Stew Smith Fitness News

Any person or team who exercises in the heat needs to hydrate during workouts to stay cool and avoid over-heating and even potential death from heat stroke. Fatigue is part exertion and part body heat so your hydration plays a huge part in your athletic and tactical performance. Dehydration can occur during excessively sweaty workouts no matter how well you hydrate prior to your workout. But you also need to add electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium as well.) Foods rich in many of these elements are essential to your recovery from significant water / electrolyte loss. If you are not...

People often ask me about fitness programs for kids who are actively involved with sports, martial arts, and other physical activities. Recently, a friend of mine asked, "My 12 year old son has done a few years of karate when he was younger, plays sports, runs on a cross country team, and has tried P90x. Is this OK and do you recommend working out this young? What about weight lifting?"I think that it is great that one of the first introductions to athletics was a martial arts program. Kids at a very early age learn not only discipline, focus, and...

Why Are You Doing Daily Calisthenics? (High Reps) This one drives me crazy. Far too often I see this comment followed by the question - "why aren't I getting stronger in my PT?" This question is about adding PT everyday into a workout program for hundreds of repetitions each day! "Stew, I have been doing 500 pushups and situps along with 100+ pullups everyday for the past few months. I saw some great increases but now my increases have stopped and starting to turn into decreases on some days I test. What is going on? I thought it was OK...

This week a National Guard soldier who is preparing for his PFT asked a common question that many people get wrong. “Since I have a cold (head stuffed, sore throat, sinus pain) is it OK to PT or run?”First of all, anytime you go into a public facility consider it germ infested during the flu season -- especially a gym. Catching colds from your kids who attend school, from living in barracks, or from cafeterias is all too common during the flu season. By simply washing your hands and using hand cleaner throughout your day, you can significantly decrease your...

Here is an emailed question about not having the facilities to do pullups. I have a hard time with this one as I have not been a gym member for nearly twenty years and have no issues with finding pullup bars or even building my own for little or no money. Just use some good old fashioned ingenuity or buy an inexpensive pullup bar system if you need to. One observation too - have you noticed there is NEVER a line in the gym for the pull up bars? There is a reason - Pullups are hard to do -...