I woke up nice and early this morning to play a round of golf with my new brother-in-law (refered to as BiL from here on). As I walked out the door, with a mug of hot coffee, the crisp morning air helped to finish the process of waking me up. Looking at the sky I knew it would clear up and become a perfect morning for golf. As I pulled into the course, there was one older gentleman teeing off, but no other cars there except my BiL's old beat up pickup truck. A good sign, It meant that we'd be able to enjoy the walk around the course at our own leisure and not have someone behind us waiting to tee off. (which, if you're a golfer, you know adds a little bit of pressure to your swing).

I wanted to throw up a Quick Stress Reliever tip that I think might help some people, not only will this relieve stress, but it will also help you get fit!

The next time you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed or stressed from your day to day interactions and responsibilities, spare 30 min. so you can engage in some moderate to high intensity aerobic exercise. Go out for a jog, bike run, possibly hit up the gym and jump on your favorite machine. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you get your heart moving. You'll notice that when you are done, your troubles and stress don't seem so bad anymore.

I picked up a copy of the Wii Fit this past week, and wanted to share some of my thoughts on it. I think that it is an amazing product, there are a few shortfalls in the software, one being you can't hit a button had go through a set 'program', you are stuck with manually selecting each exercise, but other then that, my wife, friends and I have had a lot of fun playing (and exercising!) with it. The way that the system uses your balance on the board to make sure you are doing the Yoga or other exercises properly is really well done and I feel that you can get a decent workout from playing.

In this article I am going to talk about the "Sit-Up" and the "crunch" (which is a half sit-up where you only go up half way), the two have been synonymous with each other for as long as they've been around, so I am going to say Sit-Up while referencing the both of them. Recently I have started doing a form of sit-up every night (or at least I try to do it every night). I have to say that even though I just started recently, I am already noticing a big difference and I feel a lot better for doing it. I wanted to take some time to talk about what I've been doing and why this little exercise that has been proven to work through the test of time should be made part of your daily routine.

This is a very common subject where you'll get a different answer from every person you ask. What I am going to do here is try to outline my thoughts on how someone should go about starting to exercise. The first thing you need to do is to give yourself an honest opinion of what your current fitness level is. If you start off thinking that you are more able then you really are, you have a lot higher chance of getting injured, and then stopping your routine completely. We want to avoid this, so whatever fitness level you say you are, make sure it is accurate and honest. When I speak of "fitness level" I'm not going by any guidelines, I just want you to be aware of what you can do, so you don't start off trying to run 20 kms or bench press 90kgs (~200lbs).

This months Money Sense magazine has an interesting article ("How to buy a will of iron" by Duncan Hood) that talks about setting rewards for making sure you accomplish your new years resolutions and any personal goals you set. He basically says that because of peoples natural aversion to loosing money, you are more likely to accomplish your goals if instead of setting a reward for doing something, you actually set a penalty for not doing it. So, for example, if you were going to give yourself a $100 gift for loosing that extra 5kg you gained over the holidays. Try saying you'll give that $100 away if you don't loose that extra 5kg.