There are a lot of things to learn about and do in life. Way too much to possibly learn about in the amount of time we’re given. In fact, in many cases time is the constraining factor that fairly decides what we are going to do and how successful we will be.

In general, the more time you spend on something the better prepared you will be for success. This varies, however, in that different people take in information at different rates and can be more or less effective at retaining that information.

That would be where something like speed reading would come in. By a practiced increase of reading speed and reading comprehension it is possible to make less time count for more where anything reading is concerned. Added benefits may be an increased memory capacity and more mental discipline.

Speed reading is simply an accelerated rate of reading. Usually speed reading involves employing specific techniques to your reading that, with practice, can double or sometimes even more than double your reading speed.

If a person is aimed for success, things like reading speed and a sharp memory would seem to give them an extra edge. College students many times benifit from speed reading techniques. Studying becomes faster and more profitable. Speed reading can also be an easy way to impress someone.

Speed reading isn’t a hard thing to pick up and many times courses for speed reading are very affordable. It’s one more way to improve your quality of living.

Speed Reading Technique Course
Speed Reading

In part one of this series I discussed some tips to keep your strength and muscle, or even gain some during the wrestling season. In part two of this series I will give you ten sure-fire tips for improving your “wrestling strength” and therefore your wrestling performances. These tips apply to both in-season and off-season training.

1. Train the “Posterior Chain”

The posterior chain muscles are comprised of the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. This extremely powerful area of the body is a key section to overall wrestling performances. By improving strength in this area you will notice a marked improvement in speed and power in the neutral and bottom positions. Some exercises that you might want to consider in order to work the posterior chain are good-mornings, stiff-leg deadlifts, deadlifts, barbell squats (bar low on shoulders). My two favorites are the reverse hyperextension and the Russian glute-ham-gastroc machine. They are the ultimate in working the posterior chain muscles.

2. Strength Train SLOW, Wrestle FAST

You want to be fast and strong on the wrestling mat. Don’t think that you should throw weights around when you strength train though. When wrestlers try to move a barbell quickly in their workouts, they are using momentum to help move the weight. You should minimize momentum, and maximize the amount of muscle that gets worked by slowing down. How fast (or slow) should you move a weight when strength training? When you are raising a weight (or contracting the muscle) try to do it in 2 seconds. When you lower the weight, do it twice as slowly. You should take about 4 seconds to lower a weight.

3. Brief Workouts

Your workouts should never exceed 35 minutes in duration. If they do, YOU”RE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH! By completing your workout in no more than 35 minutes or so, your body’s hormone levels are optimal. Your ability to recuperate from the workouts, and therefore develop more strength, is increased. Avoid long, drawn-out strength training workouts. They will eventually cut into your body’s ability to recuperate, and lead to over-training.

4. 12 Exercises Or Less

When I develop sport-specific strength training routines for my athletes, I always adhere to this. This number of exercises will allow you to hit the “wrestling muscles” with just enough, but not too much. Any more will almost guarantee that you will send your body into an overtraining syndrome.

5. 2 Sets Or Less

Read this one carefully, and try to really absorb the content. You should do no more than two work sets (the sets that count. These don’t include a warm-up set) for any given exercise. If you are working hard enough, this is plenty. You do a warm-up set for an exercise, then move to your top weight. After you complete that top weight, reduce the total weight on the bar or machine by 20% and repeat. If you are really training intensely, you can do just one work set per exercise. This is the ideal. If you can hammer a muscle with one perfect set of an exercise, there will be no need for another set. I advocate a second set with a 20% weight reduction because many people don’t quite hammer that muscle with one set.

6. Fail In The Gym To Dominate On The Mat

Other than your warm-up set for each strength training exercise, you should train your sets to “momentary muscular failure.” This is the point where you can no longer complete another repetition with perfect form. By training to momentary muscular failure, you are forcing the muscles to adapt, and therefore get stronger. Let me clarify training to “failure.” Training to failure is not “almost taxing the muscle.” It is the point where you cannot push or pull another repetition no matter what. Is it safe to train this way? Absolutely! The first few repetitions of a set are actually more dangerous. When an athlete is not using good form, and slower speed, it is usually during these first few repetitions that an athlete gets hurt.

7. Use Machines And Free Weights

There is a common misconception amongst athletes and coaches that you must use free weights when strength training. Free weights are great! So are machines! Your muscles don’t know the difference. The intensity is the most important thing when trying to improve your strength for wrestling. The tool that you use to get there is not. I like certain exercises for certain muscles. It also depends on injuries that a wrestler might already have. You can work “around” and injury and still give the body a thorough strength workout. If you have access to Hammer Strength machines, I highly recommend that you include them in your wrestling strength workout.

8. Use A Thick Bar

If you don’t have access to a thick bar, get one. This is usually a hollow metal tube that you put free weights on the end of. A thick bar forces you to hold on tightly when performing exercises. It develops fantastic forearm and hand strength. It should be part of every serious strength training program for wrestlers. You can do curls, reverse curls, rows, and presses with it.

9. Keep Up The Protein

Whether you are trying to cut weight or go up a weight class, you need regular feedings of protein. Protein helps to repair and rebuild muscle tissue. It is vital to keep up protein feedings if you are trying to cut weight… unless of course you don’t mind losing muscle and getting weaker. Try to get at least 5 protein feedings per day. The difference lies in the carbohydrate intake. If you need to cut weight, you should begin slowly dropping carbs, but never completely. You can’t wrestle if you have no energy. Carbohydrates are you body’s preferred source of energy. Contact me at steve@sports-strength.com if you’re interested in a personalized meal plan for wrestling.

10. The Trap Bar

The trap bar is another incredible piece of equipment when trying to gain wrestling strength. The trap bar is a hexagonally shaped bar. It allows you to perform deadlifts with maximal stimulation of almost every muscle vital to improved wrestling performance. If you’ve never seen one, do a search on the web. This is an exercise that all of my wrestling clients use. It will make your entire body stronger. If I were limited to only one exercise in order to increase the strength in my wrestlers, this would be the exercise that I’d choose.

Steve Preston is a Sports Performance Specialist in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He specializes in helping wrestlers and other athletes improve performance through sport-specific strength training. He is available for phone consultations and clinics. For more information go to http://www.sports-strength.com He has recently created the Champion Strength Training for Wrestlers DVD Program. It is available online at http://www.sports-strength.com/wrestling.html

What do you do when payday comes three days too late to help you out of a financial jam? If you’re like an increasing number of people, you turn to a provider like United Cash Loans to help you get through. United Cash Loans makes short-term personal loans of $100 to $500. Your loan is usually approved within hours, and you have your cash loan in your bank account the same day.

Who Qualifies for United Cash Loans?

Most cash payday loan providers don’t do credit checks, and their requirements for issuing a loan are simple. In a nutshell:

- You must be 18 or over - old enough to sign a legally binding contract.
- You must have a verifiable source of regular income.
- You must have at least $1000 a month verifiable income.
- You must have an active checking account.

How Do I Apply for United Cash Loans?

Applying for an online cash payday loan is simple - but you still need to take it seriously. With most companies, you simple fill out a simple loan application form - it usually takes about two minutes. The form will ask you to fill in contact details and answer a few simple questions. A loan officer from the payday loans company will call you back within in hour to discuss your loan needs with you and see you through the remainder of the application process.

How Do I Get My Money If I’m Approved?

When you apply for most payday loans, you’ll agree to let the loan company make an EFT deposit to your checking account. Other companies will send the money to you via Western Union.

There are a lot of unscrupulous companies out there. The attorney general’s office recommends the following if you choose to apply for any cash advance payday loans.

1. Research the company before doing business with them. Make sure that you have a street address and telephone number where they can be contacted. Check online with the Better Business Bureau to see if there are outstanding complaints.

2. Read the terms and conditions of your loan completely to make sure that you understand what you are agreeing to.

3. Shop around to get the best deal for your payday loans. There’s a wide variance in the amount of the borrower’s fee that you’ll pay to difference companies - from $12 to $30 per $100 borrowed.

Russ Davis provides daily content and information for www.UnitedCashloans.us. For more information on United Cash Loans, please visit www.unitedcashloans.us

This article is for Affiliate Program Managers: Interested in increasing the amount of revenue that each of your affiliates creates for your business? Read on to learn about how to use your existing articles to grow your affiliate program strength.

From an affiliate perspective, there are only a few ‘deal breaker’ type things that I insist any affiliate program that I join must provide me:

Real-time reporting statistics

Real-time email alerts upon each sale

Payment on a consistent monthly basis

High price-point products

Package of articles that I can reprint on my websites and ezines

One strategy that many newbie affiliate program designers fail to offer is a package of articles that can be reprinted on my website along with my unique affiliate link. Of the tens of thousands of dollars I’ll do this year as an affiliate, you would be shocked at how much of the revenue comes directly from reprinting articles of the affiliate programs I am involved in. This strategy works for me and it can work for you!

Here’s what to do:

Designate 10, 25, 50, 75 or 100 articles that will be made available to your affiliates as a dump (meaning all at once and immediately).

Provide them with 3-10 articles per month thereafter that they can reprint along with their affiliate link.

Be certain to spell out the reprint rights of this type of affiliate article marketing so that your articles don’t show up on bad websites you wouldn’t want to associate with.

Here’s what NOT to do:

Allow your articles to be private labeled. This is a poor strategy and will dilute your credibility. They should carry your name or the name of your primary author brand.

Don’t give out all of your articles for your affiliates to use. Best to designate a specific “lot” of them that can be used by your affiliates and the rest are yours to keep exclusively for your direct sales audience.

Why this type of article marketing is important for affiliate program managers and affiliates:

Articles are like “sales agents” in that they keep selling for you, day after day, year after year. They also help expand your reach as each article gets indexed by the major search engines. Lastly, they give you another reason to send an email to your list members about the articles available.

This is a credibility builder for the affiliate program manager and it’s a “Give” before the “Take” which begins the reciprocation cycle in a positive direction.

Note For Affiliates Who Use Articles To Promote Their Affiliate Programs:

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Some sites (like ours at http://EzineArticles.com/ ) don’t accept articles that promote affiliate programs, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go find other sites that do accept articles that promote affiliate program links. I really meant this article to speak directly to affiliate program managers and not the needs of affiliate marketers.

To save you the trouble of sending me an email to ask why EzineArticles.com doesn’t accept articles that promote affiliate programs, there are three reasons:

1) Because we don’t accept articles that are available on a non-exclusive basis (meaning we only want to see original or exclusive licensed content) and…

2) Because affiliate marketers are not our ideal author profile type and…

3) Because most ezine publishers don’t want to reprint articles that pitch an affiliate link. One of the primary purposes of our site is to be a resource for ezine publishers to find supplemental content for their next email newsletter.

With that said, there are plenty of competitor article sites that will allow you to submit your affiliate-link-laced articles, not to mention listing them on your own website.

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Bottom line: If you offer an affiliate program to promote your products and services, consider immediately offering a package of articles that your affiliates can add to their website or send to their email newsletter lists to further promote your business.

About The Author:

Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best *ORIGINAL* articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/ directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/

Copyright 2005 - Christopher M. Knight. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, give author name credit and follow all of the EzineArticles terms of service for Publishers.

There are many frugal single mothers that don’t have a lot to donate to those affected by hurricane Katrina, however most feel terrible and wish they could. Here are some frugal single mother ideas that may allow one to if donating cash is not an option.

Clean out your closets.

Go through your closet and take old clothes or new clothes that you never wear and donate them. Think of the people that just lost their home, their personal belongings, and their normal daily activities such as work, school, etc. These people will take what they can get. Don’t stop at your clothes closet. Continue on to linen closets and donate towels, cleaning products, go to your pantry and donate non perishable items, donate anything you can think of that you may or may not use everyday. Most likely, someone will use it and be glad to have it.

Give blood.

Go to your local Red Cross and donate your items that you have collected as well as giving blood. During this emergency situation, people are going to need medical assistance and your blood could save a life!

Raise money.

If you can’t afford to give money, raise money instead. There’s been people selling lemonade and donating their donations to this cause. If you don’t have anywhere to donate your items to or they are objects not easier transportable, have a garage sale and sell them. Then take the money and donate it to the cause. Find out if your children’s school is doing anything to contribute items. They may be collecting toys to give to the children of those affected.

Take a family or individual into your home.

There are schools that are taking students that have been displaced. Some however may not have available housing or the students may not be able to afford it so if you live near a campus you may look into contacting the school and let them know you’d be willing to help out a student until they can get back on their feet.

The options are plentiful if you think creatively. You may be a frugal single mother but there are still ways to help out even when money is tight. These survivors have lost everything and could use whatever they can get!

For more frugal single mother tips and ideas go to SavingDimes and SingleMotherResources.

Katie Spencer is a contributing writer for a number of international financial journals both online and in print. Katie has been delivering financial education to the public in a variety of areas to include budgeting, credit and debt management, and money saving tips. Recently, Katie has been in partnership with a national educational foundation to deliver financial advice to American consumers via the web. Recently Katie has been focusing on ways to help the victims of hurricane Katrina. For more go to either http://www.savingdimes.com or http://www.singlemotherresources.com

The right kind of PR, that is, the kind that puts you in charge of the care and feeding of a lot of people who play a major role in just how successful a manager you’re going to be?

As that manager, it also helps if you accept the fact that you need the kind of external stakeholder behavior change that helps you reach your business, non-profit or association objectives.

And it’s also helpful if you believe it’s a good idea to try and persuade those important outside folks to your way of thinking, then move them to take actions that help your department, division or subsidiary succeed.

Given all of that, if it now appears that you need to do something positive about the behaviors of those outside audiences that most affect your operations, yes, you really need public relations!

I mean, look at the sort of results you could be getting: politicians and legislators starting to view you as a key member of the business, non-profit or association communities; prospects starting to do business with you; fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; membership applications on the rise; customers starting to make repeat purchases; community leaders beginning to seek you out; welcome bounces in show room visits; higher employee retention rates; and even capital givers or specifying sources beginning to look your way.

So we agree that, yes, you really need public relations. But here’s what’s got to happen.

From the get-go, assure yourself that the public relations people assigned to your department, division or subsidiary know you’re determined to find out what your most important outside audiences actually think about your organization. Reason being that target audience perceptions usually lead to behaviors that can help or hinder you in achieving your operating objectives.

Pin down which audiences are really key to your success then build and prioritize your list of important outside groups of people whose actions most affect your unit. And begin work on that top external audience.

Your new public relations effort will depend for its success on how efficient you are in gathering the perceptions of your organization held by your key target audiences.

Put your public relations team to work interacting with members of that #1 outside audience. Or, if you can tap a good sized budget, you can ask a professional survey firm to do the job for you. However, because your PR folks are already in the perception and behavior business, my choice would be to use them for this assignment.

Either way, someone must interact with members of that prime audience and ask questions like “What do you know about our operation? Are you familiar with our services or products? Have you had any negotiations with us? If so, were they satisfactory?”

Keep a careful eye on responses. Notice any evasive or hesitant comments about your organization? Be especially alert for misconceptions or untruths. Are there false assumptions or inaccuracies you need to remedy in light of experience that shows negative perceptions inevitably lead to negative behaviors - the kind you must correct to protect your unit’s operations.

All this work prepares you to set your public relations goal. For instance, clarify a hurtful inaccuracy, fix that misconception or flatten that rumor once and for all.

As with just about any goal you pursue, you don’t reach it without the right strategy to show you how to get there. Fact is, with matters of perception and opinion, you have three strategic options: change an offending opinion/perception, create it where there isn’t any, or reinforce an existing perception.

Here, perhaps the hardest work connected to a public relations program rears its ugly head — preparing the persuasive message you will use to carry your corrective facts and figures to members of your key target audience.

Several characteristics are required in such a message. It must be clearly written as to why that misconception, inaccuracy or false assumption should be corrected or clarified. Supporting facts must be truthful so that they lead to a finished message that is persuasive, believable and compelling.

How would you plan to move your message to your audience? This is the least complex step in the sequence because there are so many communications tactics ready to do the message delivery job for you. They range from op-eds in local newspapers, radio and TV interviews, speeches, consumer briefings and brochures to newsletters, special events, emails, personal meetings and many, many others. Only caution: be sure the tactics you assign to the job have a good record of reaching people just like the members of your target audience.

Can we point to progress? Only way to know for certain if offending perceptions have been altered, is to interact out there once again with those audience members asking the same questions as before. But this time, you and your PR team will be watching carefully for indications that the troublesome perception really is correcting in your direction.

That IS where “the public relations rubber meets the road,” isn’t it? Business, non-profit or association managers use mission-critical public relations to alter an offending perception, leading directly to the predictable behavior…which helps them reach their department, division or subsidiary objectives.

About The Author

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to business, non-profit and association managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communi- cations, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, major in public relations. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net. Visit: http://www.prcommentary.com