Posted on

Monday, 8th April

The breaking of the very cold weather is already signifying my outside activity programme gathering much more pace.

For those of you who think it’s still too cold to get out there, you would be partly right, but you would be really missing out on some fun workouts, as well as endless health benefits.

Venturing out in this weather is always hard when you are trying to take big gulps of fresh air in. The shock of cold air can affect you more than you thought, and here’s the best way to get around it.

Let’s say you are doing some running outside, and especially the short and sharp stuff. There are a few things to consider.

By running short distances at near maximum speeds, your lungs will demand big things, and this cold air will quickly make you more uncomfortable than you normally are. So let’s say you normally spend 25 minutes outside working out, i would tend to HALVE that time. Chances are that 10-12 minutes will easily be enough in the cold working near to maximum intensity.

I would then finish off the rest of the workout inside, giving your lungs a chance to recover and get through the rest of your workout in a more forgiving atmosphere.

The great news is though that each week, you will be able to train outside for longer as your lungs get used to the cold, leading to full duration workouts outside.

From this week, it should start to get warmer anyway, and this is why you will likely be doing far more workouts outside.

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 5th April

The role of speed and agility should not be limited to the “young and sporty”.

How many of you went to school, took part in sports to some degree, then may have even gone on to play for the school team, maybe a proper club team and maybe for a number of years……………….then everything stops!!!

You may have a couple of years off, sometimes a number of years off, and when you try to get back into exercise, the agility and speed you once had in school for example has disappeared!

You feel stiff as a board and you always put it down to “old age”, even though you may only be in your 30’s or 40’s!!! Hardly old age in my book!!

The great news is that there’s many ways around this but you do have to start slowly.

Getting a more general programme that concentrates on making your core stronger is the way to start, getting your muscles more flexible and allowing them to strengthen. You need to stick at this for a couple of months until your body recognizes that its ready to improve again, and you suddenly start realizing that you are not really “too old” at all, that you can feel better, that your clothes start to feel looser and that you can show improvements in your training, and incremental improvements start becoming a normal way of life for you.

Its at this stage you can think about doing more speed and agility work.

Fast footwork sessions are suddenly an option, backward running can be done, light sprint work is back on the agenda, and a whole host of techniques I love to take people through.

Once you get through this work, automatically you will start to remember the way you were in school or in your sports team, you will be a lot more agile, much faster and literally a big spring in your step!

This is what a much more complete programme is all about, and this is why I so feel that amazing results are always consistently possible.

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 21st March

An interesting question from someone I train today.

When I give out home workouts for individuals to do, many here will already know its usually 6-8 exercises, done for a total of 3 times. Most people tend to thrive and get serious results from this type of training, and then by the week we tend to increase the numbers for each exercises.

For example, if you can do 5 press ups in week one, and with gradual improvement you can do 25 press ups in week 6 or week 8 even, then you have made serious improvements. If you apply this to each exercises, and theres no reason to doubt that, then the across the board results can be staggering!

This has often been the case over the years, and this type of training forms the foundation of my home training.

The question I had was “could I do all of the exercises numbers in one go?”, what was meant by that statement was if the person was asked to do 3 sets of 10 press ups, then could they do 30 in one go? I have talked about the one set theory before, and one all out effort can work very well indeed, but it is very tough to do.

This is why I tend to spread the effort over 3 sets. This is also why I don’t do MORE than 3 sets, I want to spread the effort out over 3 sets, but I don’t want to lose intensity of the workout by spreading it out TOO much.

So the answer is that most people 3 sets of an exercise is just about right, but if you have the inclination and want to get your workout over much quicker, and are willing to put a huge effort in, then doing one set of everything can work incredibly well!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 15th March

I have had a record number of great measurements this week. This in plain language to me and you would be at least 2 inches off the waist in a 4 week period, at least 2 inches off the hips in that same 4 week period, at least 2-3 beats per minute off your resting heart rate, at least 1.8% off your body fat, and your blood pressure in a healthy range. How’s that sound because a lot of people have been pretty happy to say the least about it this week!!!

What we talk about every day on here is exactly HOW to achieve these great feats. Using smart training methods and adopting good eating habits will take you a long, long way PLUS save you A LOT of time!!

There will be times when you have plenty of time for exercise, and times when you really don’t think you can fit a session in. It’s vital you have two different plans for those two scenarios!

Plan A for the times when you enough time would be to aim to get good quality full sessions in, with all your usual exercises, and use that time to throw in a few you don’t usually do, you know the ones you perhaps dont like all that much BUT you know ARE GOOD FOR YOU!!!

Plan B for the times when you seemingly do not have enough time, mean you have to condense your efforts greatly, but the great news is that you can still make your workouts great quality!

Let’s say you usually do 3 sets of 8 for each weights session. Reduce that to two sets and sometimes even one if you are really pushed for time, the key is though to use MAXIMUM intensity on those reduced sets, so this means your reps will probably increase to 10, 12 at least, meaning you put more effort into those sets.

This tactic alone will give you a great workout, plus reduce your workout time to less than half!!

You can apply this method to just about any exercise and take the “not enough time” excuse right out of the equation!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 14th March

Anyone who trains with me will know that we work on the latest scientific research of training all of the time. Things change and there’s always exciting things happening.

Then you will know we focus so much on balance, brain muscle communication, agility, strength and speed in particular, which will lead to endurance, very good conditioning and outstanding health (which is the most important thing!).

Which leads us to the much discussed conversation on which is better? Free weights and natural movements or machines?

Free weights and natural movements will always win because they go with the body needs to NATURALLY move. The movements we do mimic movements we do in daily life, and this is of vital importance to get you through the rest of your life in good shape and avoid serious injury or immobility problems, which unfortunately affect most people as they get older. Prepare well by doing a whole host of natural movements on a daily basis and weekly basis, and your long term health will seem much brighter.

Machines on the other keep you working on one plane of motion, and can lead to repetitive strain if done over a long period of time. Machines because of their limited range of motion will give you exactly that, LIMITED results, limited mobility and limited flexibility, all far more important than you think.

Its a shame that when these machines started being really popular in the 80’s, that most gyms still consider them viable.

The science of training has moved on light years since then, and most machines apart from a couple needs to be thrown in the scrap.

The sooner you get out of machine based training and get into whats happening in the real scientific forms of training, then you will improve in every single area of your body, your balance, your reaction time and your strength and agility!

Twitt