My Top Online Fitness Resources

The Cat’s Out of the Bag; My Top Online Fitness Resources
By Steve Ward

When you’re living submerged in a language you aren’t familiar with, getting any kind of information is a challenge. Expats in Korea, however, have an advantage in that Internet access is easy to find. As nearly all my articles have referenced a website somewhere in them, I thought it might be useful to list my top websites for information and motivation for getting in shape.

1. Never underestimate the role of motivation in your fat loss goals. A key component to maintaining motivation is tracking your results. Fitday.com let’s you track your diet, weight loss, and even specific workouts totally for free. I can tell you that there’s nothing more satisfying than looking at my graph that visually displays just how much I’ve lost over the past year. It makes it MUCH easier to resist the extra slice of cake at the office birthday party.
2. It’s easy to get caught up chasing fad after fad when it comes to fitness. Before you spend big bucks on a lifetime membership at the flashiest gym in town with row after row of sparkling machines, read everything on crossfit.com. The website is a little tough to navigate, but it’s worth it. Most of those machines are little more than decoration for everyone except hardcore bodybuilders that spend hours every day in the gym isolating certain muscle groups. For the rest of us, we need to use as many muscles as possible in as few exercises as possible and then get on with our busy lives. What’s more: There’s a group of crossfitters in Korea and they’ve started working out every day in Osan and every Saturday at Yonsei University in Seoul. Contact crossfitosan.blogspot.com for details.
3. No one should start taking supplements lightly, and you should understand well what you’re doing when you do add them to your arsenal of fitness strategies. Some, such as a basic whey protein or Omega-3 pill, can be beneficial to everyone, but most of them only benefit experienced athletes that need to micromanage their diet and body composition. That’s not most of us, but regardless, pretty much all of your supplement needs can be taken care of on Mass119.co.kr. The Optimum Nutrition Strawberry protein powder is a staple in my diet. I even put it in my oatmeal. You’ll need to call in the help of the ubiquitous ‘Korean friend’ to order off the site though.
4. When it comes to reading a large amount of information, sitting down to a computer isn’t the best choice. For fitness, there are three books I can highly recommend: The Abs Diet (and Abs Diet for Women) and The New Rules of Lifting are both put out by Men’s Health. I started my journey by following the exercises and general diet laid out in the former and I now find myself transitioning towards workouts similar to the latter. The Zone is also a highly recommendable diet, not just for the results it produces, but also because in long-term studies Zone adherents stuck to the diets significantly more than other diet programs. CrossFit also highly recommends the Zone Diet. So how do you get these English-language books in Korea? WhatTheBook.com makes it a piece of cake. Though it does take a while to get the books from overseas, shipping is free and they charge the same list price you’d get buying from a bricks and mortar store in the U.S.
5. When it comes to fitness, the true ‘experts’ are the bodybuilders that make a living putting their money where their mouths are. Bodybuilding.com may be intimidating at first, but when it comes to no-nonsense, practical, information about WHAT WORKS, It’s the best place to go. Even those losing large amounts of bodyfat, rather than bulking up, can learn a lot from people that have had to cut their bodyfat to 5% before a show. Bodybuilding.com also has an extensive online store for supplements and supplies, and shipping to Korea isn’t outrageous.
6. The strength of forums.jpfitness.com is in its wide net. This forum site has a discussion going for just about everything under the sun. If you’ve got a specific question about something, it’s the place to go.
7. At the beginning of 2003, John Stone decided he’d had enough of being overweight, so he decided to fix the problem once and for all. Since that time he takes pictures of himself DAILY and posts them online for the world to see. Stone reached his fat loss goals in no time, but he didn’t stop there. His website, JohnStoneFitness.com, has grown to become an all around fitness site, but the best part of it is still the self-portrait gallery, which is inspiring to say the least.
8. MensHealth.com is the online version of the wildly popular men’s magazine. Just about every article from the magazine can be found online, not to mention the web-exclusive content on the blogs. That being said, lately I hold the site in a little less esteem because I feel like it’s mostly a lot of trivia rather than practical knowledge. Still, the stories are great for motivating you and it’s always good to know things like the fact that Guinness is one of the most low-calorie/low-carb beers on the market.

Spend some time on any of these sites and you should be able to find a program that suits you. I firmly believe (and, once again, I’m no doctor, so take this with a grain of salt) that anyone and everyone could benefit from a weightlifting program, but you should find a basic plan created by an expert before waltzing into the gym and promptly blowing out a shoulder or dropping a barbell on your chest.