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Home Leg Workout for Men – No Equipment Necessary

Another at-home workout! This is 8 minutes of total work designed to really hit your legs. See more at home workouts videos for men here.

2 mins Box Jumps

2 mins Air Squats

1 min rest

2 mins Box Jumps

2 mins Air Squats

The box jumps and air squats are a great leg workout for men. If you’re doing this at home and don’t have access to a plyo box you can use a chair, a bed, stairs, a table to do step-ups(I wouldn’t recommend jumping on anything that’s not designed to be jumped on). Or you can build your own plyo box at home for about $35.

Box jumps will build plyometric strength and increase your heart-rate. Fantastic exercise for overall athletic ability and conditioning.

Air squats are great for building strength in the legs, targeting your glutes, hamstrings, and quads. They’re also hands down the best hypertrophy exercise you can do without weights.

Post your total number of reps below!(I forgot to count mind haha).

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Online Gaming Addiction – Are you Addicted? Should you be worried?

I received an e-mail from Curtis today: he would like to eliminate his “online gaming addiction” and spend more time on his life goals.

This brought up a few questions:

  • What’s the definition of gaming addiction?
  • Are games bad for you?
  • Is it possible to have a healthy relationship with online games?

Online Gaming Addiction

An addiction is defined as a substance or activity that is compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities. Let’s break that down in relation to online games:

Online Gaming Addiction
Online Gaming Addiction
  • Compulsive – do you find yourself playing games even when you know you should be doing something else? To put it another way: are you choosing to game, or are you playing despite your desire to do something else?
  • Interference with ordinary life responsibilities – Is your gaming habit interfering with your school, work, or relationships? This was certainly the case for me from the ages of 13-22. I logged on average 60 hours a week in online games(UO, EQ, DAOC, WoW) and consistently chose to play the game over getting a job, going to class, or spending time with friends.

Are games bad for you?

It depends. How’s that for a terrible answer?

But really, it depends. It depends on whether you fit the definition of addiction. If a game is interfering with your life and causing you to compulsively play then games are bad for you. A game should not interfere with your health, relationships, or responsibilities. After all it’s just a game. No one given the conscious choice would choose a game over their health, yet, that is the reality of what gaming addiction causes.

Games also bring a myriad of benefits. Especially online gaming. It improves your visual-spatial awareness. Hand-eye coordination. Improves cognitive function. And most importantly it is social and connects you with others which can give you a sense of community and belonging and satisfy some deeply held social needs that can sometimes be difficult to find in real life.

And it’s fun. People become addicted to games because they’re fun and enjoyable. In the sense of entertainment and fun, for me, nothing comes close to playing online games. If gaming brings me more happiness and fun than any other leisure activity why shouldn’t I indulge in it during my leisure hours?

Is it possible to have a healthy relationship with online games?

Absolutely. Like anything else the key is moderation and balance.

Easier in theory than practice. Games are designed to be addictive. And like an alcoholic a gaming addict might find that they cannot avoid gaming addiction without complete abstinence. This is something that varies with each person’s individual brain chemistry.

Personally I had to eliminate games completely for a year before I could find my ideal balance. Now I play 15-20 minutes of Hearthstone or Heroes of the Storm three to four days a week. The games come only after I’ve completed all my other priorities(work, exercise, nutrition, reading, meditating). I consciously avoid playing MMOs like World of Warcraft because I know that for my personality type I can’t play a MMO without dumping every spare moment into the game.

How to break a gaming habit

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”- Aristotle

To accomplish new goals you need to build new habits. Trying to stop a gaming addiction with sheer will-power is non-productive and will not work long-term. You need to replace the gaming habit with a new healthier habit. Try starting a new intermittent fasting diet.

For example: You find that your habit is to come home, load up a game, and play until 2am. You want to exercise more, eat better, and study more. You need to start by short-circuiting your gaming habit. Tape a big piece of paper over your monitor with a check-list: exercise, cook dinner, study. And make a promise to yourself that you cannot remove that piece of paper until you’ve checked off all three items. Even if you only spend 5 minutes exercising, and 5 minutes studying, and cook a can of tuna. The point is to rewire your habit of what you do when you come home. I guarantee that if you do this for 30 days you will naturally WANT to exercise, and cook dinner, and study, because those are the new habits that you have formed.

If you need a good book to read check out Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.

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A long overdue update.

Crazy is not a strong enough adjective to describe the past year. Insane. That’s closer. Indescribable. Probably the most accurate.

In January I was ontop of the world. Nothing could go wrong. I knew, with certainty, that opening up a gym would be the first step to complete financial freedom and getting everything I ever wanted in life. In May I opened the doors. By August I was struggling to even wake up because of crippling depression.

There were thoughts of driving to the mountains and living out of my car until I was out of cash… and then, well, it wasn’t a pretty thought. Of emptying my bank account and flying off to Thailand.

And then somehow, miraculously, I found the perfect buyers. Sold the gym, got a job as an Accountant, and then worked myself into a position of managing paid online ads for the company.

That’s a short version of how the last year has gone. If you want some more details here’s a reddit thread I made about the gym: http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2r1jbi/i_opened_then_sold_a_crossfit_gym_story_and_ama/

Some lessons I wish to share

  • Never give up. Never ever ever give up. As long as you draw breath keep taking steps forward. The greatest arrogance of man is his belief that he has even an inkling of what the future will bring. We have no idea – so with that in mind no matter how bleak your path looks realize that you’re not seeing the whole picture. Never give up.
  • All of the answers to your problems reside in your mind. Take time everyday to sit quietly and ask yourself: what can you improve on, what are the major problems afflicting you in life, and how can you solve those problems? Your mind contains more potential riches than all the vaults of the Earth. It will provide you with as many solutions as you give it questions. Feed it the questions.
  • With love and an open heart you can accomplish anything. Don’t let the pains and difficulties of life cause you to shut down your heart.
  • Stop worrying. Plan, organize, think. But don’t worry.
  • If I can do it, so can you. This is the 8th major depressive episode I’ve made it through now. Each one has successively stripped away negative elements of my personality and shaped me into a better, stronger human being. If I can do it, so can you. Keep going. This too shall pass.

My new theory for depression

I’ve always thought of my depression as just a natural part of who I was. I’ve assumed that I’ll always have highs and lows. But I recently recognized a very interesting trend – each summer, around the May-June time frame my cognitive function would decline sharply. It feels like I’m struck stupid. 8 months out of the year I’m a great conversationalist, writer, speaker, thinker. The other four I may as well be a zombie.

May-June also happens to be when allergy season kicks off in Missouri. And I was told by the nurse who administered my allergy skin-test that she had “never seen anyone as allergic to trees and grasses as I was.”

Briefly, my new theory is that my depression is largely modulated by chronic inflammation. Allergy season creates massive acute inflammation, which then starts a chain reaction of poor performance coupled with biologically caused depression which feed upon each other until I am fully incapacitated. Then allergy season goes away, I slowly recover, and by November/December I feel like myself again and become productive again.

If you want to read more detail I wrote a reddit thread here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/2vngh3/food_for_thought_inflammation_may_be_a_primary/

Here are the steps I’m taking now to keep my overall inflammatory load low and thereby prevent future major depressive episodes:

  • Eliminating processed carbohydrates from my diet.
  • Supplementing with magnesium, vitamin D, Tumeric, Ginseng, Ashwagandha, Multi-vitamin.
  • Meditating daily.
  • Allergy immunotherapy.
  • Sleep is a top priority, along with naps.
  • Exercise(of course!).
  • Eating pro-biotic foods(fermented foods, yogurts).

Having taken these steps my brain feels incredibly clear. This entire post has taken less than 20 minutes to write. I started right into it. I’m doing really well at work. Motivated to work on Healthy Gamer and other side-business ideas. All-in-all life is really great, and, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that my body is actually functioning optimally.

If you deal with chronic fatigue, depression, lack of energy/motivation… maybe try putting yourself on a anti-inflammatory regime. For me it’s helped tremendously.

Feel free to leave any questions you have below, I’ll be checking back and answering. And keep an eye-out for new videos. The plan is to put out at least 1 workout video a week and then start adding more on top of that.

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Titanfall Beta Review by Gull

My targeting reticule flashes on a dark corner and I fire three times. Though, I was not aiming accurately the bullets strike true and the enemy pilot dies. My smart-gun could see what I could not: a cloaked enemy, waiting in ambush. I sprint through the abandoned building, running along walls, and leaping over the broken floor, before finally entering the battlefield at large. The robotic support officer’s face appears on my screen, “enemy Titans in the area,” as a massive robot slams into the ground. Blinded by dust, I switch to my rocket launcher in vain as I’m crushed by a massive metal foot. Welcome to Titanfall.

The multiplayer first person shooter genre has been stale for the last few years. Call of Duty 4 was great, but each iteration afterward (has) failed to capture my attention. Battlefield Bad Company 2 kept me up late during my all too short weekends, but I did not even bother to purchase 3 and 4. Titanfall is the new Multiplayer FPS by Respawn Entertainment. In case you hadn’t heard of them, Respawn is made up of the majority of the old Infinity Ward, the team behind Call of Duty Modern Warfare (one). They innovated the genre then, and they have done it again.

Titanfall pits two relatively small teams of players in 6 vs. 6 battles. Currently in the beta there are three modes: Attrition, Hardpoint, and Last Titan Standing. What are Titans? Titans are giant mechs which can be used by the player to gain an edge on the battlefield. You can customize your pilot with different weapons and perks, and can unlock new upgrades and perks by completing challenges.

Players can wall-run, sprint at speeds that would make Bolt blush, and double jump across impossible distances. This sets the game apart from other current generation shooters. Walls and buildings help you chain together double jumps and wall bounces to scale buildings to dodge opponents or to get the perfect sniping spot.

The Titans are big mech fighting suits that your pilot can either have fight on their own controlled by the AI or assume direct control of. Piloting your Titan sacrifices mobility for increased durability and firepower. The 40mm Cannon my Titan has equipped will one shot a player. All pilots are equipped with some form of anti-Titan weapon. Enemy pilots can leap on and blast the Titan directly in the control unit if they can survive long enough in close-quarters combat. This bypasses the Titan’s shields and directly damages the Titan’s hull.

Piloting a Titan gives you a bigger punch but also makes you vulnerable to ambushes. You’re always on the lookout for pilots on the roofs or hiding inside buildings. Titans, when properly utilized, can turn the tide of a battle. However they are superbly balanced as to be not overpowered. When you start a match you have 3 minute timer until you can summon your Titan. This timer is reduced by damaging and killing other pilots or minions, which are another fresh element of Titanfall.

Minions are best equated to the creep or minions in games like Dota or League of Legends. The minions are AI teammates that litter the battlefield helping you maintain position or attack your enemies. Their main function in my opinion is to make the player feel more epic. I’ve run across enemy minions holding one of my team’s minions in a choke hold while another is prepped to punch him. When I enter the room they freeze for a second allowing me to shoot both the bad guys in the head, my AI ally gets up and thanks me before we continue on our merry way. They also have chatter which serves to bolster your ego, “Don’t worry boys! We got a pilot here!” and “These guys are bad ass!” are some examples of their phrases. As many of us know, it is very frustrating to be doing poorly in an FPS, but with the minions around you can still feel good as you run into a room and easily dispatch 4 or 5 minions. The minions are not just there to provide enrich the gaming experience though, in the Attrition game mode you still receive points that count toward winning the match by killing them. The minions further build on Titanfall’s epic experience.

I was not excited or hyped for this game at all, but then I got into the beta and on whim started playing. I didn’t stop playing until my girlfriend dragged me away. I had a dream about piloting a Titan as I slept after the first night; this game has got me hooked. Titanfall checks most boxes for a good FPS: tight controls, fun and innovative gameplay, and balance. Give it a try or check out our videos at youtube.com/Gullington or here on The Healthy Gamer!

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