Welcome to the VPX Sports Supplement Blog

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Marc Siegel. I'm a certified personal trainer in New York with five fitness and training licenses and I currently write a weekly blog here. This week’s blog will be about my experience with Phase 1 of VIVO 360. I would like to preface this blog by saying that I have spent years working with Eric Hoult, the national director of VIVO 360, and share many similar views on dieting nutrition and training. I am sure that Eric can agree with me that while we have seen/put many people on various diet regimens ranging from the weekend warrior all the way up to people on a national competitive level, nothing has quite compared to the level of VIVO 360!

Every morning when most people wake up they take their multivitamin and think that they are getting all of the necessary nutrients for the day; however, they are gravely mistaken. Roughly 50% of Americans are deficient in their daily recommended intake of Magnesium. Magnesium is necessary for more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body. It assists in keeping heart rhythm steady, maintaining nerve function, promoting normal blood pressure, regulating blood sugar levels, supporting immune health and bone strength. Regarding the mineral itself, it happens to be the fourth most abundant mineral in the human body, with approximately 50% of it being found in bone and the other 50% inside of cells of body tissue and organs.

We’ve all seen that person who's turning red in the face while maxing out, or that person who sounds like a leaky tire or hissing snake. Those people are the reason that I am writing this article. Proper breathing during exercise is a very important, yet a mostly overlooked action.

CH-CH-CH-CHIA...who remembers that clay ram from the eighties, that you smeared this weird green stuff on it, and then it grew out all bushy? In any event, thirty years later Chia seeds seem to be all the rage. The reality, however, is that the Chia seed has been documented to date back to the ancient Aztecs, Mayans, and Native Americans. While the word Chia happens to mean oily, the plant's formal name is Salvia Hispanica. These seeds are typically found in the deserts of Argentina, Mexico and Peru.

Cardio in the morning on an empty stomach, or cardio after a meal? This question is probably one of the Top 10 debated topics in the fitness realm. Over the years I have read countless articles showing evidence for both sides; however, in doing some more research I came across a very interesting study. The study was written by Brad Schonfeld, MSC, CSCS in the February 2011 Strength and Conditioning Journal. The theory behind fasted cardio is that there is a shift from utilizing carbohydrates, which will allow greater use of stored fat for fuel. However now there is some hard scientific evidence showing that this theory is not true. I will do my best in this blog to explain the highlights of this article keeping it as easy to understand as I can.

It was just holiday time and all the dieting rules were out the window. People ate and drank as if they have never seen food before. Some people were literally eating and drinking until they felt sick! But at every party I went to, there was always someone going on about how red wine and dark chocolate are good for you. They claim that the intake of Anti-Oxidants in the red wine, and the dark chocolate, as well as the flavonoids in the dark chocolate are good for your heart. Are they correct? Is it just a myth?

Greetings from the VIVO 360° Team!

First off, we would like to wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are ready to have an even better 2013.

With the New Year approaching, everyone is getting geared up for the typical “New Year’s Resolution” of weight loss. But with so many options and activities to do, what is the most efficient way of spending your time? If you have an hour to workout, how do you decide between playing football or going to the gym?

They say that seasons change and people change, but one thing that doesn't change is the fact that the common cold is a rampant virus that affects over 1 billion people a year. The debate whether the common cold is curable has been ongoing with two very conflicting sides. On one side there are people that believe that there is nothing that you can do to alleviate or cure the common cold. The other side is those that believe you can alleviate and cure the common cold with both pharmaceutical and homeopathic methods. In this week’s blog I will take neither side, but present to you some strong arguments for both sides.

These days when I walk around my gym I feel like I always see someone jumping over boxes, throwing medicine balls up to the ceiling, or hopping around like a rabbit. When I go over to these people and ask them why they're doing these specific exercises, their typical response is either they have a friend that showed this to them or they saw it in on the internet. What they need to understand is that all of the above are variations of plyometric training.