Posted on

Wednesday, 9th November

A popular request i get a lot of the time is from 14 year old rugby players who want to “bulk up” for rugby.

First of all, 14 is a great age and the recommended earliest age for exercise.

Exercise in terms of weight training is not to be done at 100% flat out capacity with maximum intensity, weight training should be moderate at this age because your bones are still growing. You should start off light under supervision and add weight when the previous weight becomes really easy.

If you’re at a gym, a good programme to start off would be;

one set of everything first week, monday wednesday and friday

two sets of everything second week, same days

three sets of everything in the third week

8 repetitions per exercise and use a weight that tests you over the last couple of reps, but doesnt strain you too much, this is important to follow, NO STRAINING!!!

The exercises

Bench press

squat or leg press

upright rows

one arm dumbbell rowing

arm dips on bench

curls with dumbbells

Plank-aim for 10 seconds working up to 60 seconds over the next few weeks

Most people try to over-complicate things, and of course theres a million other exercises you can pluck out of any magazine, but for best results i would stick to those exercises over the first 4-6 weeks.

Take around one minute in between each set, you’re not there to sit around talking all day!

The first is all about conditioning your body to weight training, it can take a while and some pick it up quicker than others, and after all, you will have plenty of years ahead of you training, so theres no huge pressure to get it right in week one for example!!!

The other temptation is to want to copy others in the gym and want to put too much weight on, this is a big error and two things will happen, you will either get injured or get fed up with not being able to lift as much weight as others!!! This is a long term game and not a flash in the pan type of programme!!!

This is the first basic lesson on how to start off, if you start off properly you will be successful, if you don’t, its highly unlikely you will keep it up even in 3 months!!

More tomorrow!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 4th November

Massive changes in your body will happen if you are training in a proper manner.

For instance, i was doing a one off session with someone yesterday and this person claimed she always did fit ball/swiss ball group classes and was also a regular a pilates classes.

Since a lot of my sessions are now focused on balance and stability work, i was ready for this person’s valuable input on my session.

The result was the exact opposite of the one i expected.

Out of 20 exercises i did on the fit ball, she had only done one of them before, i was stunned.

On the pilates moves i usually do, she had never done one of them.

Guess what too? She still had a bad back despite her appearance at all of these “group classes”!!!

I asked how she found all the new exercises i had given her, and she said she felt relieved because her back was so much looser and the exercises i had given her she felt would quickly strengthen her back. This was good for me to know too, as you are looking for good feedback on the work you do, and getting the right exercise prescription is always important.

It shows that if you do the right exercises, then not only do you get substantially better results, but you spend less time exercising too because you will be getting the job done a lot quicker!

It is like seeing someone who only does treadmill work every session, every week, every month for years. They may appear quite lean, but you know they are missing out on so many elements of health and fitness. For example, they are not doing a lot of muscle toning, bone strengthening, muscular endurance etc etc.

They will need resistance training in their lives if they are to reach their true potential. Sometimes we don’t like leaving out self-enforced comfort zones, but we must do it to reach our true ambitions.

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 26th October

Halloween coming up and traditionally a big time for sweets and this means lots of sugar of course.

Most of us consumed lots of sweets as children and some of us are still consuming sweets on a regular basis now, but its when we become adults that the problems usually begin to hit home!!!

First of all, if we continue to get sugar from refined sources such as sweets, we can soon enough develop cardiovascular trouble and thats really bad news, especially when you start thinking about heart disease.

Eating a lot of sugar can increase the levels of “fluffy” fat that is between our arteries. This can form plaque and globules of fat that can lead to big trouble for us anytime.

When these forms of plaque break up, they travel to the heart, brain or kidney and can cause heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure.

The added sugars are just as bad if not worse, all of those names such as corn syrup, white sugar, brown sugar, dextrose, crystal dextrose etc etc are really devastating for your whole system if you continue to base your diet high in sugars!!

Sugar itself will not give you the heart attack, its just the sorts of conditions it brings with it. If you eat sugary foods every day then it doesnt take a genius to work out you will become overweight!! And from being overweight, diabetes, certain cancers and many other diseases become a lot more likely according to numerous studies!

A startling fact is that 36% of most overweight people’s sugar intake comes from liquid sources, pop, sports drinks, energy drinks are heavy contributors to ill health, and if most people just drunk water instead of sugary drinks, the obesity problem would be substantially decreased!!!

The bottom line is that a little sugar is needed by everyone, but fruits and grains are the preferred sources for good health and if you take this route, you are likely to regulate your health very successfully!

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 18th October

Warren Gatland admitted today he thought about cheating when it came to saturday’s disappointing loss, by faking an injury to one of the other props so Wales could achieve uncontested scrums. This would give a big advantage to wales, especially when it comes to the fact that they were already playing 14 versus fifteen, and the game would end up more evenly balanced, instead of being under constant pressure in the scrum!

For the sake of the spirit of the game, he didn’t resort to that but that are plenty of teams who would, without naming individual countries, but cheating has been a part of professional sport since the year dot!!

Drugs are the most well known form of cheating, and there are numerous sports such as athletics, cycling, american football, baseball etc that are rife with widespread drug taking unfortunately.

You may know yourself someone who takes drugs in order to get ahead in whatever field they are in. It could be recreationally taken steroids, it could ephedrine type products for sport, whatever it is, it comes down to one thing-CHEATING!!!

Performance enhancing drugs are not only illegal, but like the gatland comments, they are totally against the spirit of the game and sport in general.

Once you have resorted to them, you have given up your right to offer advice to others on performance, because you will not have played on a level playing field. You won’t know the hard work it takes to do it naturally, to suffer more, to recover more, to hit the sack earlier to recover, to have greater attention to detail in your food, to make every training session count etc etc.

To aspire to get to the top of any sport naturally is a very noble thing, and unfortunately becoming more and more difficult.

The good news is that it is possible to do it, as long as you make the use of the latest science and have a monumental work ethic.

 The other route is cheating, plain old fashioned cheating and that doesn’t impress anyone, and when you take the longer term health side effects into consideration, it can’t be worth it surely?!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, October 7th

As we go toward a great weekend of rugby, Wales versus Ireland, England versus France, its important to manage your body’s performance throughout this weekend.

A lot of people will use this weekend to complete trash their body, and forget all about eating healthy habits and say that somehow on monday morning or evening, they will fix it and they will be back to normal on tuesday!!!

Life or fitness doesn’t work like that somehow, and you always need some guidelines and tried and tested strategies to get through a weekend like this.

If friday night is your night, and you’re having “a few” no matter what!!! You had better make sure you do a workout tomorrow m0rning. If you do, your booze leaves your body to a large degree and you feel better.

If you don’t, your spare tyre gets bigger and you feel sorry for yourself all of saturday.

Then if you drink again saturday, you will write off another few drinks, and you usually wont have ANY idea how many extra calories you consumed in food thats usually too high in saturated fat, salt and sugars, THATS THE WAY IT IS when you let it all hang out  the weekend.

Then there’s sunday. Sunday lunch can be preceeded by a fried breakfast, a sleep on sunday afternoon (i miss those days!), and then something that could be called “comfort food” at the end of sunday.

To fix this calorie avalanche, stick to the tried and tested.

If you are out tonight, make sure you get out for a run, hard walk, cycle, inside workout WITHOUT FAIL!!!

Have a good breakfast, nothing fried and nothing greasy!

If you are out saturday, do the same workout sunday (usually outside) and really get a sweat on.

You can STILL enjoy your weekend, you just do not need to end up like a stuffed pig on monday morning, and take until thursday next week until you feel back to normal!!!!! SORT IT OUT SATURDAY AND SUNDAY and there wont be tears on monday morning, and you will be in a much better mood for it!!!

Good luck Wales!!

Twitt