in their late teens and early twenties. As we age, our bodies naturally lose muscle, especially as we are less active in our lives. This muscle tissue loss results in a decreasing metabolic rate. And then, if you continue to eat like you did when you were younger … well, you’ll slowly gain weight, pound by pound, month by month, year by year, until one day you look in the mirror and wonder, “What happened?” This is how the average American adult gains 2.2 pounds per year. The key to eliminating accumulated body fat is regaining your youthful metabolism by regaining your muscle through strength training.

As soon as possible, following your workout you need to consume: • 30 – 50 grams of a lean complete protein like whey, soy, egg, chicken or fish. • 30 – 50 grams of carbohydrates with a high glycemic index. Why lean protein? Because fat slows the absorption of protein and carbs. During a brief window of opportunity after your workout, protein synthesis occurs at the highest rate. This is due to the micro-trauma (broken-down muscle tissue) that occurred during your workout. Complete recovery will be optimized if you provide your muscles with a large supply of amino acids—the key components of protein—within 45 minutes after your training session. A whey protein shake is the best post-workout protein choice because it is so rapidly absorbed, and it has the highest efficiency ratio, or availability to the body, of all proteins. Why carbs with a high glycemic index? Immediately following your workout is the only time to eat carbs that rapidly absorb into the blood stream as the glucose causes an insulin spike. Insulin helps shuttle protein into the muscles, repairing and building new muscle. It is also an important hormone that regulates the storage, replacement, and use of glucose. During a workout, the body uses stored glucose that is in the blood and muscles as fuel for the activity. If the lost glucose isn’t refilled within about 45 minutes after training, your body rapidly goes from an anabolic state (muscle growth and repair) to a catabolic state (cannibalizing of the body’s muscle for protein and energy). Since insulin signals the body to replenish and store glycogen, and the release of insulin is best triggered by eating foods with a high glycemic index, it makes sense that eating carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, along with some lean protein, is the best post-workout choice. An effective and convenient post workout meal is a whey or soy protein supplement, which contains maltodextrin, or simple sugars, as its carb source.

He’s a large man, no doubt pumped full of steroids, but I can tell just by looking at him that he doesn’t know how to handle himself in a street fight. He’s all free weights and gym muscle. That doesn’t make a man a good fighter, though. It just means he can open the jar of mayonnaise if it ever gets stuck.

Marrok was the best looking man in the Four Kingdoms, Good or Bad.  If he hadn’t been born evil, he would have been a perfect knight.  Even his body was custom-made for charging around on horseback, slaying monsters.  Tall and broad-chested, with muscles that didn’t come from a gym.  His looks were so… gallant.  So heroic.  Such a shame that a dashing, valiant exterior was wasted on a complete asshole.

No girl will pick six-pack abs over six cars. So, drop the dumbbells and grab a briefcase. Swap your protein shakes for paychecks and deadlifts for dollar signs. Abs might get a glance, but a garage full of luxury rides? Now that’s a head-turner. So, quit sweating at the gym and start hustling at work. After all, muscles flex, but money talks—and it’s fluent in 'Vroom Vroom' and 'Cha-Ching'!

No, Pain No Gain is Not Always True. Whenever we tend to go through painful experiences in life, we often keep pushing on because of the age-old advice we have been given, which is “No Pain, No Gain,” That advice is sometimes true, but many times, following it could be the worst thing you could do. When you are in the gym, soreness is good. A burning sensation of blood filling up the muscle is good when you are lifting. But if you rip out a muscle or tear it and have excruciating pain, you are going to mess things up. If you have angina or chest pain, you need to stop or you might have a heart attack. The same is true in business and career, just because you working very hard and killing yourself does not mean that will give you the best results

Dina slipped out of the bathroom and nearly walked directly into Scott. Well, fuck. He was shirtless. She definitely hadn't been wrong about his body. His wasn't the chest of a man who spent endless hours in the gym or kept to a strict diet. Scott's muscles were heavy, densely packed. His shoulders were broad and rounded with thick cords of muscle. He looked like some kind of Scottish war hero or Greek god. Dina was definitely staring and she didn't give a fuck. She had been right about the hair too. A mass of dark brown--- almost black--- hair peppered his chest and trailed down his stomach to the V-shape of his hips.

Big muscles. Small brain. Standard gym bro who thought he was God’s gift to women.

didn’t mind the fencing. Maybe even liked it. “It’s like Darwin’s law got repealed. Call it the rule of the weak.” “Okay.” “You think women can tell which men are the fittest anymore? They can’t. You see a guy who’s really cut and buff and wearing a muscle shirt to show it off, and you can figure he spends all his time in the gym, but you know something? Odds are he’s a faggot.” “Or a WrestleMania champ.” Another flash of annoyance; I’d gone too far. “I mean, look at these guys.” He waved at the wall, at the hostages on the other side. “This country was made by guys like

Some people wish for world peace or an end to homelessness. I wish every woman could have as a lover at some point in her life a man who never smoked or drank too much or became jaded from kissing too many girls or looking at porn, someone with the gracious muscles that come from honest work and not from the gym, someone unashamed of the animal side of human nature.

The less carbs you eat, the lower your muscle glycogen levels will be, and this means compromised performance in the gym and tough workouts (muscle endurance seems to take the biggest hit).

Catch me up. I had to stay late after class because I was busy sucking up to the TA,” Brian confessed. “Ellie has a cute freshman lab partner, Sasha’s tired of Victoria, and I sat next to Bo Randolph in biology.” I conveniently left out mention of the note. Three sighs of delight reverberated through the room at the mention of Bo’s name. “Bo looks like he’s sculpted from stone by some master and skin was stretched over the form. Unreal,” Sasha declared. “I’d love to see him in a life drawing class.” “The guns on that guy,” Brian concurred. “Where are all of you seeing him?” I asked, surprised at their distinct recall of Bo’s body. “I see him in the gym, lifting,” Brian said. “Yoga,” Sasha offered. “He does yoga?” My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No, while I’m doing yoga, I see him working out. He’s like all muscle. Last semester’s yoga class at 5 P.M. was packed once word got out that he and his buddy Noah lifted weights there before dinner. It’s like a burlesque show. They start out with their shirts on and then slowly unveil the package as they get sweatier and sweatier,” Sasha explained. “Then, when they’re super hot and super sweaty, they’ll run their discarded shirts over their chests.

The more you give, the more you want to do it—as do others around you. It's like going to the gym. If you've been working out your kindness muscles, you get stronger at it. — Nipun Mehta

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Someone starts out sedentary, overweight, and somewhat insulin resistant. They set out to improve their health and lose some weight by following a low-carb diet. It works great. They lose weight, their insulin sensitivity improves, and their energy is through the roof. They start exercising, which helps them lose some more weight, as well as build some lean muscle mass. Now they are really into it, and the frequency and intensity of their training increases. This individual is now at a healthy weight (or relatively lean), is exercising regularly, and has better insulin sensitivity. They are a completely different person, metabolically speaking, then when they started. But the problem is they are no longer properly fueling their body and recovering from their intense training sessions (which were once non-existent). They are starting to feel tired and fatigued in the gym, are always in a bad mood, are holding on to stubborn body fat, can’t sleep at night, get sick all of the time, and are maybe having some sexual performance and hormonal issues. Their diet no longer matches their new activity levels and current metabolic condition, because those have completely changed over time. If this person objectively looked at their situation and progress and listened to their own body and biofeedback, they would consider some dietary adjustments. A moderate-to-higher carb intake might be a better fit. But some people will cling to a diet that initially gave them good results, and got them from Point A to Point B, thinking it will get them from Point B to Point C. I’ve been there myself. Part of it is initial experience, part of it is marketing material, and part of it is pure emotion. It doesn’t always work that way for continued progress.

Hello to all Goodread and Facebook fans, only 15 days until my book releases. I hope you are excited as I am! Share your enthusiasm, by writing a positive message below! Don't forget to purchase your copy!!!

I took in the sight of him in his gym shorts. His chest still glistened from his shower. He was gorgeous. His body was perfection. Each ab muscle well defined. And his arms… Thank you, God.

Nick saunters into the gym and my heart basically stops. He’s ridiculously cute in his PE shorts and dark green T-shirt; and people that good-looking seem vulnerable, almost like they can’t be real. He’s real, though. He’s all dark skin and dark hair and dark eyes. Okay. His eyebrows, like Devyn’s nose, are a little big and if you stare at him long enough you realize that his lips are a bit lopsided. I have kissed his lips. I have felt his breath in my ear and I know without a doubt that he’s real, even if he is a werewolf. The massive muscles in his legs redefine themselves as he walks toward me. He waves a late pass at the coach and yells, “Sorry I’m late. I’ve got a pass.” “Not a problem, buddy,” Coach yells back. He and Nick are all jock bonding. Nick pockets the note, which is probably a fake. I can smell his deodorant even though he’s still far away. There are these things called pheromones, odors that guys give off to attract women. I swear his pheromones have my freaking name written on them. They hone in and attack. “You are getting all swoony faced,” Issie tells me with her singsong voice. She pokes me in the ribs with her elbow, gently. She turns to Devyn, who is smiling like a crazy man, just hanging back in his wheelchair watching the scene. “Dev. Look at Zara. She’s got her lovey-dovey look on.” As Is gazes at Devyn with her own lovey-dovey look, he says, “Yeah. Teen love. So obvious. So hormonal.” “I am not hormonal.” I fake glare at him.

My feet hurt. I needed some new shoes. Or maybe it was high time I got in shape. I was six-three in my socks, heavy enough with muscle, but my gut was starting to show the influence of a few too many beers. I could join a gym. Pump some iron, run on a treadmill while staring at a TV talk show twenty inches in front of my face. Do time on the elliptical next to some flabby gasper in spandex. Or maybe I just needed better shoes.

Getting your ass away from the gym is probably the number one thing you can do to start kicking your gains up a notch.

when my shirt feels tight it is because I have put on muscle in the gym, but when my belt feels tight it is because that idiot dry cleaner shrank my trousers. How convenient!

We can only become MORE by dealing with, and overcoming MORE. Therefore, let's consider challenges and obstacles as the gyms of life that help us train, stretch and develop our mental, emotional and spiritual muscles MORE.

Across the room is a man lifting weights. His muscles are crazy big. He’s not bad on the eyes at all. “I’m telling you,” Cami says, her eyes still on Mr. Beefcake. “They should have an observation deck here, where we can sit with a glass of wine and watch the show. I’d come to the gym every day.” “I

She stopped at the foot of the trio of beach chairs and smiled down at Richter and his men. Richter was in the middle. The one on the left was a hairy beast of a man with the fat-over-muscle build of someone who’d earned their conditioning from life experience, not a gym bike. Someone who possessed the brute core strength to physically break you. The man on the right was younger and leaner, but still carried plenty of brawn. It squared with Isaiah’s story—these weren’t techie savants hired to pull a sophisticated vault break. Richter was lining up big scary men to storm a hotel room and take down an army of casino thugs by force.

Hello to all Goodread fans, only 16 days until my book releases. I hope you are excited as I am! Share your enthusiasm, by writing a positive message below! Don't forget to purchase your copy!!!

Life's like a gym membership - you don't know your strength until you're thrown into the weight room! So, when life serves up its toughest challenges, put on your superhero cape and show those obstacles who's boss! After all, who knew you had a knack for turning setbacks into comebacks with a side of sass? Keep flexing those resilience muscles, because you never know what feats of strength you'll conquer next. When life throws you a curveball, knock it out with your wit and charm!

In 2018 I went back to the mountains to become a wildland firefighter again. I hadn’t been in the field for three years, and since then I’d gotten used to training in nice gyms and living in comfort. Some might call it luxury. I was in a plush hotel room in Vegas when the 416 fire sparked and I got the call. What started as a 2,000-acre grass fire in the San Juan Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains was growing into a record breaking, 55,000-acre monster. I hung up and caught a prop plane to Grand Junction, loaded up in a U.S. Forest Service truck, and drove three hours to the outskirts of Durango, Colorado, where I suited up in my green Nomex pants and yellow, long-sleeved button down, my hard hat, field glasses, and gloves, and grabbed my super Pulaski—a wildland fire fighter’s most trusted weapon. I can dig for hours with that thing, and that’s what we do. We don’t spray water. We specialize in containment, and that means digging lines and clearing brush so there’s no fuel in the path of an inferno. We dig and run, run and dig, until every muscle is spent. Then we do it all over again.

Just as you can’t mimic the wind by pushing against a tree for a few minutes, you can’t mimic natural, varied human movement through isolation exercises for muscles or repetitive aerobic training at the gym.

MenZnow" provides useful information for building a healthy body with a focus on fitness. Information and columns on sports such as gym, muscle, cycling, mountain climbing, climbing, walking and swimming. Wisdom that you want to incorporate into your daily life, such as dieting and eating. Lifestyle itself, fashion & gear, etc.

As I will discuss shortly, the body’s resting metabolic rate (RMR) is a key player in our ability to stay lean, and it is affected to a large degree by our body composition with muscle being our greatest calorie burning ally. With that said, it’s important to place the emphasis on a positive change in body composition and not just weight loss. Losing muscle weight is bad and counterproductive. Using the calories in vs. calories out theory alone, can at best give you a temporary fix. It’s unrealistic and unhealthy to go through life following a diet that causes you to feel tired and hungry while your hormones run amuck.

Our RMR decreases by about 5% every decade after thirty, mainly because of the loss of muscle mass associated with aging. Fortunately, our lean body mass can be controlled through proper nutrition and strength training. It only takes a few months of training to recover one or two decades of decrease in our RMR. Metabolically, muscle is very expensive tissue, even when it is at rest. Another way to positively influence our RMR is to provide our body with a steady flow of nutrients. The body is extremely resourceful, and during times of starvation it adapts by slowing down its RMR. It tries to save every calorie consumed by storing some as fat. Any of the common diets that severely restrict your caloric intake neglect this principal, and that is why people on those diets almost always gain at least their original weight back. When the body receives a regular flow of calories, in the form of frequent meals, it allows the RMR to remain high, and burn those very same calories off. Frequent meals also utilize the thermal effect of food. Eating temporarily cranks up your metabolism. The more meals you eat in a day, the more consistently your metabolism is boosted. You experience an increase in your RMR for about 5 hours every time you eat. This accounts for 5 – 10% of your total calorie expenditure. Over the long haul this can make quite a difference.

Remember, your muscles grow while you rest. Overtraining and poor nutrition are easily the most common pitfalls that beginners and experienced fitness enthusiasts alike fall into. It’s not possible to say exactly how much is too much, since many factors such as genetics, diet, sleep, training intensity, frequency, and duration all play a role. It’s best to watch for the following signs of overtraining: A halt in progress, chronic fatigue, decreased motivation, frequent injuries, and an increased resting heart rate, which is measured first thing in the morning before getting out of bed. If overtraining is suspected, adjust one or more of the following: Diet, amount of sleep (you should try for 7 – 8 hours per night), training intensity, duration, and frequency.

It’s true that low rep workouts, consisting of powerful and explosive movements, will build more size (but not less definition) than high rep workouts, because the “fast twitch” muscle fibers required in explosive movements are much larger than “slow twitch” fibers required for more enduring tasks. But really, for mass, wouldn’t you want to recruit all possible muscle fibers and not just the fast twitch? Likewise, for “definition”–that is, losing body fat so the striations in your muscles show more–wouldn’t you want to recruit all possible muscle fibers, especially since the number one factor affecting our resting metabolic rate, and thus fat loss, is muscle mass? The only thing you should alter depending on your goal–whether it’s to tone or bulk up–is nutrition.

She points to two devices in the center of the dark space. The contraptions are silver and remind me of the suits knights wore in past centuries. The armor hangs suspended between two metal wires. “They are concentraction machines.” I slide my body into the machine. Dry gel hugs my feet, my legs, my torso and arms and neck, till only my head is free. The machine is built to resist my movements, yet it responds even to the tiniest stimuli. The idea of building muscle is to exercise it, which is nothing more than using the muscle intensely enough to create microscopic tears in the tissue fiber. This is the pain one feels in the days after an intense workout—torn tissue—not lactic acid. When the muscle repairs the tears, it builds on itself. This is the process the concentraction machine is built to facilitate. It is the devil’s own invention. Harmony slides the device’s faceplate over my eyes. My body is still in the gym, but I see myself moving across the rugged landscape of Mars. I’m running, pumping my legs against the concentraction machine’s resistance, which increases according to Harmony’s mood or the location of the simulation. Sometimes I venture to the jungles of Earth, where I race panthers through the underbrush, or I take to the pocked surface of Luna before it was populated. But always I return home to Mars to run across its red soil and jump over its violent ravines. Harmony sometimes accompanies me in the other machine so I have someone to race.

A Protein Is Not a Protein Companies are touting protein as a cure-all and for weight loss/muscle gain. They’re selling protein shakes, protein cookies, protein snack bars, even protein coffee. It’s true that protein is neither carbohydrate nor sugar nor fat, and you need it to maintain normal growth. However, your kidneys have a limited capacity to excrete the metabolic by-products of protein metabolism, and overexcretion can cause kidney damage. Therefore, protein quality is as important as protein quantity. For example, eggs and beans both contain protein, but are very different in quality. Dietary protein is made up of twenty separate amino acids strung together in different combinations and amounts. One of those amino acids, tryptophan, is rarer and therefore more important than others, because it’s the precursor of serotonin, an important brain neurotransmitter (see Chapter 19). Eggs, poultry, and fish are the best sources of this amino acid, while beans have very little. On the other hand, additional protein is needed if you’re building muscle, especially branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs; leucine, isoleucine, valine), which are 20 percent of muscle (see Chapter 18). BCAAs are in high concentration in corn products, and are what’s in those tubs of protein powder at the health food store. If you’re a bodybuilder, you need them; if you’re not a gym rat and consume excess BCAAs, your liver will take the amino groups off and turn them into organic acids, which will either be diverted into liver fat (through DNL) or into excess glucose, either of which can generate hyperinsulinemia and drive chronic disease. The goal is to get more tryptophan and less BCAAs in the protein you consume.

He is an attractive guy. He has the whole rocker vibe going for him, with black, slightly curly hair, dark eyes, and tattoos taking up residency over most of his body. It also probably helps that he clearly knows his way around the gym. His golden skin pairs beautifully with his defined muscles.

anaerobic energy is inefficient and can be toxic, creating an excess of lactic acid. The nausea, muscle weakness, and sweating you experience after you’ve pushed it too hard at the gym is the feeling of anaerobic overload.

Resigned that I wasn’t going back to sleep, I rolled up and got out of bed once another glance at my phone confirmed it was seven thirty and instantly peeked out the window. There was a dull, repetitive sound coming from out there. It was Mr. Rhodes. Chopping wood. Shirtless. And I mean shirtless. I’d expected something nice beneath his clothes from the way he filled them out, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of… him. Reality. If I wasn’t already pretty sure that there was dry drool on my face, there would have been five minutes after seeing all…. That through the window. A pile of foot-long logs were tossed around his feet, with another small pile that he’d obviously already chopped, just to the side. But it was the rest of him that really drew my attention. Dark chest hair was sprinkled high over his pectorals. The body hair did nothing to take away from the hard slabs of abdominal muscles he’d been hiding; he was broad up top, narrow at the waist, and covering all that was firm, beautiful skin. His biceps were big and supple. Shoulders rounded. His forearms were incredible. And even though his shorts grazed his knees, I could tell the rest of his downtown area was nice and muscular. He was the DILF to end all DILFs. My ex had been fit. He’d worked out several times a week at our home gym with a trainer. Being attractive had been part of his job. Kaden’s physique had nothing on Mr. Rhodes though. My mouth watered a little more. I whistled. And I must have done it a lot louder than I’d thought because his head instantly went up and his gaze landed on me through the window almost immediately. Busted. I waved. And inside… inside, I died. He lifted his chin. I backed away, trying to play it off. Maybe he wouldn’t think anything of it. Maybe he’d think I’d whistled… to say hi. Sure, yeah. A girl could dream. I backed up some more and felt my soul shriveling as I made my breakfast, making sure to stay away from the window the rest of the time. I tried to focus on other stuff. You know, so I wouldn’t want to have to move out from shame. Was I tired? Absolutely. But there were things I wanted to do. Needed to do. Including but not limited to getting away from Mr. Rhodes so my soul could come back to life. So an hour later, with a plan in mind, a sandwich, a couple bottles of water, and my whistle in my backpack, I headed down the stairs, hoping and praying that Mr. Rhodes was back in his house. I wasn’t that lucky. He had a shirt on, but that was the only difference. Darn.

Emotions are, both, a language and a muscle. They need fluency and fortitude.