makeqfit

We were up to usual antics in the Canarian sunshine. La Santa was rocking as per. Here's a few pics.

Trainer, 71, is inspiration to clients

By Ericka Blount Danois | Special to The Sun

February 3, 2008

On this rainy day, only the resolute are in Energy Fitness Center on Liberty Road in Randallstown , getting in their evening workout.

In the corner of the gym, Ernestine Shepherd is quietly training a petite client, Cynthia Evans, who weighs 110 pounds and is 4 foot 11 inches tall. They are working on their rear delts, lifting 5-pound weights and stretching their arms into a 'T' before they move on to the 30-poundweights.

It would all seem pretty dreary -- the rain, the routine of weightlifting -- if it weren't for the fact that Shepherd, at age 71, is so dazzling to watch. Wearing red sweat pants, a red-and-white sports bra and a baseball cap that reads, 'Determined, dedicated, disciplined to be fit,' she is a unique figure in the world of fitness.

Shepherd's attitude lends credence to the adage 'age ain't nothing but a number.' Five days a week, she trains women of all ages -- three days at Energy gym and two days at her church, Union Memorial United Methodist Church , 2500 Harlem Ave. , where she has a class of 25.

? ERNESTINE SHEPHERD
Age: 71

Profession: Certified personal trainer and retired school secretary at City Springs School in South Baltimore .

Training grub: She drinks 16 ounces of water and eats a light snack that includes a bagel with peanut butter or two hard-boiled eggs before starting her workout.

On the run: SusanG. Komen Breast Cancer, Turkey Trot, Women's Classic in Baltimore, Resolution Run at Patterson Park, Race for the Kids, the Dreaded Druid Hills at Druid Hill Park, Baltimore Marathon.

Other acclaim: Has appeared in Essence (1991 and 2003); The Baltimore Times (2002); and the book Self Seduction, Ultimate Path to Inner and Outer Beauty (2003); has appeared on The View (2001); in a Carmax commercial (2004); and in the Miss America Senior Pageant (2004). She models for Nova Models in Baltimore .

Status: Married to Collin Shepherd, 77, for 52 years. They have a son and a grandson.

What her husband says: 'She is a very determined person and she is not only in this for herself, she is interested in helping other people, including myself,' he says. 'We exercise at home. She is an inspiration tome; sometimes I get lazy, but she gets on me. I learned you are never too old to exercise.'

'I usually start off with about 15 minutes of cardio, running in place, then we do floor exercises working on the abs, legs, upper and lower obliques, and then we proceed with the weights,' she says about her training sessions that last about an hour. Wendy Barry, 38, started training with Shepherd six months ago. After her weight went up to 241 pounds, she started working with a nutritionist and lost 50 pounds.

When she started working with Shepherd, she lost another 20 pounds and traded her size 22 dress for a size 8. Some days she walks 10 miles with Shepherd before she goes to work at the Department of Social Services in Baltimore .

With 10 percent body fat, Shepherd is 5-foot-5 and about 130 pounds of inspiration to her clients, many of whom she includes in her routine of walking or running, which begins at 4 a.m. at Druid Hill Park.

Sharron Woods, 60, and her mother, 85-year-old Eva Miller, attend Shepherd's Saturday class at the church. Both are former body builders who have successfully competed in weightlifting competitions.

When Miller was 70, at 5 feet 3 inches tall and 150 pounds, she could bench press 175 pounds. So she and her daughter were skeptical when they began Shepherd's first class and were instructed to run in place.

'I looked at my mother and said, 'This is not going to get it; we are used to vigorous exercise,' ' Woods says. 'Well, then she pulled out some exercises I had never seen. Before we left, I was begging for more.'

Some of the exercises, Woods recalls, included trunk twists while holding a pole-- right, and then left, before going down and doing squats still holding the pole.

Still, Woods wasn't convinced. When Shepherd asked her to run with her in the morning, her first thought was, 'She's 70, I can keep up with her.' 'That woman was a road runner!' remembers Woods. 'I am really energized working out with her.'

Her mother was equally humbled: 'She didn't go easy on me because of my age,' says Miller, who works part time as a teacher's aide in the Baltimore school system. 'She works me just like she works everybody else.'

Indeed, she even works hard enough that her former trainer, Raymond Day, can't keep up with her.

Though he runs with her some mornings, he is reluctant to take her up on offers to participate in the marathons she runs in. In addition to her regular workout routine and training others, Shepherd has participated in numerous 5K and 10K races and marathons.

But Shepherd hasn't always had a focus on fitness in her life. In fact, in her younger days she was a 'prissy' girl, with little athletic interests.

It wasn't until she turned 56 that she began to exercise with the aid of her sister.

They were both spurred on to join a gym after shopping for bathing suits and not liking what they saw in the mirror.

Day trained them both at a gym on U.S. 40 and remembers that Shepherd was in good shape, but had a lot of body fat and didn't know how to lift weights. Her sister, a year older, acclimated her body quickly to the routines.

Then one day in 1992, her sister came into the gym complaining of a ringing in her ears. 'A few days later, she passed away,' remembers Day. 'She had a brain aneurysm that burst in her head. They were really close, they did everything together.' 'When she died, I said I didn't want to do anything,' says Shepherd, a retired Baltimore schools secretary. 'A friend of mine said, 'You know your sister wouldn't want you to do that.' '

Day says that when she decided to come back to the gym, she came back with a new vigor and dedication. Before long, people would compliment her on how she looked. 'She was the most dedicated person I have ever trained,' says Day, who worked with her for 15 years.

Nowadays, she works with nutritionist Todd Swinney. She keeps busy by modeling in magazines and commercials and recently participated in the Senior Miss America pageant in Baltimore .

But mostly she inspires others.

'She is a people person,' says Woods. 'She is constantly asking, 'How do you feel about this? Are you feeling OK?' Most people just follow a routine and they don't pay attention to how you feel. With Ernestine, every day is different.

'So that means, it not only keeps you thinking, it keeps your body thinking and challenges your body,' she says. Miller agrees.

'She is amazing,' she says. 'I don't think I'll ever look like that, but I am working on it!'

unisun@baltsun.com

Okay... time to get back in the gym!!! SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!

It's hard to know if this is sports related or very bad method acting! It does have to be seen to be believed. Steve Mclaren, England's great-sch ever (total) football manager-sch, we salute you!

When I was growing up and getting into martial arts, watching kung fu films and hearing about the legend of Bruce Lee, I also stated buying martial arts magazines> One name which would crop up on a regular basis was Benny "The Jet" Urquidez. Referred to as "The Jet" due to his speed and accuracy when striking, Benny Urquiduez contested over 200 bouts in his fight career including some 58 title fights. There is some dispute over whether his record - win-lose -draw - is 58-0-0 hence making him undefeated in 58 fights, or, as two of the fights were deemed "no contest" and in some quarters one fight was seen as a loss - his 1978 bout against Prayout Sittiboonlert - in which he loss by decision as you can see below.

To say The Jet was a proficient or even prolific martial artist is somewhat of an understatement. He gained his black belt in karate at the age of fourteen, going on to gain black belts in eight other martial arts disciplines. He is also credited with having introduced full contact karate/American kickboxing to the West, having before that competed in points only semi-contact karate.
Undoubtedly a great fighter he fought and won fights in five weight divisions - there will always be a slight cloud over his achievements due to his own insistence of maintaining a record of never having been defeated.
What is not in doubt and cannot be disputed is his talent and ability, which he took into films. His slighty unusual look, descended as he was from Blackfoot Indians and Spaniards, gave him the perfect "deadly henchman" look. This is showcased brilliantly in a clip from the film "Wheels on Meals" when he fights a very youthful Jackie Chan.

These days The Jet still imparts his vast knowledge of martial arts at his gym in Hollywood. He also teaches film and stage fighting, whilst retaining a zest for the path - martial arts - that life had set out for him.

Checking out crossfit training on youtube and came across this. I'll try it at some point and report on the outcome. There are loads of these crazy crossfit vids. This what we trainers do in our spare time; explore more ways to nurture and torture! Coming to a class soon! Enjoy.

Below is a vid of K1's top ten knockouts from 2007. But for sheer guts and getting-off-the-canvas determination number four takes some beating!

In my classes on Thursday and Friday evenings, the warm up is skipping. The Friday guys are happy to skip away, the Thursday guys however groan as though I've just asked them to dig a deep hole and get into it! Here, for my Thursday evening guys, is a little inspiration.

Women fighting, specifically fighting on film; artistically, well choreographed, looking as though they can actually fight, has always held a bit of a fascination for me. women fighting in films is not a new thing. the The late sixties and seventies martial arts boom, led by Bruce Lee, whose more story and character driven films, revolving around a strong moralled, good ass-kicking lead, appealed to the Western masses, showcased, ever so briefly, a fighting woman. In Lee's worldwide hit film one of the chief exponents of females fighting on film made a brief - fighting appearance. Angela Mao (seen above as "Lady Kung Fu") plays Lee's sister in Enter the Dragon. We see her in a brief flashback as she tries to fight off some bad guys, eventually electing to take her own life rather than be taken. Possibly because of the women's movement and colourful music seen of the seventies, the empowered female made fleeting, if sometimes comical, appearances in cinema.

Generally they tended to beat up men. The prospect of two women fighting wearing more than a bikini and executing proficient high kicks at one another was not one that really took off in the seventies, or even much in the nineties. there would be a bit of wait before we saw two women squaring up in a less than obscure straight-to-video film. A big star, within martial arts circles, was Cynthia Rothrock, was the goto girl for seeing a woman kicking, punching and handing out justice the old fashioned way in the eighties and into the nineties. An accomplished practitioner of five martial arts, Rothrock made and continues to make, a career as woman who could fight without pulling hair or scratching eyes out. By no stretch of the imagination an accomplished actress and, probably due to some of the stuntmen she had to work with, alot of her better known works, the American productions, always looked sped up and fake. But as the clip below shows, she could do it the Chinese way.

More up to date, we have had Michelle Yeoh - the other woman in the clip above - and Ziyi Zhang, both of whom have a fantastic fight scene in "Hidden Dragon Crouching Tiger". On the big screen Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin have a brief fight in "Total Recall". Though for a great fight scene between women, the scene involving Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in "Kill Bill: Volume One" is a modern day classic. In fact every fight scene in the Kill Bill films is brilliant. Check out the Uma Thurman versus Vivaca Fox clip below.

On television women being able to hand out the odd can of "whup ass" has been evident for over a decade. Lucy Lawless' Xena was probably at the forefront of strong fighting women through the nineties. With her more demure sidekick, Gabrielle, played by Renee O'Connor, they smacked up marauding hordes across mythical lands right up to 2001. In the noughties we had Kelly Hu in the martial arts showcase that was "Martial Law" and present day we have Yvonne Strahovski in the spy drama/comedy "Chuck". For the martial arts lover there is plenty of action to be seen on our screens. The answer to the question'"can she kick it?" has to be "yes she can!"

SEPP BLATTER, the FIFA president, has mooted an idea to introduce by 2010 a system that “protects” home-grown footballing talent by having a numerical quota system. The “six-plus-five” (rolls off the tongue!) quota system guarantees that every footballing team, worldwide, will eventually have to field a minimum of six home-grown, as in eligible for the home country’s national team, players. The English FA sees this as veiled attack on the cash rich Premier league. The major leagues in world football; English, Italian and Spanish, attract footballing talent from all over the globe. They attract the best players because: They pay the best wages and they offer the most glory; league championship medals, champions league, UEFA cup. Even for the teams within these leagues which cannot realistically challenge for top honours, for players from smaller footballing nations, the wages and the televisual exposure make the working environment appealing. As ever, media exposure and hyperbole make the lot of a professional footballer something that is difficult to see as anything other than glamorous. The image of all footballers being millionaire playboys is flawed. Of course, those in the top teams do not struggle to pay their bills, but in the lesser teams, many of these young men have to think about accumulating enough money in a decade to last into dotage. So it is no surprise that a talented footballer from a poorer nation would jump at the opportunity to ply his trade in one of the cash rich leagues of Europe.
The six-plus-five rule would hurt a lot of these young footballers and push up the price of already overpriced home-grown players. The argument that this system would give young home-grown players more chance to progress is flawed. This will simply give home-grown players more reason to not try as hard. The Premier league has already shown how some, home-grown, players have flourished, whilst others have bemoaned the influx of foreign players. Frank Lampard, a player seen as overweight and pedestrian in his West Ham days, blossomed at Chelsea in a team filled with foreign talent. Danny Murphy, a talented midfielder player, felt that he had to leave Liverpool to advance his career. Not that his career has blossomed since he moved on. His career has been patchy at best. Nor has he enhanced his national team call-up potential.
To summarise, six-plus-five is a compromise on quality. It would not help the national team, being in a team does not automatically make players better. If that were the case the Scottish Premier league would not be a two horse race, Celtic and Rangers, every season, come think of it, the English Premier league’s title is only contested by four clubs, one of which, Chelsea, can boast an English spine to the team. The six-plus-five system may be dead in the water before it gets going, as there is the small matter of European law to overcome. This will not stop Sepp Blatter from trying to push through the rule.

It is well documented that Ricky Hatton balloons up to twelve/ thirteen stone (180 lbs) which is two stone plus above his fight weight of ten stone (140 lbs). I found quite an interesting interview with his strength coach, former bodybuilder and trainer, Kerry Kayes. Bringing his bodybuilding expertise to Hatton's camp at the behest of Billy Graham, Hatton's trainer. He outlines a little of how he helps Hatton achieve results.

click pic.

KERRY KAYES