High As A Mutha F***a: 55.5 Inch Platform Box Jump

I set a new personal best this morning in the platform tuck jump with 55.5 inches. My previous best was 50 inches set 5 months ago. We get high as a mutha f***a!

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Super Shoulders- Handstand PushUps

If you truly want to build big shoulders then you will have to add handstand push-ups to your arsenal. There is a reason why Olympic gymnasts have killer delts. 

Handstand push ups are an advanced level exercise but can be modified to accommodate novice or intermediate lifters. 

The easiest way to do handstand push ups is to prop yourself up against the wall [as a spot] eventually you'll want to increase your range of motion by placing your hands on boxes and lower your head between them. This is the ultimate pressing exercise and should be included for some massive shoulder development and full body strength and athleticism.

Patience is a must.

The Complete Chin Up

The Astone Fitness Complete Chin Up Bar is the ultimate upper body home training system. With this versatile home gym, you can perform chin ups, push ups, wide grip, pull ups, dips, leg raises, and sit ups. Multiple hand grips allow for variations of each exercise. Strengthen, tone and build muscular endurance by developing your chest, back, shoulders, triceps, biceps and abdominals with this quick and easy to install chin up bar.

Portable Home Gym Chin Up Bar Features:

• Multiple comfortable grips allow you to perform a variety of chinup positions
• All-rubber handles for maximum durability. Won't break down like spongy sweat-absorbing handles
• Unique stylish design
• Fits standard doors with no need for drilling, screwing, hammering or messing around
• Strong enough to hold just about anybody up to 300 pounds
• Full color companion booklet with sample exercises you can perform at home

Check out the Complete Chin Up in action below and 10 Tips to Improve your pull up...........

The Human Trainer

Functional Training, Adapted.

GET A FULL BODY WORKOUT THAT FITS YOU - AND GET RESULTS FAST!

THE HUMAN TRAINER is portable, sets up in seconds and gives you a full-body, resistance and cardiovascular workout. Using your own body weight. THE HUMAN TRAINER lets you achieve exactly the resistance you want simply by shifting the angle. Whether you are a beginner or an elite athlete, the HUMAN TRAINER adjusts to YOU.

WHAT IS THE HUMAN TRAINER?

The Human Trainer is a portable, fun to use, versatile and highly-effective training system. The Human Trainer harnesses your own bodyweight to provide resistance and gives you virtually unlimited fitness options that train your entire body. By simply adjusting your angle or changing your grip, you can target any muscle group without having to stop your workout. As a fully portable exercise unit, The Human Trainer also gives you the ability to set up and workout anywhere within minutes. The Human Trainer engages your core on every exercise, increases your flexibility and gives you an unbeatable muscular and cardiovascular workout!

Cookie Cutter Fitness: One Size Fits All

All fitness centers and coaches have their own unique brand or style of training.  Call it their training philosophy.  Within that philosophy you have your own tricks and techniques, beliefs and principles that you follow and implement into your programming.  


Over the last few years the hottest fitness trends have been group training classes.  At home fitness programs like P90x and Insanity, the phenom known as crossfit and everyone's favourite the bootcamp.  


During a kettlebell workshop I attended last year the instructor reinforced this trend by stating "group fitness was the future."  I undoubtedly agreed with him.  It's more affordable than private training, it's social, it has a built-in support system, it's motivating and best of all you've got an instructor telling you exactly what to do.  Of course there are cons as well.  If it's large group training [more than 12 participants] you're not going to get a lot if any attention during the class.  What is the point of doing the exercises if you're not learning to do them properly?  Scalability is a huge issue, everyone ends up doing the exact same workout with the exact same weights- which can lead to a feeling of failure, poor results and ultimately quitting.

Rob Ford to Stop The Gravy, Meatballs, Ice Cream and Pizza Train!

"300 pounds of fun!"  That's how Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford described himself while hosting a press conference for his 'Cut the Waist Challenge'.  Ford tipped the scale at 330lbs while his brother City Councillor Doug Ford weighted in at a slim by comparison 275lbs.  

This is all part of the Mayors aim to encourage the public to embrace a healthier lifestyle.  His goal is to lose 50lbs in 5 months, while ultimately getting himself down to 225lbs.

The Mayor says his weight loss plan will be based on "common sense" - more exercise and less eating, particularly late night snacking.  It's funny how common sense kicks in when you reach 330lbs.   

Brash Essentials: Strength Training for Women

The alternate title I flirted with for this article was How to Get a Body Like [insert famous celebrity name here].  Being a Fitness Professional has it's perks one of those is not being bombarded with questions about how they can lose 'this' or 'tighten up that'.  

The first thing you have to understand is there are only a few ways to get that slim, fit, athletic look like your fav celebs.  Forget the words 'tone' or 'sculpt' in relation to your muscles.  You cannot shape or elongate or tone a muscle or anything like that.  You can only make a muscle bigger or make it smaller. The same can be said for fat cells; you can make them bigger or you can make them smaller. That’s it.  So basically what every women should be aiming to do is build muscle and lose fat.  When you build muscle you will end up burning more calories at rest, meaning it will help you burn fat and get leaner.

Brash Essentials: Tools of the Trade

Every profession has a set of tools that helps them do their job.  A fully stocked gym is the largest tool box a trainer or client will ever need, but for a small investment you could mimic what you get in your gym, at home.   

People are often surprised at my own personal home gym because I really don't have that much in it.  I have a set of dumbells from 5 to 25lbs, tubing in various resistance, a couple stability balls and medicine balls, the TRX [which is a bodyweight suspension trainer], different speed and agility equipment [ladders, hurdles, cones] and some kettlebells.  That's it.  I do have the luxury of of a fully stocked gym [where I run classes] whenever I need it but if I want to get a quick workout in without leaving my house that option is always there.  And you can to.


Top 5 Tools for Your Home Gym/ To Use At Your Gym


*If the gym you're paying to help get you in shape doesn't have ALL of the pieces of equipment in this list....then your gym sucks!

Brash Essentials: Exercise Progressions

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results -Albert Einstein

Once you have a handle on the basic movements i.e. push ups, squats, lunges, pullups and the plank it's time to take those moves to the next level.  My job as a Fitness Professional and coach is to push my clients to that next level.  When you start training, you come in with a set of goals that you wish to achieve, it is my focus to help you hit those goals while helping you set new goals, more challenging goals. [Read about setting goals here]

If your goal is to run a marathon, get that elusive six pack, bench press 300 lbs or keep up with those 20 year old's at the pick up basketball game you need to progress your training.  Never stay stagnant!  

Using the five basic movements I listed above I will show you just how you can use practical progressions to seriously amp up your workouts.

PUSH UP

The basic push up is done on the toes and I always encourage my clients even if they can only do 1 or 2 in that position to start on the toes before regressing to the bent knee position.

EXERCISE WORKS

It really does.

Yesterday I dropped a bombshell on you when I proclaimed in two words, the exact same words in the graphic above, EXERCISE WORKS. [Brash Essentials: Training Principles]  I know it might seem far fetched, and you may think I'm stretching the truth a little bit [or a lot] but really [like my nephew says] it works.  

It might be easy for me to say because I've been doing it for a long time and I truly enjoy it but consider this: Study's show that an increase in physical activ....blah, blah, blah.  You've heard all this before.  You know exercise is great for you.  We can count the hundreds of reasons why we all should be exercising on a regular basis.  So I won't do it [today].  

I wanted to share with you actual results from a client of mine to prove to you that this wild proclamation indeed has some weight behind it. 

Quickly as a side note 'Exercise Works' is an actual quote I have adopted from my client.

Here we go.  

Brash Essentials: Training Principles

Excuse me while I blow your freakin' mind....exercise works and it doesn't have to be complicated. Mind blown!

Over the next few weeks I will break down my training principles for you step by step.  Starting with a breakdown of movements to exercise progressions, conditioning, favourite tools + exercises and of course how to put it all together.  

So, to start it all off let's talk about movements.  My training style is very simple folks, I perform movements that are pushing and pulling, hip and knee dominant,  plus anti- rotational and rotational core work.  

Now, to break it down further the pushing and pulling movements are broken down into two more categories: vertical pushes and pulls and horizontal pushes and pulls.  

Here are some examples:

Try The Tug Toner

The shake weight was a game changer in the sexually suggestive fitness device world. Since it's arrival on the scene, we've been graced with it's presence alongside other devices such as the Free Flexor (don't forget to cup the ball).  You can check out their infomercials [here]

Latenight host Jimmy Kimmel really hit the nail on the head when he took these products to spoof school. I think the workout you get from laughing would actually trump any physical exertion you would get from the product itself. Ladies and gentlemen, the Tug Toner.

Novemeber to Remember

Starting in November we're adding 3 new Women's ONLY classes to the schedule.  Monday and Wednesday night at 7pm and Saturday at 11am.

Tuesday and Thursday night at 8pm are co-ed classes and Saturday at 12pm we offer a Men's only strength class [get huge!].  

For a full price breakdown with comparison's to some of the other bootcamps in the city [click here] 

Class Descriptions you can find [here]

All classes take place indoors at 374 Dupont St.  No need to bring any equipment we are fully stocked.

• Medicine & Stability Balls
• Skipping ropes
• Hurdles
• Agility Webs & Harnesses
• Free weights & Therabands
• Heavy bags
• Footballs & Soccer Balls
• Glider discs
• Power Sleds & Sprint Parachutes
• Tug of war ropes
• Tools designed exclusively for the program.
• Tractor Tires & Sledgehammers
• 1600 sq.ft of Turf
• Olympic bars and bumper plates
• and more.... 

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Week of CrossFit

So, maybe I jumped the gun a bit.  I posted a blog earlier in the week about CrossFit with some excerpts from an article in Men's Health magazine.  In my blog I stated that I do not CrossFit nor will I ever be a CrossFitter.  I've tried just about every form of exercise, I've done my research and tried various video workouts like P90X, Insanity, etc.  So why would I not give the world's leading training system a go?  

Here's the plan:  Next week I will abandon my usual training routine, throw caution to the wind and do only CrossFit WOD's [workout of the day].  After my usual warm up and some practice lifts I will jump head first into 4 WOD's that I plucked off the CrossFit website.

Day 1

21-15 and 9 rep rounds of:
Left-arm Kettlebell snatch, 1.5 pood [16kg]
Right-arm Kettlebell snatch, 1.5 pood [16kg]
Pull-ups

Record and post your time.

Do You CrossFit?

If you haven't heard of CrossFit it is the world's hottest training system.  CROSSFIT mixes Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, calisthenics, gymnastics, sprints, plyometrics, and exercises like rope climbing, tire flipping and sled pushing.  The workouts are short, intense, and constantly changing. 

CrossFit Affiliates are popping up at the rate of Starbucks now.  Do a Google search for CrossFit in your city and I'll guarantee at least 3 pop up- more if you live in a major city.  

The set up is simple- each 'box' as they call their gyms, is mostly open space, with a rubber floor, high ceiling, and equipment—barbells and plates, kettlebells, medicine balls, jump ropes, rowing machines and gymnastic rings.  They do not look anything like a traditional gym. No mirrors, no machines to isolate muscles, no stationary bikes, no display cases full of expensive powders and bars.  

The highlight of each class is the workout of the day, or WOD. (A lot of these have been given women's names—anybody up for a Cindy? How about a Fran?) 

I do not CrossFit.   Never have, never will.  I don't own a Box nor do I aspire to.  My training business will never become an affiliate.  With all that being said, I do not hate CrossFit.  They preach functional fitness as do I.  They believe workouts should be short and intense so do I.  They have found away to get women not only lifting weights but heavy weight.  

They have created a following unmatched by any other training system.  I respect what they have built.  With any global phenomenon there will be detractors and skeptics- CrossFit has their fair share.  

My belief is that EXERCISE WORKS.  CrossFit, bootcamps, bodybuilding, spinning, yoga, P90X, sports, it all works.     

In this month's Men's Health magazine they have a great story on CrossFit called 'INSIDE THE CULT OF CROSSFIT'    It's a long one so I will highlight some of the points I think are important but if you have ever thought of trying CrossFit you should read the whole thing. 

What's YOUR Excuse? The On Going Series

Because this is the 4th blog about this subject [What's Your Excuse pt1 & What's Your Excuse part Deux & Make Time] I think it's safe to call it a series.  

I've heard many excuses both personally and from colleagues so I intend to share some of the best excuses EVER as part of the What's Your Excuse Series.

$IV.00 Group Training Ends Soon

BRASH Fitness & Conditioning's $4 group class bonanza is ending October 31st. Get your first week FREE and then enjoy each class thereafter for only $4 per class for 2 months.  

Don't wait until the new year, get in on the action now!  

New pricing comes into effect November 1st.  Check out our amazing class promotions [HERE].

Drop me an email to sign up for your first class: andrew@brashfitness.com 

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100-year-old Sets Record with Marathon Finish

What's your excuse part deux!

Fauja Singh, 100, finished Toronto's waterfront marathon Sunday evening, securing his place in Guinness World Records as the oldest person — and the first centenarian — to ever accomplish a run of that distance.

Singh, a British citizen, was the last person to complete the race, crossing the finish line just before 6 p.m. ET with a time of 8 hours, 11 minutes and 5.9 seconds.

Although event workers were dismantling the barricades and taking down sponsor banners as he made his way up the final few hundred metres of the race, a throng of media, family, friends and supporters were there when Singh made marathon history.

Singh, who only speaks Punjabi, said through his coach and translator Harmander Singh that he had set a target time of nine hours.

David is Brash

David has never looked better...BRASH Fitness & Conditioning group classes!

Or if you prefer the 1-on-1 attention book a FREE personal training session today.

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Gooooal! The Importance of Goal Setting

Almost every decision to start a new fitness routine begins with a goal.  "I want to lose 10 pounds", "I'm going on vacation in 2 weeks and it's a nude resort", "My husband left me for the babysitter I need to look hot", "I wanna be able to touch my toes.", "I wanna see my toes!".   I've heard every single one of those ...not really- yes I have...not yet! 

Goals are a necessary component to your training and everyone should make them.  

First, we should define three types of goals: Outcome Goals, Behavioral Goals, and Performance Goals.