To the Warrior, there's only one goal in life: To be stronger than the previous day.

The Warrior awakens before the sun rises. To the Warrior, there's only one goal in life: To be stronger than the previous day. This means he must battle complacency and inner weakness. The Warrior must first win the struggle taking place within himself. The, he must overcome every external adversity that is presented before him. All of these adversities become battles within the larger war.

To win this war, the Warrior must reach deep down inside himself and find out what he's truly made of. A warrior does not say, "I will try." A warrior says, "I will do". No excuses. No regrets. No failures. If you live a life where you put limits upon yourself, you might as well be dead. Never accept mediocrity. To live, you must kill these self-imposed limits.


A warrior does not say, "I will try." A warrior says, "I will do".
A warrior always has a battle plan. You must learn to draw up a plan, implement your plan, overcome adversities, maintain discipline and control under great stress, and ultimately defeat your foes. To be a warrior, you must adopt this way of thinking. Now let's use this knowledge to improve your arsenal. It's time to build your shoulders.

The Battle Plan

The essence of the warrior's workout is to select those exercises that will elicit the greatest response. Therefore, you should always your workout with basic, heavy mass-building movements. These movements will recruit the greatest number of muscles from a particular area into the movement, therefore lending themselves to the heaviest weights.

Begin with the behind-the-neck military presses. This movement is one of the most riskiest due to the precarious position your shoulders are put in. The key is to be careful, start light and increase your poundages slowly over time. This exercise is the overall mass-builder for your shoulders. Your rep range should be in the neighborhood of 6 to 12, 12 for the warm-ups and down to 6 for the heaviest sets. You will do 4 working sets after your warm up.

You will do as many warm ups as needed to thoroughly warm up the shoulder area and get to your desired starting weight. Doing warm up sets is absolutely imperative for your first exercise.

Your next exercise will be seated dumbbell presses. The use of dumbbells for presses will help incorporate all of the stabilizer muscles in the shoulder region and make you stronger for all pressing movements. Do 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps. After doing these basic "mass" movements, head on to "isolation" movements.

Your shoulders should be thoroughly warmed up and fatigued. Now you need to isolate each individual muscle of the shoulder area. Begin by targeting the medial and front delts. To do this, superset standing side dumbbell laterals with front dumbbell raises. This combo will completely destroy the area. Go balls-to-the-wall here. Use the heaviest weight possible while keeping strict form. Finish 3 supersets of 10 to 12 reps for each exercise with absolutely no rest between them.

The key to both of these exercises is bringing the dumbbells as high as possible with your pinky slightly higher than your thumb (think of pouring a can of beer into a mug. The goal here is to completely exhaust the muscle and recruit every last muscle fiber. You'll know when you do it right. Your shoulders should be on fire and feel like they have been hit with napalm. You got to love the burn. You got to be able to take the heat.

There's one last area you need to hit. Rear delts. To be a true Warrior, you must never forget this area. Two exercises should crush this often neglected region. Begin with lying rear delt dumbbell lateral raises. This exercise is performed on an incline bench set at the lowest incline. Lie on the bench with your face facing into the bench and begin raising the dumbbells.

The rear delts are small in comparison to the rest of the shoulder complex. And since all the stress is placed onto the rear delts, they do not require a tremendous amount of weight. Even though you won't be using the large dumbbells, go as heavy as you can for 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps. After you finish this, they should be really pumped and screaming for you to stop. But you're not going to stop now. You're not finished yet. Go over and grab a low cable pulley and do 3 sets rear cable laterals. Again make sure that your pinky is higher than your thumb throughout the movement. Doing it this way places a greater amount of stress on the rear delt.

Remember When Kate Moss Was Skinny?

Well she's not now. Don't get your Calvin Klein's in a bunch, it's not like anyone is calling K. Mo. fat. (Hmm... K.Mo. Yeah, okay, I can see why that never caught on.) But in today's game of anorexic roulette, the Waif herself comes out looking rather... normal.

Take Kate in the '90s. Not even any visible ribs! And real breasts!! And yet every major publication hailed her as the malnourished poster child for Heroin Chic.


And who can forget her famous CK undies ad? Sure, you can see her hip bones. And her thighs probably wouldn't touch if she put her foot down. (What exactly is she doing there? Checking for plantar warts?) But her arms have meat on them and you can't count the sinews in her knees.


Then there is this magazine cover - beautiful in the simple way that she made famous - from 2001 (as far as I can tell). No model these days would go out with those collar bones! Where is the pop? The shoulder nub? Her cheeks even lack their signature sunken appearance (probably because she is, for once, posing with her mouth closed).


Even today, as evidenced by her current reign as October's Vogue cover girl, she's thin but, admit it, looks kinda normal - at least by media standards.


See, Kate just isn't serious enough about continuing this Auschwitz chic that she started. If she were, she'd be doing the "banana bag" diet which is neither as porny nor as healthy as it sounds. The awkward moniker comes from the yellow color of the fluid in the IV bags. The fluid that starlets are mainline-ing in an effort to get their vital nutrients without the calories.

According to the Daily Mail, "Designed as IV drips for alcoholic patients in hospitals (who are undernourished from drinking more than they eat), this yellow-coloured liquid is being snapped up by those who opt out of eating in order to fit into their Kova & T Latex leggings."

Why would anyone feel the need to be so skinny that they would choose to get their multivitamin via a saline drip? Because they're competing with this:


And this:


Like I said, remember when Kate Moss was skinny?

The Number One Worst Diet Ever

We who roam in health and fitness circles hear a lot about good diets and bad diets, not to mention the sheer number of blinky punch-the-monkey badvertisments touting The Best Diet EVAH! that we are subjected to on a daily basis. But did you know that researchers have examined all the diets out there and crowned the worst diet ever?

In a society that has embraced everything from the Banana Diet (eating only bananas and lukewarm water for breakfast) to the Banana Bag Diet (no food, just nutrients in an IV drip) to the Bananas are Satan Diet (a.k.a. Atkins), you'd think it would be hard to choose the worst diet ever. But intrepid researchers from Duke University have taken on humanity's plight as their own and examined them all. So who took the rhinestone tiara? The Cabbage Soup Diet.

That sound you just heard was my brain grinding gears. Um, what? The researchers claim that the Cabbage Soup Diet is the worst because it is so deficient in protein (no mention of the bruises suffered from people being physically ejected by their partners from bed after bubbling the covers with their nocturnal emmissions). Which I can kind of understand. I mean wasn't the Gulag sort of the ultimate human experiment in surviving on the broth of flatulent vegetables? It certainly didn't promote health.

But the worst diet ever? At least the Cabbage Soup Diet incorporates an actual vegetable. I would like to nominate my own suggestion for Worst Diet Ever: The hCG diet.

hCG stands for human chorionic gonadotrophic hormone which for people not intimately acquainted with uteruses, is otherwise known as the pregnancy hormone. I was orginally introduced to this hormone when I experienced my first miscarriage. Drawing blood, the lab can do a count of your hCG levels - which in a normal pregnancy will double every 24 hours. In a miscarriage it stays stagnant or falls. It's important because it is the hormone that tells the fetus to grow.

In the hCG diet, the orginator Dr. Simeon instructs you to inject this hormone (sometimes via the urine of pregnant women) into yourself every day for 23 days. In addition to the funfunfun of daily injections, the diet asks you to gorge on all the fatty food you can for the first two days to make sure "your fat cells are filled to max capacity." Starting with the third day you are to eat only 500 calories a day and have no sugar or starch of any kind until you finish out the injections. The claim is that the hCG will suppress your appetite so much that you will no longer care that you are only eating 500 calories a day.

Now, if the description alone isn't enough to warrant the Worst Diet Ever title, here is some additional evidence:
- Clinical studies on hCG have shown no measurable effect on weight loss or fat loss when compared to a placebo.
- The main proponent of this diet, infomercial guru Kevin Trudeau, who has already been jailed for fraud, now has a federal injuction against him and the diet.
- The original book, Pounds & Inches by Dr. Simeon, is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive advertising.

So you are on a starvation diet with no carbs developed by known hucksters plus you have to inject yourself daily with urine. See? Worst diet ever!

Do I win?? Any other nominations for the Worst Diet Ever? What's the worst diet you've ever tried? (And no, I have never tried this one nor will I ever consider doing an Experiment on it so don't ask.)

Mini-Experiment: Using Vibrations to Intensify Your Workout

I have a disgusting confession to make. I went 54 hours without a shower. But wait, it gets worse - I did five workouts during that time period. So in addition to leg stubble that could cut a brotha and armpit hair that would have made me the envy of the Lillith Fair, I had the stank of five sweaty workouts slicked and then dried onto my skin. Normally I'm not this hygiene challenged but circumstances and a packed workout schedule (concerns about over exercising duly noted) produced a confluence of nastiness hitherto unprecedented. Which is how I came to be introducing myself thusly:

Man at Power Plate Gym: Hi, I'm James and I'll be your personal trainer today!

Me: Hi, I'm Charlotte from The Great Fitness Experiment and I stink!

James: Oh, well, um, really? I can't smell you.

Me: And you seem too nice to tell me if you did. But seriously, I reek. So, I'll just apologize in advance.

James: Ah, okay. No worries. We always wipe down the equipment after each client.

After that inauspicious beginning, I began my first workout on the Power Plate, a large-ish machine with handles and a rubber padded platform that you stand on. It's all very beam-me-up-Scotty minus the pointy ears. So I did my best William Shatner and stood confidently on the machine. Well, as confident as I could be standing on a very big, very expensive piece of equipment that I had absolutely no idea what to do with.

James stepped in to rescue me from myself. After pointing out all the buttons on the Power Plate and saying a lot of science-y things about megahertz and g-forces and actually using the formula Force = mass X acceleration properly in a sentence, he got to the point. "What makes the Power Plate unique is the vibrating platform. The vibrations engage 30% more muscle fibers."

I tried to nod but by that point the machine was quietly humming while I held a static 90-degree squat. Normally I can talk during a squat (heck, normally not much can stop me from talking as the Gym Buddies will attest) but the vibrations went from my toes to my head, causing a not unpleasant tingly feeling. The best I could manage without my teeth chattering was a "hummmooooooowwwwwaaaaa" that sounded exactly like when you talk into an oscillating fan. Which of course made me giggle. Which made me notice that even my cheeks were vibrating. Which made me giggle even harder.

James was a very good sport through all of this, pausing to let me say silly things like "Luke, I am your faaaattthhhhhaaaaaa" and even laughing good naturedly despite the fact that I'm sure I'm not his first client to pull such shenanigans. He patientely explained that the thing that makes the Power Plate unique among fitness gadgetry is that due to the vibrations you "feel like you are working less but your muscles are actually working harder."

"So you perceive your exertion to be less but you are really getting a better workout?"

"Yes, and in a shorter amount of time." The typical Power Plate workout lasts about 30 minutes.

More for less. Which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the holy grail of exercisers everywhere. But the question was, would the Power Plate deliver on that promise or would it end up like those vibrating exercisers of yore?

James led me through an entire workout focusing mainly on lower body and core. I did squats, weighted lunges, rows, bridges and even a plank all while vibrating at approximately 35 times a second. Other than making my fatty bits jiggle embarrassingly, it felt a lot like a traditional body-weight workout. It was hard to compare my rate of perceived exertion due to the fact that I was so entranced by the vibrating that I kept forgetting to focus on my body but I'm pretty sure I didn't work out as hard as I normally would have. It's also hard to measure something like "30% more muscle activation" but I did feel like I was using muscles to stabilize myself that rarely got used.

At one point James instructed, "Stop moving your foot."

"I'm not," I answered, trying to keep my teeth from knocking together.

"You are," he replied, pointing at my toes.

I looked down. Sure enough my foot was dancing around all of its own accord. How embarrassing. I tried to put a stop to it but I couldn't really feel it moving, leaving me with the dilemma of launching into a full-on softshoe or using my other foot to hold it down. Thankfully the machine stopped vibrating saving me from what could only end in further giggling.

James then instructed me to drink water telling me that the vibrations would cause a lympatic "cleansing." I had no idea that the lymph system could "cleanse" or what that would mean (more peeing?) but apparently you helped the process along by drinking lots of water.

"So how do you feel?" he asked solicitously when I was all done getting smellier.

"Tingly."

"And...?"

The owner of the studio interjected, "You might not feel sore tomorrow; we always go pretty conservative on the first workout."

But the thing was, I was starting to feel a little tight in my legs which from previous experience usually indicates that I will be sore the next day. In addition, I sweated (swote? swotted?) plenty so I know I was working something.

My Conclusions
Does the Power Plate provide a more intense workout than traditional weight training exercises? Perhaps, but I think you could achieve the same level of exertion without the fancy machinery, it might just take you longer. The real selling point for me about the workout was not that it offered the fitness equivalent of a proceed-directly-to-go-and-collect-200$ card but rather all the attention that came with it. Every time you use the thing, you get a personal trainer. The monthly fee was about what you'd pay for a membership at a nicer gym but when you consider that you are getting a personal training session every time you go in (and they do have other equipment like cardio machines to round out your workout), then the fee becomes a screaming deal.

So my recommendation is that if you have a Power Plate in your gym already, it's definitely worth checking out. It was one of the most unique workouts I've ever tried and definitely ranked high on the entertainment factor. Also, if you are interested in hiring a personal trainer long term then a gym like Fit U is a great deal. (Thanks to Dennis for the tip! And to Candice, Keith and James for the great experience!)

Does Keeping Kids Safe Mean Making Them Fat?

Think hard - when was the last time you saw a high dive outside of the Olympics? Our local pool sure doesn't have one. Indeed, the last time I can remember seeing one was in my high school pool when I was on the diving team for about two seconds. (Although I stuck around long after I quit to help all the guys shave their legs before meets. What can I say? Swimmers are hot. Even freakishly hairless boy swimmers.) There's a reason we don't see many high diving boards anymore. Or any diving boards at all. Or merry-go-rounds. Or ten-foot-tall metal slides. Or see-saws. Or many of the playground favorites from our childhoods. It's because they're not safe.

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old-timer who walked to school in paper bag shoes - uphill both ways! - and played hackey sack with a hairball for fun, I have to say: What is happening to children these days?

A recent uproar in New York about unsafe playgrounds brought out some intense emotions in parents and children alike. And what was the object of their protestation? Tetanus-laden uncovered screws? Uncoated swing chains that pinch little fingers? George Michael policing the restrooms? Nope. They were mad about the rubber surface that was installed to protect children against falls. See, when the weather gets hot, so does the rubber and apparently the kids felt like it was burning their feet.

I do have some sympathy for those New Yorkers. As a parent I completely understand the pain that ensues when children start whining. If mine keep it up long enough I swear my ears actually bleed. As a playground veteran I can vouch for the fact that children find any number of things outdoors whine-worthy. In addition to hot playground surfaces, there's hot playground equipment, hot picnic tables and hot (read: lukewarm) juice boxes. There's also cold swing seats, cold monkey bars and cold (read: lukewarm) bottles. You know what helps with all that? Earplugs. Oh, and shoes.

Are Safe Kids Fat Kids?
In a day where it is postulated that over 85% of the U.S. population will be overweight in 20 years, it seems like a lot of parents aren't getting the message about the importance of exercise. While the above example is a little extreme, many parents end up curtailing physical activities - especially the spontaneous outdoor kind that experts have long advocated as necessary for children's mental and physical health - because of safety concerns.

I have to admit I have done it. I won't let my six-year-old walk two blocks to his friend's house to play because I'm concerned about all the street crossing he'll have to do. I don't let any of my children play outside unattended because we don't have a fenced-in yard. So if I'm busy when they want to play outside, they don't get to go outside. If they want to practice riding their bikes? I drive them (!) to a local park because we have no sidewalks in our neighborhood. In fact, most parents I know make some marked concessions to safety that our parents didn't do when we were kids.

My mother accuses me of trying to wrap my kids in bubble wrap but I am a mother to three boys. And I say this with love but they're crazy. The two-year-old gets his kicks from scaling the bookshelves and then jumping off the top. The four-year-old literally thinks he can fly, as evidenced by his ability to jump down an entire flight of stairs without touching carpet until he lands in a heap at the bottom. We've already had multiple visits to the emergency room involving such innocuous objects as a banister, a bungee cord, and a fluffy red pom-pom. Can you imagine the carnage that would ensue with, say, a pellet gun? Or a roller-derby Barbie??

What Is A Parent To Do?
There has to be some middle ground between protesting that the ground is hot on a hot day - last time I checked suing the laws of physics isn't usually productive - and leaving your kids in the care of no one but your dog while you go out on the town (Hello Peter Pan!). Out here in the frozen wasteland, parents compromise by paying exorbitant fees to have their kids play hockey. I however have a problem with a sport that makes me pay out the ying so my kids can knock around the noggin I spent nine months gestating. (I didn't even eat soft cheese because it might be bad for them!) I suppose the biggest problem is what kids are doing instead of playing outside: generally something involving a screen.

Safety is a concern for adults wishing to play in the outdoors as well. Even with reflective gear, cell phones and pepper spray available, many women cite safety as a major reason they don't exercise outside. Not to mention that injuries and accidents can happen to the best of us. Aron Ralston, anyone? (Hint: he's the man who cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to save his life.)

Other than spending a lot of time wishing I lived in a place where I could chuck my kids out the front door after breakfast and tell them not to return until the dinner bell rings, what can I do? How do you guys balance the concerns of safety with the need for exercise? And, more importantly, how do you get your kids to stop with the whining??

A STUNNING UPSET; PACQUIAO KO 8!!!

Oscar De La Hoya came into the ring wearing old-school brown colored gloves. By the time he left the ring, he just looked old.

In one of the most stunning and completely dominating upsets in boxing history, Manny Pacquiao won "The Dream Match" by TKO victory Saturday night when De La Hoya's corner threw in the towel after the eighth round.

A crowd of 15,001 fans at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and a worldwide HBO Pay-Per-View television audience witnessed what was described by HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg as "one of the greatest performances by a prize fighter I've seen in 31 years in this business."

Know More, Grow More, Richard Seymour's fit school.

How Much Can You Chin?
That's not a typo. Unlike in the bench press, most guys gauge chinup performance by how many reps they can complete, not the amount of weight they can lift. But Australian researchers determined you should be able to do a chinup with as much weight as you can bench-press. This validates an observation I've made training athletes: Shoulder injuries rise significantly once a guy can bench-press 15 percent more than he can chin.

To figure out how you measure up, do as many chinups as you can with your body weight, then compare that with the number of reps you can bench-press using the same weight. Let's say you weigh 180 pounds and can complete five chinups. Your strength balance is ideal if you can do, at most, five reps of the bench press with 180 pounds. If you can pump out 10 reps with that weight, however, you're substantially stronger in the bench, and a candidate for shoulder trouble.

How to do it: Grab a chinup bar with an underhand grip, hands shoulder-width apart. Hang with your arms straight. Pull your body up until your chin clears the bar, then slowly lower back down. Repeat.