Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Today is a day to give thanks.

Enjoy your day. Eat well.

“Handicapped is a mental state!”

Last night I was at a bodybuilding event/fundraiser for the incredible young woman I first saw last year around this time. Here is the much requested follow up:

“Handicapped is a mental state!”
by: Joe Leonardi

Last December, I wrote a column describing a very inspirational moment.  I saw a young person who was missing her left arm and leg ferociously training with the look and intensity of many champion athletes I have met over the years. At the time I didn’t know her story. I didn’t even know her name.

Since that column appeared, I have had many people tell me about the incredible Stephanie Jallen. During a meeting with Senator Ray Musto and his wife, Frances, I was encouraged to have a face to face with Stephanie. I made a phone call to the Senator’s Pittston office and within hours I received a return phone call from Stephanie’s proud and supportive mother Deborah Jallen.

In the course of my life, I have had the chance to train with champion bodybuilders and strength athletes, I have broken bread with multi-millionaires, talked politics with national and state elected politicos and I even had the chance to campaign with the great Lynn Swann. The people I have met are all impressive in their own right, however compared to Stephanie Jallen, well, there is no comparison — Stephanie is in a league all her own.

This impressive person will make you forget that she has just embarked on her teenage years. She answers questions and discusses her life with the poise and confidence of someone who has spent eternity in the limelight.

I asked Stephanie how I should refer to her in this column.

Should I say she is handicapped?

A special needs person?

I wasn’t sure what term to use.

She told me I should refer to her as normal and that is when she uttered the title of this column.

Prior to skiing, Stephanie had been involved in basketball and soccer. Then a little over four years ago, she received a letter inviting her to a PA Center for Adapted Sports Clinic. There she discovered skiing. Instructors wanted Stephanie to ski in the seated position, but the nine year old Miss Jallen would not hear of it. She insisted and obviously got her way — she would ski standing up.

A chance meeting with personal trainer Ernie Baul occurred at a fundraiser that would impact her future training. Stephanie’s congenital condition caused her left side to be underdeveloped, leaving her arm very short, tapering down to one digit. Her left leg had to be amputated when she was an infant. Ernie focuses her training on underused muscles and works especially hard on keeping her hip, leg, knee and ankle strong and stable.

Stephanie told me that Ernie’s training program has translated into a dramatic improvement in her performance.

In the last year, the fiercely competitive athlete entered her first international competition — the Huntsman Cup in Utah.

How did she do?
How does three gold medals and a bronze sound?

Stephanie is a talented skier who is on track for the 2014 Paralympics to be held in Russia. Her ability has led her to be competing above her age level.

She is not limited by her lack of a full left arm, nor by her lack of a left leg.
She can, however, be limited by funding.

It is not an inexpensive endeavor Stephanie has undertaken. Unlike the professionals, USOC and corporate sponsors that dominate the Olympic games, the Paralympics have no such financial backing in place. Several fundraisers have been held, but money can become a limiting factor.

In today’s sports environment, we glorify steroid bloated baseball bashers, but sometimes true sports heroes are here at home.

Stephanie is getting help with her training thanks to the generous spirits of the before mentioned Ernie Ball, who trains her at no charge. Larry Danko has shown his heart fills his massive chest by allowing Stephanie pro bono use of his first class facility. We are the valley with a heart and it is my hope that we adopt Stephanie’s journey as our own.

The news continues to give us many people to be ashamed of — Stephanie Jallen is someone of whom we can be very proud!

I do not think of  Stephanie as a handicapped athlete.

I don’t think of  her as a special needs person.

When she wins the gold at the Paralympics, I won’t think of   her as a Paralympic Medalist.

She is — Stephanie Jallen, Athlete; Stephanie Jallen, Champion.

Dr. Joe Leonardi

Inspiration

http://www.timesleader.com/pittstondispatch/opinion/Inspiration_12-14-2008.html

I attened the NEPA Natural Bodybuilding Contest last night, and ran into this incredible young woman and her proud family and supporters. At the request of one of her supporters I am reposting the link to th opinion piece I wrote. Please take a moment to click on the above link, read and comment at the bottom of the column.

Thanks!

Joe

Excuses — You have them, I’ve heard them

Excuses — You have them, I’ve heard them

by: Joe Leonardi

Ten excuses I have heard in the last two weeks.

1 – I just can’t live without ice cream.

2 – I love pasta.

3 – I don’t have the time.

4 – I was going to, but then I got side tracked.

5 – I slept late.

6 – I am stressed out.

7 – I don’t have the will power.

8 – I eat out all the time.

9 – I can’t cook.

10- I WAS going to start on Monday.

Some excuses are from clients of YourNewPhysique.com, some from friends, some from people who have seen my web site and some from those who knew me in my obese days and tell me they have to get in shape, but just ______ fill in the excuse.

There are many excuses not to re-take control of one’s health, but there are few legitimate reasons. Yes, there are actually legitimate reasons, but that is not the topic of this column.

I have heard them all, here is a little secret; I have used them all. I am here to tell you that there is no reason to be obese. As I wrote in a previous column, obesity is not a complex issue. In the absence of a medical or hormonal condition, obesity is a choice. I know, I know the burning of me in effigy is commencing. I can hear the epithets being directed at me now.

Doc, how dare you say I choose to be this way!

How dare you say I want to look and feel like this!

Who do you think you are, do think that if I could, I would control myself?

How can I have the temerity to state that obesity is a choice? What gives me the authority to make such a claim?

That’s easy — I once weighed 340 ponderous, pachydermian pounds and had to squeeze into a tight fitting size 54 pants. I am confident I know a thing or two about becoming obese.

Recently, I have dropped well over one hundred pounds and transformed by rotund shape into a fit physique. So, I also know what it takes to drop the weight.

Jack Lalanne has said that exercise is the king and diet is the queen. How do you argue with a 95 year old person who is still full of vim and vigor?

I tell people to get their own new physique entails a complete commitment. There is even a formula. It is:

100% Exercise + 100%  Eating + 100% Energy

It is not difficult to get in shape, eat the correct foods and stay focused; it requires the three D’s:

Desire; Determination; Discipline

Many excuses such as time or eating out can be overcome with proper planning. I teach an eight o’clock class two days a week. Because I am in my office until seven in the evening, I work out first thing in the morning. Do you think I like setting the alarm for four a.m.? Do you think I am thrilled when it goes off? However, that is when I have the time and that is when I get up.

Throw out the excuses! Say no to obesity! Choose health and fitness!

As far as excuse number 10, the hell with Monday — Get with it!

Interesting!

This morning I only had a chance to skim this interesting article. Later this week I will read it in more detail and then, of course, write a commentary.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33336289/ns/politics-washington_post/

Very Interesting

I only had a chance to skim over the below article.  I will read it in detail and then comment on it later this week.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33336289/ns/politics-washington_post/

The death of clanging and banging iron?

I have been lifting weights on and off since I was 12 years old. I will never forget the day my Mom and Dad purchased my first weightlifting set from Sears. I hurriedly opened the box containing the 110 pounds of plastic covered cement and the iron barbell with the plastic sleeves. I was in heaven, it was that day I began pumping plastic. A few years later,  I graduated to a commercial gym and it was there that I discovered the meaning of the phrase, “pumping iron.”

To me there is nothing quite as exhilarating as the smell, the noise and the energy of a true weightlifting gym. The clanging and banging of the iron, the grunts and groans as men and women try to blast out those last few muscle building reps really brings me to life.

So what has brought me to the title of this column?

Well, I was finishing up the other morning, it was chest and back day and I was doing my last of 36 sets, super-setting decline flyes with dead-lifts. I only had about 225 on the bar, but as we all know the dead-lift is a brutal exercise, more so when done last and even more so when done in a superset fashion. Well I was brining iron  down to the floor with some good old fashion banging. The sound of the weights against the floor ramped my adrenaline causing a release of energy to explode me upright.  At the top position my dead stop caused the weights to shake and there was the clanging.  I was really  moving, up and down like a piston. After my last set I re-racked the weight. I was soaked in sweat and my grip was almost completely shot thus the bar slipped and the weights came crashing down onto the rack.

I stood up tall, full of self-pride because I just completed three  more reps than I did last workout. Then it happened — the  person next to me muttered under their breath, “Jesus Christ.”

I paused, unable to believe what I just heard. I thought to myself you have to be kidding. I wanted to shout “THIS IS A GYM!”  Of course my parents raised me with manners so I walked over and apologized. This person did not even acknowldege my apology, so I edged a little closer and said it a bit louder. Finally, the person relunctantly accepted.

I was so ticked off that to calm down I did six more sets, three more supersets of machine benches and bent over rows. I noticed the mutterer was talking to someone else and when I was done with my sixth set the person finally went and did another set. I wanted to yell again, “MAYBE IF YOU WOULD ACTUALLY WORK OUT YOU MIGHT LOOK A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN YOU DID A YEAR AGO!” But dam my parents raising me to be polite. I just stripped the bar, looked over and said, “good-bye.”

Honestly, is it just me? When I go to workout I am there to workout. I don’t sit around for 10 minutes between sets, I place a towel down on the benches; I take my sweat with me,  I allow people to work in, I always lift under control,  I rarely drop a weight, I respect the equipment, I strip every bar and every machine, I replace the weights back to the stacks, I put the dumbells back in their apporpriate place on the rack, I even put them in order if someone else didn’t.

So, am I out of line to workout so hard that iron weights make noise?

Am I incorrect to push a set to failure that on occasion the weight slips?

Is old school clanging and banging dead?   Say it ain’t so!

Obesity: A complex problem? I don’t think so!

Obesity: A complex problem? I don’t think so!

by: Joe Leonardi  

www.YourNewPhysique.com  

There has been much talk and debate about national health care. I am not going to discuss politics or the pros and cons of universal health care, that is in the control of the politicians.  

I am going to discuss one of the major risk factors to our health, one major risk that we, ourselves, can actually control — Obesity.  

I heard on the news that obesity  (I believe they stated specifically childhood obesity) was a complex problem that did not have a simple solution.  

Okay, let’s examine this ludicrous statement. Generally speaking, unless a person has an underlying medical or hormonal condition, there is no reason for one to be overweight or obese. I’m sorry to burst many people’s excuse-seeking bubbles — but that is a fact.  

We control our bodies.  

We control what goes in.  

We control the amount of exercise we put out.  

The problem is not complex: it is too much sugar, too much high fructose corn syrup, too much processed fast foods, not enough lean proteins, not enough fresh raw vegetables and not enough getting from behind the computer and moving.  

The solution itself is also simple: cut the sugar, cut out the  high fructose corn syrup, get rid of the highly processed refined garbage Americans are shoveling down their gullets and replace them with lean proteins, raw fresh vegetables, healthy fats, low glycemic fruits and get up and get moving.  

Today we have more obese people in the United States than those who are simply overweight.  

This is a real problem  

This problem will lead to real diseases.    

The morbidly obese are going to stress the U.S. health care system to a degree that not all the private or public health insurance money will be able to handle.    

A local school district was given a grant from the State Education Department to fight childhood obesity. I don’t know why they needed $5,000. I will tell them how to do it for half that. Has anyone ever seen school menus today? While healthy options are available, there is still plenty of sugar laden and processed junk on the menu.  
Side note: if your school still has soda machines — get ‘em out.  

Physical education must be a five day a week class and a regimented exercise program is a necessity. We need to teach children fitness as a lifestyle from their earliest and most formative years. I will even come in and design it.  

My good friend, the Yonk, at his highly influential blog The Lu Lac Political Letter, mentioned how a company had an incentive program for its employees. The employees were paid for taking steps to be responsible for their own wellness. Sounds like a good plan, but what passes for dietary guidelines and exercise plans really do very little  for the morbidly obese. Again, I will come in a design the program and then I will make sure people stick to it. If you want to pay people to take care of themselves okay, but give them the guidance and the accountability to stick to it.  

I remember when HMO’s and PPO’s first started in the mid 1980’s. One of the great parts about my plan was that my gym membership was paid in full by the health insurance company. I used that membership; however, I knew many who joined but then were out of the gym within a month. The result was that the good intentions of helping their insured get fit, ended up just costing the insurance company more money than it saved and they changed the benefit to a discount and then eventually did away with it.  

In the United States, we are focused on our healthcare crisis. We are trying to figure out how to pay for care. I am sure that there will be something in one form or another by the end of the year; however, we really need to stop focusing solely on the “care” part of  healthcare and start putting an emphasis on “health.”  Unless we act today, for some, tomorrow may be very bleak.  

Joe Leonardi  

I am  a chiropractor who shed 140 pounds, reshaped my body and recaptured my health in one year. Today I counsel many people on how to change their lives and conquer obesity.  I am available to speak to your group and can be reached at 718-1500.

 

Dr. Joseph F. Leonardi

Returning

Hi Everyone,

Beginning next week I will be posting about 1 – 2 times per week. Sorry I have been away, I have had a lot going on, but I can’t wait to get back to writing and helping those afflicted with obesity conquer it.

 

Joe Leonardi

Lazy Limbaugh

I just listened to the part of another Rush Limbaugh anti-exercise rant. So either he is  lazy, or just plain afraid of getting hurt. Either way his excuses are pretty lame, kind of like a toddler.

Exercise, done properly, utilizing correct technique, pre and post warm up and warm down and appropriate care of the occasional minor injury is not going to cause an noticeable increase in injury.

Being out of shape, old reclining Rush would be more apt to injure himself golfing. If he would condition himself the risk of injury from his only athletic endeavor would decrease.

I will update this more later, but if Rush would like, I would be more than happy to show him how to exercise and turn his less weighty, yet equally flabby body.

Joe Leonardi