Sleep to gain Muscle and Burn Fat

Hi everyone

I hope this blog finds everyone fit and well.

Building Muscle takes a lot of hard work, and if you are going to do all of that hard work, you want to ensure you feed your body right, and also get enough sleep in order to make your workouts pay off. When you sleep, your muscles grow from the workout that you gave them, but guess what! If you don’t sleep properly your efforts will be wasted rather than rewarded.

Recovery Time

Your body needs substantial recovery time after a workout, that means 8 hrs sleep each night, (not 10hrs one night and 5hrs the next). You cannot store sleep, so it must be regular, adequate sleep is something you must engage in every single night.

Stages of Sleep

There are 5 stages to sleep and if you are like most people leading stress filled lives, you never make it past stage 1 or 2. Because of this you will wake up feeling as tired and drained of energy as what you did when you went to bed. This type of sleeping will not help you to build muscle.

If you were to practice deep breathing, or meditation before going to bed you would be more likely to reach stages 4 and 5 where your body can heal, repair and grow. These are the stages of sleep you need to get to in order for you muscles to grow. Your body however will react to a number of different elements in your life. You must also focus on stress relief, eating right and exercising on a regular basis. A good Personal Trainer will be able to help you with this.

During the deep sleep stage, your body goes through a process of specific adaptation to imposed demand, which means your body goes through a process of building your muscles bigger and stronger so that when you work out again, they will be ready. This is the reward you will get from your workouts if you get the right amount and type of sleep, they will build bigger and stronger.

Additional benefit

How does your body get the energy to do all of this work while you are asleep. The answer is Fat, that’s right, that rotten old body fat that all of us want to get rid of, while you are in a deep sleep, not moving at all, your muscles are using your fat stores, so, not only are you building muscle but you are also burning fat simply by getting a proper amount of sleep, I’m sure you won’t want to complain about that.

I don’t have time

Look at ways you can do things better through the day, can things you go out for be done online or on the phone etc, Use time blocking for certain tasks and do them in that time. Prioritise. Your family, work and sleep should be your priorities, and you will be able to deal with all of them far more efficiently by getting a proper amount of sleep, so if you want to live your life to it’s fullest (and who wouldn’t want to)? Get the right amount and type of sleep and in return you will have increased muscle, lose weight and feel rested and ready to tackle each day.

Goodnight from me for now, see you in around 8 hours.

[Via http://maddiganbr.wordpress.com]

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Bad Moments on the History Channel – Ancient Alien Contact

The History Channel is a fine resource for individuals with a casual interest in history to learn about many exciting topics, the History channel attempts to introduce people to a wide variety of periods and events in history, often it does an okay job in its introductions.  Unfortunately it also on occasion wings out onto a bizarre tangent of doom in which it will present, in full cable glory, a theory of incredible madness as either proven fact or as a compelling question for people to consider.  Probably one of the finest examples of this is the History Channel’s efforts to explain the idea that ancient visiting alien beings, from off-planet, had an impact upon early forming human cultures.  Theories about the level of this impact range from the aliens landing, giving our ancestors a “high-five” on being intelligent and farming, and then blasting off back to the nether regions of space to the aliens teaching us everything from stone-cutting to urban development.  Some believe that these alien visitors would have been perceived as divinities by our ancestors, citing rock-carvings depicting “odd occurrences” in the past that could be depictions of alien contact.  These usually involve stone carvings of objects flying through the sky, carvings of beings apparently sitting in stars or spheres in the sky, up to an ancient Meso-American deity depicted in a space-ship capsule.

Those who hold to these theories dismiss the notion that the carvings could be metaphors, depicting supernatural events, or that they could be attempting to capture in stone tales of the divine with cultural impact for the viewers.  Although those who support ancient alien visitors will admit that could be the case, they will then say with a smile and a twinkle of hope in their eye, “But what if they depict something else instead…”  Normally I am one to allow individuals their fantasies and if it gives people a warm fuzzy feeling to believe that the divine beings of our ancients were space aliens rather then a personification of the Earth in female form making passionate love to a personification of the Sky, so be it.  Certainly it is no more odd then believes that humans came from the armpits of a dead god who fell from the sky and decayed on the ground.  However looking at rock carvings as a possible source of this proof is faulty at best and a bad application of history, because it ignores the highly likely fact these carvings depict mythical or symbolic relationships that were understandable to those who they were carved for but whose meaning we have lost.  What frustrates me most is that people seem to understand this but actively don’t want to believe it, on this show they argue over and over again that our ancestors would have carved something depicting something flying in the sky only if they had seen it, where else might they get the idea?

Do me a favor, take a dollar bill out of your pocket, look at the portrait side, and then flip it over.  See on the back, see the two symbols that make up the Great Seal of the United States, one to a side, check out the one left, the giant eyeball floating over the unfinished pyramid, the eyeball with rays coming out of it.  You know what that means, or should, it depicts the all-seeing eye of the Judeo-Christian divinity looking over the work of the founding fathers, unfinished, as represented by the pyramid.  (If you like it represents the all-seeing eye of the Masons looking over the world and the pyramid is just another sign of the Masons, either way though, you know it means something human and earthly in origin.)  But bury a bronze medallion with that seal on it in the ground for a millennium, dig it up, and suddenly you will find people arguing that the floating eye represents the aliens, looking over us, as we build our city structures under their guidance.  People we can talk with items floating in space today, if we go through another period in which knowledge contracts and only those stories get through, how long before it was aliens showing us how to achieve that goal?  I have never seen a giant disembodied eyeball floating over a pyramid, neither have you, at least not sober, but we were able to create this symbol with meaning out of our imagination.  I am annoyed that many “experts” on this subject seem disinclined to provide the same abilities to our forebears.

As well the other annoying argument from that show, “with their level of technology this level of precision carving was impossible, simply impossible.”  To which I reply “timescale, you are forgetting timescale, the timescales of our forebears were not the same as our own.”  Our civilization builds things in months and years but past civilizations built things in decades and centuries, in fact it was only seven centuries or so ago when Europe built stone temples to the Judeo-Christian divinity that could take a full century to finish, three lifespans, yet no one would contend today that these items were built using amazing technologies from the stars.  No cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built the same way that ancient stone monuments were built: slowly, with great skill, with great patience, and with a great attention to detail.  You can carve a stone with amazing precision if you do it over a span of a year, you can move huge boulders great distances if you have a gang of a hundred working on moving one or two stones per season.  Sure it might take two centuries to finish, but when building for the divine, human time scales are not so critical.

Do I have more proof then those on the History Channel?  No, sadly, at the moment I do not, and neither do they, however I call upon those who see these sorts of shows to think carefully, what is more reasonable?  Humans working for centuries to build monuments to the divine, massive undertakings built to impress and awe, behavior we have ample written evidence of already in our history OR that aliens came to Earth and moved the boulders for our ancestors?

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Foreign soldiers in the Wehrmacht during WW2

One of the most amazing facts of the Second World war is that people of many foreign countries fought in the German army as Wehrmacht soldiers.

Turkish

Koreans


Jews. Mostly as guards of concentration camps. Jews of course were not foreigners. They were as German as anyone else.

It would be interesting to understand why a Jew would act as a guard in a a concentration camp; a place where his kith and kin were persecuted. The most opportunistic types. Those who prefer to survive without any principles, perhaps?

Japanese

What were the Japs doing here? They could have well served in their nation's army. Some kind of exchange? Or were there Japanese people in Germany in large numbers?

This Japanese is an officer in the German army

Indians. Efforts of Subhash Chandra Bose.

Bose was anti-British. He met Hitler in Berlin and raised the Indian unit in the Wehrmacht. Enemy's enemy is a friend, I guess.

Georgians and Azerbaijanis


Chechen

One can understand the Chechen in the German army. Their struggle against Russia continues till this day.


Bosnian Muslims



Africans

Hitler shrewdly maintained good relations with the Arab world

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Life under German occupation in Russia: WW2

Frankly from the point of view of most Russians, it was not a bad life under the Germans during the Second World War. Most German soldiers were very disciplined and not women-ravishing monsters like the Soviet soldiers who occupied Berlin at the end of the war. Russians could freely practice their religion. Most hated Stalin and communism.

But it is not wise to say these things nowadays. In the West because the army of Nazi Germany has been branded as a bunch of devils. In Russia too every home has lost a member in the war and saying nice things about Wehrmacht during WW2 would not be wise.


But there is another side to the coin. The mentality of the German leaders their attitude towards the Russians. Hitler labeled them as sub-human (untermenschen). Himmler said that he would have no pity even if a Russian woman died after working like a slave for German cause. According to Erich Koch, Reich Commissar of occupied Ukraine the 'lowliest German worker was a thousand times more valuable' than the entire population of the Ukraine. 


In German occupied areas of Russia the people died of starvation. There was little food to go around. The people took to eating dogs, crows.. anything they could lay their hands on. In Kharkov 1,00,000 people died of starvation under German rule. 


Yet the hardy Russian people survived. Inna Gavrilchenko, A Russian woman, worked in a slaughterhouse in Kharkov. She used to smuggle out blood from there and ate 'blood omelettes'.


Russians throwing stones at a statue of Lenin in occupied Russia.

German soldiers watch as a Russian religious procession passes.


This Russian village had no use for this Soviet emblem.

This Wehrmacht soldier tends a Russian baby.

Russian women wave as German soldiers pass

Ordinary people everywhere are the same. They do not hate people of other nations. It is the leaders' who create discords.

This woman seems smitten by the handsome German officer.

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Attack on Russia: Early days: WW2

In the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the attack on Russia on June 21, 1941, the German progress was easy. It seemed by winter arrived, Moscow would fall. But Russia had a strong ally; the dreaded Russian winter. But that is another story.

Given below are snippets of the early days of the invasion. All the pictures have been taken by German soldiers.

New testimony and documentary evidence can now reveal that Stalin was seriously considering suing for peace and had even organised a 'getaway' train to take him to safety as German guns started pounding Moscow. His decision to stay and fight was a crucial turning point in the war.

A horse cart gets bogged down in the slush. The Russian terrain was a German enemy. So was the climate.

A Russian plane lies broken. That was Russia in late 1941.

HITLER INVADES RUSSIA (Source: BBC)

The Germans invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, and looked poised to take Moscow by October that year. With the benefit of hindsight, popular opinion has labelled Hitler as virtually insane for invading the Soviet Union, but at the time many people - including those influential in both Britain and America - thought his decision was a sound one. Indeed, Hitler came much closer to pulling off his grand plan than the Soviet Union was ever prepared to admit.

A Russian machine-gun unit lies destroyed.

The German Blitzkrieg technique was as devastating in Russia as it had been in the rest of Europe. The scene was set for a war of annihilation waged by the Nazis against the Soviets with no mercy shown by either side. One week into the German invasion, 150,000 Soviet soldiers were either dead or wounded - more than during the five months of the Battle of the Somme.

As the German armies swept further into the Russian heartland, one million Soviet troops were drafted to protect Kiev. But despite Stalin's ruthless order forbidding any city to surrender, Kiev fell and 600,000 Soviet soldiers were captured. By October 1941, three million Soviet soldiers were prisoners of war. New testimony and documentary evidence can now reveal that Stalin was seriously considering suing for peace and had even organised a 'getaway' train to take him to safety as German guns started pounding Moscow. His decision to stay and fight was a crucial turning point in the war.

German soldiers get a shoe-shine.

BRUTAL HITLER, BRUTAL STALIN.

Stalin and Hitler were together responsible for the leitmotiv of ruthless brutality that prevailed throughout the hostilities between Russia and Germany. During the Battle of Moscow, in which 8,000 Soviet citizens were executed for perceived cowardice, the Russian armies were forced to stand their ground, despite perishingly cold conditions of 43 degrees below freezing.
To prevent his soldiers deserting the front line around the capital, Stalin ordered special 'blocking detachments' to shoot all deserters. The Soviet leadership also instructed Soviet partisans operating in the countryside to kill anyone whom they believed was disloyal. This resulted in an effective carte blanche for partisans to abuse their power and extract whatever they wanted from helpless villagers.
A report from one partisan division shows that rape, killings and beatings were commonplace. To make villagers' lives still more hellish, in some areas, particularly the occupied Ukraine, nationalist partisans (as opposed to Soviet partisans), who were bent on freedom from the Soviet regime, also started up their own brutal operations in the countryside. Villagers were now faced with violence from three different fighting forces.
Russians did not suffer only from their own side. Nazi rule over the territories they captured from Russia was draconian. Erich Koch, Reich Commissar of occupied Ukraine stated that the 'lowliest German worker is a thousand times more valuable' than the entire population of the Ukraine. Starvation was widespread, with Soviet civilians forced to eat dogs - until the dog supply ran out and people were forced to turn to rats, crows and birch bark. In the Ukrainian town of Kharkov, which was administered by the German army, 100,000 people died of starvation and disease.

A Russian village burns

THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE SUFFERED

The German army, faced with an ever growing partisan threat, became increasingly comprehensive in their view about what constituted a partisan. One army document lists 1,900 partisans and their 'helpers', killed by the Germans in one action. But only 30 rifles and a handful of other weapons were found with them - more than 90% of those killed by the Germans had no guns.
And yet people still managed to survive. Inna Gavrilchenko tells how lucky she was to get a job in a slaughter house during the occupation of Kharkov. It gave her access to blood, which she smuggled out and cooked into a 'blood omelette'.

German planes have blown away this train.

German soldiers killed in action.

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Amazing photos from the Russian Front: WW2

This Russian soldier stands guard at Karelia.

Did you know that some Japanese too fought in the German army during the Second World War? Here they sit as POWs in Russia.

Contrary to the horror stories we hear about the brutal treatment German POWs received in Russian hands, here they are offered a smoke by a Russian soldier.

A Russian mortar fires away as the dutiful nurse does her job.

Russian soldiers move as a train chugs in the background.

Incredible! These Russian infantrymen are firing at a German plane!

And successfully, it seems!

One gets used to war. This elderly Russian woman calmly walks home while the Russian soldier is tense and ready for action.

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DANNY HINDALOV 02

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