We love kettlebells here at Okanagan Peak Performance Inc. because they are so versatile.  No matter what ails you kettlebells can help. Got too much body fat?  Kettlebells can help melt it away. Got a bumb knee or shoulder that hurts?  Kettlebells can help them move and feel better. Can't jump high enough or hit a golf ball far enough? Kettlebells can add explosive power. So what's your fever?  We typically put people into one of the 3 following categories and we end up using kettlebells in some shape or form to help people realize their goal and fix their problem (aka fever) Look Better: problem of having too much body fat or not enough muscle Play Better: problem of not being able to hit the golf ball far enough or ski long enough Feel Better: shoulder that clicks, knee that cracks and popsThis post is going to quickly go over how kettlebells can help solve these problems but if you are interested in more details shoot us an e-mail and stay tuned for our upcoming clinic. Look BetterWhen someone comes in to see us about looking better that means that they want to change their body composition by either decreasing their fat mass or increasing the their lean mass.  In most cases it's a little of both.  Typically we use energy system training to melt fat and free weights to improve muscles.  The beauty of kettlebells is that we can blend these two together which really provides the biggest bang for your buck!! With kettlebells you're basically your doing cardio with weights.  The design of the kettlebell allows for this blending due to a through a wide range of movements that can be done with just one kettlebell.  This allows you to do longer sets of exercises with little to no rest...

This is the first installment of a series of articles that we are going to call “exercises from around the world”.  It’s no secret that we here at Okanagan Peak Performance Inc love to travel, so it only made sense that we share and teach you some exercises from around the globe in order you make you a bit more worldly, cultured and hopefully more fit.  If nothing else it will serve as a reason to write off a trip or two as a business expense!!!We are going to start this worldwide tour in Turkey, where Asia meets Europe. This beautiful country has 3 of the wonders of the world along with one of the weirdest yet tastiest candy bars on the planet. You Either Love 'Em or You Hate 'Em While I am personally not a big fan of Big Turk, I'm more of Wunderbar kind of guy, I am a really big fan of the Turkish Get Up. I am such a big fan of it that it raises my blood temperature, not only when I am doing this great exercise but more so when I see it being performed incorrectly and thanks to the internet I've seen a lot of non-Turkish Get Up's.This is a very complicated exercise and as such deserves a lot of time and attention to learn it properly so that you can reap the many rewards that this exercise offers while avoiding an injury and ridicule from performing it the wrong way.The best way we have found to teach this exercise is from the top down so we will first teach you the Turkish Get Down.The benefit of teaching it this way is that we have gravity working with us and we have come up with a series of cues that will help you execute...

You might be surprised to realize how little exercise is required in order to detect physiological changes in the body.And this is important because often times a common complaint to performing exercise is not having enough time. I know there are days when I don't get in a workout because I feel swamped with many other 'priorities' and therefore convince myself it simply doesn't work with my schedule on that day to find time to exercise.I may think differently in the future knowing the following bit of research.10 minutes of exercise is all it takes for there to be metabolic changes in the body. With just this small amount of time it can take upto to an hour for your body to return to a pre-exercise condition.This means enhanced circulation, ventilation and caloric burn that extends well past the moment we stop exercising.So this in itself should be reason enough to step away from the computer every couple of hours and do 10 minutes of jump rope, running stairs, jumping jacks or swinging a kettlebell. There are endless options. The point being that if all it takes is 10 minutes than we really can't use a lack of time as an excuse.But here's where things get interesting.Do you think this investment in exercise is the same for everyone? I mean does 10 minutes in exercise have the same results for two people of the same size, age and sex?We might assume that it does but we'd be wrong.Leaner people have increased levels of a metabolite called niacinamide, a nutrient involved in blood-sugar control. It comes from the group of B vitamins and has a number of health benefits.When researchers measured this compound at the end of the Boston Marathon, the more fit people had levels ten times higher than their less fit counter parts.There are over...