SmarterFitter Blog Less diet, more brain

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Recently, we’ve been thinking lots about functional fitness and getting hard without the gym. Although we like to avoid equipment as much as possible, a medicine ball could be a useful addition to our “home gym” (which is thus far small enough to stash under the bed, bicycles aside).

Medicine balls are those big heavy black balls that are a little scary except to those few masochistic folks who like to toss them back and forth to one another. It may harken bad memories of gym class. I remember when my 3rd-grade gym teacher tossed one of these cannon balls at me and I dropped it on my toe, not prepared to catch something that weighed 8 pounds (my gym teacher was a competitive body builder who could lift a car like it was a feather, but he wore those rediculous 80s Zubaz pants so we couldn’t really take him seriously).

Trying Fitness has two great videos that demonstrate various medicine ball exercises that you can do on your own. They look like they’d make you hard really fast.

Medicine Ball Exercises You’ve Never Tried [Trying Fitness]
Zubaz Official Website
Buy a medicine ball online [Amazon]

“Grrrrrrr… half the price.”

That was Tim’s response when I told him the lowest price on a pair of Mizuno Wave Alchemy Running Shoes according to ransacker.co.uk, “the running shoes comparison website that save you time, money and benefits charity.”

Ransacker’s lowest price was £39.99, half of what he spent in New Zealand in February at a running shop. True, did get his foot analyzed by a “pro”, but he didn’t get that nice warm feeling of knowing he got a good deal. In fact he emailed me later that he “felt sick” by the purchase. A happy consumer he was not!

If only he knew about Ransacker, recommended to us by Carl who runs the site. Racksacker makes runners happy by saving them money on shoes, but also makes the charities happy by donating 50% of its commission to the charity of the shoe-buyer’s choice. Tim and I both agree that this is very cool. We wish we thought of this idea! But we were too busy making chains and planning meetings. So thanks to Carl for building this site! I will use it when my current Salomon XA Pro trail running shoes lose their steam.

Do you have a website you’d like to recommend? Then click here to send us a link. If we like it, we’ll post it! And we usually do like it, so why not, eh?

ransacker.co.uk

They claim a wide range of health benefits:

• By stimulating the muscles of your lower legs and feet, you add strength, improve balance, and increase agility.
• A lower heel position leads to stronger legs and feet, straightens your spine, improves posture, and reduces back pain.
• Individual toe compartments gently spread your toes to strengthen foot muscles, increase range of motion and improve foot health.

The concept is kinda intriguing.

Do you buy these claims?

Has anybody used them?

Link