Stew Smith Fitness News

I was honored to get a phone call from Pavel Tsatsouline the other day and after an hour of conversing about each others training methods, we agreed to write an article on each other's websites. If you are not familiar with Pavel, check out his website StrongFirst.com as well as several published books and countless videos on Youtube discussing movements and the science behind his training methods. He uses a diverse number of activities to train others as well as maintain an advanced level of strength, cardio fitness, flexibility, and mobility.  From calisthenics, kettlebells, Olympic / power lifts, and more,...

Fitness for BeginnersDo you need a little Fitness Motivation?  Check this out. So many times I have seen people start off after long periods of time off with physical activity and make Day One a 3-4 mile run because "that is what they used to do." This philosophy can also be seen in the weight room with people lifting heavier weights with high volume (weights or calisthenics) than they should at first. Depending on your goals and your chosen method of exercise, I would start off doing the following: - TREAT YOURSELF LIKE A BEGINNER (at least for a few weeks)...

     Do You Have This Dream?  Serving Your Country and Community....      Do you want to be selected in a job within the tactical professions - meaning the military, police, firefighter and serve your country and community? Do you need to pass a fitness test in order to maintain your job or advance within your current profession?  Have you trained to crush a PT Test before? Are Pushups, Situps, Pullups, and running "long distance" your nemesis? If so - have you experienced failure with getting results in these fitness tests in the past and now you’re worried about...

Nutrition for Energy: Eat, Sleep, Recover We eat and sleep nearly every day of our lives unless extraordinary circumstances occur. So, we should get good at it if we care about performance and recovery. In fact, you can use all the recovery tools and methods you want, if you just focus on your sleep and nutrition, you will have close to 90% of the recovery issue handled.  Sure, there are times that the "missing 10%" can come in handy with massage tools, supplements, hot/cold treatments, compression gear and more tools of the trade, but for the most part if you...

My Love - Hate Relationship with Running and Lessons Learned Along the Way Coming from a strength / power / speed / agility athletic history, anything over 100m of running was considered long distance. I thought - why run 3-4 miles for a workout when all I had to do was run a 100 yd field fast and some bases that were 90ft apart from each other? So I did not do long distance running in my early teens. One of the things that did get me to start running "long distance" of 1-2 miles was joining the military. Yes...