Last week, I had the pleasure of spending a majority of my time sitting on my butt, out with a fever. With all of this down-time, it gave me the chance to catch up on some much needed internet scouring for good information. Since it's Saturday, and I know a lot of you will have some down time this weekend, what better way to spend it than reading up on some of the highlights of what I found? 1. Bojan Kostevski has a tremendous article on Intermittent Fasting that may not necessarily be anything new, but it's VERY informative. In it he clearly discusses what the data from his extensive research has laid out and puts it in a way that's easy to understand. I personally have begun to play around with IF and found this article extremely helpful to confirm my current methods and really see the pro's and con's of fasting. You can read Bojan's article and study here: The Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Human and Animal Health

2. My buddy Brandon LaVack of LaVack Fitness has recently upped his blogging game, causing me to snoop around his site. I found this amazing article on running injuries and the influence that your shoes and diversity of movement can have on them. Brandon is the go-to guy for lowering your running times and preparing your body to fight crime as the Flash. Any information that he gives on the subject is extremely valuable. You can read his article here: Shoe Implications for Injury Reduction in Running

3. Dr. Kathy Dooley has done it again. If you don't follow her, I highly recommend you start. She puts out a daily, QUALITY blog that ranges from topics on movement, anatomy, pathology, motivation and just being a better person. With her background as a chiropractor and anatomist and her passion for movement and training, she brings a lot to the table. One of my favorite articles that she has done is, "Why Your Group Class Failed You." It's music to a trainer's ears and is exactly why we run things the way we do at SAPT. You can read the article here: Why Your Group Class Has Failed You

4. I hate Jilian Michaels. I love Dean Somerset. So an article by Dean on how Jilian sucks was right up my alley. He brings up great points that I think we as an industry need to get behind to fix so that our field can have more clarity for the general public. Only then will the trainers who go above and beyond start to be recognized for their practice rather than the idiots who are screwing people up and getting paid for it. You can find his article here: How Do You Tell Who Is The Expert.

5. I am also a huge fan of Bret Contreras and all that he does for the field. Especially when he is calling out the idiots who are holding us back, which he does in the following article. In it he calls for a debate with a self-proclaimed functional guru who has been slandering others' training tactics with his own pseudo-sience. This is less of an informative read and more of an, "Oh no he didn't." But I still think that you can take some great info from it. You can read all about it here.

6. Lastly, is an article from Charles Poliquin. If you don't know who he is, then you should just spend the next hour reading stuff on his site, it's all gold. He recently put out an article on the current state of mens' hormones. A surprising amount of health issues exist due to the negative impact our daily life has on our endocrine system. A large amount of Coach Poliquin's work has been on undoing that damage. This most certainly isn't is most in-depth article on the subject, but I think it's a good wake-up call for many men. You can read more about it here: The Testosterone/Estrogen Balance In Men