Do you want to have a day when you feel energetic, joyful, creative, productive, be in a good mood and avoid weight gain? Most people will say yes to all. Skipping breakfast will cause the opposite results. As my good friend says: skipping breakfast is not negotiable. 

I will summarize the reasons why you should wake up a little earlier and feed your body.

In order to have optimum levels of energy throughout the day, you may want to start understanding what controls energy in your body. One of the main energy “managers” of your body is a hormone called cortisol, the stress hormone produced by your adrenal glands. When you skip breakfast, the cortisol level is elevated because your body senses that you are in starvation mode. 

Click to read more ...

While sitting here on a beautiful evening in Boulder, CO, eating fresh greens that a friend has grown herself, sweet potatoes and organic chicken I am feeling very inspired and grateful. 

Looking around to appreciate beauty is a choice, eating the best foods for my body is a choice and having a life with purpose is a choice. It does not just happen. I choose great, I choose to live my best every day because all we have is this moment, in this body. So what you choose to do now and how you take care of your sacred body will determine the outcome in your life. 

Click to read more ...

Most people are used to feeling okay. Why not great? What has happened to the real feelings of great energy and vitality?

The answer is a chronic state of stress. Stress comes in many different forms: physical, chemical, electromagnetic, psychic, nutritional and thermal.

Stress can be a positive state. It makes us achieve goals, win races, get fit, succeed in work, relationships, etc. Imagine the caveman, stressed to the highest when hunting or running from a lion. When he was safe, the stress levels came down and he recovered and healed all of the exhausted systems in his body.

Click to read more ...

If you ever watch me at the gym or in a video training, you will see me pulling, pushing, lunging, squatting or twisting. I love moving my body in the way it was supposed to.  As Paul Chek states: “to move means to experience.” With that said, I am constantly looking to have a work out experience at the fullest because it helps me connect with all parts of myself.

I am frequently changing the format of my training so I can continue getting results by challenging my body. I change the tempo, sets, repetitions, resting time, exercise order, intensity and so on. My latest change was my footwear, I wanted to increase the connection between my body and the ground, increase foot proprioception, work more my stability and enhance my overall experience as I move my body. The moment I tried "barefoot training" shoes I felt all those aspects in action.

Click to read more ...

In the first part of this article I addressed primarily the hip, and how we need to move the hip joint complex in all different planes and ranges of motion.

In this video today, I will show how to add three very important movements to the lunges, incorporating the upper body: reaching, bending and twisting. Reaching, bending and twisting are part of our everyday life tasks and part of many sports. Injuries happen every day from simply bending over to pick up a pencil. If you teach your body how to function properly during your workouts, you will most likely be preventing injuries and your performance will be increased.  

Caution: DO NOT perform these movements if you have a vertebrae disc issue or any other condition of your spine. Consult a professional for a full movement evaluation first.

Perform 2 to 3 sets of 4 repetitions, you can do the first set with reaching/bending and the second one with the twisting. Progress from bodyweight to light weights. Bend your knees as you reach down. Start with short range of motion and increase it, as you get stronger and more flexible.

By Ale Gil

The hips are the main power engine of the body. They are the epicenter of many simple everyday movements and the source of very complex and explosive motions involved in sports. Visualize the serve in tennis or a golf swing, that power comes from the hips.

Many of the injuries I have seen over the years of training fitness enthusiasts and athletes come from imbalance somewhere in the hip area. The tightness or weakness will be compensated somewhere else in the body. Common areas of injuries are low back and knee. To avoid injuries and make your hips function the way they are supposed to, you need to give your hips what they need: movement in various planes of motion. Not just forward and backward like most people do.

In this video I will be sharing with you a sequence of multi-plane lunges.

Click to read more ...

As my profession has been evolving more into being a nutrition/wellness coach, the questions from friends and clients come up more frequently. I want that, I want the invitation to educate them so they can make better choices and move towards having great health.

One of the big topics today is wheat. Is it that bad? Some people say they eat only whole wheat, or whole grain breads. Others may say they eat only organic flour or organic pasta, and the subject goes on. Organic or conventional, it does not matter. The first problem is that wheat today is not the same wheat that our ancestors ate hundreds of years ago. Genetic changes have been induced to increase yield per acre.

Click to read more ...

Paradigm shift has become an often used expression, because it is happening in so many aspects in our lives right now. It is time to get educated about what health really is, time to learn the truth about our food and what it is doing to our bodies. Time to question your doctor and why he or she is giving you drugs instead of teaching you how to eat right to treat your condition, time to ask your favorite restaurant where they are buying their meat from. Time to manifest changes for better health!

Click to read more ...

You all have heard by now that interval training is more effective and less stressful in the body systems than doing a long steady state aerobic activity (check my old post, The Myth of Cardio for Weight Loss).

What about weight training? Many people ask me if they should lift every day, how long, and if they should do cardio before or after lifting.

Before I answer any of these questions, I always ask what their goals are. For this article I am going to assume that you want to lift weights to get stronger, to increase lean body mass, to lose weight, to prevent injuries and you want to look good in front of the mirror. We all do!

20-minute, high intensity training is a great way to accomplish all of that.

Click to read more ...

If you have been a fitness enthusiast for a while, you know that if you do the same routine for too long you won’t get results like you got in the beginning. You may change the number of sets, repetitions, exercises, resting period and still not get too much of a change.

There are a few more ways to make changes and have a bigger impact on the outcome without going too crazy.

Click to read more ...