TrAinINg WiTH Ur Dog

Resistance Training With Your Dog

By Mj

Is it possible to do resistance training with
your dog? Learn how now!

You may be wondering, "How can I possibly do resistance training with my dog?" Well, here are a few exercises you can do with the aid of your faithful furry companion.

(F.Y.I. - This section is written tongue-in-cheek - there is plenty of serious exercise advice to be found in the e-book).

1. Leg raises - if you have a male dog, he's probably already shown you how to do this one.

2. Abdominal crunches with a paw on your forehead - laying down on the floor and grunting in pain can cause your dog to do it's own investigation to find out if you're all right. The scratch marks across your forehead are simply a byproduct of that concern.

3. Deadlifts - if your dog has any inkling that you're taking him to the vet or someplace else he doesn't want to go and you've had to scrape him up off the floor to get him in the car, you've just done a deadlift.

4. Pull-ups - this involves pulling up furniture, rugs, carpets, clothes, etc. to pick up all the fur that gets into the strangest of places.

5. Pushdowns - one for the overly-enthusiastic dinnertime beggar.

6. Lunges - when you're trying to grab her for a bath.

One final word of advice when doing resistance training with your dog is never yell out "Spot me!" if your dog is not housetrained. It's a mistake you'll make only once.

Top 10 Holiday Weight GAIN Strategies!

IMPORTANT! This information is strictly intended to be humorous! Do not attempt these strategies unless you really, really feel like it.

As a personal trainer, I always like to see people put on as much weight as possible leading into New Years Resolution season. It gives me more to work with when they come to me to lose it. :)

If you find yourself dangerously underweight this holiday season, fear not--help is on the weigh!! These tips will help you to maximize your assets to the fullest extent possible in the limited time you have available.

1. Nap After Every Meal

This includes breakfast. This is a favorite trick of the Sumo wrestler. The idea is to eat as much as possible then go directly to sleep, a time when your body doesn't use much energy and has a greater tendency to store food as fat. Turkey and warm milk for dessert will help you accomplish this if you're not tired enough.

2. Follow Fatty Meals With a Sugary Dessert

What's the best way to make sure that fatty food isn't wasted by burning it off? Eat 12 sugar cookies! The sugar will help raise your insulin levels, helping to push that fat directly into your fat cells where it'll be safe.

3. Stay Away From Veggies

Vegetables have far too much fiber and will leave you feeling too full to eat enough afterwards. Even a good, rich dip won't be able to compensate enough for this problem. If you love the taste of dip, save it for the potato chips. Not only do chips have more calories, they are shaped more like scoops than vegetables and you'll be able to get more dip per chip.

4. Gravy is the Fifth Food Group

To really maximize your weight gain, your food pyramid should be floating in a lake of gravy. Gravy is loaded with life-giving energy in the form of fat and corn starch (a wonderful, high-glycemic sugar that will help ram that fat right onto your hips).

5. Reduce Your "Running Around Town" Levels

This is especially true when shopping for presents. You will burn off way too many calories trying to fight the crowds at the mall for you to effectively gain weight. Hire some neighborhood children to fetch things for you or rent a golf cart. If you must walk around when shopping, be sure to stop at the food court or pretzel stand every half-hour to refuel.

6. Drink Alcohol Late At Night

Only do this if you are of legal age, of course, and never drink and drive. Drinking is one of the best ways to increase your unlean body mass that there is. Each gram of alcohol contains 7 calories per gram instead of the wimpy 4 calories in a gram of regular carbohydrates. On top of that, alcohol has the added bonus of turning off your fat burning hormones. And all of this accomplished
at night when your metabolism is at it's slowest...what could be better??!!

7. Skip Breakfast, Have a Light Lunch and Hog Out At Dinner

By skipping breakfast and depriving your body of fuel, you will help slow your metabolism early in the day when it normally would be at its fastest. This will help set up your expansion plans!

The light lunch should consist mainly of sugary foods to help skyrocket then plummet your blood sugar. This will help you to feel much hungrier when you sit down for the big feast of the day.

Dinner should consist of fatty meats, gravy, lots of butter, egg nog, cookies, and something fried. If you must have a salad, save it for last after you've finished up with your higher-calorie selections. And be sure to cover it with enough dressing so that you can't tell what color of food you're eating.

8. Save the Exercise For the New Year

Exercising will only burn off precious calories. It will also help build muscle mass, which is a definite no-no if you want to put on as much fat as possible. Muscle will burn up those valuable calories that you've worked so hard for all day long.

9. Don't Leave The Table

A great weight-gain strategy is to park yourself at the table all day long. Let someone else clean up the breakfast dishes, wait there for snacks to be served, start into lunch soon after that, lie back and have a snooze (provided you've planned ahead and pulled a recliner up to the table), then wake up in time for dinner. This will result in a favorable lethargy-to-gluttony ratio.

10. The Santa Claus Racket

Tell your children to leave milk and cookies for Santa. When they go to bed, drink the milk, eat the cookies and leave one present under the tree. Wake up your children and tell them that Santa only brought one present and that if they want another one, they need to leave more milk and cookies. Sent them to bed. Drink milk and eat cookies. Repeat.

The bonus part of this strategy is that your children may be so tired by the time you're done, they might let you sleep in a full fifteen minutes longer than they regularly would!

Put all these weight gain strategies into effect and I guarantee there will be more of you to love come January 1st!

KiSS mE BabY

The Art Of Kissing

And Why You Should Kiss, Too

Every now and then a quarrel breaks out down at the barber shop, lines are drawn, challenges leveled and, with any luck, somebody walks out with very few blood stains. All over a seemingly innocent discussion: What is the greatest sport on earth?

Some say "football". Some say "baseball". Canadians say "hockey". The rest of the world says "soccer". (Actually, they say "football", too...but they mean "soccer".)

I say: "kissing". Yes, kissing is the greatest sport on earth. Allow me to explain just a few of the reasons.

ATTENTION: If bad breath (yours or your partner's) makes you uncomfortable kissing, you need The Bad Breath Report

Kissing is the most versatile sport around. There are so many types of kisses to choose from – at least one for just about any occasion. There is the quick peck on the cheek kiss, the peck on each cheek kiss, the peck on your nephew's cheek kiss while grabbing the other cheek flab with your hand, the wildly passionate kiss, the elegant kiss on the hand, the dreaded kiss of death, the "Hey you! Kiss this!", and even the Florida town of Kissimmee (founded, no doubt, by early Italian pioneer kissers).

The Art of Kissing Is Easy

Kissing is easy to transport. It really doesn't matter where you are. You can kiss: at the gym, in the boardroom, in the space shuttle, even in Alaska from June through September.

Kissing requires so little equipment, which means you can do it even when not prepared for the occasion, and even when you have to travel light. This makes it the ideal participation sport for businessmen, world travelers and marsupial groupies.

Kissing always livens things up. Try this: the next time you are in an oh-so-booooring meeting that seems to last oh-so-foreeeeever, why not just kiss somebody. Go ahead; try it. See how it livens things up?

Kissing is legal in all 50 states and most earth-bound countries. Rumors are circulating that kissing will even be legalized soon on Mars, Jupiter and in Afghanistan.

Kissing is 100% biodegradable, so when you kiss somebody, you help the environment.

Kissing is safe to do in a moving vehicle, as long as you are not driving.

Kissing is non toxic...unless you kiss somebody who has just swallowed a bottle of Drano. Even so, kissing is still safe, as long as you do not use your mouth.

Kissing is non-fattening. This is perhaps the best news of all, because dieters now have something to keep their mouths busy while not eating, and smokers can quit smoking without having to chew candies until they a) need to diet or b) induce diabetes. (Read the headline: "Kissing prevents diabetes")

Kissing is organic, low in sodium, preservative-free, low in saturated fats and does not contain dozens of delicious ingredients that cannot be pronounced, like javelchromopntheoremicherbicidic acid.

Most kisses are not tested on animals, but who am I to stifle your sense of adventure?

You can kiss just about everyone: your boyfriend, your aunt, your wife, your veterinarian, the Prime Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick and your pet aardvark. Don't try kissing them all at the same time, though...especially not your boyfriend and your wife.

Kissing meets the toughest safety regulations of any national or international sporting organization. Kissing has a tremendous safety record, except for the occasional locked braces. But a quick call for a AAA tow truck fixes that problem (CAA in Canada, AA in the UK, the local plumber in France)

Extreme Kissing NOT Recommended

The only recorded deaths involving kissing are by third parties, usually wives, husbands, spurned lovers and other spectators who somehow get past security and storm onto the playing field like that well-dressed gentleman at the Superbowl.

We do NOT recommend "extreme kissing". For instance, don't kiss an on-duty garbage truck; it is considered dangerous. Don't kiss a metal fence-post in sub-zero weather; readers in northern climates know exactly what I mean. Don't kiss any electrical outlets, or you'll look like this.

Are you paying attention? This one is important. Don't kiss the vacuum cleaner if you want to retain all your vital organs. It's OK to kiss sandpaper, just don't use your tongue. Don't kiss a chainsaw; we feel this one is self-explanatory. And don't kiss your office manager while on duty...unless you happen to be a work-from-home hermit like me.

But overall, kissing is so great that it makes baseball, hockey, football and soccer seem like bush league sports. Next time you hear a brawl at your local barbershop, just go in and give everyone a kiss. I guarantee that you will win the argument hands down. And if not, at least you will make some new friends to argue with.

Get a personal growth humor column, like this one on thet of kissing, in your inbox every week.

No nuisance HeRE

Curbing the Public Nuisance

The Happy Guy takes aim at the world's oldest profession.
He's been around since the dawn of humanity. His profession is even older than the world's oldest profession. He's been loathed and reviled by politicians, bureaucrats and hot dog vendors.

I am speaking, of course, of the public nuisance.

He was that slithery dude in the Garden of Eden, taunting folks to shoplift. "Go on. Take a bite of the apple. The grocer will never know it's misssssing."

Even in caveman days, the public nuisance was the one who would always have a practical joke to play on somebody. "Hee, hee. Thag not looking. I go paint his fire green so it look like bush. He no be able to find fire. Hee, hee. OUCH! Ooh. Ooh. Yowwww. That hot!"

He is the opinionated loudmouth who can't keep his trap shut. "I told Caesar the Coliseum should be built on the west side of town. 'Caesar,' I said. 'The Coliseum should be built on the west side of town.' But did he listen to me? No-o. Did he build the Coliseum on the west side of town? No-o."

"So...that's why the lions are drooling on the other side of that door?"

"Ah...well, yes, actually."

The public nuisance is that whiner who can't stop complaining about the weather. "Aw, c'mon Leonardo. Why don't you invent something useful, for a change? Like better weather."

"What's wrong with the weather?"

"What's wrong? What's wrong?! It's too cold when I want it to be too hot. It's too hot when I want it to be too cold. It rains when I work in the fields. It gets dry when the crops need rain. And did you see how the wind blew the other night..."

The public nuisance has been with us throughout the ages, playing music too loud in public places.

"What's that racket?"

"I think some teenagers are playing their lutes a little loud."

"Well how's a middle-aged lady supposed to get any sleep around here?"

"But what can I do?"

"You're a knight, for goodness sake. Get your horse and your lance and run them down. "

But, like all good things, even the public nuisance has been transformed by technological advances. We no longer rely on manual labor to provide public nuisance services to the population. Machines supply all the disturbance we could possibly desire.

Automation of the public nuisance was inevitable. As cities expanded, it was getting harder and harder for the public nuisance to be everywhere at once and provide adequate disturbance to the entire population.

It was also very inefficient to have individual public nuisances repeating the same tasks in each part of town.

And then there was the issue of quality control. Who would ensure that all the public nuisances were serving the community to the same standards? Who would ensure accountability and integrity? Some public nuisances have been known to take payola.

"Hey. You. What's that stench?"

"I'm just cracking a few eggs to throw at your house."

"Why at my house? What did I do?"

"Nothing. But you have a fancy house and I figured you would be most willing to provide me an incentive to throw them somewhere else."

"What!? This is extortion!"

"Yes."

"I see. Well, Smithers down the road has been way too uppity this week, so here's a little something to go be a his public nuisance tonight."

"Thank you, Sir. It's been a pleasure disturbing you."

I was stumped. I really had no idea how to end this column. "Maybe the public nuisance should be a she," I mused

"Why a she?" my wife asked.

"Because people complain if I just assume my characters are "he". The trouble is, whenever I make them "she", somebody wants to know why I'm picking on women."

"They would if you make the public nuisance a woman," my wife observed.

"Are you saying women are never nuisances?"

"Everybody knows that you men cause all the public disturbances," my wife poked me.

"That's because men get bored you women try on more clothes and more clothes and more clothes. We are just trying to keep things interesting"

"Men have such a short attention span..."

Suddenly I knew how to end the column: In our household, we have no need for a public nuisance – automated or manual. We each have our own private nuisance, whom we love very much.

"That's no way to end a column," my private nuisance insisted. "Why not tell them about how you would get rid of public nuisances once and for all?"

"Shhh. Don't tell them. That's next week's column."