That's Fit

Curious to know how celebrities squeeze fitness into their daily lives? Want to know the secrets of the stars? Bi-weekly our That's Fit fitness expert Fitz sits down with the celebs we want to know more about, and digs out their great and not-so-great methods to staying healthy.

This week I'm featuring one of the coolest guys in the world. A real life action hero who actually couldn't answer some of my questions, because he's been sworn to military secrecy. I love it! Bear Grylls is the star of Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel.

Bear was a survival expert in the British Special Air Services (21 SAS). He's obsessed with adventure as well as breaking rules and records. Bear is a brilliant outdoors man, built like a guy movie producers choose for their action flicks, and handsome enough to make girls want to watch him eat zebra guts. A fantastic combination for television.

To shoot each episode of Man vs. Wild, 33 year old, Bear gets dumped out of a helicopter in to the wildest most extreme regions in the world where tourists are likely to become stranded. He then gets to work trying to teach our sorry butts how to escape eminent doom. On Man vs. Wild, Bear has: thrown himself into both quicksand and an ice lake to demonstrate exit strategies, hidden from a sandstorm inside of a camel he'd previously gutted, and chowed down on everything from elephant dung to goat testicles. All for our benefit.

While interviewing Bear, I started the conversation off by telling him that I love the show, but spend half of the run time covering my eyes and ears. He didn't seem surprised. I often inquired about why he is willing to go to such extremes. He also didn't seem phased; unlike you and I....hiding inside of a camel doesn't seem appalling to him. The man is the real deal. He takes his job seriously and is literally willing to do anything to survive. I think I'm inviting Bear to vacation with me from now on.

Fitz: How did you get into this whole survival thing?

Bear: I was a survival expert in the Royal Marines. We had a tight unit and I loved it. I served twice.

Fitz: What kind of exciting missions did you go on in the military?

Bear: I can't tell you much, it's all kind of hush-hush! But in one of my unfortunate incidents, I broke my back in three places during a free-falling parachute accident in Africa.

Fitz: Ouch! I'm impressed that you recovered and came back for more. What kind of kid were you?

Bear: Oh God! I was always dirty and causing lots of trouble. Kind of like I am now.

Fitz: How did you end up with your own show on Discovery Channel?

Bear: I had done a television series about the French Foreign Legion in the UK. The people from Discovery Channel invited me to do Man vs Wild. They had to ask three times, because the first two times I told them no. I felt like they wanted some 'smart guy' and I was not what they were looking for.

Never a dull moment with Bear Grylls. The star of Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild and I spoke last week during a long interview in which he will be featured in an upcoming Celebrity Fitzness Report. Definitely 45 of the most interesting minutes in my life. I can't imagine anyone having more incredible tales.

Bear told me about visiting the Sahara Desert in Africa and enduring the extreme temperatures, highs of 130 and lows of 20 degrees ferenheit. What he didn't tell me is what I saw last night while watching his show. He was given a camel from some local tribesmen that he met on his journey, and showed how to skin it to make a blanket (which he slept with later that night). Fun! He also demonstrated how to remove the water reservoirs from the camels humps in order to drink. Tasty! But wait ...there's more!

If your young child is a "hands-on" type of kids who loves his or her blocks and building materials, those language skills may be under development along with motor skills, according to a study released this week.

The study revealed that language scores were about 15 percent higher in the group of kids aged 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 who were sent blocks to play with out of a group of 175 kids.

Parents of each block-supplied child were given instructions on how to help their kids play with the blocks, then each kept copious notes during a four-day study period. After studying the responses from all involved parents, the researchers concluded that 'block play ' stimulates thinking, memory and physical mastery -- all of which are precursors to language construction and expression.

A group of Canadian audiologists and speech pathologists are concerned that noisy classrooms are making it tougher for kids to properly hear lessons and therefore learn material. A study comissioned by the Canadian Language and Literacy Reseach Network showed that first grade students tend to miss at least 1 of every 6 words spoken by their teachers because of the amount of ambient noise, including other classes and audio equipment, in classrooms.

As this article points out, while adults have the language skills to determine words that they've missed in sentences, children aren't able to put the pieces of a sentence together and end up experiencing a number of detrimental effects including poor understanding, reading problems and decreased attention. Apparently the problem is worse in Canada than in the United States, where there is a national standard that keeps classrooms less noisy.

Are you worried about the amount of noise in your child's classroom?

On pretty much every TV show about hospitals there's always a hot-shot surgeon or sexy intern who seem to care more about their image than consoling patients. They use overly-complicated medical jargon, rush through a diagnosis and give patients little emotional care -- they help heal the patient but they don't really make them feel better.

Does this sort of thing just exist on TV? It looks like no according to a study done at the University of McGill in Montreal. The study examined results of a clinical skills exam taken by over 3000 doctors in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The physicians who scored low on the test also had more patient complaints lodged against them, and the majority of these grievances were communication issues. Doctors who, just like the hot-shots on shows like ER and Grey's Anatomy, were judgmental, condescending and ignored what patients had to say.

So while being a good communicator doesn't necessarily make one a better doctor, the best doctors definitely know how to communicate.

Friday April 17th, I'll be attending a fitness conference. Fitness conferences are a blast and are designed to take fitness professionals to the next level. Keep us updated on new tools, toys, and training ideas. It's a place where we share our research, invention and experience. It's a awesome!

I've been going to these conferences for almost two decades and I look forward to each and every one. I love my job, would do it for free if I was one of those 'trust fund kids,' and love the buzz I get from the whole experience of helping others live better and longer. Fitness conferences are super cool, because they inspire and educate my colleagues and I to better ourselves in order to better you.

Fitness pros aren't the only ones who'll benefit from them though. I would love to see more general fitness enthusiasts there. You get to choose the courses you're interested in taking and just go experience a bunch of different innovative workouts. For example. The area I live in does not offer any Strip Tease classes. But, I got to try one at a conference. Does that mean I want to become a stripper or become the Strip Tease instructor? NO! I just wanted to go do it for fun. By the way.....from my experience, the class is basically a hip hop dance workout with some extra thrusting and hair flipping.