Review: The Heavy Grippers

Edited by Naomi van Raaphorst

My rating: 5/5
The Heavy Grips grippers are a great way to increase your hand and forearm grip strength significantly. Perfect for athletes where grip strength is essential, as climbers, baseball players, gymnasts, strength athletics and so on. I can’t complain about the quality of the Heavy Grip grippers. They work perfectly and they are really challenging. I personally find it a great way to improve my grip strength. I have been using them around a month now since 15/03/11 and it's going great. I bought the beginners package which contains three grippers of different pinch force. The Heavy Grip 100 of 45kg pinch force, the Heavy Grip 150 of 68kg pinch force and the Heavy Grip 200 of 91kg pinch force.
In the beginning I could only close The Heavy Grip 100 of 45kg ten times while now I can easily close it 20 times, I could only close the Heavy Grip 150 of 68kg five times not even completely closed while now I can close it around eight times completely and the Heavy Grip 200 of 91kg I could only close it half way while now I can almost close it just missing by a tiny bit.

I greatly recommend the Heavy Grip's. They are economic, great quality and a great product for strength sports.

Sport/condition test for my sport education [Part 2]

Edited by Naomi van Raaphorst

So last Friday, the 1st of April, I had received the great news that I passed the sport/condition test. So I am going to tell how the test went. We began with swimming, we had to all do the basic strokes and swimming under water, that went great so I am quite sure I past each aspect of the swimming test. Then we had to do the condition test. First we began with jump heights, mine was about 40/50centimeter high, then we had to do the flexibility test, which I passed barely. Then I had to do an exercise, which is exactly like a pull up but instead of pull yourself up and down, you had to pull yourself all the way up. Your head had to be higher then the pull up bar and you had to stay in that position for longer then 30 seconds. I managed to hang 50 five seconds. After the pull up exercise I had to do the shuttle test where you had to at least score 12 stags. I scored 12 and a half. I was and am still very happy with my score's.

What did not went that well was ball sports. We began with doing basketball, lay outs, I pretty much sucked at it. I could not throw the ball correctly and I only got the ball in the basket two or three times after at least 20 tries. Then we did basketball team playing. There is where I did my best to score some points in the test. I tried to pass the ball always to someone else when it was the right moment, always defending and trying to get the ball out of the hands of the other team, passing the ball as fast as possible to my team mate, etc.

I tried my best to work as a team and it went great. I did not stop for a second, I continued all the time. Always looking for opportunities to be helpful in the match.
Then we did volleyball underhand and overhand techniques which went really good. I failed in the beginning but I got the drift pretty fast.
So then we where done after 3/4 hours of doing the test.

So I was really happy when I got the news I passed the test. I was really afraid that I would of failed. So in September I am going to be in my new education. I cannot wait to begin.
Any questions or comments are welcome.

• Related links:

http://www.sbva.nl/
http://www.rocva.nl/mbo/Opleidingen/Overzicht/Sport/Sport_Bewegen/Pages/Sport_en_Bewegingsbegeleider.aspx

Sport/condition test for my sport education [Part 1]

I am going to have a sport/condition test 22 March so they can check if I am in good shape so I can get into the sport education.

The test is divided in three parts:

1.Condition test:

-Shuttle-run test over 18 meters till stage 12.
-Hanging with bended arms, head above the pull up bar and hands pointing towards you one minute.
-Flexibility
-Jump Strength in height.

2.Ball Sports:
-Volleyball
-Basketball

3.Swimming:
-Basic techniques
-12 meters underwater swimming.

I have been working on all three aspects these last months and I am personally confident that I am going to succeed in the sport/condition test. But I am still worried about the ball sports part because I never really played a lot of football, basketball and sports like that so I lack the technique and experience. I always enjoyed other kind of sports like parkour, climbing, swimming, weight training, outside sports and fight sports. I luckily had the chance to talk to several students who are doing the education and some of them also had the same issue as me. They said that it would not be a big problem cause if you just follow the instructions of the person who is testing you at that moment and show you're doing your best and you're being able to do it in such a short amount of time that would give me points for the test and as second team work so I am confident the test is going to go well. So I hope I am going to be posting next week that I past the test.

Any questions or comments are welcome.

• Related links:

http://www.sbva.nl/
http://www.rocva.nl/mbo/Opleidingen/Overzicht/Sport/Sport_Bewegen/Pages/Sport_en_Bewegingsbegeleider.aspx

How to Increase Your Running Stamina - wikiHow

The human body can get used to a sedentary or inactive lifestyle. Low energy levels can affect your physical and mental performance. Increasing your stamina is about more that just building muscle or increasing strength. It is about the energy produced from activity. Try these helpful tips to increase your stamina and enjoy a more active lifestyle.

Read more: How to Increase Your Running Stamina - wikiHow


This article has helped me a lot there are great tips for people who have no stamina at all or if you have stamina way's to improve it like for example Tip 9:
Running involves not just the legs but also the heart , so try to strengthen your heart by varying your running speed , sprint 100 mtr and then jog the next 100 repeat this during the entire course of running if you are not running on the tracks then count 80 steps while sprinting and 110 steps while jogging

This tip has helped me quite a lot in my last training. I improved from twentytwo minutes thirtythree seconds to twentyone minutes and thirthysix seconds, so almost one minute of a difference. I pushed myself so far, that when I got home, I was laying on the floor. Adding sprints while I was running got me extra seconds and it's helping me to improve my condition, that is my main reason for sharing this article on my blog, so that readers get more chances to read this great article with great tips.

Why did I start smoking and how/why did I quit smoking?

Edited by Naomi van Raaphorst

Why did I start smoking? 
I quitted smoking on September 2010 as you can see on the picture on the sidebar. Since then I haven’t touched a cigarette. I have been smoking since I was twelve and a half years old. You are probably thinking why the hell would you, but I only wanted to belong somewhere. I had no friends and most of the kids in school smoked. So I thought if I would start smoking too I would belong somewhere, and it would give me more chances to socialise it worked out but after a couple years I found out that its not about changing yourself or belonging somewhere, its about being yourself and adapting yourself at the same time to your surroundings. That’s a brief explanation of my reasons why I started smoking. Now I am going to explain why I stopped.


Why did I Stop smoking?
I have stopped like two or three times but my reasons weren’t as clear as they are now. I have smoked for some years now and I have felt how it affected my body in every way, being dizzy all the time, headaches, sour stomach, less lounge capacity and so on. I saw how the smoking people around me where enslaved, everywhere they went to, they had to smoke. As it was destroying them day by day and they just continued. Then I thought why do I smoke? Why waste my life to this sad addiction? While I can be living a longer and healthier life next to the ones I love, while I can be achieving so much more then wasting time/money smoking. But I had been thinking about these things for months before I stopped. Stopping to smoke is no easy thing at all, even more difficult is the question when are you going stop? That was a question flying around my mind for a long time before I stopped but month by month I started realising more and more that it would be better for me to quite smoking. There was no reason for me to continue I mean is there? Well yeah there was, it was a great way to relax and burn some neurons, But since I started working out and getting more active at it, that was even a greater way to relax and distract my mind of my problems.

How did I Stop smoking?
First I just tried to find a different addiction which was working out, but I couldn’t do that all day so I only did that 3 days a week. Then I thought, if I would find a different addiction to get distracted enough, so I wouldn’t think so much about smoking in my case it was Runes of Magic its like World of Warcraft. So what I did was I bought a package of the most disgusting cigarettes and only smoked 1 everyday before going to bed the rest of the day I was just looking for constant distractions as my mobile phone, eating, playing games mostly Runes of Magic(RPG games are quite addicting believe me) or on messenger chatting to my girlfriend or friends. This is what I did till the package finished I only smoked one every night so I would get less used to smoking a long the day which worked actually. Then when the package was finished I wasn't used to smoking through my day and the cigarettes tasted so bad that it didn't make me miss it badly as it usually would. Then I just kept distracting myself through the days and staying away of people who smoked and everything that had to do with it. Till I could handle it and I also started running combined with my weight training schedule which helped me to not want to smoke because usually if you smoke and you do intense activities during your day which you normally don’t do, you notice right away you’re a smoker. Maybe it doesn’t annoy you, but it did annoy me, if I would run for five minutes and I would feel so weak it definitly bothered me, but okay that was my story on how I stopped smoking.

Any questions or comments are welcome.