Happy Friday!

I’ll tell ya. I can people watch all day sometimes. My favorite type is the person who insists on a smoothie for energy before they exercise.

As soon as they’re done exercising, 30 minutes later, they’re starving! So, they get themselves a wrap.

60 minutes after the start of their exercise journey, 1000 calories has been consumed, 30 minutes was used to eat and the other 30 to exercise. Interesting.

Trading 1 hour of your time in to exercise for 30 minutes so you can burn 200-350 calories for 800-1000 calories isn’t worth it, at all.

It’s worth it if you want to feel good. However, if you want to change how you look, that trade of time and calories for less time, more calories and sweat is not going to pay off!

If you’re exercising to change how you look it’s imperative to realize this.

You can run for 2 hours, be dripping in sweat, have burned 1500 calories, however, if you go grab yourself a milkshake and a turkey sandwich even, you’ll have been better off not exercising in the first place.

THE reason why you see people in the gym over and over – looking the same time after time  – is because they’re eating too much.

Think about that today and this weekend.

Are you exercising to change the way you feel or look? (No matter what it’ll make you feel good though!)

It’s no secret that sleep is essential for our overall well-being.

Studies show that not getting enough sleep has many health consequences, such as raising our risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity!

Lack of sleep also makes us cranky and less happy. And when we’re less happy we’re more likely to eat poorly. When we eat poorly, we’re less likely to be happy.

Want to make $60,000 extra per year while sleeping (literally!)?

According to author Norbert Schwarz, getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for your daily happiness than a $60,000 raise.

So how do you get more sleep? Like anything, you have to make time for it. Ideally, you’d get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. But sometimes, it’s hard to fall asleep.

Exercise to the rescue!

Well, according to one extensive study done this year on healthy children, sleep onset latency – the time it takes to fall asleep once in bed – ranged from as little as 10 minutes for some to as much as 40 for others.

However, physical activity during the day and sleep onset latency were closely linked. Apparently, every hour of sedentary activity during the day resulted in an additional 3 minutes it took to fall asleep at night.

And the children who fell asleep faster, slept longer too! They got an extra hour of sleep for every 10-minute reduction in time it took them to drift off.

But you aren’t a kid you say. We’ll we’re all kids at heart!

And studies done on adults have reached similar conclusions. For those who have trouble falling asleep – and staying asleep – exercise helps a lot!

Bottom line: The more active you are, the better you’ll sleep.

Last week, my aunt took me to see Cirque Du Soleil’s ‘Wintuk’ show. I’ve never seen a Cirque show so I was really excited because I’ve heard a lot about it.

I can safely say these guys/girls are the best athletes in the world. It is incredible some of the feats they pull off. (Although I didn’t see this in person here’s one I found which still boggles my mind, although, all their stunts did.)

Body control doesn’t do a justice. However, that’s what these athletes are masters of – body control.

Whether they are 40 feet in their air balancing themselves on a little ball or riding a bike and jumping up and down over someone’s head, body control is what it comes down to.

To be able to go from a sprint to a stand still is very hard. Much harder than going from a stand still to a sprint because momentum can be our worst and best friend.

A few days of eating right in a row can make us feel like we’re on top of the world. But a bad meal or two or three (which is inevitable) can be our demise.

With exercise, momentum is something we want to avoid.

For example, those guys in the gym that are curling too much weight, rocking their entire body in order to lift the weight, are using momentum to bring the weight up.

The idea is to use your bicep. Not momentum!

Of course, these guys think they look cool because they’re lifting a lot but they’re wasting their time. And they look silly. Ego lifters aren’t people you want to follow.

The goal is to have perfect form. Slow and steady. I don’t care about how much you can lift. I care about how much you can lift with perfect form.

The best way to achieve perfect form, at the very least, is to go slow. At least your muscles will feel the tension.

Both on the negative (lowering) and the positive (lifting) of the exercise.

Can you stop on a dime?

See if you can. If you can’t, you’re using too much momentum and not enough muscle.