Wednesday, January 19, 2011

How To Train At Age 75


For those of you who grew up in the early sixties, the TV was filled with sword and sandals epics, westerns, and spy movies. Many of what we would call "B" or "C" movies made it to the fuzzy black and white television 25 miles north of Pittsburgh, PA.
Actor, Brad Harris, stood out as someone in amazing shape, who could pull off his own stunt work. Here is a bit from his Wikipedia entry.-

Born in St. Anthony, Idaho, he received an athletic scholarship to UCLA where he studied economics. When he injured his knee he was advised to take up weight lifting to strengthen the injury that developed his interest in bodybuilding.
Harris entered films as a stand-in, stuntman, and later an actor. His first roles were in André de Toth's Monkey On My Back and Li'l Abner. With his athletic physique, Harris travelled to Rome to perform stunts in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. He stayed in Europe for the boom in European sword and sandal, Eurospy, and spaghetti western genres. Harris discovered, when working in Germany, that stunt coordinators were nonexistent in that country and he often did extra duties as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, second unit director and actor.

Currently, Brad is 77 years old and designs and sells exercise equipment. Here is an interview from Ironman Magazine in 2008 where he details his training methods.
http://www.ironmanmagazine.com/site/brad-harris-very-alive-at-75/

You can read more about Brad's equipement, HERE.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Food Supplements That Work



The addition of food supplements to the list of products sold by fitness companies in the 1950's was an economic one. After someone bought a barbell they had little reason to be a return customer. Barbells last pretty much forever. This lack of cash flow was remedied by selling protein supplements. Supportive literature recommended that trainees could not possibly get adequate protein from diet. Strength athletes from that era were used as proof through product endorsements. This gave birth to the multi billion dollar supplement industry. Most modern fitness magazines are literally catalogues with advertisements for food supplements that will fix almost anything. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I will focus you on several sources of common sense talk on food supplements.

First, two articles by Lyle McDonald. Very nice overviews of the subject.
Part One
Part Two

Next is a virtual guidebook of useful supplements and sources by Martin Berkhan.
Supplements and Sources

The last article is a refreshing piece by Alan Aragon. He compares the popular fruit juice that is sold through "multi network marketing", and cheap wine. This shows you how ridiculous most claims are. 
MonaVie versus Two-Buck Chuck.