Collabofit

Who needs sit-ups? - Some good tips from a U.S. Army fitness instructor

Saturday, July 7th, 2007

Some good tips about doing more whole-body excercises instead of just isolated abdominal exercises.

You can’t dead lift 600 pounds if your abs aren’t strong, but you will never see a 600-pound dead-lifter doing crunches and sit-ups.

Both exercises have a long history in our military, but dead-lifters know something most in the military do not: Isolation exercises are the wrong way to develop abdominal muscles.

Read the entire article: Who needs sit-ups? - Military Off Duty, Army Health, military fitness, army physical fitness - Army Times

Posted in Fitness, Fitness Activities | Comments Off

How the ripped actors in the movie “300″ got that way - Gym Jones

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Want to know how the actors in the movie “300″ (based on a famous Greek Spartan battle) got their ripped abs, toning and overall bad-ass muscles? They did it the old-fashioned way, by earning them honestly. Admittedly, 10-12 hours of gym workouts a day, 5 days a week, for 4 months, and probably anyone who survived that would end up considerably more fit.

Mark Twight at Gym Jones explains the regimine they put the actors through:

Buzz about the movie “300″ increases in volume as its release date approaches. Because we were responsible for the fitness and appearance of the barely-clothed protagonists we are fielding calls regarding the training undertaken by cast and stunt crew. Since it was a Hollywood gig assumptions are made about the preparation, with a 50-50 split between accuracy and utter madness. The following explanation should help to rectify the more erroneous ideas about what actually happened.

…

This sort of training seems perfectly normal to us but others find both the work and our language unusual. Gerry Butler commented that, “the first time anyone ever told me I was ‘fat’ was after I got this part.” Many observers got hung up on the penalty part, or the fact that one penalty session was called “Loser’s Redemption”. One individual commented, “You call people ‘losers’? That’s unkind.” And the answer is that we’re not here to make friends; there’s a job and it’s got to be done.

…

The second misconception surrounds the idea of the Spartan workout, aka “300″, how frequently it was done or who actually finished it. “300″ is a one-time test, an invitation-only challenge undertaken by those deemed ready for it. By the end of our four-month project 17 people had done the workout (Logan and I were two of them). This constitutes about 50% of the cast and stunt crew. We supervised every test, evaluated each rep for quality and only counted those that achieved our standards for form and range of motion. Like many workouts “300″ is not hard once you’ve done it but the apprehension built up ahead of it — something we encouraged — was enough to make some guys fear it to the degree that performance was compromised. This workout was a crucible that some passed through and others still have hanging over them.

“300″
25x Pull-up +
50x Deadlift @ 135# +
50x Push-up +
50x Box Jump @ 24″ box +
50x Floor Wiper @ 135# (one-count) +
50x KB Clean and Press @ 36# (KB must touch floor between reps) +
25x Pull-up
300 reps total

Gym Jones was started by a bunch of climbers. They are bad-ass, and set a pretty good example for people who want or NEED to accomplish real results in their lives for when the real competition happens — on the mountain, in fire fights, or playing professional sports.

For those of us who program computers for a living… there is inspiration in seeing their dedication and hard work, maybe even enough to get us off our butts for a change.

Click here to read the full article at Gym Jones about their “300″ workout

Posted in Fitness, Fitness Activities, Gym | 2 Comments »

Losing weight the Wii way. (Wii is Nintendo’s latest videogame system)

Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

This guy lost 9 pounds by playing Nintendo Wii Sports. If you want to start tracking your own videogame usage and fitness and weight stats, please send an email to gserafini [at] gmail.com and I’ll hook you up with an invite to Collabofit.

Six weeks ago, I began what has become a huge obsession of mine. It is called the “Wii Sports Experiment” (Read my original announcement of this from Early December ‘06). I outlined a 6 week game plan for myself, the idea being that I would continue ALL normal activity and eating habits, and simply add 30 minutes of Wii Sports to my day. For the past month and a half, I’ve stuck to these guidelines very strictly.
For those of you unfamiliar with “Wii Sports”, you can watch a video review of the game and find out what it’s all about, here
I’ve been meticulously keeping track of the following for the past 6 weeks:
- Weight
- BMI
- Calories burned per session/per game (via BioTrainer, thanks Nancy!)
- Body fat % (via a Digital Body Fat Caliper and a body fat scale)
- Heart Rate (at rest)
- Wii Fitness Age
- Additional Notes/Soreness

Read the rest of his story at .::{WiiNintendo.net}::.

Posted in News, Weight Loss, Online Fitness, Fitness Activities, Fun, Videogames, Video Game Fitness, Wii | 1 Comment »

3 more fitness activities added that you can track on Collabofit.com

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

We just added, by popular request, these new activities that you can track on your Collabofit user page:

Aerobics
Dancing
Elliptical

If you have any other activities that you would like to keep track of, let us know. If you don’t have an invite yet, send an email to: gserafini [at] gmail.com with the subject “Collabofit Invite Please”.

Posted in News, Fitness, Developer Updates, Online Fitness, New Features, Fitness Activities | No Comments »

The first fitness site that lets you get points for playing VIDEOGAMES!!! Oh yeah, we just added 10 more activities you can track :)

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

By popular demand, we’ve added 10 more fitness activities to Collabofit that you can use to track your fitness stats. Some of these are gym activities and some are home and fun activities.

New Collabofit activities:

Basketball
Benchpress
Curls
Hiking
Housework
Pullups
Racquetball
Stairclimber
Videogames*
Yardwork

* Videogames???

Here are the top 3 reasons why we think it’s useful to track your time playing videogames using Collabofit:

Lots of people love playing videogames, and it is common to actually work up a sweat while playing them. i.e. there is _some_ fitness benefit (we think…)
By treating videogames as a fitness activity worth tracking, hopefully people who like to play videogames will look at some of the other activities you can track using Collabofit, and will realize that something as simple as taking a walk is worth more points than playing videogames. Maybe the same competitive drive that leads some players to play for hours on end will also lead them to get out and do something else useful with their time and get some sweet fitness points for doing so. And that’s a good thing, right?
What other fitness site actually gives you points for playing videogames? How cool is that!

If you want an invite, email gserafini [at] gmail.com with the subject: “Gimme a Collabofit Invite Please” and we’ll hook you up. (Open public signup is coming soon, but sending us an email so we can send you an invite is currently the only way you can get an account.)

Now get your Dance Dance Revolution on and Wii your way to a slimmer trimmer you!

The cool photo of people playing a Nintendo Wii is by delta_avi_delta, hosted on Flickr and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.

If you like the idea of getting points for playing video games, please digg this article and / or vote it up on reddit. Thanks!

Posted in News, Fitness, Developer Updates, Online Fitness, New Features, Fitness Activities, Fun, Videogames | 12 Comments »

New activity: Track your snowboarding this winter season

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

Snowboarding is now an activity you can track in Collabofit - your own personal online fitness stats tracking application. As usual, RSS feeds are automatically updated every time you add an entry.

This was added at naomiredding and Simon’s request.

The cool picture of a snowboarder is by garrulus and is Creative Commons licensed and hosted by Flickr.