What does skeletal muscle consist of? How does it contract? Muscle anatomy can get quite complex… and that’s even without mentioning the physiology of muscle contraction! This article breaks skeletal muscle down into its smallest parts and examines the amazing processes that bring about all our movements… Every one of the body’s 430 skeletal muscles [...]

Do you pop a daily vitamin pill? If so, you’re not alone. Millions of people do so, most of them for the wrong reasons. Listed below are several reasons why both adults and children take vitamin-mineral supplements. What are your reasons? 1. “Because I don’t eat a well balanced diet, they are my Nutritional Insurance.” [...]

Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body – comprising approximately half of the free amino acids in the blood and muscle. As a non-essential amino acid, glutamine can be produced in the body by conversion from another amino acid – glutamic acid (primarily by the skeletal muscle and liver. Glutamine’s main functions [...]

What a terrific program! The San Diego Boot Camp has challenged me to my limits and I feel I’m in the best shape of my life. John really does a great job of mixing up the exercises so the classes are exciting and challenging and the hour flies by! I lost 12% body fat after [...]

Muscle contracts to move bones and body parts Muscles look either striated or smooth: Striated muscle has stripes or striations in it. Smooth muscle does not. Also, muscles are labeled as either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary muscles are muscles that you can move whenever you want to. Involuntary muscles contract and relax automatically inside your [...]

Busy schedules can send stress levels soaring. What does stress have to do with diet? Plenty. When tensions get worse in one aspect of life, it’s not unusual for other areas to seem worse too. This can lead to a breakdown in behavior normally under control, such as the diet. With small positive steps, however, [...]

Why is recovery so important? The recovery process is when you are actually getting the benefits of exercise. When you are training you are actually breaking your body down. Your body then repairs itself to its previous level then a little beyond to better handle the stress of training the next time. But your body [...]

1. Perform a 5-10 minute warm up prior to lifting 2. Complete the full body flexibility routine (5 minutes) before lifting to minimize the chance of muscle strain. 3. Visualize yourself performing your set immediately before you do it. See it performed intensely with perfect form, and then match the real thing to your vision. [...]

An Introduction to Creatine Because nearly everyone associates anything that improves performance with steroids, creatine has gotten a bad reputation from people that don’t understand it. Creatine is involved in the first system for regenerating ATP (the fuel source for cells), is found naturally in foods, and our body even synthesizes it. There are a [...]