"Images of the Virgin Mary in Guatemala and other countries"
View allAll Photos Tagged ab workouts
Featuring Seniha Originals' Cirila Set at Equal 10.
For all the credits, please check the Blog
Hit of the day: Kanye West - The New Workout Plan
♫ MOTi, Bodyworx - No Pain No Gain ♫
Push yourself to the limit
Play the game that's it No pain No gain
Pick up the pace let's get it
Pace the way that's it no pain no gain
Push yourself to the limit
Play the game that's it No pain No gain
Pick up the pace let's get it
Pace the way that's it no pain no gain
No pain, no gain
No pain, no gain
No pain, no gain
No pain, no gain
No pain, no gain
No pain, no gain
mike - my brother msiscoe here in the flickrveld) came down from NYC to headline at the Comedy Zone in Greensboro this weekend. Great show! tough as hell trying to photograph in lounge lighting from 40 feet away while laughing so hard your stomach is sore. In fact, Mike should repackage his act as an ab workout. Check out his website at mikesiscoe.com and check him out when he's in your area.
not bad for 1600 ISO...sheeshkabob!
i hail from a butter milk & honey family
i am sUch a cookie boy, & i'm getting so smoll
& teh best ab workout from my giggle fit
It’d had been WAY too long since I’d done any gravity defying feats, so I bought a bunch of balloons and convinced Spadge to put herself through a killer ab workout.
See more on my blog — ricknunn.com/projects/goodbyegravity/goodbye-gravity-vii
Find Me: My Site | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Strobist:
• 600ex-rt camera left on 1/4th power through a Westcott Rapid Box Duo.
• 600ex-rt camera right, on 1/16th power through a RoundFlash Beauty Dish.
• 600ex-rt camera left behind subject on 1/8th power with a blue gel.
• 600ex-rt camera right behind subject, pointed at the tree on 1/2 power with an orange gel.
All photos copyright 2015-2022 by Yarin Asanth.
Please note the copyright. The photos are property of the photographer Gerd Michael Kozik! No further use of my photos in any form such as websites, print, commercial or private use. Do not use my photos without my express written permission !
Location: Lake Constance, Mettnau Island, Radolfzell, Germany
Die Geschichte hinter diesem Foto: Ich erinnere mich gut. Es war ein stürmischer Spätnachmittag. Ich lief am Ufer des Bodensees bei der Halbinsel Mettnau auf und ab, um ein geeignetes Vordergrund-Element für ein gelungenes Landschaftsfoto zu finden. Kein Ruderboot weit und breit, nichts Interessantes um die weite Szenerie zu durchbrechen und um einen Fokus zu setzen. Leider hatte ich auch noch meine Stativplatte vergessen, böse Sache. So baute ich mir als erstes ein “Stativ“ aus Steinen für meine Camera, das ganze ziemlich weit unten am Boden, um eine Low-POV-Langzeitbelichtung machen zu können. Nun blieb mir also nichts anderes übrig, als die äußere Szenerie neu zu gestalten. Das Ufer fiel zum Glück sehr flach ab und meine Kleidung war sowieso bereits ziemlich durchnässt. Nun hieß es also Objekte ins Bild tragen. Man diese Steine waren wirklich schwer und mit zwei, drei Steinen war es nicht getan. So wurde es dann eine echte Lektion und am Ende hatte ich ein ganz ordentliches Training hinter mir. Solche Steinbrocken kann man ja nicht einfach irgendwo hinwerfen. Es soll ja auch noch schön aussehen. Das war also echt Arbeit. Dann noch Filter drauf auf die Kamera und Schuss. Wild Lake…;)
The story behind this photo: I remember it well. It was a stormy late afternoon. I was walking up and down the shore of Lake Constance near the Mettnau peninsula, trying to find a suitable foreground element for a successful landscape photo. No rowing boat far and wide, nothing interesting to break the wide scenery and to set a focus. Unfortunately, I had also forgotten my tripod plate, bad thing. So the first thing I did was to build a "tripod" out of stones for my camera, quite far down on the ground, to be able to take a low-pov long exposure. So now I had no choice but to redesign the outer scenery. The shore sloped down very shallowly and my clothes were already quite soaked. So now it was a matter of carrying objects into the picture. These stones were really heavy and two or three stones were not enough. So it became a real lesson and in the end I had quite a decent workout behind me. You can't just throw stones like that anywhere. It should also have look nice. So it was really work. Then I put a filter on the camera and shot. Wild Lake…;)
Tiny bird with great charisma. There was a pair actually. They kept perching overhead, moving in closer. Had to lean waaay back and manual focus. Good ab workout haha. Very curious and sociable.
This picture highlights why this is simply not a great lens. For a prime lens, this should pop off the screen, look alive, yet, it doesn't. Not even close.
It works fine for the sake of iNaturalist and identifying species in the field. Apart from that, I would not say this helps me create anything artistic.
And for those reasons, I'm kind of over it. The phone in my pocket creates more arresting imagery, vastly.
In broad daylight it's pushing the ISO to five thousand. That is unacceptable, even at 1/800th a second.
I'm not really sure what my alternatives are, expensive one can only presume.
When you're putting time into this stuff, the results should award the labor. This is how I view art, when we're assembling a trailer it has less to do with what program you're using, more to do with the craft, where to razor cut, add sound.
But with photography, the tools really do matter, I've found. You can have the best subject in the world on a limb above your head, but it pays to have glass when do shoot your shot.
189/365
According to the legend, when the root is dug up it screams and kills all who hear it. (from Wikipedia)
Well this was a fun photo to create. I always seem to like a photo better if I have to go through some physical torture to get it. This wasn't too bad, my back's sore and it was a good ab workout haha! I was goofing off in editing and ended up turning myself green and actually felt it looked more natural in the environment than normal skin color, and I wanted to seem like part of the root, so I went with it! I had noticed this stump while taking yesterday's photo and was going to do my usual bad habit of putting off using it until I had thought of the perfect photo to use it with. But yesterday I decided that instead of telling myself that and then never end up using it I'd just do what ever came to me. And I'm glad I did.
Must attribute with link to: www.ptpioneer.com
Image of a girl working out Outside doing stability ball Crunches outdoors in a park
Had to take this one a few times to get the sun in the center of the heart. Wish I had got more of the out line of his face but hey got some random birds fly by which was unexpected and cool.
Got an ab workout on this one!
We laugh so much it gives us an ab workout.
Today's random fact: the worst part about this project is you now know I will wear the same clothes for days on end.
Have the U.S. mainstream media sunk this low? What is the purpose for the Wall Street Journal giving such a full and extensive coverage on Meng Wanzhou's wardrobe? It's so sexist!!
There is no question Ms. Meng is rich. Rich people wear name brand clothing and live luxuriously. It's not unusual that she has nice homes with lots of amenities.
I don't remember reading any news article about Abigail Johnson of Fidelity Investments, for example, detailing her wardrobe or how luxurious her homes are.
While the WSJ article gives every aspect of Ms Meng's wardrobe, there's nothing on why Canada values the two Michaels' arrest so much. After all, when they were arrested in China, there were 300,000 Canadians living in China and Hong Kong and about 200 Canadians were thought to be in custody in China. So why did the U.S. and Canada pay so much attention to these two Michaels? Could it be because they were spies for the Canadian government?
albertapolitics.ca/2020/12/why-did-chinas-government-pluc...
Why did China’s government pluck the Two Michaels from among 300,000 Canadians in China?
This WSJ article fails to mention the omissions and misrepresentations made by the U.S. prosecutor. The fact was HSBC was fully aware of the relationship between Huawei and Skycom, the business entity that sold HP computers to Iran. The prosecutor also omitted a crucial slide in Ms. Meng's Powerpoint presentation.
ca.style.yahoo.com/meng-wanzhous-lawyers-claim-extraditio...
Meng Wanzhou's lawyers claim extradition case riddled with misrepresentations
www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-china-meng-kovrig-spavor-pris...
Inside the Secret Prisoner Swap That Splintered the U.S. and China
Detention of a Chinese executive to stand trial in the U.S. provoked a standoff between global rivals and opened an acrimonious new era
4:30 a.m., Sept. 25, 2021, Tianjin, China
A pair of prison vans approached the terminal at Tianjin Binhai International Airport carrying two Canadians, blindfolded and disoriented from 1,019 days in captivity.
On the moonlit tarmac, an unmarked U.S. Gulfstream jet waited to take them home. Nearby, the Canadian ambassador paced the carpeted lounge.
Fifteen time zones away, an Air China Boeing 777 stood ready at Vancouver International Airport. Armed officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police kept watch in the terminal. A Chinese executive in Manolo Blahnik heels strode past them, carrying a bag with a Carolina Herrera dress shaded the same vibrant red as China’s flag and trailed by an entourage of lawyers, aides and diplomats who called her Madam Meng. She, too, was headed home.
One of the most significant prisoner swaps in recent diplomatic history was under way, after a top-secret negotiation that was three years in the making.
At the Tianjin airport, a Chinese official was on the phone to confirm the woman’s passage through the Vancouver terminal. He then cleared the Canadian prisoners. The Canadian ambassador fumbled for their passports in a yellow envelope and ushered the men to an immigration checkpoint.
A Chinese guard stamped the passports and directed them to the runway.
When Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada in 2018, she was chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co., a telecommunications giant founded by her father that was poised to win the race to build 5G networks in most of the world’s largest economies. Canadian authorities took Ms. Meng into custody in Vancouver, British Columbia, on behalf of the U.S., which had filed bank-fraud charges against her.
The detention of the 50-year-old celebrity businesswoman, and U.S. efforts to extradite her for trial in New York, transformed her into a national martyr in China and a symbol of America’s growing hostility to its nearest rival.
Days later, the two Canadians were seized in retaliation for Ms. Meng’s arrest. Michael Kovrig, 50, was on leave from Canada’s Foreign Ministry to work for the International Crisis Group in Hong Kong. Michael Spavor, 46, ran a business that helped students, athletes and academics visit North Korea. During their incarceration and harsh treatment, the two men were sympathetically shorthanded in news reports and by Western leaders as “the two Michaels.” Both men denied any wrongdoing.
The arrests marked a turning point in the growing power competition between the U.S. and China, helping shift it from mutual wariness to full-blown animosity. Unlike last century’s Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the prisoner skirmish reflected a U.S.-China battle for control of the international flow of data and, ultimately, primacy in global commerce.
Negotiations to free the prisoners strained relations between China, U.S. and Canada. Each nation navigated its own security concerns and domestic political pressures. The U.S. pressed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release the two Canadians and cited their arrest as evidence of Beijing’s disregard for the international rules-based order. Mr. Xi saw Ms. Meng’s detention as another underhanded attempt by the U.S. to contain his country’s advance.
Mr. Xi penned more than 100 notes about her case, and he discussed the Michaels with two U.S. presidents. Mr. Xi refused to free them until Ms. Meng was released. Canada was caught in the middle.
Dominic Barton, the Canadian ambassador, spent hundreds of hours at a whiteboard in an embassy safe room charting proposals to get his countrymen released and visiting them in prison. He delivered coded messages in rapid-fire English he knew eavesdropping guards would struggle to understand. Until the final moments, Canada worried that a news leak or a stray remark from a U.S. senator would scuttle the exchange.
This account is based on interviews with current and former U.S., Canadian and Chinese officials, lawyers and prosecutors, former Huawei officials, people familiar with Ms. Meng’s legal team and her staff, as well as current and former diplomats of the three countries. It draws from court documents, real-estate and corporate records, classified diplomatic cables, unpublished photographs and notes of government officials involved in the negotiations.
A spokesman for the Chinese consulate in New York declined to answer questions. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman has said that Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor were detained and tried in accordance with Chinese law, and their case was unrelated to Ms. Meng’s arrest.
Meng Wanzhou planned to spend only a few hours in Vancouver when she touched down on Dec. 1, 2018. It was one of four cities where she kept a home.
The Huawei CFO checked seven suitcases, packed with presentation material for meetings in four countries, including Mexico. The country’s newly inaugurated president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was open to Huawei building 5G networks in his country, brushing off U.S. security concerns.
Ms. Meng also booked a stop in Buenos Aires, where she would join her father, Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s billionaire founder. Mr. Ren had once announced that none of his three children was visionary enough to succeed him. Ms. Meng, who crisscrossed the world representing her father’s empire, seemed determined to prove him wrong.
Around the time Ms. Meng walked into Hong Kong’s international airport, word of her itinerary passed over a secure line to the Palacio Duhau hotel, site of the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires. A White House lawyer took the call in a soundproof tent set up in a suite. Afterward, the lawyer woke up John Bolton: Ms. Meng was en route.
Mr. Bolton, then-national security adviser in the Trump administration, knew Ms. Meng’s arrest could disrupt the summit’s marquee event that evening, a dinner between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Yet Mr. Bolton, a longtime China hawk, felt it was worth the risk. The president didn’t yet know about the plan. White House staffers later debated whether Mr. Bolton had told Mr. Trump or if it hadn’t fully registered with the president.
While Ms. Meng was on her flight to Vancouver, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents passed along details of her travel outfit: a black Abercrombie & Fitch hoodie, dark sweatpants, her hair just past the shoulders.
Federal prosecutors had a sealed indictment against Ms. Meng and Huawei for bank fraud, alleging she had helped disguise the company’s business dealings in Iran. The evidence was in a PowerPoint presentation Ms. Meng showed an executive of HSBC Holdings PLC in the back room of a Hong Kong restaurant in 2013. Huawei, she claimed in her presentation, wasn’t violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.
The charge was narrow, but it would serve a broader national security objective—to help Washington convince U.S. allies Huawei couldn’t be trusted.
In a briefing room at the Vancouver airport, six Canadian police officers and border guards studied photos of Ms. Meng. “Seize any electronic devices on MENG to preserve evidence, as there will be a request from FBI,” a Canadian constable scrawled in a spiral notebook.
Ms. Meng’s extradition request had arrived from Washington on a password-protected file that Canadian authorities needed more than a day to unlock. The delay meant Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, also attending the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, was told of the request only around the time officers took positions at the Vancouver airport’s Gate 65 jet bridge.
At 11:18 a.m., Cathay Pacific Flight 838 rolled to a stop at the terminal gate.
Two border guards escorted Ms. Meng to a counter where another guard combed through her luggage. Officers asked questions, among them: Did Huawei ever sell products in Iran? They collected her electronics and demanded her passwords. One by one, they slid her devices into security bags, as the U.S. had requested: a red-cased Huawei phone, a black-and-pink 256-gigabyte thumb drive, a pink-framed MacBook and an iPad with a sticker of Winnie-the-Pooh, a character sometimes used on social media to mock Mr. Xi, China’s leader.
“You have committed fraud, we’re arresting you, and then you will be sent back to the United States,” a police officer told Ms. Meng.
“Me?” she said. “You’re saying I committed fraud in the United States?”
“I don’t have details,” another officer replied. “They have a fraud charge against you regarding your company, uh, Huawei?”
An officer added, apologetically, “We’re only assisting the United States.”
At the police station, Ms. Meng was fingerprinted, and allowed a phone call to the only Chinese-speaking lawyer Huawei could find on short notice, a patent attorney. As the attorney dashed to the station, Ms. Meng began to gasp for air, worrying officers who sped her to a hospital.
Messrs. Trump and Xi were dining on Argentine sirloin, accompanied by a 2014 Malbec. The goal of the dinner was to reach a truce in an escalating U.S.-China trade war. Neither man appeared aware of Ms. Meng’s arrest. Mr. Bolton, seated near Mr. Trump, didn’t mention it.
Mr. Xi learned shortly after, according to Chinese government officials, and it struck him as deceptive and an insult. He had just agreed to buy more U.S. food and energy.
Mr. Trump questioned Mr. Bolton days later at a White House Christmas dinner, according to people familiar with the conversation. “Why did you arrest Meng?” the president said. “Don’t you know she’s the Ivanka Trump of China?”
Chinese Foreign Ministry officials briefed Mr. Xi on the arrest when he returned to Beijing on Dec. 6. Ms. Meng, ranked China’s eighth most powerful businesswoman by Forbes magazine, was in custody and under severe distress.
China’s Ministry of Public Security, which had a list of Canadian names, proposed two for him to select. Canada’s ambassador was summoned to a Foreign Ministry office in Beijing and warned China would retaliate.
Two days later, a call came to the Canadian embassy from a man stopped while trying to board a 2 p.m. flight to South Korea from a city in China’s northeast.
“I’m being questioned,” Michael Spavor said.
That night, the embassy got another call, this one about Michael Kovrig. He had been walking in Beijing when he was bundled into a vehicle.
For hours, embassy officials waited to hear from the two men, hoping authorities would release them. Then came the whir of the office fax machine, signaling trouble. Fax was the preferred channel of China’s Foreign Ministry. The machine spat out back-to-back missives announcing the detention of two Canadian citizens suspected of threatening national security.
Canada’s ambassador met with officials in Beijing. They asked for Ms. Meng’s release. “He who ties the knot must untie it,” one of them said.
A month later, Mr. Trudeau cemented his government’s position at a snow-drenched cabinet retreat in Quebec. Arrests of innocent Canadian citizens wouldn’t force Ms. Meng’s release.
“Canada cannot be bullied,” he told his cabinet members.
The prime minister, a liberal leader who in public appearances sometimes appeared boyish, had a harder side. Just before he assumed office, Islamic State militants had abducted two elderly Canadians. Mr. Trudeau later refused to pay a ransom, and they were decapitated.
It was his worst moment as prime minister—and the right decision, Mr. Trudeau said at the cabinet retreat.
When Canada’s ambassador to China said in public remarks that Ms. Meng had a strong case to fight her extradition, Mr. Trudeau fired him.
To free Ms. Meng, Huawei assembled a team of more than a dozen lawyers, including some of the corporate world’s highest-paid. They all agreed she was unfairly trapped in the rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
One of Huawei’s recruits—trial lawyer Reid Weingarten, whose clients had included Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—carried a report into a meeting early in 2019 with Justice Department officials. It detailed reasons the defense team believed Ms. Meng would easily win her case.
Elevating a six-year-old PowerPoint presentation to a charge of bank fraud was an overreach the Justice Department would regret, according to Ms. Meng’s lawyers. Some doubted prosecutors had the appetite to go to trial.
Instead, they found little hope for a swift resolution. Federal prosecutors in the case were confident. If Ms. Meng wanted to plead guilty, they were ready to talk. Otherwise, they would see her in court.
The White House had a lot riding on the case. Huawei was on the other side of a contest for control of 5G, the wireless network slated to ferry data to billions of devices worldwide. It was a fight the U.S. didn’t want to lose.
Huawei was offering to deliver its 5G equipment—antennas, base stations and routers—more quickly and less expensively than its Western competitors. The company, a relative newcomer compared with century-old telecom rivals Nokia Corp. and Ericsson AB, had become a world leader.
U.S. national security officials were convinced of a danger other nations thought could be managed—that Huawei was assembling the architecture China could use to conduct worldwide surveillance.
In 2009, U.S. cyberspies had infiltrated the company’s networks. FBI analysts, worried Beijing could use those same networks to spy, alerted their bosses. Defense Department officials urged U.S. telecom companies to steer clear of Huawei. A 2012 congressional investigation concluded China could use Huawei equipment for espionage but didn’t find clear evidence it had.
By the time of the Trump administration, Huawei had built a seemingly insurmountable lead over its rivals. An analysis that circulated among intelligence officials warned Huawei would control 80% of the global market for 5G equipment. National security officials feared that would hand China a surveillance tool with the potential to collect all manner of secrets, from the blueprints of nuclear plants to military plans of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Defense officials and diplomats reached out to America’s closest foreign partners and pushed for Huawei bans. The company dispatched its own lobbyists, lawyers and public-relations firms to say it had never conducted espionage and never would. Huawei challenged the Trump administration to reveal the evidence it claimed to hold, material the U.S. said was secret to protect its sources and methods.
The White House instead offered a slim thread of evidence. In 2017, Beijing had introduced an intelligence law that said “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.”
Huawei, the Trump administration argued, was bound by law to spy. The company countered that it applied only in China.
U.S. diplomats took printouts of the law to allies around the world, reading it aloud to officials caught up in what many saw as a feud between superpowers. The U.K., South Korea, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Canada balked at pressure to ban the company. Some were baffled by the escalating campaign.
Huawei said it was a Chinese success story whose founder was motivated not by rivalry with America but admiration for it.
Mr. Ren, a former army engineer, started out in 1987 selling telecom switches from an apartment in Shenzhen, a small city overshadowed by neighboring Hong Kong. In his telling, a 1993 Greyhound bus trip across the U.S. stirred grand ambitions.
In Dallas, Mr. Ren recalled visiting the 60,000-acre headquarters of Texas Instruments Inc. Employees there clocked overtime to take him on a daylong tour of research facilities, revealing technical details of new high-speed devices.
At National Semiconductor in California, at the time one of the world’s leading chip makers, he saw an exhibition of optical devices and 3G network switching technologies.
Mr. Ren hired a taxi to drive around the Silicon Valley research facility of International Business Machines Corp. to calculate how many square kilometers it encompassed. He felt “the United States will prosper forever,” he recalled in a blog post.
A quarter-century later, his company was a leader in artificial-intelligence research and had a smartphone brand that sold more units than Apple Inc. Huawei opened a 4-square-mile campus outside Shenzhen that featured Swiss-style trams zipping past replicas of European castles and landmarks of Paris and Verona, Italy, that housed Huawei offices and research labs.
As the company grew, it was stalked by allegations—from former employees, rival corporations and U.S. officials—that its advance relied on deceit. Huawei denied the allegations and said it was committed to complying with laws in global markets. The company settled lawsuits with competitors that accused it of stealing trade secrets, among them Cisco Systems Inc. and Quintel Technology Ltd.
Paperwork for search warrants and interview notes piled up in a Justice Department office in New York. Some companies were afraid China would retaliate if they took Huawei to court, feeding a view at the department that Huawei’s competitive advantage was impunity.
A bank ended up providing investigators with evidence for the government’s first case, which originated in the Brooklyn, N.Y., office.
In 2013, HSBC had asked Huawei to explain a news report claiming it secretly owned and operated a company that sold its products in Iran. Afterward, Ms. Meng then told the HSBC executive in the Hong Kong restaurant that Huawei adhered to U.S. sanctions.
Months after the meeting, border agents searching Ms. Meng’s electronics during a transit through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York recovered a text file of her talking points concerning Iran. It had been deleted but not erased from the hard drive.
The file became useful when HSBC, on the hook for its own legal missteps, had to give federal prosecutors a dossier on its business with Huawei, including what Ms. Meng had said about her company’s dealings in Iran.
Federal investigators assigned a code name to keep the probe secret. HSBC and other banks cooperating with the Justice Department feared for the safety of their executives in China, as well as business ties there.
Prosecutors in April 2017 served Huawei with a subpoena to answer questions about whether it conducted business in sanctioned countries, and company executives subsequently halted travel to the U.S.
In August 2018, prosecutors readied an indictment against Huawei and Ms. Meng. They kept it under seal until she landed in a country within their reach.
Ms. Meng’s jail in Vancouver was a $4.2 million house facing the North Shore Mountains. It was the smaller of her two homes in the city.
U.S. officials had hoped Canada would keep Ms. Meng behind bars until her extradition. The billionaire’s daughter, who had been issued at least seven passports, was a flight risk, prosecutors argued during her December 2018 bail hearing.
Instead, a judge had granted her bail, set at 10 million Canadian dollars, equivalent to $7.5 million, and imposed a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Otherwise, she was free to roam. A GPS monitor on her ankle kept Ms. Meng tethered to authorities.
Later, she received court permission to move, for security reasons, to a $12.3 million, seven-bedroom villa, two doors from the home of the U.S. consul general. Mr. Ren dispatched a team of Huawei employees to help with public relations and his daughter’s defense.
A vice president from the Brazil office and a China-based legal director were the first to arrive. They stayed in a villa nearby. A PR manager from Huawei’s headquarters followed, and he began holding impromptu news conferences on the courthouse steps, irritating Ms. Meng and her legal advisers. They worried his public statements could jeopardize the case, but Mr. Ren overruled their objections.
By April, Huawei had a more senior team in place, including Mr. Ren’s translator and personal assistant, who served as a liaison.
The former head sales executive in Europe directed Ms. Meng’s daily Zumba classes and yoga workouts. Personal chefs prepared health-conscious meals. A florist arranged bouquets for the dining table. Mr. Ren tried to prod his daughter into pursuing a Ph.D. while she waited for her release.
The cast of helpers and aides was known as Sabrina’s Team, after one of the English-language names she used.
When Ms. Meng stepped out, a set of court-appointed bodyguards, stationed in a tent pitched on the property, trailed her. Fashion boutiques accommodated her private shopping tours. She dined with friends at the Dynasty Seafood restaurant, where the city’s Chinese elite enjoyed dim sum and city views.
Huawei had built a foothold in Canada’s telecom market, including a 5G research center. Shortly after Ms. Meng’s arrest, the company ramped up its advertising around the city, draping bus stops, billboards and shopping malls in banners, many in Chinese, featuring its latest slogan—Huawei: a higher intelligence.
On March 6, 2019, three months after her arrest, bodyguards and TV cameras followed Ms. Meng into court for her extradition hearing.
On the courthouse steps, protesters opposing Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong set fire to a Chinese flag. Some held placards scrawled in all caps, “EXTRADITE MENG!”
The court hearing lasted just a few minutes, marking the start of a protracted legal battle. Each time Ms. Meng went to court, she passed a Chinese nurse, a member of China’s Uyghur minority, holding pictures of Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor, the two Michaels, to protest their detention.
In the northeastern city of Dandong, on the North Korea border, Michael Spavor lived with some 20 other inmates in Cell 315. At night, they slept side by side like sardines. The overflowing compound was sweltering on hot days and cold after dark. Meals were meager and unchanging: cabbage, eggs and rice.
Mr. Spavor, a Calgary native, traveled to South Korea at age 21 and taught English. He became fascinated with the authoritarian state of North Korea and began arranging tours. In 2013 and 2014, he planned three trips for Dennis Rodman, the former Chicago Bulls basketball star who had his own interest in the secretive country and its leader, Kim Jong Un.
Mr. Spavor impressed party guests in South Korea with his pitch-perfect North Korean accent.
The two Michaels had met once at a dinner in Beijing. The expatriates chatted about China, North Korea and relations between the two countries.
Mr. Kovrig had gone to Budapest after college in the mid-1990s, joining a wave of Westerners who flooded into once-closed Central European countries. He worked as a reporter and sang in a punk band before returning home to join Canada’s diplomatic service.
Fluorescent lights glowed 24 hours a day in Mr. Kovrig’s windowless cell at Beijing’s No. 1 Detention Center. For almost six months, he was confined without a whiff of fresh air. To break the monotony, he devised a daily workout of push-ups, six-minute planks and 7,000 steps around the tiny space.
Prison authorities spent the first months of Mr. Kovrig’s incarceration conducting interrogations that stretched to 10 hours. Over and over, they questioned his work at the Canadian embassy in Beijing.
In June 2019, after more than 150 days in prison, Mr. Kovrig was allowed to send a batch of letters home. The embassy scanned the stack of handwritten notes and emailed them to his wife in Toronto.
Vina Nadjibulla, a 44-year-old international security analyst, met Mr. Kovrig while they were studying international relations at Columbia University in 2001. She was raised in wartime Kabul, the daughter of a Soviet Jew and an Afghan Muslim, and had found her calling in conflict prevention at the United Nations. Mr. Kovrig proposed to her in the U.N. Assembly Hall.
He entered Canada’s foreign service, and she worked on the reconstruction of postwar Sierra Leone. The couple had separated by the time of Mr. Kovrig’s arrest. But each had promised to help the other if they were ever kidnapped during their work abroad.
Ms. Nadjibulla put her life on hold, flying between Toronto, Washington and Ottawa to petition officials who could help free Mr. Kovrig. In June, Mr. Trudeau invited Ms. Nadjibulla to his office, and she read from her husband’s letters to his family.
“If there is one faint silver lining to this hell, it’s this: trauma carved caverns of psychological pain through my mind,” one letter said. “I find myself filling those gulfs with a love for you and for life that is vast, deep and more profound and comforting than what I’ve ever experienced.”
“Come sit with me and walk with me in spirit,” Mr. Kovrig wrote. “Help me feel less isolated. Let me share the love I have for you and we’ll get through this together.”
About a week later, Mr. Trudeau arrived in Osaka, Japan, for the G-20 summit. He set out to lobby the one person who could release his two countrymen—Mr. Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
In meetings with Western leaders, Mr. Xi seldom joked and rarely smiled. He usually began with a monologue of talking points almost identical to his public statements. He so resolutely stuck to scripted remarks that his interpreter simply read aloud from a prepared English text. When finished, Mr. Xi would ask, “Don’t you agree?”
White House officials analyzing transcripts from closed-door talks often struggled to understand whether Mr. Xi had said anything of substance beyond his prepared statements.
In their conversations, Mr. Trump would try six or seven ways of bluntly asking a specific question, and Mr. Xi would repeat the same vague responses.
Other world leaders traded small talk and called each other by their first names—Donald, Angela, Vladimir. Even behind closed doors, Mr. Xi stuck to “Mr. President” or “Madam Prime Minister” and other honorifics.
Throughout the first half of 2019, Mr. Trudeau had failed to get an audience with Mr. Xi. His diplomats in China were frozen out. The Chinese reply to Mr. Trudeau was frustrating: It would breach protocol for Mr. Xi, China’s head of state, to speak with Mr. Trudeau, merely the head of government of Canada, whose head of state was Queen Elizabeth II.
Beijing expressed itself through trade restrictions. China blocked shipments of Canadian canola oil at its ports. In May, it barred pork from two of Canada’s top slaughterhouses. Three days ahead of the G-20 summit, it stopped all Canadian meat from entering China.
Mr. Trudeau asked Mr. Trump to speak up for Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor when the U.S. president met with the Chinese leader at the summit in Osaka.
At their meeting, Mr. Trump handed Mr. Xi a sheet of paper that listed the names of Americans being held in China. The names, written in Chinese and English, also included Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.
“It would be a great gesture,” Mr. Trump said with a stroke of flattery, if China could help these people get home.
Scanning the names, Mr. Xi pointedly noted that the last time the two leaders had met was the day of Ms. Meng’s arrest.
Mr. Trudeau got his opening by chance. Chile was a guest at the G-20 meeting, but its representative didn’t attend a scheduled assembly. That left Canada seated alphabetically between China and Brazil—and Mr. Xi seated to the right of Mr. Trudeau.
The Canadian prime minister passed a note, handwritten in Chinese, to Mr. Xi. “We have to communicate,” it said. Mr. Trudeau proposed they select two confidants to begin backchannel talks.
The two men stepped to the side of a conference floor, exchanged pleasantries through a translator and clasped hands.
Days later, Dominic Barton, the former global managing partner of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., carried a thin folder of notes into the gated Diaoyutai state guesthouse in Beijing. His meeting was unofficial and secret. He told his secretary he was on vacation.
The 60-year-old Canadian had risen in the slipstream of China’s economic miracle, and through more than a decade living and working in the country had ties with Chinese entrepreneurs, executives and party leaders. He had written two books on China and taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Mr. Barton wasn’t a diplomat. Yet Mr. Trudeau believed he could break the diplomatic logjam and bring home the two Michaels.
An adviser had informed the prime minister that there was a 40% chance Mr. Barton’s first meeting with Chinese officials would go well, a 40% chance it would go well enough for a second visit and a 20% chance it would go sour.
The silver-haired executive smiled at a pair of Foreign Ministry officials when he and the adviser entered the meeting room. An elderly Communist Party official began reading from a stack of pages, pausing with dramatic effect for the translator to catch up.
“You have arrested Madam Meng.”
“You are lapdogs of the United States.”
Mr. Barton interrupted, and the ministry official, appointed by Mr. Xi, looked up and flipped back to the first page. Then he began rereading from the beginning. For three hours, the official read from an invective-laced script, circling back to the top each time Mr. Barton protested.
Calling for a timeout, Mr. Barton stepped into the hallway. “I think we’re in the 5%,” the adviser said, acknowledging the worse-than-expected outcome.
Mr. Barton held his tongue through the last hour of hectoring. The Chinese official focused on Section 23(3) of Canada’s 1999 Extradition Act, which gave the country’s justice minister authority to cancel an extradition.
“You don’t even know your own law!” the official said.
At the end of the meeting, Mr. Barton asked if China’s Foreign Ministry would attend a second meeting in Ottawa. No, the official said. But the Canadians were welcome to return to Beijing.
That was the only good news Mr. Barton had for the prime minister.
“OK,” Mr. Trudeau said in their phone call. “Well, that’s something.”
Weeks later, Mr. Barton was named Canada’s ambassador to China. His first test was a meeting with Mr. Xi in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The ambassador delivered a short speech in his halting Mandarin during an exchange that lasted barely a minute.
“My mission here is to resolve this issue,” Mr. Barton said. “I want to get Madam Meng and our people home.”
“I didn’t know you spoke Mandarin,” Mr. Xi said.
“I don’t…that’s the only Mandarin I know,” the executive replied.
Mr. Xi smiled. “It takes two people to repair a relationship,” he said.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, then offered his own rough-edged advice.
“You got a lot of work to do,” Mr. Wang said, slapping Mr. Barton’s back. “You better exercise hard!”
Shortly after, Mr. Barton made his first visit to a Chinese prison. Guards escorted him past an interrogation room holding a metal chair with straps.
Guards told Mr. Spavor that he had a visitor.
The two men met in a reception room, and they were told not to discuss Mr. Spavor’s case. Mr. Barton leaned across a table toward the handcuffed prisoner. “I’m going to talk to you very fast to be able to smuggle some stuff in about the case,” he said. “Here are the four things I want to discuss. But first, is there anything you want to put on the agenda?”
Mr. Spavor, struggling with sleep, looked numb. “How long will this go on?” he said. “Every day I wake up, and it’s the same.”
Mr. Barton said he didn’t know. He spoke rapidly about efforts to free him and of the health of Mr. Spavor’s father in Calgary, who had fallen seriously ill.
When guards caught mention of Ms. Meng, they interrupted, and Mr. Barton switched subjects before returning to the case.
Mr. Barton also went to the Beijing prison to see Mr. Kovrig, who was livid and gesturing at guards he said were abusive. They had taken away his glasses, citing rules against metal objects.
“Take their numbers!” he said, his 6-foot-4 frame stretching out of his too-small prison uniform. “Write them down!”
In his letters, Mr. Kovrig had called the prison a concrete desert.
He also demanded to know about his release. “When will this get done?”
Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor were headed toward their second Christmas behind bars when NATO leaders mingled at a Dec. 3, 2019, Champagne reception in Buckingham Palace.
It was hosted in the Green Drawing Room, a long, crimson-carpeted hallway decorated with silk wallpaper and gold-framed pictures of England’s monarchs. Kate Middleton and Prince William filtered through the crowd of NATO officials charged with defending the West. Mr. Trudeau spoke privately with the queen.
The prime minister’s chief foreign policy adviser, David Morrison, grabbed a word with White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Earlier in the day, the prime minister had told Mr. Trump about the ordeal the two Michaels were enduring. The U.S. agreed to a meeting in Washington, an opening Canada welcomed.
The White House had already resumed prisoner-exchange talks with Beijing. National security adviser Robert O’Brien, who followed Mr. Bolton, had recently been in Bangkok for a meeting of Asian leaders.
He surprised China’s premier, Li Keqiang, at the meeting with books for the two Canadian prisoners: “Unbroken,” Laura Hillenbrand’s profile of World War II prisoner Louis Zamperini, for Mr. Kovrig, a C.S. Lewis novel for Mr. Spavor and a Bible for each. The books contained handwritten notes reassuring the two captives that the world knew of their suffering.
As Mr. O’Brien passed on the books, he also relayed a diplomatic message: Washington wanted to talk.
Days later, China’s deputy chief of mission in Washington met discreetly with National Security Council staff at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House. Washington had no right to demand the Canadians’ release, the Chinese delegate said: “This is not a U.S. matter.”
Beijing, however, was willing to consider another exchange first, to build trust. The U.S. could accelerate the deportation of Bank of China Ltd. manager Xu Guojun, who was sought by Chinese authorities for corruption-related charges.
In return, the Americans wanted David Lin, a Taiwanese-American pastor imprisoned for life after proselytizing in China, and Kai Li, a Chinese-American businessman from Long Island, N.Y., who was serving 10 years for espionage.
A few days before Christmas, a Canadian delegation met in Mr. Mulvaney’s office at the White House, where administration officials were preoccupied with Mr. Trump’s first impeachment hearings.
Canada’s acting ambassador to Washington, Kirsten Hillman, and Messrs. Barton and Morrison squeezed next to John Demers, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security, and Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser. The sooner Ms. Meng was extradited, Mr. Pottinger said, the sooner the two Michaels could be freed.
The Canadian delegation said Ms. Meng’s appeal could last years and would almost certainly end in a plea deal. If so, they said, the sooner the U.S. agreed to a plea deal, the better for Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor.
After several videoconference calls through the spring of 2020, Mr. Demers told the Canadian diplomats that the Justice Department was considering a deferred prosecution agreement: Prosecutors wouldn’t move forward with charges if Ms. Meng pledged not to commit other federal crimes.
The sticking point was that Ms. Meng would have to admit wrongdoing. Her lawyers said she would never agree because she had done nothing wrong.
Mr. Barton and his closest aides in Beijing frequently worked in a room below the Canadian embassy that had metal-coated walls to repel electronic surveillance. It was named the Salle de Deux Innocents—the Room of Two Innocents—for a travelogue written by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau after he hitchhiked with a friend across Mao-era China.
In meetings, Mr. Barton and the aides toggled through flipboard pages with names of officials they hoped could persuade China to see the logic of settling Ms. Meng’s case with the Justice Department.
Months before her arrest, the two countries had pursued a free-trade agreement. Now, the invitations to state functions slowed to a trickle. Mr. Barton, known for his ability to strike deals in China, couldn’t get calls returned, even from longtime acquaintances. “We have come to expect this from the U.S., but we have a 50-year relationship with you,” one official said.
The mission wasn’t just faltering, Mr. Barton confided to a colleague. It was lurching toward humiliation.
In spring 2020, Mr. Barton hoped for better luck with Mr. Ren, the Huawei founder. He secured an appointment at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters, where he found Mr. Ren upbeat about his daughter’s prospects.
Madam Meng would be home soon, Mr. Ren said through his translator. Her lawyers had many grounds to appeal her extradition, and they believed one would stick. “I trust the Canadian legal system will do the right thing,” he said.
Ms. Meng, her legal team and Huawei were so confident of a win that they had her bags packed and chartered the 787th Boeing 787 ever made, a commemorative Dreamliner jet that would bring her home from Vancouver.
Days before Ms. Meng’s May 27, 2020, court hearing, her assistants staged a rehearsal for a planned photo on the steps of British Columbia’s Supreme Court building. Huawei colleagues and household staff joined Ms. Meng, flashing victory signs in front of an imagined crowd of supporters.
On the morning of the hearing, they were met instead by a jeering crowd hoisting signs: “Boycott Huawei” and “Free Canadians Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor.”
In the courtroom, Ms. Meng’s lawyers told the judge that the U.S. extradition request was faulty. Under Canadian law, the extradition could proceed only if the offense was a crime in both Canada and the U.S.
Although U.S. prosecutors had charged Ms. Meng with bank fraud, the lawyers said, the case was in fact about U.S. sanctions on Iran, and Canada had no such sanctions. The judge declined the appeal.
Vina Nadjibulla, Mr. Kovrig’s wife, was watching the judgment and taking notes. She had spent hundreds of hours following the case. After the judge’s decision, she went to Washington to brief officials.
Each month, she sent Mr. Kovrig a letter with regards from friends. She included such cryptic messages as, “I was walking in our old stomping grounds,” meaning she had been lobbying officials at the U.N.
Ms. Nadjibulla sent nutritional and fitness advice. Mr. Kovrig began sprinkling milk powder and sesame powder from the prison canteen on meals for a protein boost; he tried pistol squats to strengthen his core. His life was so closed he didn’t understand that a pandemic was disrupting the world.
Mr. Kovrig read 20 to 30 books a month—on philosophy and geopolitics, classics from Tolstoy to Kafka and Nelson Mandela’s prison autobiography, “The Long Walk to Freedom.” He and Mr. Spavor read copies of Viktor Frankl’s meditation on life in Auschwitz, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
Mr. Spavor shared his books with cellmates, who were rarely allowed them. In return, they helped him learn to write Chinese characters.
Mr. Kovrig’s letters home included book reviews, and Ms. Nadjibulla forwarded his recommendations to an informal book club of friends and colleagues in the U.S., Canada and Asia.
After months of requests, Chinese prison guards allowed Mr. Kovrig to call his family. Ms. Nadjibulla answered.
“V, is that you?” he said.
In the summer of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic spread worldwide, FBI agents arrested five academic researchers, most of them charged with lying on visa applications. Trump administration officials believed the students were exploiting U.S. research to advance China’s military. All pleaded not guilty.
The arrests prompted China to resuscitate secret prisoner-swap discussions with the U.S., which had gone silent in the pandemic. Beijing wanted its researchers back. Washington wanted its Americans—and the two Michaels.
A videoconference linked officials from the National Security Council, State Department and Justice Department with Chinese Foreign Ministry diplomats and the Ministry of Public Security. The U.S. insisted on using Microsoft Teams rather than Chinese software for the meeting.
“They are students,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said. “They are just studying.”
The U.S. offered to return the researchers, as well as speed up the deportation of Xu Guojun, the banker sought by China on corruption charges.
In return, the Americans wanted Kai Li, the businessman, and David Lin, the pastor, as well as Victor Liu and Cynthia Liu, American siblings blocked from leaving China since 2018. The U.S. also asked China to allow the exit of another three U.S. citizens, including two children.
The proposed exchange—seven Chinese for seven Americans, plus the two Canadians—would make it one of the largest prisoner swaps since the Cold War.
When U.S. officials raised the names of Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor, a Ministry of Public Security official said, “The Chinese people would not allow the Michaels to go home unless Madam Meng does.”
A Justice Department official encouraged the Chinese officials to talk with Ms. Meng’s lawyers about accepting the offer from federal prosecutors: freedom in exchange for an admission of wrongdoing. Persuade her to sign, the U.S. official said.
The talks fizzled. The U.S. wouldn’t bring home the Americans without the two Canadians. Ms. Meng wasn’t interested in the prosecutors’ offer.
The Chinese executive told her lawyers she would never admit wrongdoing. She was willing to remain in Vancouver for years, if necessary, while her legal team fought the U.S. extradition. The company’s reputation was at stake.
That summer, Huawei swept past Samsung Electronics Co. to become the world’s top smartphone maker. As chief financial officer, Ms. Meng had to protect the empire her father had built.
But Huawei was already tipping.
Mr. Trump, who began referring to Huawei as “Spyway,” signed off on new export restrictions in 2020 that blocked the company from buying computer chips produced with U.S. tools. The restrictions extended to manufacturers using American technology worldwide. Huawei started to run low on chips it needed to churn out smartphones, which made up around half its revenue.
Huawei also lost the license to load Google software on its phones and tablets. As sales plunged, Huawei considered shifting into electric cars.
Canada discussed the arrest of Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor at NATO counterintelligence briefings. Western leaders who spoke with Mr. Trudeau heard about the harrowing prison conditions endured by the two Michaels. Many of the details came from Ms. Nadjibulla.
One by one, the world’s wealthiest countries gravitated toward the U.S. position and cut ties with Huawei.
In July 2020, the U.K. announced it would ban the company from its networks by 2027. Two weeks later, France said it would stop renewing licenses for Huawei 5G equipment, effectively barring the company. By October, the U.K. Parliament’s defense committee said it would accelerate the Huawei ban.
Huawei’s head of public affairs in North America, Vincent Peng, bounced between the U.S., Canada and China, scouting for lobbyists to reach lawmakers and diplomats to help free Ms. Meng.
Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election in November, and as the clock ticked down to a new administration, Mr. Peng called Mr. Barton a few days before Christmas. He said Huawei was going to try its luck with Joe Biden.
Mr. Biden’s first bilateral meeting as president was with Canada on Feb. 23, 2021. The first item on Mr. Trudeau’s meeting agenda was the release of Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor. “These two guys are in prison,” the prime minister said. “They are there because we are living up to our commitments to you….We need to get them out.”
“I will not interfere with the judicial process,” Mr. Biden replied. “Everything else, I am here for you.”
Ms. Meng’s detention was one area where Mr. Xi hoped he could reset U.S.-China relations under the new president. Yet from all appearances, the relationship remained volatile.
At a March 2021 meeting in Alaska, China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, publicly accused the U.S. of persuading other countries to attack China. In private, Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought up the two Michaels, saying serious countries don’t kidnap people to use as bargaining chips.
That month, Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor were tried for espionage in closed-door hearings. Verdicts and sentences wouldn’t be announced until later.
As Mr. Biden took office, the Chinese leader came to see the case as an obstacle to restoring U.S.-China ties under the new administration. Mr. Xi felt his country had demonstrated sufficient resolve against Western provocation.
He tapped Xie Feng, a vice foreign minister, to bring the prisoner standoff to an end. Mr. Xi by then had sent more than 100 handwritten notes to underlings about Ms. Meng’s case.
In July 2021, the Justice Department dropped charges against the five Chinese researchers, a decision that lowered tensions between the two countries. Days later, Mr. Xie joined a gathering of senior U.S. and Chinese officials in Tianjin, the first such meeting in more than three months.
Between testy exchanges about Covid-19 and human rights, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said her department wouldn’t block Ms. Meng’s return home if she settled with U.S. prosecutors.
That was the assurance Mr. Xie was seeking.
Two weeks after the Tianjin meeting, Mr. Barton learned that Mr. Spavor would be sentenced in Dandong. The ambassador’s team invited diplomats from allied countries to gather at the courthouse. If Canada couldn’t stop the sentencing, it wanted the world as a witness.
Mr. Barton was joined by diplomats from the U.S., Japan, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. In the courtroom, Mr. Barton opened a video call to the Canadian embassy in Beijing and narrated the proceedings.
The judge sentenced Mr. Spavor to an 11-year term for espionage, based on the number of incriminating photos authorities claimed they found on his phone. Mr. Barton called Mr. Spavor’s family and then spoke to reporters.
“Our collective presence and voice sends a strong signal to China and the Chinese government that all the eyes of the world are watching,” the ambassador said.
A month later, Mr. Barton was summoned to the U.S. Embassy safe room to read transcripts of a call between Messrs. Biden and Xi. The two leaders had again pressed each other to release the prisoners.
It was, according to Beijing, “the consensus of the two presidents.”
Mr. Barton got an unexpected call while he was wrapping up a visit to an organization serving children with special needs in Qinghai, one of China’s poorest provinces. An aide handed him a phone and said, “Xie Feng wants to speak to you now!” Mr. Barton stepped into a blue van.
Mr. Xie spoke through a translator and quizzed Mr. Barton over details for completing the deferred prosecution agreement with Ms. Meng. The snag was how the U.S. would characterize her wrongdoing. Mr. Barton relayed some potential wording, and Mr. Xie cut him off, breaking into English.
That’s good, he said.
Ms. Meng wouldn’t explicitly admit to lying—only that the statements she had made to HSBC were “untrue.”
Mr. Barton plugged in a phone charger and called off his next visit. He kept Mr. Xie on the phone to go over logistics of a deal that could easily collapse. It all hinged on one overriding question: Would Xi Jinping approve?
The decision arrived in a handwritten note from the General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Xi gave his consent.
On the evening of Sept. 19, one of Ms. Meng’s new lawyers emailed a statement of facts to the Justice Department. The Huawei executive would concede that what she told the HSBC banker in 2013 was untrue.
Five days later, Ms. Meng joined a Brooklyn, N.Y., court hearing in a videoconference call from Vancouver. She pleaded not guilty to the indictment and accepted the deferred prosecution agreement.
The same day, Mr. Barton arrived for a prison visit with Mr. Kovrig. He learned he would speak to the two Michaels in video calls. Mr. Spavor had already arrived in Beijing by train.
“You will have the honor of telling them they’re going home,” a security official told Mr. Barton.
Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor appeared on the calls, one after the other. Mr. Barton tried to keep his voice from breaking in his call to Mr. Spavor.
“You’re going home,” he said.
Mr. Spavor looked bewildered.
“Are you serious?”
Nervous that any snag could derail the prisoner exchange, only a few select diplomats in Canada’s Beijing embassy knew what was afoot. Embassy staff worked out travel arrangements. A diplomat’s wife volunteered to bake peanut-butter cookies for the trip home.
In Vancouver, Ms. Meng and her lawyers had a 4 p.m. deadline on Sept. 24 to complete paperwork for the agreement with the Justice Department.
After the U.S. case was done, Canada invoked Section 23(3), the article allowing the government to terminate Ms. Meng’s custody.
In China, Messrs. Spavor and Kovrig, handcuffed and blindfolded, arrived at the Tianjin airport. Mr. Barton waited in the VIP lounge.
As the Canadians cleared the immigration checkpoint in China, officers at the Vancouver airport handed Ms. Meng her own freshly stamped passport. She hugged a lawyer and bid farewell to Chinese consular officers.
Ms. Meng learned during her flight that Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor had also been freed.
After a nighttime landing, Ms. Meng descended the airplane stairs at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport. She wore a Chinese flag pinned to her red Carolina Herrera dress and waved to a waiting crowd. Projectors flashed her name across skyscrapers in Shenzhen.
From a red carpet placed on the tarmac for her arrival, Ms. Meng raised her hands in victory and thanked one person, Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor touched down in Anchorage, Alaska. On the rain-washed runway, Mr. Kovrig bent to kiss the ground. Mr. Spavor joked they should hold their kisses until they reached Canada.
Mr. Trudeau and a small entourage greeted their return in Calgary, Mr. Spavor’s hometown. They were welcomed with to-go cups of Tim Hortons coffee.
Mr. Kovrig flew on to Toronto. Ms. Nadjibulla met him there, and they embraced beside a Royal Canadian Air Force jet.
The next day, China allowed the Liu siblings to return to the U.S.
Once home, Mr. Spavor found it hard to sleep in his own bed, having grown accustomed to contorting himself in a cell beside dozens of inmates. He remains in Canada and regularly speaks by phone with Mr. Barton.
Mr. Kovrig and Ms. Nadjibulla spent weeks together writing a book on the ordeal during her stays in Spain, Canada and the Netherlands. They hope the book offers a road map for other prisoners and their families. Despite their divorce plans, they are in some ways closer now than ever, friends said.
Mr. Barton resigned his post as ambassador three months after the two Michaels returned home. He became chairman of Rio Tinto PLC, the Anglo-Australian mining conglomerate. China, long locked in a trade dispute with Australia, agreed last month to develop a $2 billion iron-ore project with his new company.
Ms. Meng was recently promoted to a six-month rotation as Huawei’s chairwoman. She no longer sets foot in Western countries.
The U.S. and Canada persuaded 66 other countries to sign a declaration against arbitrary detention to forestall similar international disputes.
The resurgence of what the U.S. has called hostage diplomacy—by China but also Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and Turkey—has reached such proportions that Mr. Biden this summer declared it a national emergency. He signed an executive order authorizing the U.S. to impose sanctions on anyone involved in wrongfully detaining Americans abroad.
Huawei has pleaded not guilty to the bank-fraud and other charges in the U.S. case. On Monday, prosecutors unsealed charges against two Chinese intelligence officers accused of trying to bribe a U.S. law-enforcement employee for confidential information about what people familiar with the case said was the Huawei investigation.
Canada in May declared Huawei a national security risk and banned it from building 5G networks in the country. It was a political decision, a Huawei spokesman said, resulting from U.S. pressure.
“We used to embrace the ideal of globalization and aspire to serve all mankind,” Mr. Ren wrote in an August company memo. “What is our ideal now? Survive and earn some money wherever we can.”
The company has since been expelled from most European and North American 5G networks.
Regular old sit-ups. Which are not actually encouraged any more, in favor of crunches, curl-ups, planks, and all kinds of other ab/core exercises. But it's relatively easy to get the figures into this pose, at least.
via Tumblr ift.tt/2dKb549
There’s no denying our Instagram feeds are a prime source of motivation. So we’ve sourced seven of the best social media accounts to help you stay motivated and inspired, grouped by your goals.
For fat-loss fortitude
A Google search of ‘fat loss’ will see enough returns to bring on a migraine. We’ve sorted the sensible from the silly so you can maximise your shred.
Alexa Towersey @actionalexa
What you get:
Along with inspiring quotes and epic action shots (no squatting in a G-string here, folks), Towersey posts weekly examples of fat-burning circuits and booty-building exercises for you to try at home. And as a woman with years of experience and who trains some of Sydney’s top models, you are inclined to take her advice. With a scientific yet readable caption style, Towersey regularly reminds you of why rest, recovery and stress management are integral to your fat-loss goals – ’cause, let’s face it, it’s easy to forget come Monday morning.
What you don’t get:
Half-naked selfies or long opinionated rants, thank goodness. Just knowledge, working examples and ancillary training methods so you can max your goals.
Top tip:
“Train for your objective. Training to put on muscle is very different to training for strength, which is different to training for weight loss and different again to training for a specific sport. Remember, movement is not always progress. You can run in place and never get anywhere.”
Tom Venuto burnthefatblog.com
What you get:
Tips on leaning out from a natural bodybuilder – because why wouldn’t you take advice from those whose job it is to eradicate fat? A science boffin, Venuto posts about once a week and covers current fitness controversies – from the science behind eating more fat to whether you should be performing a crunch. If you’re looking for less-ordinary tips with the backing of a lab coat and academic studies to give you an edge, Venuto is your man.
What you don’t get:
One-size-fits-all workouts, training programs or nutrition plans. This blog is all about current research and the underlying factors affecting progress than cookie cutter routines. Sure, there are example workouts scattered here and there, but it’s not the place to go for daily pre-workout inspiration. You will have to plan your training yourself.
Top tip:
“Doing nothing but cardio is a mistake. But cutting out cardio completely is also a mistake. The truth lies in the middle. Maximum fat burning occurs when you combine cardio training and weight training together. For health and weight maintenance, I would suggest three short cardio workouts per week, about 20 to 30 minutes per session. But for maximum fat loss, I recommend four to seven days per week of cardio or other vigorous physical activity for 30 to 45 minutes (based on results) at a moderate pace.”
NEXT: Muscle madness
For muscle madness
If you’re looking to hit up the weights room to improve strength, tone and support fat loss (or just to look bad-ass – guilty!), these are the web accounts set to inspire.
Lauren Simpson (Snapchat: laurensimpsonnn)
What you get:
This young Sydney-sider is the perfect combo of body composition inspiration and information. You’ll be spoilt with regular rig/ab selfies as she preps for her next bikini comp, behind-the-scenes access to her numerous photoshoots, supplement discount codes, high-protein recipes and – our favourite – weighted workouts ripe for screen-shotting. She even encourages it.
What you don’t get:
Anything cardio based – she just doesn’t do it (ectomorph and naturally lean body shape perks). Simpson is renowned for her powerlifting and hypertrophy protocols to create the curves that have seen her win a recent WBFF pro card, so she may be hard to relate to for those looking to drop fat and create curves more steadily.
Top tip:
A recent leg workout from her Snap stream:
Superset
» Paused squat – 3 sets of 5 reps
» Hamstring curls – 3 sets of 5 reps (toes turned out, heels touching)
» Pendulum squats – 5 sets of 15 reps
» Split squats – 4 sets of 8 reps (each side, back foot elevated)
Nia Shanks (niashanks.com)
What you get:
Blog posts from a qualified trainer about everything from staying motivated to fat loss, but we particularly love her spiels on weight training. Not only do you get specific workouts and training programs based on your goals and time constraints (often with supporting video content), she also explains why you are doing what you are doing – whether that be a certain rep range or using a particular piece of equipment. It’s probably more suited to the intermediate weight lifter – although there are some body weight posts and beginner variations if you are just starting out.
What you don’t get:
Blogs about hitting the weights room to improve ‘flaws’ in your physique. Conversely, you also won’t get the ‘just love yourself as you are’ psycho-babble. Shanks finds a way to balance our mental health and self-confidence with our realistic desire to improve.
Top tip:
“If you strength train with the primary goal of improving your performance in the gym, you are setting yourself up for success. Unlike cardio, strength training is a great way to set positive, motivating goals that will keep you going in the gym week after week, month after month, and year after year.”
NEXT: For flexi fitness
For flexi fitness
The yogi yodas need their social fill too. To bring the zen to your computer screen, here are our top picks for scientific knowledge and practical tips to deepen the stretch.
Kate Kendall @activeyogi
What you get:
Let’s face it – sometimes we just want to chill on the couch, look at some pretty pictures and be inspired to hit the mat in the morning. Aussie-born and -bred yoga instructor Kate Kendall’s Instagram account is our go-to for beautiful bendy moves in obscene scenery. Her captions remind us to get outdoors, be with friends and just stretch. Plus, it’s always kind of interesting to see where her career as a Blackmores ambassador and her own yogi studio take her – whether that be instructing nighttime silent disco yoga sessions or standing side by side with other fitspo celebs.
What you don’t GET:
Actual informative tips on the practice of yoga – for that you will need to head to one of her classes.
Top tip:
Kate shared this quote from Sharon Gannon, founder of Jivamukti Yoga: “You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.” Deep.
Rachel Scott rachelyoga.com
What you get:
Yoga enthusiast and the director of Teachers’ College and Development YYoga, Rachel Scott’s website is all about education. With clean lines and easy-to-read spacing, her blog posts range from the quick and simple step-by-step instructions on a particular pose to a moving diary-style entry on anxiety and depression and how yoga has helped to heal. Encompassing the merging of spirituality and physicality native to true yogis, her blog posts are beautiful, short, sharp and informative, and you can pick and choose what you read depending on your mood or motives for the day – the archives are pretty extensive.
What you don’t get:
Regular updates – admittedly her posts are usually one or two a month, but at other times they are more sparse. If consistency is key to building your relationship with your blogger, then maybe look elsewhere.
Top tip:
“Our mats are not places to be perfect, or even places that we have to be particularly happy. They are places to be authentic. The mat is a place where it’s okay to cry. They are places to give ourselves permission to feel, practise self-care, and use our beautiful physical bodies to potentially shift our experiences. We can move with our feelings rather than cover them up.”
NEXT: For running ragged
For running ragged
For those who love to hit the pavement, these steady-state cardio training accounts will help get the blood pumping.
Deena Kastor @deena8050
What you get:
If you are well and truly sick of an Insta-feed filled with puppies, children (yes, he/she is adorable but…) and green smoothies, take a look at former Olympian Deena Kastor’s running Insta account. Her photographs will have you pining for an active holiday or a stroll around your nearest river with regular snaps of stunning sceneries from her track of that day. Her captions are a mix of inspiring quotes, reflections on the running life and diary entries of her favourite events and experiences. Okay and yes – the odd dog/child/green smoothie does pop up (she has all three). We love it really.
What you don’t GET:
Boring activewear selfies or overtly posed stretches. Refreshingly real, Kastor would rather give you a glimpse of nature and push you to pull on the running shoes rather than her own (albeit lithe) body.
Top tip:
“When faced with a challenge, it’s easy to feel small, but go down that trail as fast and safely as you can and feel as majestic as the mountains that stand over you.”
{nomultithumb}
Read more …
from Women’s Health & Fitness Combined Feed ift.tt/2ebd6Zi
via IFTTT
Every time I run on the treadmill I think about doing this shot, so after my run today I gave it a try. There are things I'd like improve, but it's hard shooting yourself while running! :)
Strobist: 1 Alien Bee 320 w/s with softbox @ 1/16 power, 45 degrees camera right. 1 AB 160 w/s @ 1/4 power with 20-degree grid, 90 degrees, camera left. Triggered by PWs and Canon remote. 1/8 sec, f/71.
Explore #190, 4/19/07
Happy Veterans Day 2020! And speaking of veterans, here's an old veteran that's a little worse for wear. So what are we looking at here?
This 3-engine KC-135R, 63-8886, was involved in a ground collision on 26 Sep 06 at Manas Air Base (Manas International Airport) in Kyrgyzstan after returning from a combat mission over Afghanistan. In short, a Tupolev TU-154 that was cleared for takeoff prior to the KC-135 clearing the runway ran into the stopped tanker, damaging both planes. Fortunately (and miraculously), there were no fatalities. Details of the incident can be found here:
aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20060926-1
So how did I come upon this photo opportunity less than a week later, especially since I never deployed to Manas AB, which was typically staffed with Fairchild AFB crews and planes. McConnell crews and tails were at Al Dhafra in the UAE, while Grand Forks crews (like me) and tails were out of Al Udeid in Qatar. For some reason, and my memory is growing foggy with the passage of time, but some Al Udeid crews had to forward-deploy to Manas. I can't remember if it was because Fairchild crews were hung up deploying or if they needed to ramp up tails at Manas. Either way, one of our crews had forward-deployed and was operating out of Manas when, for some reason, the aircraft commander lost track of time or something and was unable to make it back out of Afghanistan in time to meet the daily runway closure curfew at Manas and ended up having to divert to Al Dhafra. Well, military leadership doesn't like it when one of their assets doesn't return like it's supposed to and is now somewhere else in the Area Of Responsibility, The crew flew their tanker back to Manas the next day, but the hammer dropped and that crew was then grounded. That's where I come into the picture. I was tasked with flying a combat mission over Afghanistan, and instead of coming back "home" to Al Udeid, I was to continue on to Manas to pick up the grounded crew and their belongings and fly them back the next day.
Operating out of Al Udeid, 95% of my missions were north over Iraq. The 5% that went to Afghanistan were much different, mostly because you had to deal with Pakistani controllers and the communication with the command and control was spotty at best. I had not been to Manas AB before, but here I was going in there, in the mountains, at night. No big deal, honestly, but it was weird in a couple of different ways. First, everything was in meters over there. All my previous flying time had been in feet, so this was something different...I had to figure out how to make the altimeters read meters rather than feet. Second, tower control was staffed by some Kyrgy guy who typically spoke only in Russian but sputtered out English-sounding words when he was speaking to an American plane that was inbound. Because of that, there was an English-speaking liaison in the tower you had to listen to on a different radio who basically interpreted for you. And that setup is why that TU-154 and KC-135 ran into each other less than a week before.
Because I hadn't been to Manas before, I brought my Canon Digital Rebel XT along to document the scene. It just so happened that as we were being driven off the flight line to our rooms, we were passing by the doomed-to-the-scrap-yard KC-135. I whipped out my camera, opened the sliding door on the bread truck, and snapped a series of photos, paparazzi-style, as we drove by. Highly not allowed, but this shot is seeing daylight for the first time here. I figure the statutes of limitations have long since expired, so here's a rare look at a 3-engine KC-135...still far more amazing than the tri-jet, tanker wanna-be KC-10!
Anyway, I basically spent one night in my entire USAF career in Manas, and it was noteworthy beyond just the weird metric altitudes on approach, the controller with needed-interpreter, and the 3-engine KC-135. For one, Manas AB was the first base in the AOR (I believe) to implement mandatory USAF PT Gear for USAF personnel when not in uniform. At Al Udeid, we were still wearing civilian workout clothes, so this was my first opportunity to wear the USAF's overly-complicated, over-designed, no-thought-to-practicality polyester-plastic PT Gear. And, as you'd expect from a government acquisition process, the PT shirt could not be washed with the PT shorts as one required hot water while the other required cold water.
Anyway, after we got to our rooms and settled, we donned our polyester and plastic PT Gear and headed for the chow hall. Enroute, we passed by a Marine Corps Lt Col who stopped us and asked, "Don't you salute in the USAF?" Forgetting that we were in an actual, designated military uniform, I apologized and we rendered a proper salute. BTW, the food was basically truck-stop sandwiches and granola bars. Shockingly, the food at Al Udeid was better (which isn't saying much). The rooms were much nicer at Manas though.
Then, when we left the next day with the grounded crew, we couldn't just fly straight back to Al Udeid; they wanted us to refuel a B-1B over Afghanistan on the way. No problem, but because of the runway closure at Manas, we had to take off much earlier than we would have to meet the bomber, so we ended up burning holes in the sky for a couple hours waiting for the B-1B's refueling time. Once he was on the boom, the crew informed us that they were dealing with a Troops in Contact situation and were doing shows of force. To translate, that meant the enemy was engaged with our ground troops and the B-1B was buzzing the bad guys on the ground. If you've never been around or had a B-1B fly over at low altitude in full afterburner, you're missing out...and apparently it would scare the hell out of the people messing with our troops. Anyway, the B-1B crew asked for additional gas beyond what they were frag'd for, so, since they were actually involved in combat stuff protecting our ground forces and the command and control communication was so poor over there and would take time to get approved, I made the command decision on the fly to offload what they needed (just make sure we had enough gas left to get to Al Udeid afterwards).
Once the offload was complete, we radioed the command and control guy and gave him the code phrase requesting our departure from the country and he came back saying we were assigned to refuel a pair of A-10s an hour later. "Oh sh*t!" I thought. Nobody told us that beforehand; we didn't have the fuel to do that since we offloaded extra to the B-1B! As we were working with the command and control guy (who was relaying, ironically, back to higher command and control at Al Udeid), I heard another tanker check in over Afghanistan. I asked if he had enough fuel to cover those two A-10s that were assigned to us and fortunately he did. We relayed that down to the command and control guy, and we were given the green light to head "home". During the rest of the flight back, I was writing down notes on all that had happened and why I made the decisions I did based on the information I had at hand because I assumed a couple of days later when the rolling ball of feces from not refueling those A-10s finally got far enough down the hill to my Director of Operations, he'd need answers to give those higher up the hill as to why we were unable to refuel those A-10s. But the call to his office demanding explanations never came and my backside never got bubblegum'd.
So there's the story of my one and only time in Kyrgyzstan along with a 3-engine KC-135R! I figure experiences like that justify the free $5 lunch my work provides us veterans on Veterans Day!
I thought this one was kind of funny because my friend really wanted to go for a run today and then on top of that she decided to do the most intense AB workout in my Insanity program... well let's just say I caught her while she was "resting"
ourdailychallenge: HIGH ANGLE
Upper East Side, Central Park - Jun 2008 - 067
These pictures were taken on two successive days when I had doctor appointments on the Upper East Side of NYC, and had the chance to walk along Fifth Avenue, and then through Central Park in order to return to my apartment on the Upper West Side, at Broadway & 96th.
I had now reached the west side of the inner roadway that circumnavigates Central Park, and was heading north toward the exit on 96th Street. I was at about 94 Street at this point -- looking east, with the reservoir in the background.
Note: this photo was published in a Dec 17, 2008 blog entitled "Dopo Jane Fonda." And it was also published in a Mar 4, 2009 blog entitled "Do You Exercise?" More recently, it was published in a Jul 2009 blog titled "Finalizar tus ejercicios de forma inteligente." And it was published in a Sep 2009 blog titled "Para perder esos dos kilos de más: incrementa la actividad física." It was also published in an undated (Nov 2009) blog titled "Chile: A correr en Providencia 10k." And it showed up, without any details, on an undated(Dec 2009) collection of "Stock photography" at Newbury Images. It was also published in an undated (Dec 2009) Jog4Life blog titled "Beginner Week One Marathon Training."
Moving into 2010, the photo was published in a Mar 25, 2010 blog titled "¿Una hora de ejercicio al día para no engordar en el tiempo?" It was also published in a Jul 1, 2010 blog titled "Stop stressing and start living: 10 quick stress busters." And it was published in an undated (Jul 2010) blog titled "Be Active for Healthy Diabetes." It was also published in an Aug 10, 2010 blog titled "Stay Safe with Your iPod." And it was published in an Aug 27, 2010 blog titled "How Playing Music Affects Your Exercise." It was also published in a Sep 21, 2010 blog titled "8 things my exercise program can teach you about helping your child with maths." And it was published in a Sep 23, 2010 blog titled "Jogging When You Are Overweight." It was also published in an undated (mid-Nov 2010) blog titled "Abdominal Fat – Abs Training to Lose Belly Fat – Four Exercise Tips." And it was published in a Nov 29, 2010 blog titled "Different strokes, blogging and podcasting." It was also published in a Dec 13, 2010 blog titled "Top 6 Exercise Routines To Do At Home."
Moving into 2012, the photo was published in a Jan 4, 2012 blog titled "Exercises For Stomach – Trim the Belly With Some Top Exercises For Stomach Fat." It was also published in an undated (late Mar 2012) blog titled "f 運動と食事の関係を知る." And it was published in an Apr 6, 2012 blog titled "OVERCOMING THE ISOLATION OF WORKING ONLINE." It was also published in a May 3, 2012 blog titled "Correr unas dos horas semanales nos regala 6 años de vida." And it was published in a May 8, 2012 Frugal Mom blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written here on this Flickr page. It was also published in an undated (early Jun 2012) blog titled "6 cách giảm cân sau khi sinh để lấy lại vóc dáng," as well as a Jun 2, 2012 blog titled "Esercizio fisico, un antidolorifico naturale contro il dolor neuropatico." It was also published in a Jun 6, 2012 blog titled "The SoJO 104.9 ‘National Running Day’ Playlist [SURVEY]." And it was published in a Jun 25, 2012 blog titled "Ab workout for women." It was also published in an undated (early Sep 2012) Italian blog titled "Esercizio fisico, un antidolorifico naturale contro il dolore neuropatico." And it was published in a Sep 21, 2012 blog titled "Your Mind, Your Body at Fitblogging." It was also published in a Sep 26, 2012 blog titled "Gegen den inneren Schweinehund: Eine Frage des Selbstvertrauens?" And it was published in a Nov 8, 2012 blog titled "Quick Workouts That Pack a Punch," as well as a Nov 16, 2012 blog titled "App statt Arzt." It was also published in a Nov 30, 2012 blog titled "Correr ouvindo música: descubra o efeito que ela causa na sua atividade." And it was published in a Dec 11, 2012 blog titled "Tre domande a… FISICAST."
Moving into 2013, the photo was published in a blog titled "Link Round-up: Cinnamon Rolls, a Fitness Challenge, and Plenty of DIY Projects." It was also published in a Jan 3, 2013 blog titled "Jogging When You Are Overweight," as well as a Jan 7, 2013 blog titled "5 Tips for the Jogging/Running Beginner." And it was published in a Jan 26, 2013 blog titled "退休的感觉真好," as well as a Feb 6, 2013 blog titled "HEALTHY LIFESTYLE: GETTING IT TOGETHER POST-GRAD." It was also published in a Feb 18, 2013 Italian blog titled "Si può fare sport con il soffio al cuore?," as well as a Mar 18, 2013 blog titled "[걷기다이어트]걷기 운동 재미있게 하는 법 ." And it was published in an undated (late Apr 2013) blog titled "8 Ways to Improve Your Circulation." It was also published in a Jun 14, 2013 blog titled "Does Exercising With Apps Actually Get You Fitter?" And it was published in a Jul 2, 2013 blog titled "Health and Fitness Apps to Motivate You."
Moving into 2014, the photo was published in a Jan 11, 2014 blog titled "Top Beauty Brands to Shoulder Expenses Brought About by Weight Loss Fraud." It was also published in a May 6, 2014 blog titled "5 Tips for the Jogging/Running Beginner."
Moving into 2015, the photo was published in a Mar 4, 2015 blog titled "Don't Go Jogging in the Morning." And it was published in a Jul 2, 2015 blog titled "How To Help Your Child Lose Weight."
****************************
Note: this photo was taken 4+ years ago, in the summer of 2008, when my editing and "post-processing" consisted of little more than simple cropping with Apple's iPhoto program. On Dec 2, 2011 I imported the photo into Apple's Aperture program, and used its facilities to adjust the hot-spots and cold-spots in the photo. What I was particularly trying to do was lessen the blackness and lack of detail in the black outfit worn by the woman in the left. I also wanted to "sharpen" the detail of the photo, since the combination of their running motion and my own camera-shake made the focus a little "soft." But it's a JPEG image, so I couldn't sharpen it at all; and I was only able to achieve a small amount of shadow-lessening in the black outfit. C'est la vie ... I still think this is a slight improvement -- and it's also a good reminder of why I now shoot everything in RAW, and spend more time with the details of editing/post-processing... :)
froknowsphoto.com/youtube-thumbnail-5-min/
I am back with another 5 Minute Portrait and this time around my goal was to capture a YouTube Thumbnail for a fitness video with Maria.
Thumbnails on YouTube are very important and can be the difference between getting people to watch your video or not. But a lot of people tend to try and cheat their thumbnail by selecting it to be something that has nothing to do with the video itself.
In this case my goal was to capture a killer thumbnail for an ab workout video with Maria. Maria is looking to create A Fitness YouTube Channel so I helped out by filming a few videos for her. Since we already had her video shoot in the can it only made sense to take photos in the same situations for the thumbnail.
The photo shoot went pretty smoothly as you will see from the photos in the video and below. But I ran into a major issue when I attempted to import the files from the CF card to the computer. Somehow the card ended up getting corrupted and could not be read by any computer. I would think this was mostly my fault for putting the card in the card reader and removing it a bunch of times without ever actually exporting the photos. I exported the video before but not the photos. And yes if you are wondering I did eject the card before removing it from the card reader.
I was pretty bummed that I lost the files but I figured I would try and recover them like I have heard many people have done. I first attempted using the Pro recovery software from Sandisk and that was not able to recover anything. I than found a different one online which I purchased and it had success in pulling hundred of files.
It found all of the photos from Maria's photo shoot along with hundreds of other photos going back months. Now it did not find any RAW images but it did find jpegs which is better than nothing. If this was a professional shooting I would not have been totally SOL. Sure the files that it recovered would not be good enough for much more than an 8x10 they were perfectly usable for online use.
froknowsphoto.com/youtube-thumbnail-5-min/
I am back with another 5 Minute Portrait and this time around my goal was to capture a YouTube Thumbnail for a fitness video with Maria.
Thumbnails on YouTube are very important and can be the difference between getting people to watch your video or not. But a lot of people tend to try and cheat their thumbnail by selecting it to be something that has nothing to do with the video itself.
In this case my goal was to capture a killer thumbnail for an ab workout video with Maria. Maria is looking to create A Fitness YouTube Channel so I helped out by filming a few videos for her. Since we already had her video shoot in the can it only made sense to take photos in the same situations for the thumbnail.
The photo shoot went pretty smoothly as you will see from the photos in the video and below. But I ran into a major issue when I attempted to import the files from the CF card to the computer. Somehow the card ended up getting corrupted and could not be read by any computer. I would think this was mostly my fault for putting the card in the card reader and removing it a bunch of times without ever actually exporting the photos. I exported the video before but not the photos. And yes if you are wondering I did eject the card before removing it from the card reader.
I was pretty bummed that I lost the files but I figured I would try and recover them like I have heard many people have done. I first attempted using the Pro recovery software from Sandisk and that was not able to recover anything. I than found a different one online which I purchased and it had success in pulling hundred of files.
It found all of the photos from Maria's photo shoot along with hundreds of other photos going back months. Now it did not find any RAW images but it did find jpegs which is better than nothing. If this was a professional shooting I would not have been totally SOL. Sure the files that it recovered would not be good enough for much more than an 8x10 they were perfectly usable for online use.
froknowsphoto.com/youtube-thumbnail-5-min/
I am back with another 5 Minute Portrait and this time around my goal was to capture a YouTube Thumbnail for a fitness video with Maria.
Thumbnails on YouTube are very important and can be the difference between getting people to watch your video or not. But a lot of people tend to try and cheat their thumbnail by selecting it to be something that has nothing to do with the video itself.
In this case my goal was to capture a killer thumbnail for an ab workout video with Maria. Maria is looking to create A Fitness YouTube Channel so I helped out by filming a few videos for her. Since we already had her video shoot in the can it only made sense to take photos in the same situations for the thumbnail.
The photo shoot went pretty smoothly as you will see from the photos in the video and below. But I ran into a major issue when I attempted to import the files from the CF card to the computer. Somehow the card ended up getting corrupted and could not be read by any computer. I would think this was mostly my fault for putting the card in the card reader and removing it a bunch of times without ever actually exporting the photos. I exported the video before but not the photos. And yes if you are wondering I did eject the card before removing it from the card reader.
I was pretty bummed that I lost the files but I figured I would try and recover them like I have heard many people have done. I first attempted using the Pro recovery software from Sandisk and that was not able to recover anything. I than found a different one online which I purchased and it had success in pulling hundred of files.
It found all of the photos from Maria's photo shoot along with hundreds of other photos going back months. Now it did not find any RAW images but it did find jpegs which is better than nothing. If this was a professional shooting I would not have been totally SOL. Sure the files that it recovered would not be good enough for much more than an 8x10 they were perfectly usable for online use.
Introduction To Your 6 Pack
Six pack abs are the holy grail of physical fitness when you ask anyone about the male or female physic. The opposite sex will like us more and people of the same sex will be envious of our perfect torso. The truth is, and many won’t tell you this is that it’s actually not that hard to get those killer abs that you crave so much. Unfortunately for men it’s much easier if you’re female to get those perfect abs.
Although women are genetically wired to carry more fat than men, because there body is naturally preparing to nourish a baby, and obviously fat helps to achieve this. The healthy BMI of a women is between 18% and 20% where as it is 10% to 15% for men.
Women also store fat in different places to men. Women tend to store their fat in Hips, Buttocks and thighs. In fact gluteofemoral fat which is stored in the butt and tops of the legs is often thought to be a sign of strong metabolic health. This is why women find it easier to get to the end goal of an amazing six pack.
Unfortunately for men. The main place they store fat is around the abdomen area which is a bit of a bummer if your goal is killer abs. The dreaded beer belly has dashed many a dream of the glorious six pack, but not to worry. It may not be as easy to get abs if you are a man but it’s certainly not that difficult if you follow the right plan of attack. Plan Your 6 Pack Here For FREE
Firstly for both men and women you need to get down to that healthy BMI we spoke about earlier. Men at 10% to 15% and women at 18% and 20%. You might be very surprised when you get here to see that your abs are already pronounced so you have already fought half the battle. The way to get to this point is to eat a healthy, well balanced diet. You need to be sure you keep your body well-nourished with the essential vitamins and minerals while lowering your BMI at the same time.
Phase 1
What Foods To Eat
Protein drinks for example are a great way to lower your BMI while still making sure you stay healthy and always feel full. This is because protein has a high thermic effect which basically means it’s difficult for your body to digest. As a result of this you spend more energy breaking it down when digesting it. To work out how many grams of protein you would need each day, you need to multiply your weight in lbs by 0.8, so for a 170lb person that’s 136 grams of protein a day.
You should also try and opt for lean meats such as turkey and chicken breast without the skin. Tuna and salmon help to keep Omega3 up and also try and keep snacks to just nuts seeds and beans. To bulk out your diet you need to stick to healthy whole grain foods which help provide carbohydrates that keep you energised, fruit and vegetables provide you with vitamins, minerals and fibre, and plenty of dairy foods which give you calcium and natural protein.
Accelerate your weight loss…
To help speed up the weight loss and get to your BMI goal you need to carry out some aerobic activities. These help to speed up the burning of unwanted calories and together with eating healthily will speed up your advance towards your killer abs goal. If you are new to cardio you must start off gradually with something easy such as a brisk walk once per day.
As we are trying to target our abdominal muscles it’s a good idea to try using what is called a sweat belt or Ab belt to help target the stomach area. The reason these are so successful is because of what they target. See how to get hold of a free sweat belt here…
Sweat Belt/Ab Belt
The simple answer to this is yes. Let me explain how. Firstly let me dispel the myth that only overweight unhealthy people sweat. The actual truth is that the healthier you are the more likely you are to sweat. So if you are determined to get to your ideal BMI you better be prepared to sweat…a lot! The reason you sweat more as you get fitter is your body needs to work harder to keep you cool.
Another more direct reason that sweating helps you lose weight is detoxification, which is directly related to weight loss. As our bodies are overloaded with toxins from pollution, poor diet, pesticides, food additives, caffeine and alcohol. Any number of health problems can occur including headaches, bloating and fatigue, but the main problems are often weight gain and cellulite. Your body holds these toxins in your fat store so it keeps them away from the body’s main organs. As sweating is the best way to release these toxins from the body then it stands to reason that excessively sweating in any given area will release massive amounts of unwanted toxins, therefore breaking down that targeted fat store while also ridding the area off access water which further helps to loose inches. As these sweat belts are designed to be inconspicuous they are really easy to wear when going about your normal daily chores. This has the added benefit that whether you are just starting on your road to fitness, or you are already an avid fitness nut you can still benefit from wearing a sweat belt as it just enhances the exercise you are already doing.
Tracking Your Progress
It’s often a great idea to keep a close track of your body measurements. Some people may go a bit too far while losing weight and this can be dangerous. To keep track of your vital statistics you can use something like a body tracking software, this allows you to measure any part of the body that you want to track and plot it in the program. As you regularly plot your measurements you see a graph developing, this allows you to easily see if you’re losing weight too fast or it gives you a massive boost as you can see in black and white how great you are progressing.
This is what we call stage one of operation killer abs. As we have already said, in order for you to see your abs developing you first need to be able to see your abs. Getting your free sweat belt/Ab belt is the ideal way to do this.
Phase 2
Now you are getting nearer to your ideal BMI you can move on to stage 2. In this section we need to start targeting our core fitness. There is no point just working on your abs without working the whole core as this can lead to a back injury. The way we make sure this does not happen is to use something designed specifically for this job.
The Ab Wheel/Ab Roller
At first glance this can look like a very simple piece of equipment. But don’t let that fool you. The Ab roller is actually an amazing piece of home gym equipment, which when used as directed can build muscle in not only your Abs but also your back which helps to build the solid core that we need.
Balancing Your Core
The Ab Roller actually works a number of muscle groups when used correctly. The major muscles worked with the Ab Roller are obviously the abdominal muscles, including the rectus abdominis (the so-called six-pack), the underlying transversus abdominis and the oblique’s which are situated down your sides. What many people don’t realise is that your lat’s, triceps, hip flexors, pectorals, trapezius muscles and glutes also will be worked with the exercise wheel, not to the extent that your core does but as your body tries to balance these muscles are used. It’s a great idea to use the sweat belt in conjuction with the ab roller to maximise results. Get them both for free here.
This is where the differences are between using the ab wheel and doing more regular exercises such as crunches and sit ups. Don’t be fooled into thinking that because the exercise wheel hits many more muscle groups, you get less of a work out on your abs. This isn’t the case. The ab wheel will target your abs and your back while also hitting other smaller muscle groups which get a work out trying to keep your weight distributed correctly.
Ab Wheel Exercises
The traditional way of using the ab wheel is to grasp it in both hands and while on your knees you roll out forward until you reach the plank position. You then reverse that and roll back to your start position without arching your spine. If you want to target a different muscle like your oblique’s then you can roll out at a slight angle. When you have been using it for a while you might want to up the intensity by starting from a standing position. You reach down and grab the ab roller and roll forward from there all the way out to the plank position. You then reverse this as before till you are back in your original pose. Again please regulate the amount of sets you do when you first get started. You will be amazed at how good this works and over doing it at the start may slow down your overall progress.
Phase 3
Ok so now you are at your ideal BMI and you have been ripping it up for a month or so with the ab wheel. You can now see some great definition in your abs and your body generally. Don’t forget the ab wheel hits lots of muscle groups so you WILL notice that lots of your body is getting much more defined. Hopefully you have remembered to keep a track of your progress using the body tracker software we spoke of earlier. Not only will this keep you going when you sometimes feel like you don’t want to work out. Also when people start noticing how good your new killer abs look they WILL be coming over asking how you got so ripped in such a short space of time. Having the data to show people how quickly you progressed might just give them the incentive they need to start and do the same. What better way to top of your new body than helping someone else also achieve theirs.
But were not quite done yet…
Electronic Muscle Toning Belts/Electronic Ab Belts (EAB)
Let’s start by explaining what the electronic ab belt does. Many people think that the electronic ab belt does the same job as the normal sweat belt/ab belt we spoke of in phase1. This is definitely not the case. While the normal ab belt is designed to help you lose the fat around the waist by causing a sauna effect that is concentrated around your tummy while working out, and has the effect off stripping back the unwanted fat so you can actually see the abdominal muscle.
There are certain people that will tell you that the electronic ab belt will get you killer abs in no time by sitting on your backside while eating cakes and sweets. Unfortunately this is not the truth. In fact it’s rubbish. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you there is a miracle way to acquire your killer abs without any hard work what so ever. There is however a free way to aquire an Electronic Ab Belt, see here.
What I can tell you is this, electronic ab belts do work for the purpose in which they were made. They were designed to target the muscles which other ab exercises find difficult to reach. Firstly the EAB will stimulate the rectus abdominis (6 pack) and the oblique’s on the side of the body which are notoriously hard to work and help shape your waist, it also hits your transversus abdominis which are deep within the abdomen. The EAB is is used to polish all the hard work that you have already put in when using your normal ab belt and working through the phases using your ab wheel as well.
The EAB is an entirely different piece of equipment. Although it is used to get to the same end goal as the normal ab belt, the EAB has been designed to reach certain muscles which are ordinarily really difficult to work and it does this by using electronic impulses. Although we can use the ab wheel to target the muscle groups in general the EAB can laser target the muscles what want to be most pronounced.
Benefits of Using Muscle Toning Belts
So what are the benefits of using the EAB? Firstly let me emphasize that the EAB is not a substitute for healthy eating and plenty of exercise. However in today’s modern world finding the time to fit everything in is very hard and unfortunately looking after our bodies often comes bottom of our to do lists. The EAB allows you to still work those abs while doing other more mundane tasks such as cooking or shopping. You can even wear it at work so you can still put some overtime in or wear it at home while watching television. So as you can see the EAB is a fantastic way for busy people to still commit to their health and fitness while keeping up with whatever today can throw at them.
I hope the above article has been of help to you in your quest for the perfect abs. Please remember that although using the equipment we have recommended will get you your perfect killer abs, it does require some hard work on your part too. Remember to keep track of your progress using the free body tracker software so you can remind yourself how well you are doing if you ever feel like giving up.
Most important: Please read and adhere to all the instructions that you receive with your ab equipment. Saving 5 minutes at the beginning and not reading instructions could end up with you getting hurt and having to postpone showing off your killer abs…
Want A Shortcut To Killer Abs?
We appreciate that you’re dying to get those killer Abs to show off to everyone. Or maybe you just arn’t happy with your body and would love to do something about it.
I suppose it is easier to get talking to that fit guy/girl at the gym if you already have a toned body. You already have something in common to break the ice.
It’s quite an expense for all this equipment maybe you just can’t afford it at the moment?
Maybe you just don’t have time to get those killer Abs you always wanted.
What if I told you there may be an answer!
What if I told you that you could get your hands on a Sweat Belt an Ab Roller and a Muscle Toning Belt and they were all FREE!
Do you think you could find the time to create perfect Abs if all this equipment was for nothing?
Great! I thought so.
CLICK HERE NOW!
Source/Repost=>
abtekk.com/3-easy-step-to-killer-abs/ ** Abtekk ** abtekk.com/
If you were looking for ways to both strengthen and increase stability of the musculature of the spine one could perform various exercises, but there is only one solution that doesn't require any kind of exercise - active sitting on SpinaliS chairs. Strengthen your core muscles while sitting!
SpinaliS Spider Series Chair is one of the most popular models in Canada:
www.spinalis-chairs.ca/spinalis-chairs/spider/
Any type of prolonged poor posture will, over time, substantially increase the risk of developing back pain. Examples include slouching over a computer keyboard, driving hunched over the steering wheel, lifting improperly. SpinaliS chairs will take care of your bad posture and will improve it very fast.
For more info call 844 777 0489
or drop by SpinaliS Vancouver store on
3619 West 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC, V6R 1P2
Core stability refers to a person's ability to stabilise their core. Stability, in this context, should be considered as an ability to control the position and movement of the core. Thus, if a person has greater core stability, they have a greater level of control over the position and movement of this area of their body. The body's core is frequently involved in aiding other movements of the body, such as the limbs, and it is considered that by improving core stability a person's ability to perform these other movements may also be improved i.e. core stability training may help improve someone's running ability. The bodies core region is sometimes referred to as the torso or the trunk, although there are some differences in the muscles identified as constituting them. The major muscles involved in core stability include the pelvic floor muscles, transversus abdominis, multifidus, internal and external obliques, rectus abdominis, erector spinae (sacrospinalis) especially the longissimus thoracis, and the diaphragm. The minor muscles involved include the latissimus dorsi, gluteus maximus, and trapezius. Notably, breathing, including the action of the diaphragm, can significantly influence the posture and movement of the core; this is especially apparent in regard to extreme ranges of inhalation and exhalation. On this basis, how a person is breathing may influence their ability to control their core.
Some researchers have argued that the generation of intra-abdominal pressure, caused by the activation of the core muscles and especially the transversus abdominis, may serve to lend support to the lumbar spine.
Typically, the core is associated with the body's center of gravity, which is over the region of the second sacral vertebrae groups and stability is associated with isometric or static strength. In addition, it is the lumbar spine that is primarily responsible for posture and stability thus providing the strength needed for the stability especially utilized in dynamic sports.
FREE Shipping Anywhere in Canada
Alberta AB, British Columbia BC, Manitoba MN, New Brunswick NB, Newfoundland and Labrador NL, Northwest Territories NT, Nova Scotia NS, Nunavut NU, Ontario ON, Prince Edward Island PEI, Quebec QC, Saskatchewan SK, Yukon YT (Alberta, Colombie-Britannique, Nouveau-Brunswick, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, Territoires du Nord-Ouest, Nouvelle-Écosse, Nunavut, Ontario, Île-du-Prince-Édouard, Québec, Saskatchewan, Yukon)
Class I Medical Device
Health Canada has certified SpinaliS chairs as a Class I Medical Device to prevent spinal problems and treat existing ones.
Abs and Back Workout
Work out while sitting on any of the SpinaliS chairs and performing your daily tasks at the office or home.
Back Pain Relief
SpinaliS Chairs will work out your core muscles for you. Just sit, do your thing and leave everything else up to SpinaliS. STRONG CORE MUSCLES = NO BACK PAIN
Stylish Office Chairs
Design of the SpinaliS Chairs is an eye candy – your customers will definitely notice them!
Yoga Ball Alternative
It is recommended not to sit longer than 2 hours on a yoga ball, but on the SpinaliS chairs you can sit all day long.
Standing Desk Alternative
SpinaliS chairs will actually make your body to work out and get you into a great shape without the hard task of standing or exercising.
Who does use SpinaliS?
Google, Dubai Airport, SONY, IBM, DELL, Skoda Auto, CSOB Bank, Unicredit Bank, Vodafone and many more.
SpinaliS Canada
ph: 778 989 0637
Unique Chairs for Healthy Back and Great Posture - FREE SHIPPING in Canada
#SpinaliS #SpinaliSCanada #pelvicmuscles #floormuscles #transversusabdominis #multifidus #internalobliques #externalobliques #obliques #rectusabdominis #erectorspinae #sacrospinalis #longissimusthoracis #diaphragm #latissimusdorsi #gluteusmaximus #trapezius #improvecoremuscles #coremuscles #howtoimprove #improve #activesitting #dynamicsitting #Canada #midsection
Note: this photo was It was published in an undated (Jan 2010) Squidoo blog titled "Fastest Way to Lose Weight." And it was published as an illustration in an undated (Jan 2010) Squidoo blog titled "Free Printable Exercise Log - Get in Shape for 2010!" It was also published in a Mar 28, 2010 Health Knowledge blog and an Apr 24, 2010 Shakeway blog, with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page. It was also published in a Jun 21, 2010 blog titled "Placer, diversión y salud son las principales motivaciones para ejercitarnos." And it was published in an Aug 20, 2010 blog titled "what is the fastest way to lose 10 pounds?" It was also published in a Sep 21, 2010 blog titled "Help, I need to lose my “Just had a baby weight” FAST! Any ideas?" as well as a Sep 28, 2010 blog titled "Unsafe Ways To Lose Weight – My When – Fastest To Lose Weight." It was also published in an undated (Oct 2010) Weight Loss Shakes City blog, with the same title as the caption that I used on this Flickr page; and it was published in an undated (late Oct 2010) blog titled "Workout With An Exercise Bike." It was also published in an undated (mid-Dec 2010) blog titled "LA HCG Weight Loss Program Is Based On Cutting Edge Techniques," as well as a Dec 14, 2010 Buy HCG Cookbook blog with the same title and detailed notes as what I had written on this Flickr page.
In 2011, the photo was published in a Jan 2, 2011 Exercise BIke Zone blog, with the same title and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published in a Jan 7, 2010 blog titled "What Is The Best Exercise Machine For Weight Loss?" and two undated (early Jan 2011) "Weight Loss Helps" blogs titled "The Big Role of Insulin In Your Exercise Program ," and "You Are Not Alone… The True Role of Supplements in Weight Loss and Muscle Building." It was also published in an undated (early Jan 2011) blog titled "Does anyone recommend any good fast weight loss diets?", as well as a Jan 11, 2011 blog titled "Weight Loss Supplement At Work – Is There A Special One?" It was also published in a Jan 19, 2011) blog titled "Finding the Best Weight Loss Supplements." And it was published in a Jan 20, 2011 blog titled "How To Lose 37 Pounds & Melt Away Belly Fat By Going Against Mainstream Diet & Exercise Advice!"
It was also published in a Feb 27, 2011 blog titled "How to Get People to Read My Blog." And it was published in a Mar 16, 2011 blog titled "The Poll Results About Solo Slim Side Effects Have Been Tallied!", as well as another Mar 16, 2011 blog titled "Get Rid of that Muffin Top and Enjoy a Free Waistband Best Diet to Lose Belly Fat." It was also published in an Apr 4, 2011 blog titled "Mejorar la salud con disciplina." And it was published in a May 20, 2011 blog titled "Get Fit Lake Mary! Fitness Classes @ Lake Mary Farmers’ Market." It was also published in a Jun 29, 2011 blog titled "Ab Workouts: Three Exercises for Fast Abs." And it was published in a Jul 3, 2011 "Cellulite Patches" blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published in an Aug 16, 2011 blog titled "Tenersi in forma col wellness coach." It was also published in an Oct 25, 2011 blog titled "Nice Exercise Programs And Weight Loss photos," with the same caption and detailed notes I had written on this Flickr page.
Moving into 2012, the photo was published in a Jan 5, 2012 blog titled "Some thoughts about exercise and motivation," as well as a Jan 5,2012 blog titled "what is the best weight loss programme from an indian point of view?", and a Jan 6, 2012 blog titled "Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and LA Weight Loss is the variation among what?" It was also published in a Jan 31, 2012 blog titled Exercise fights chronic disease sadness," as well as an undated (early Feb 2011) blog titled "Exercise for Depression: Suggestions for Making It Possible." And it was published in a May 31, 2012 blog titled "Exercise could be, er, bad for your heart, study says." It was also published in a Jun 4, 2012 blog titled "After Drug and Alcohol Rehab: Healthy Living." And it was published in a Jun 6, 2012 blog titled "Question by needtoknow: What is a good AB workout machine under 0?" It was also published in a Jun 22, 2012 RAAL blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written here on this Flickr page. And it was published in an Aug 11, 2012 blog titled "Take A Look At These Muscle Building Tips!" It was also published in an undated (early Sep 2012) blog titled "How To Choose A Gym," as well as a Sep 5, 2012 blog titled "Exercise Your Mind And Improve Your Mental Health Before You Have A Breakdown." And it was published in a Dec 3, 2012 blog titled "How much weight do you have to lose to have excess skin?"
Moving into 2013, the photo was published in a blog, "Pack On More Muscle With This Weight Training Advice." It was also published in a Jan 6, 2013 blog titled "Tips For Getting The Right Amount Rest In Between Muscle Building Sets." And it was published in a Jan 8, 2013 blog titled "Great Advice To Help Build Muscle Fast!" It was also published in a Jan 20, 2013 blog titled "Ways On How You Could Achieve Bigger Muscles," as well as a Jan 25, 2013 blog titled "Aerobic Exercise is Best for Weight Loss, Study Says." And it was published in a Feb 14, 2013 blog titled "Exercises You Should Do For Putting On Muscles," as well as a Feb 18, 2013 blog titled "Muscle Development Tips That Will Help Get You Your Dream Body." It was also published in a Feb 24, 2013 blog titled "Discover The Muscle Building Tips Of The Pros." And it was published in a Mar 11, 2013 blog titled "Muscle Building Tips People Don’t Want You To Know! " It was also published in a Mar 17, 2013 blog titled, simply, "Exercise," as well as an undated (mid-March 2013) Dude Mountain blog titled "The Most Effective Muscle And Strength Building Tips." And it was published in an undated (mid-Apr 2013) blog simply titled "Exercise," as well as an Apr 14, 2013 blog titled "Tips That Will Help You Build Your Muscles." It was also published in an Apr 17, 2013 blog titled "10 Ways To Be Healthier In 10 Minutes Or Less," as well as an Apr 22, 2013 blog titled "Use These Ideas To Gain Bigger Muscles," and a May 7, 2013 blog titled "Helpful Ways to Build New Muscle Fast." It was also published in a May 8, 2013 blog titled "What is Mind/Body Exercise, And Why Should I Do It?", as well as a May 15, 2013 blog titled " Want To Increase The Size Of Your Muscles? Consider These Tips! " And it was published in an undated (mid-June 2013) website titled Lean Green Cleaning Machine. It was also published in a Jun 22, 2013 blog titled "Exercise and Harm," as well as a Jun 28, 2013 blog titled "Haftada 150 Dakika Spor YeterliyMİŞ" and a Jun 28, 2013 blog titled "Training Techniques In Order To Avoid Injury." And it was published in a Jul 11, 2013 Mother Nature Network blog titled "Exercise."
Moving into 2014, the photo was published in a Jan 8, 2014 blog titled "Terrific Abdominal Workouts Can Make You Cash." It was also published in a Jan 14, 2014 blog titled " LESSON 6: OVEREATING WHEN SAD DOESN’T CUT IT FOR ME." And it was published in a Mar 17, 2014 Mother Nature Network blog titled "Exercise." It was also published in a Dec 14, 2014 blog titled "The Geek That Just Needs To Work Out."
**************************************
For the past several years, my family has spent a week, in early January, at the Club Med village in Punta Cana, on the southwestern shore of the Dominican Republic. (Our first visit to Club Med was back in 1985, and some photos of last year's trip can be seen here.)
This year's visit coincided with the awful earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- about 260 miles away, on the eastern coast of the island of Hispaniola. From what I understand, the fault line went straight west, in our direction, but then cut south at approximately the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In any case, none of the vacationers at Club Med felt even the slightest tremor; we got all of our news of the ensuing events just like everyone else, by watching CNN. But because we expected the capitol city of Santo Domingo to be chaotic and congested with relief efforts, I decided to skip a daylong trip that I had tentatively planned to photograph the churches and markets of what turns out to be the oldest city in the Western hemisphere (settled in 1497 by Christopher Columbus' brother).
In recent years, most of my photographic efforts have focused on the vacationers who fill the beaches and pool -- especially the children, who come from Canada, France, Venezuela, and various other parts of the world besides the United States. So I decided to focus on something else this year, and ... well, you can judge the results for yourself...
Active or fit sitting occurs when seating allows or encourages the seated occupant to move. Also referred to as dynamic sitting, the concept is that flexibility and movement while sitting can be beneficial to the human body and make some seated tasks easier to perform. One of the best options on the market is SpinaliS Basic Series Chairs:
www.spinalis-chairs.ca/spinalis-chairs/basic/
High cholesterol, lower back pain, colon cancer and slow blood circulation are just a few of the problems caused by sitting on a regular chair. Only SpinaliS chairs allow you to avoid all of these problems and to stay fit.
For more info call 844 777 0489
or drop by SpinaliS Vancouver store on
3619 West 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC, V6R 1P2
Loughborough University and the University of Leicester have found incredibly strong evidence linking excessive sitting to poor health: compared to people who sit the least, those who spend most time in a chair have a 112 per cent higher risk of developing diabetes, a 147 per cent higher risk of suffering "cardiovascular events" such as strokes and a 49 per cent increased risk of death from any cause.
Sadly, many chairs, even "ergonomic" ones, are designed such that your pelvis tilts backwards and throws your back into the backrest. Chairs that naturally tilt backwards further exacerbate this tendency. Granted, these chairs feel comfortable because they naturally force you to depend upon the support of the backrest, and that is relaxing. But such dependence upon support will lead to atrophy and deeper dependence.
You want a chair that naturally holds your pelvis in a neutral upright position and makes it easy to hold your spine up. This will make it easier to sit up without continual use of the backrest, enabling your back to stay active and strong. In fact, a backrest should be exactly what its name implies – a tool used to rest your back when it is tired, not something that you use continually the entire time you are sitting.
FREE Shipping Anywhere in Canada
Alberta AB, British Columbia BC, Manitoba MN, New Brunswick NB, Newfoundland and Labrador NL, Northwest Territories NT, Nova Scotia NS, Nunavut NU, Ontario ON, Prince Edward Island PEI, Quebec QC, Saskatchewan SK, Yukon YT (Alberta, Colombie-Britannique, Nouveau-Brunswick, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, Territoires du Nord-Ouest, Nouvelle-Écosse, Nunavut, Ontario, Île-du-Prince-Édouard, Québec, Saskatchewan, Yukon)
Class I Medical Device
Health Canada has certified SpinaliS chairs as a Class I Medical Device to prevent spinal problems and treat existing ones.
Abs and Back Workout
Work out while sitting on any of the SpinaliS chairs and performing your daily tasks at the office or home.
Back Pain Relief
SpinaliS Chairs will work out your core muscles for you. Just sit, do your thing and leave everything else up to SpinaliS. STRONG CORE MUSCLES = NO BACK PAIN
Stylish Office Chairs
Design of the SpinaliS Chairs is an eye candy – your customers will definitely notice them!
Yoga Ball Alternative
It is recommended not to sit longer than 2 hours on a yoga ball, but on the SpinaliS chairs you can sit all day long.
Standing Desk Alternative
SpinaliS chairs will actually make your body to work out and get you into a great shape without the hard task of standing or exercising.
Who does use SpinaliS?
Google, Dubai Airport, SONY, IBM, DELL, Skoda Auto, CSOB Bank, Unicredit Bank, Vodafone and many more.
SpinaliS Canada
ph: 778 989 0637
Unique Chairs for Healthy Back and Great Posture - FREE SHIPPING in Canada
#activesitting #fitsiting #dynamicsitting #active #fit #dynamic #health #fitness #canada #spinalis #spinaliscanada #chairforactivesitting #chairforfitsitting #chairfordynamicsitting #motivation #healthy #lifestyle #officelife #healthyoffice #healthybody #healthymind #healthyback #review #spinalisreview #chairreview #howtostayfit
Best Lower Ab Workout For Men From Fatlosslifestyle Best Lower Ab Workout www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwNQxlKME2U Best lower ab workout for men at home. So use no equipment or ab workout for men at gym. great lower ab workout for men It is intense so you can get a 6 pack fast! Killer for that really hard to reach area! youtu.be/MwNQxlKME2U
©Max Slaughter 2009 all rights reserved
model Michelle MM #1010780
Strobist info: 2 AB 800s in Large AB softboxes on either side of model Camera right AB 800 at @1/4 camera left AB800 @1/8. AB400 in strip softbox@1.4 laying on floor on camera right. Fired by PWIIs.
For more information please visit:
www.spinalis-chairs.ca/spinalis-benefits/
Here is a review on a SpinaliS Canada chair by one of our satisfied customers:
"Just over 2 years ago I was involved in a serious car accident in which I hit a tree on driver's side at 110.8 kilometers per hour.
Among several injuries I have back problems for a while now. I have tried several treatments, but recently I discovered SpinaliS chairs.
I was sitting on them during my university studying for the last couple of months now. And it is AMAZING! I have not had my back to seize up, my back pain has gone down and there is a better blood circulation down to my legs; so, that my butt and toes do not freeze up and they do not get really sore and needley.
I would highly recommend a SpinaliS chair to your friend!"
FREE Shipping Anywhere in Canada
Alberta AB, British Columbia BC, Manitoba MN, New Brunswick NB, Newfoundland and Labrador NL, Northwest Territories NT, Nova Scotia NS, Nunavut NU, Ontario ON, Prince Edward Island PEI, Quebec QC, Saskatchewan SK, Yukon YT (Alberta, Colombie-Britannique, Nouveau-Brunswick, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, Territoires du Nord-Ouest, Nouvelle-Écosse, Nunavut, Ontario, Île-du-Prince-Édouard, Québec, Saskatchewan, Yukon)
Class I Medical Device
Health Canada has certified SpinaliS chairs as a Class I Medical Device to prevent spinal problems and treat existing ones.
Abs and Back Workout
Work out while sitting on any of the SpinaliS chairs and performing your daily tasks at the office or home.
Back Pain Relief
SpinaliS Chairs will work out your core muscles for you. Just sit, do your thing and leave everything else up to SpinaliS. STRONG CORE MUSCLES = NO BACK PAIN
Stylish Office Chairs
Design of the SpinaliS Chairs is an eye candy – your customers will definitely notice them!
Yoga Ball Alternative
It is recommended not to sit longer than 2 hours on a yoga ball, but on the SpinaliS chairs you can sit all day long.
Standing Desk Alternative
SpinaliS chairs will actually make your body to work out and get you into a great shape without the hard task of standing or exercising.
Who does use SpinaliS?
Google, Dubai Airport, SONY, IBM, DELL, Skoda Auto, CSOB Bank, Unicredit Bank, Vodafone and many more.
SpinaliS Canada
ph: 778 989 0637
Unique Chairs for Healthy Back and Great Posture - FREE SHIPPING in Canada
Music by www.purple-planet.com