This is an interesting email from one of our serving soldiers in Iraq, and a female friend he has over there, i will not broadcast his name but would like to say we are all proud of our fighting forces out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here it is Soldier-“this is for my female friend who isnt really fat she just has a wide bum and big thighs.
Area wise, nope no hills, all flat-the compound that is.
I/we usually train every other day
Diet wise, ive tried to get her to cut down on the size of meals and eat when she feels “full” rather than finish the plate.
She has a weight goal but again ive stressed its not about weight loss but how well your clothes fit/tightness of jeans etc.
Keri-too right, the weighing scales can spoil many people’s progress, the way your clothes feel is ultra important!!
For myself im carrying a gut its not huge but its big enough to be annoying, my goal is 2 fold, one is to get my fitness levels improved and two to gain muscle size again.
Keri-this can totally be done, and you need to incorporate resistance work in your programme 3 times a week, but a minimum twice, the more lean muscle tissue you build, the more your metabolism burns calories 24 hours a day.
Soldier-For me losing weight is pretty straight forward my metabolic rate is very quick and once i start training im constantly hungry(which probably means eating more often but eating the same quantities through the day), but diet wise, I either have cereal for brekkie with 2 pieces of toast or scrambled eggs and bacon and hash browns, dinner and tea its mainly chicken and salad depending on how I feel, my diet is pretty good it aint great but good enough for what I want.
Keri-The evening sounds great and try to keep it to great protein choices such as the chicken, fish, lean beef etc with plenty of veggies if possible. The bacon needs to go for breakfast, keep it once a week only as well as the hash browns, they are not going to help you one bit, and carry enough salt and saturated fat to sink a battleship, pardon the pun!!!
Soldier-Going back to my friend, all i really require is a little bit of advice on whether this regime will work for her to drop a few sizes and build fitness levels up, Im thinking ive probably overdone the weight side of things for her, but thats no problem as I could lose 2 exercises from that. The exercises for her will obviously be light weight high rep as its for toning and for fat burning.
The basketball court routine i will be doing as well as I know that will get me fit.
cheers for the reply, heres the routine I was on about, I dont think its too bad, it would certainly test me if I was doing it.
20 mins Elliptical machine: consisting of:-
5 mins warm up
2 mins going hard
2 mins cool off
2 mins hard
2 mins cool
2 mins hard
5 mins warm down.Stretching
Squats 2-3 sets 15-20 reps
Bi cep curl to shoulder press 2-3 sets 15-20 reps
Lunges sets and reps as above
Bench press/flat flys sets and reps as above
Clean and jerks sets and reps as above
ab work20 mins of rowing following the same pattern as elliptical machine-keri try and cut the rower work down from 20 mins to around 10 to start, in fact set her a target of 2500 metres and see how quick she can go, this is a lung capacity buster and will test the best of us. Also, give her a 15 minute target, see how many metres can she do? let me know where she is on these and i will tell you how good she is.
For circuit work on the basketball court
gonna make that about 30-45 mins long
3 laps of court
stretching
3 laps of court steady pace
the next few laps Im not sure how much is too much in terms of sprinting/jogging/running/walking as its been a few years since i did fitness work like this?
followed by some high speed work with press ups and sit ups at the end of each sprint:-
sprint one 10 press ups 10 sit ups
sprint two 9 press ups 9 sit ups etc etc to
sprint ten 1 press up 1 sit up.Keri-build the basketball court stuff up, and aim to do sprints rather than just running around it, so up and down the court once then the press ups, then you go and she rests, then she goes you rest until you’re both tired, you will improve each week for sure!
For myself I used to use a routine which i call the “2 set routine” which involves a series of weight lifting exercises on which you lift to about 90% maximum lifting capacity for 10 reps and aim for 10 reps second set. with this one once you find 2 sets of ten easy you increase the weight for your second set so you feel that your going to fail at rep 8 maybe 9. I did this and because of my body I found i grew in size really quick and had some of my biggest gains doing it. I can send you this one if you want to run your professional eye over it
this usually takes no more than 45 mins but leaves you shattered at the end of it and hurting, but in a good way.
Keri-this sounds like a great workout and you have been working hard. The only concern i have is the last paragraph for your friend, she is not going to benefit from the 90% of max method, but you will. I would stick to all the stuff you did before that, and the key is to work up gently?
So she doesnt really get into it too quickly, and needs to build herself up week by week or two things could happen. She could either get injured and lose motivation, and the schedule will initially be too tough? Everyone needs to start off lighter and build their way up, no matter how fit they are, and your friends sounds a little out of shape, so i would set up more realistic goals, and aim to improve by the week, rather than by the workout, small gains can end up huge gains in just 6 weeks, and especially 12 weeks!!!
Let me know how you get on and please look in the diet/food section for plenty of meal ideas as well as snacks!!
Keri
