Naturally Intense High Intensity Personal Training™ Blog

Happiness is not a matter of intensity- but of balance

I am sorry to say this but I don’t believe life revolving around training and working out. Which may come as a surprise to many that look at me and think that I spend hours and hours slaving away at the gym and then the rest of time counting calories and starving myself. No, Going to the gym should be a means to an end and not an end in itself.

You go there to get the tools you need to make your life outside the gym more meaningful, but if there is no life outside the gym there is no meaning to the endeavour. You must have a healthy balance of activities, including a social and family life.  That is the only way that you can truly attain balance. We often look at those that spend countless hours in the gym as somehow being healthy, but the truth is that they can’t be. Anything, in excess even exercise is detrimental.

NOTE: If you liked my blog post and are able to forward it to a friend, or give me a Stumble thumbs up or review, Digg it and add it to a few other social networking sites or link it to your blog, I would very much appreciate it!  Thanks for reading!

Lose weight, build real muscle and get Superfit training only 10 minutes 3 times a week! That’s the slogan and the 100% guarantee of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™ created by visionary NYC personal trainer, internationally renowned natural bodybuilder and fitness expert, Kevin Richardson. Get a copy of Kevin’s free award winning weight loss ebook here!

Get weekly reviews of healthy restaurants in the NYC metropolitan area from fitness writer and NYC’s most sought after personal trainer- Kevin Richardson. A great resource for everyone, as the tips and guides in food selection can help everyone make better choices when eating out- regardless of where they are!

The question always come up with my personal training clients- can I stay on my diet and still be able to eat out? You see, most of the time we equate eating out as an activity that is not necessarily good for you. Staying on the right track diet wise brings to mind the idea of a Spartan and isolated existence- where food becomes fuel, and taste and satisfaction is secondary to eating according to several preset rules. My philosophy, and that of the Naturally Intense System, is that being healthy has mean eating foods that you want to eat, not just foods that you have to eat, and too often we fail in our attempts to lose weight or improve our health because we see this as being impossible. The good news is that it isn’t. Just because Fettuccine Alfredo may not be the best idea for you when you go out, doesn’t mean that there are not several other selections that you can enjoy.

One great aspect about living in New York City is that there are so many restaurants that offer wholesome and weight loss friendly menu items. It may come as a shock to many that I eat out on at least a weekly basis and stay within the parameters of my ‘diet’- although at this point it really isn’t a diet, it is just a way of living to be honest. But the point is that you just have to know where to go and of course, what to order. My goal is that these weekly blog posts will highlight some of those health-friendly restaurants in the New York City area, as well as provide a template for anyone interested in knowing what to eat, and what not to eat when they go out for lunch or dinner. The way it works is that every week I will post a review of a new restaurant complete with the menu items that I ate, and the ones that fall in line with the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise. (Kind of like a Zagat for eating right.)

The restaurants and food categories will vary from lunch items to dinner items, Mexican cuisine to Asian Fusion- you name it, I will cover it- and the best part is that I have one more excuse to go out with my better half and the kids.

Be sure to subscribe to my blog for the weekly updates (look for them every Friday- so you’ll have some ideas for the weekend) and you can follow along on Twitter as well! Thanks for stopping by and I hope these posts go a long way in helping people overcome any ideas that eating healthy means not being able to enjoy a normal life.

Next Friday log in for our first review- Alma-  a true landmark NYC dining spot. You’ll learn just what you can order guilt free. See you in 7!

Updated Reviews:

 Healthy Restaurants In NYC Reviews- Blue Ribbon Sushi- Japanese Cuisine

NYC Healthy Restaurant Reviews- Tamarind Indian Cuisine- Indian Cuisine

NYC Healthy Restaurant Reviews- Nice Green Bo- Chinese Cuisine

NYC Healthy Restaurant Reviews- Alma- Mexican Cuisine

Healthy NYC Restaurant Reviews- Nyonya- Malaysian Cuisine

Is The Food At Subway Really Healthy?

NOTE: If you liked my blog post and are able to forward it to a friend, or give me a Stumble thumbs up or review, Digg it and add it to a few other social networking sites or link it to your blog, I would very much appreciate it!  Thanks for reading!

Celebrity personal trainer NYC, Kevin Richardson is an award winning health and fitness writer, natural bodybuilding champion and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here.

When I was 17 years old, I tore my rotator cuff and I had a numbing fear that all that I had accomplished in terms of bodybuilding and martial arts, would be relegated to the past because of that injury. But I did not let it stop me, I went to the gym nevertheless and trained my legs and whatever else that I could without causing too much pain to my shoulder, all while going to therapy for it every day for weeks.

My shoulder healed, and then I herniated two lumbar discs in my lower back doing bench squats with 495lbs. I was going down and my partner didn’t stop me in time from sitting right on the bench with almost 500lbson my back. I heard a click and then I was in excruciating pain. I went to the doctor and they said that I would never be able to deadlift and squat the way I used to, and that herniation was a lifelong injury. The experience and determination that I learned when dealing with my shoulder kicked in, and I would not hear it. I was in agony every second of the day, and could hardly even sleep or cough for three months straight, but I dragged myself to the gym and did what I could and never missed a day.

It hurt like hell, but a year later I was 100% back, with no problems whatsoever- to this day I have never had any lower back pain, and I did my all time max squat of 695 a few years after the injury, as well as my all time best deadlift of 695lbs.

All went well for years afterwards, since I learned over time how to train to avoid injury, until in 2001 while doing cable curls with 250lbs, a guy doing pullups behind me, slipped and fell, falling on me while I was just pulling the weight up. His elbow hit my neck and I heard a snap. I could not move the next day, and the MRI showed severe herniation of two of my cervical vertebrae. Again, I was told that I would never do this or that again, and again I ignored them. I went right back to the gym and worked my way back to full strength. Through all of those episodes, I never used painkillers (I don’t like drugs and I don’t use them in any form- I have also been a lifetime drug free athlete and I don’t even use supplements) and I accepted each incident as a chance for me to grow as a human being.

The traditional martial art that I teach and devoted my life to studying calls for every experience to be seen as an opportunity for self improvement, and regards adversity as an inevitable consequence of life itself and that it must be endured and accepted, and in that way it becomes a tool that we harness for our own enlightenment. It is this philosophy that I pass on to you. Remember that there is a part of you that is untouched by the pain and the adversity that you are going through right now, a part of you that is unstoppable and is thoroughly motivated towards the accomplishment of your goals. It is there, find it and go out there and be the best that you can be.

NOTE: If you liked my blog post and are able to forward it to a friend, or give me a Stumble thumbs up or review, Digg it and add it to a few other social networking sites or link it to your blog, I would very much appreciate it!  Thanks for reading!

Celebrity personal trainer NYC, Kevin Richardson is an award winning health and fitness writer, natural bodybuilding champion and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here.

For most personal training clients one of the most amazing aspects of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™ isn’t the fantastic changes that they see in their bodies, but rather the ease with which they find themselves eating better as a result of the training. The core goal of the 10 minute workouts is to bring about a change in your body, in terms of increasing muscle mass and energy requirements by forcing the body to really work at its peak. All our clients are given dietary guides designed specifically for them, their goals and their lifestyle, and almost all of them balk at the idea that they will be able to follow the recommendations laid out in their individual eating guide. However as time goes by, they are astonished to find that the junk foods that they once ate no longer appeal to them and in fact they are more attracted to the foods on their dietary guide than the foods that they thought they could never give up! The analogy I like to present is that of a car. Most people have shall we say a standard run of the mill Honda Accord. It’s a pretty average vehicle, and they use it to go to work during the week and occasionally for a road trip on the weekends. Now with such a car, it would not at all be a problem to fill it up with regular unleaded fuel. Sure it is not the best quality of gas, but for the level of performance required, you really don’t see much of a difference. Now by starting the Naturally Intense™ System, those 10 minute workouts take you from driving a regular Honda, and upgrade you to a Ferrari Testarossa! And you have to really use that car, as you are no longer just making small trips here and there, but taking your high performance sports car and really pushing its limits on a regular basis. Driving it at top speeds in car races! Now if you were to put unleaded regular gas in your Ferrari and try to do several laps at over 200 miles per hour, you would immediately feel a difference in performance! In fact you wouldn’t even consider putting anything but high octane fuel in your car to really get the most out of it, and the same rules apply to your body! The holistic approach of the Naturally Intense™ System is that by changing the body, you change the mind. By increasing your muscle mass and in a sense turning you into a high performance machine, you lose the desire over time to put anything but the best quality fuels in your body. This organic approach to dietary modification is one that has helped so many people that have struggled for years with their eating, and is the foundation for the lifestyle change that is the end result of the Naturally Intense™ System. My philosophy is and always will be that if you are eating good foods because you have to, and not because you want to- you are not healthy. True health can only occur if the foods that you want to eat and the foods that are good for you are the same. Thus my system serves to teach people to self regulate and is not a method that tells anyone what not to do at any time.

Celebrity personal trainer NYC, Kevin Richardson is an award winning health and fitness writer, natural bodybuilding champion and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here.

Hi, my name is Kevin Richardson and I am the founder of the Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™ and head trainer of Naturally Intense NYC Personal Training Services. I created and refined the system over the course of 18 years as part of my own quest for the most efficient and effective method of training and it has been instrumental in my success and the success of the hundreds that I have had the honor of training over the almost two decades of my career as a personal trainer. Over the next twenty blog posts I will detail exactly what you can accomplish using the high intensity and holistic dietary practices of the Naturally Intense™ System.

Will Help You Decrease Your Body Fat. The first thing you will notice- and in as little as two weeks, is a reduction in your body fat. The Naturally Intense™ System helps you lose body fat in three simple ways-

The Naturally Intense System of Diet & Exercise™

Step 1: by increasing your metabolism from the muscle mass built from the high intensity workouts your body will burn more fat while doing nothing. Muscle is metabolically active, which means that you need to use up energy to sustain it, so you will find yourself naturally losing body fat as you gain muscle.

Step 2: the increased muscle mass and the high performance demands from the workouts will change your nutritional requirements. You will find that you no longer crave junk foods and instead you will naturally gravitate towards the foods that your body needs- which in time will result in fat loss that you can easily maintain, since you will no longer want to eat the foods that will increase your body fat in the first place.

Step 3: The increased energy that you will have from the combination of the 10 minute workouts and your new dietary plan will encourage you to be far more active than you were before and you’ll burn even more calories naturally as a result of your increased activity. Not only is a favorable change in body composition something that will increase your self esteem but it also reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity- some major life threatening diseases!

Celebrity personal trainer NYC, Kevin Richardson is an award winning health and fitness writer, natural bodybuilding champion and the creator of Naturally Intense High Intensity Training™. Get a copy of his free weight loss ebook here.