Paleo Fitness Book - Photo Shoot

Health: Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

The heart at Rest.

My resting heart rate this morning was measured at 39 bpm. This is maintained without any endurance or prolonged stressful activities too.  You don't have to do endless steady-starte cardio workouts to improve cardiovascular health.

Why is this relevant? Well your resting heart rate is one indication of aerobic fitness. Exercise makes your heart stronger and more efficient, each contraction pumps relatively more blood and needs fewer beats per minute to do its work.

Consider perhaps the most important muscle in the body, not just the muscles you can see in the mirror.

Read more about heart health:

Heart Rate monitor for your smart phone:

Workout: Tabata Thursday

Workout: Tabata Thursday

Tabata Intervals (20 minute workout - including rest periods)

• 20 sec Bear Crawl, 10 sec Rest - (repeat for 8 rounds).
• rest - 1 minute
• 20 sec Double Unders*, 10s rest - (repeat for 8 rounds)
• rest - 1 minute
• 20 sec Bar Muscle Ups**, 10s rest - (repeat for 8 rounds)
• rest - 1 minute
• 20 sec Burpee Push-Up (w/ 2 push-ups), 10 sec rest - (repeat for 8 rounds)
• rest - 1 minute

Notes:

• Perform flat out maximum effort for the 20 seconds of work
• * - if you don't have access to a skipping rope, perform high knee jumps
• ** - muscle ups not possible, do Air Squats

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Please scale all Fitness Explorer workouts and playouts to your current ability.  This may mean increasing or decreasing the weights prescribed, modifying distances and times, or changing number of sets and reps to complete.  Get adequate rest and sufficient nutrition to fuel the activity and to aid in recovery.  Work hard and play hard but never sacrifice correct form.

Please visit the exercise FAQ for details on individual exercises or consult the advice of a registered exercise professional to ensure safe execution of the above movements.

If you are new to this mode of exercise, try one of the beginner's circuits

Perform a warmup prior to activity, here's an example Fitness Explorer warmup

Watch    Fitness Explorer video's here on YouTube

Food: Horse Meat or Beef?

There is currently a concern in the UK and other parts of Europe about processed beef meat products containing horse meat, or beef products containing traces of pork, etc.  It has appeared as a regular news item in the British press for the last week or so.

  

Bear in mind that a ready-meal was not cooked in a large-scale kitchen as supermarkets would like us to believe, but produced in a factory with products sourced from all over the world with limited checks on the source or safety of that food.

To reduce the risks: go to a local butcher or farmer's market and ask questions about the source.  It's usually cheaper to buy your products this way too.

  

There is a price to pay for the convenience of supermarket shopping that isn't always visible on the receipt.