Wolves Fitness Guide

Getting physically fit can be hard and tough, especially for individuals who are not physically active. However, thanks to the profusion of health gadgets in the market today, many individuals find themselves motivated to improve their well-being. One of these gadgets is the so-called “fitness activity trackers”.

These trackers are popular among health buffs as they document the person’s activities and provide feedbacks which might be helpful, especially if the person engaged in the exercise has ailments or wants to monitor their activities.

For those who are interested in purchasing a fitness activity tracker, there are some things that must be considered. There are several types in the market; however each one is different and figuring out exactly what one needs will help save time and maximizes the gadget’s potential.

Fitness Trackers

Fitness trackers come in various shapes and sizes. Some are manufactured as wrist bands, sports watches or as clip-ons. Depending on the person, clip-ons are perfect for those who want to discreetly monitor their activities. Trackers that have features of sports watches help fitness enthusiasts monitor their activities and provide the user with details such as heart rate, calories burn as well as distance and steps made.

What to Look For in a Tracker

Before purchasing a tracker, it is necessary that one identifies what type of tracker would most benefit them which they can maximize in the long run. One of the things that one should consider is the features included in the tracker. Some have heart rate monitoring capability while others don’t. Some devices that don’t have the heart rate monitoring feature may have other special features such as blood pressure monitoring or calorie consumption which one might need. Other trackers also have GPS tracking enabled on them, sleep monitoring as well as other features. Do note though that the more features a device has, the more expensive it will cost. As a sports watch can be expensive, a fitness tracker designed as one can have the same features of a sport watch without the extra cost.

Another thing that one should also check is the battery life of the device. Some devices can last for three days, some up to a week while those with batteries included can last for a year. Device compatibility with smartphone apps is also another thing to consider as some devices can be synced with the person’s smartphone and help make the data collection easier.

The credit crunch has affected most people and although the housing market may have taken a slight down-turn, consumers are still buying and installing granite worktops in their kitchens. I have heard that home renovations are becoming more popular; rather than designing kitchens to improve the sale of houses, consumers are hard at work making their homes, their dream homes! I have seen an increase in consumer expenditure for worktop template cuts, where the consumers are fitting the worktops themselves; and in some cases, they are just ordering lengths and then doing the cut-outs too. If you are considering buying a length of granite for your new kitchen worktop and have decided that an over mounted sink is for you; and feel that making the cut-out for the sink is a job you can manage, then the following should help with this process.

First off, you need to make a hole for the sink. Turn the sink upside down and place it on the worktop in the position where you would like your sink to be located and make a mark round the sink using a soft white pencil. Take the sink and place it out of the way and draw another line, an inner line exactly 20mm inside of the first line – this will be what the lip of the sink will eventually rest on and is fixed to. Take your drill and drill a small hole through one of the corners of the inner line and then complete the cut-out with your jigsaw. It is important to note here; it is better to under cut your sink hole, than over cut!

If you undercut your sink hole and find that it is too small for the sink to fit, then you can easily take a little more off the stone, whereas; if you over-cut the granite, then there is little that can be done. Once you are satisfied with the shape and size of your sink hole, the final step is to fit your sink. You will need to use a small amount of silicon sealer to hold the sink in place, this being put around the edge of your cut-out. Once your sink clamps are in position, lower the sink gently into place and make a firm connection with the granite – you will need to leave the silicon to dry, but prior to this it would be advisable to carefully remove the excess silicon from the edges of the sink. This will not only save mess, but will also minimise the chances of damage being done.

Like any learned skill, there are certain basics that must be mastered first. The very bedrock upon which all health and fitness achievement rests are thoughts. Everything man-made in the world or any action you’ve taken in the past all started with a thought. There is not one man-made object or goal that didn’t start as a thought in someone’s head that was then made into reality. Your toaster, your TV, your automobile, your desire for better health.

A single thought ultimately transformed into physical reality.

In order to achieve any health or fitness goal you must start with this basic concept; thoughts are things. Thoughts are the foundation upon which you build the framework for attainment of your goal. Every thought has a physical manifestation in our bodies; every thought produces physical substances called neuro-transmitting enzymes that have instant effects on how we feel and who we are at the cellular level.

Don’t believe me? Think of biting into a big, juicy lemon or think about fingernails slowly running down a chalk board and tell me you didn’t have an immediate, physical response.

Or how about a thought that changed the world?

Every day, thousands of times a day, all over the world people fly from destination to destination. It’s amazing that a person can step into a device that lifts them off the ground and flies through the air at great speed sometimes over great distances safely carrying them to their destination in a matter of minutes or hours! Only a bit over a hundred years ago that would have been considered impossible or a miracle. Yet it happens every day today and it started with a thought in someone’s head that man could fly. On December 17th, 1903 the thought that man had had for generations to fly, became reality.

That is the power of thoughts!

If you can have that kind of immediate response from such a simple thought, just imagine what you can accomplish with a focused, burning desire backed by faith and persistence!

Life isn’t fair or normal, there’s just life. But that should be a comforting thought. If life were fair all things would be equal and all people would be equal. The logical conclusion is that there could be no social movement up or down, no bettering of yourself nor worsening, no getting healthier, just stagnation. Because life isn’t fair it means you have the ability to control whether you improve your life or make it worse but at least you have the ability to make change.

What about external influences which you have no control over? Say your significant other is killed in a car accident or you become paraplegic in a skiing accident. The list could go on and on. But there is one thing you have total control over.

Viktor E. Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, put it best in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,”

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitudes in any given circumstance.”

The only absolute freedom you have is choosing how you react to life. And how you choose starts with a thought.

Who you are right now is the sum total of what you’ve thought about up to this moment. If you’re not satisfied with who you are right now, the good news is who you will be from now on is entirely up to you. Change your thoughts and you can start changing yourself. If you want to lose weight or be more fit, it all starts with a thought.

Autosuggestion is one of the foundational tools for all fitness goal setting and goal setting in general. It’s simply self-suggestion, a method by which the conscious mind communicates directly with the subconscious mind. The subconscious takes orders from the conscious mind without question and acts upon those orders through repeated statements or affirmations. These orders are not just limited to one sense but can come from any of the five and are more powerful the more senses you use.

In order to train the subconscious mind to change you must, on a daily basis, suggest to it the health or fitness goal you want to obtain. Not just on a daily basis but throughout the day repeating and reaffirming the goal you’re seeking. However, repetition alone will have no impact. The conscious mind acts as a filter to the subconscious mind. The only way to get past this filter is through the use of autosuggestion mixed with strong emotion or feeling. The more feeling and emotion you can put into these commands to the subconscious, the faster and more powerfully the subconscious will act to bring about your goals.

In the previous three articles based on thoughts, desire, and faith, you were instructed to read aloud your written statement of your desire for better fitness at least twice a day, already seeing yourself as if you had already accomplished those goals. By affirming your goals daily, you communicated your desires directly to the subconscious, in absolute faith. Through repetition of this procedure you create habits favorable to the attainment of your fitness goals. And when you create a habit, an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary, then the hard part is over; the action becomes automatic.

If you learned to play a musical instrument in school, you couldn’t play it the first time you picked it up just because you wanted to play it. It was hard at first, forcing yourself to practice everyday, starting as a beginner who couldn’t read a note of music. That is until your practice became habit. Then you no longer thought about practicing, you just did it out of habit until one day you could play that instrument fairly well and perhaps even more than one instrument.

In more than one study and in actual practice with athletes, they were broken into two groups. The first group physically practiced 100% of the time. The second group practiced 50% of the time and the other 50% visualized in their head practicing perfectly. In almost all cases the second group performed as well or better than the first group who practiced 100% of the time.

Think about it. One group of athletes physically practiced 50% less yet had the same or better results than the other group who physically practiced 100% of the time.

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein

Your imagination is perhaps the most important aspect when trying to achieve a fitness goal. It really is literally the workroom of the mind where all your plans are fashioned. All great discoveries, inventions or accomplishments started in the imagination.

How can the imagination help you become more fit? First, there are two types of imagination; synthetic and creative. Through synthetic imagination you can rearrange or combine existing concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations. This facility creates nothing, it merely rearranges existing ideas into new patterns. This type of imagination is used mostly by inventors.

The creative imagination is the faculty through with “hunches” and “inspirations” are derived. All basic or new ideas are generated through this type. It works through the conscious mind when powered by a strong, burning desire. The more it’s used, the stronger its abilities become.

In most people this faculty has become weak and underpowered though it does not disappear completely. Like any skill, it must be practiced on a regular basis to grow stronger.

Mostly you’ll use the synthetic imagination to reach your fitness goals. Transformation of your burning desires for fitness into real-world results requires the use of a plan, a set of step-by-step ordered actions to reach your fitness goal. These plans are formed with the help of the synthetic imagination.

Once you have used your imagination to bring forth a set of detailed plans based upon your fitness desires, you’ve given concrete, physical form to your non-physical desires. Remember that the moment you transform your non-physical desires into a set of written, details plans, you’ve actually taken the first step enabling you to convert your thoughts into their physical counterparts.

And once you get an idea or thought in your head centering around a fitness goal powered by a burning desire, it becomes larger and more powerful under its own power. You give life and action to them and they take on a power of their own to sweep away all obstacles between you and your goal.

“Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all” – Pericles

There are two kinds of knowledge when it comes to fitness; general and specialized. General knowledge tends to be of little value when achieving your fitness goals. Knowing that weight lifting, for example, can help you lose weight is of little use by itself. Once you specialize your information to know that a full-body workout doing exercises such as crunches, bicep curls, or squats build muscle which require more energy which can then burn excess fat, then you can formulate a complete plan to achieve your goal.

Knowledge by itself is useless in the pursuit of fitness goals unless it’s backed by a definite plan of action. Unused knowledge is only potential power. Putting specialized knowledge to work through written, definite plans powers the engine of your fitness goals.

The true definition of an educated person is not a large amount of general or specialized knowledge. Look in any university or college. There are plenty of professors with a huge amount of specialized knowledge and a student population gaining general knowledge. Rather, an educated person is one who can find the knowledge they need or find the people who have the knowledge they need and apply it in a coherent manner to achieve their goals.

That’s the heart of specialized knowledge; if you don’t have the knowledge you need, find it or find someone who has it. It’s not important if you don’t have the knowledge but it is important that you know how to find it.

Whatever fitness goal you have, determine what knowledge you need and the end to which it’ll be used. As you gather this specialized knowledge it must be organized and put to use through a practical, written plan.

Those who are successful at improving their health and fitness never stop gathering specialized knowledge related to their current fitness goals. If you decide to start running and have never run before, determine first why you want to run. Then gather knowledge about reaching that goal.

What kind of shoes are best for your running? Are certain clothes better to wear than others? Is there information you should know about running related to your age? Can your neighbor down the road who runs marathons give you any tips?

Now that you’ve determined what information you need, have gathered it or gotten it from others, organized that information into a plan and then implemented it, your capability to achieve your goals becomes almost unlimited.