GB Personal Training News

Hi everybody this is Adam……. We are now way into feb and the London marathon is getting closer and the training is getting more intense to reach that target of under 3 hours!! I would like to share with you all my training preparation so far……
over the christmas period I ran a distance of 12 miles over the fells of the peak district and a half marathon on the road (on different days of course). Also some shorter distances of 6 miles x-country.
For me this was a break in period….
Since then my philosophy is less is more!!
Currently I am doing
- 2 to 3 sprint sessions each week which are 400m sprints followed by 400m run 10 times
- 1 to 2 strength and conditioning sessions using kettlebells and body weight exercises for injury prevention, and
- 1 long distance run each week.

Last weekend was awesome, running over the Peak District near Sheffield challenging my navigation skills and running through peat bogs for aprox 11 miles!!!

Watch this space in the future for my progress, all the hard work is also raising money for Cancer Research if you wish to sponsor me follow this link to my page and donate on line

http://www.wcrf-uk.org/fundraising/events/runners/adam_waller.php

Thank you

Adam

Andy Murray Loses Tennis Final

I’m not a huge tennis fan but when you have the chance of seeing the
first British man win a grand slam tennis title in over 70 years I
had to tune in. He lost of course.

I did notice that he was drinking iced water throughout the whole
match. Why iced? Any cold water has to be warmed in the stomach
before it can be utilised, this takes valuable time and energy.

This process can take up to 20 minutes, so is the water you’re drinking
during your workout doing you any good at all? Make sure you are
hydrated before your workout and then drink water at room temp if
you really have too.

Water is so vital to performance and overall health that the slightest
drop in hydration levels effects you big time. If you start to feel
thirsty before you drink then this is too late. Thirst is the final
signal.

Did you know that if you are dehydrated your intestines will
squeeze excess water from your digested food. Fancy a class of
waste water?

I don’t want to go on about all the benefits of water, we all know
how important it is. We came from water and are around 70% made
from it. If you want to find out more about how some serious diseases
are being cured by just adequate hydration then I can recommend:

“Your Body’s Many Cries for Water” by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj

If you still haven’t tried the 10:30 challenge the try it here:

http://www.gbpersonaltraining.com/blog/?page_id=510

Greg
GB Personal Training
London, UK
http://www.gbpersonaltraining.com

Most people when exercising with any load (kettlebell, dumbell etc)
have their whole training philosophy backwards. Let me explain.

When you do a squat, it is the downward phase that is most important.
Here your muscles are working hard to lengthen under tension. They
are not only stronger during this phase but also gain strength and
size quicker too!

The same applies to any movement, you will gain far more benefits during
the lengthening part of the muscle phase (eccentric) than the shortening
part of the exercise phase (concentric).

Now think about your own training. Are you always trying to push
more and more weight over head and then just let the weight quickly
fall back to your shoulder? If so you are missing out.

If you want to make much quicker gains both in strength and muscle
tone here’s what to do. Lets take the squat as an example:

Count to 3 as you lower down in to the squat position and then
drive up through your heels in 1. So that’s 3 down and 1 up. Use the
same principle for all your pressing exercises etc. Remember slowly
lengthen quickly shorten.

A word of warning. It is the lengthening phase that causes the post
muscle soreness so make sure you stretch after your session. Even take
a cold shower, if you dare!

We have all read magazines telling us the best workouts for thinning down, putting on muscle and developing 6 pack abs. But the workout section is only 1 part of designing a professional personal training program. Following the 8 steps below will ensure you get results quickly, safely, and consistently. It will also catapult you above the average personal trainer and establish you as a professional in your field.

Soft tissue work. Exercising and then stretching with bad soft tissue will only make matters worse. Consider an elastic band with a knot tied in it, pull the ends of the elastic band and the knot gets tighter. The same thing happens with soft tissue. Use a foam roller to remove these knots and adhesion’s before the workout begins.

Muscle activation and corrective exercise. Following your initial assessments you should know what muscles require awakening. You will have begun this process with the foam roller but certain areas may need more focus, in particular the glutes. You may also want to spend some time working on muscle firing patterns.

Core training. For many clients TVA activation may be poor or even non-existent so you will want to go through a series of progressions to improve the situation. Once TVA has been mastered both laying and standing you can move onto some static stability, namely planks.

Mobility. The fountain of youth and an area very under emphasized. Go through numerous joint mobility patterns concentrating on every joint in the body. Here you are looking to improve your clients joint mobility and also highlight areas that may need attention in the future. You may find it easier to work from top to bottom or vice versa. Joint mobility also acts as an active warm up.

Strength Workout. Here you take your tools of choice and put them into a 20 minute workout. Put together Circuits, Tabata’s, Ladders, Timed Reps, Challenges etc. Concentrate on the BIG movements and keep rest periods short to improve cardio levels. Try to include: a horizontal push and pull, vertical push and pull, one legged exercise, squat, deadlift. We use a lot of Kettlebells but you can use Dumbbells, Barbells, Powerbags, TRX etc.

Cool down. Don’t just stop after the workout. Your body still needs your muscle activity to circulate oxygen around your body. Go through some more mobility, the areas that need most work. Spend 5 minutes just bringing the heart rate down.

Stretching. You need to stretch a lot to make a difference. Education is the key here. Teach your client how to stretch, don’t do it for them. Concentrate on only the areas that need stretching. Like tuning the strings of a guitar only work on certain areas. Do not just develop the same stretching routine for every client.

Post Nutrition. Often neglected by many trainers. Encourage your client to eat a good combination of protein and carbohydrates within 1 hour of their workout. We do not encourage our clients to drink artificial protein drinks but that is up to you. Inform your clients why this is required and the consequences of missing out this important part.

By Greg Brookes

We all grow up being forced to drink milk for healthy bones and a white smile. Most get weaned off Mothers milk and straight onto cow’s milk. But, unless you are consuming raw milk you are drinking little more than hard to digest sugar water with added chemicals. The real problem arises when you pasteurize milk, a process that boils the milk at 155 degrees for up to 30 minutes.

Here are 7 dangers of drinking pasteurized milk:

No Calcium – Most people drink milk for the calcium. Following pasteurization 50% of the Calcium and all the enzymes in the milk are destroyed. The enzyme Phosphotase assimilates Calcium without it we cannot digest calcium. Minimal calcium gets absorbed. You are much better getting your calcium from leafy greens and vegetables.

Got a Yeast infection? Milk may be adding to the problem. Destroying the enzyme Galactase, the milk sugar Galactose cannot be digested. If you are drinking low fat milk you now have a liquid similar to sugar water producing a great breeding ground for those nasty parasites in your gut.

Kills friendly bacteria – Lactic acid producing bacteria protect milk from harmful pathogens. These friendly bacteria fight against the unfriendly bacteria. Without our army of bacteria we are susceptible to attack. All reported cases of Salmonella have been in pasteurized milk not healthy living raw milk.

Destroys Vitamins & Minerals – Along with Calcium 80% of all other water soluble vitamins are damaged. B12 a highly important vitamin that combats fatigue is totally destroyed. Other important minerals like Sulphur, Sodium and Potassium also have their availability reduced.

Free Radical Damage – During the heat process of pasteurization the milk fats go rancid. Chemicals are added to suppress the rancidity of the milk and to improve its odour and taste. Many even fortify the milk with added synthetic D vitamins. The body has to draw on its natural nutrient resources to handle these poisons.

Strain on the pancreas – Without enzymes the pancreas has to work extra hard to digest the milk. Without the milk sugar digesting enzyme Gatactase, the pancreas can get worn out constantly digesting this sugar water.

Growth Hormones & Antibiotic resistance – Most milk consumed today is still NOT organic. So now you have the added problem of Growth hormones that are fed to double cows milking time. This often leads to infections and puss on the udder caused by constant milking. This puss ends up in the milk. To control infections cows are put on antibiotics, later consumed by the public. A slow build up of antibiotics in your system leads to a resistance.

Greg

GB Personal Training

Imagine you are sixteen years old and your parents give you your first car. They also give you simple instructions. There is one small hitch, you only get one car, you can never get another. Never. No trade-ins, no trade-ups. Nothing

Ask yourself how would you maintain that car? My guess is you would be meticulous. Frequent oil changes, proper fuel, etc. Now imagine if your parents also told you that none of the replacement parts for this car would ever work as well as the original parts. Not only that, the replacement parts would be expensive to install and cause you to have decreased use of your car for the rest of the cars useful life? In other words, the car would continue to run but, not at the same speed and with the efficiency you were used to.

Wow, now would we ever put a lot of time and effort into maintenance if that were the case.

After reading the above example ask yourself another question. Why is the human body different? Why do we act as if we don’t care about the one body we were given. Same deal. You only get one body. No returns or trade-ins. Sure, we can replace parts but boy it’s a lot of work and it hurts. Besides, the stuff they put in never works as well as the original “factory” parts. The replacement knee or hip doesn’t give you the same feel and performance as the original part.

Think about it. One body. You determine the mileage? You set the maintenance plan?

No refunds, no warranties, no do-overs?

How about this perspective? One of my clients is a very successful businessman. He often is asked to speak to various groups. One thing he tells every group is that you are going to spend time and money on your health. The truth is the process can be a proactive one or a reactive one. Money spent on your health can take the form of a personal trainer, massage therapist and a gym membership or, it can be money spent on cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and plastic surgeons. Either way, you will spend money.

Same goes for time. You can go to the gym or, to the doctors office. It’s up to you. Either way, you will spend time. Some people say things like “I hate to work out”. Try sitting in the emergency room for a few hours and then get back to me. Working out may not seem so bad. Much like a car, a little preventative maintenance can go a long way. However, in so many ways the body is better than a car. With some good hard work you can turn back the odometer on the body. I wrote an article a while back ( Strength Training- The Fountain of Youth) that discussed a study done by McMaster University which showed that muscle tissue of older subjects actually changed at the cellular level and looked more like the younger control subjects after strength training.

Do me a favor, spend some time on preventative maintenance, it beats the heck out of the alternative. Just remember, you will spend both time and money.

Written by Mike Boyle strength and conditioning coach

So you have decided to start on your 2010 health and fitness regime. You have hundreds of options available to you: join a gym, start a fitness class, exercise at home or train for an event. No matter what option you choose there is still one question that must always be answered, how often should I exercise?

Figuring out how often to perform your fitness regime comes down to 3 personalized factors. Firstly, how much time you have and how much time you are prepared to commit to getting results. Secondly, how intense the activity you are choosing to perform. Finally, how quickly you recover. Lets take a look at each of these in turn.

Before starting your new exercise regime it is important to ask yourself how committed you are to the cause? Exercising once every 2 weeks won’t get you very far. Be honest with yourself. Realistically you need to do something at least twice per week. Now it is no good saying you are going to go all out and train 5 times per week when you know that you have little time for exercise and exercise isn’t at the top of your priority list.

Once you know how often you are going to exercise you can decide on the intensity of the workout. Here you can start to get a little more creative. Intensity is key when it comes to fat loss so you are better working out harder for less days per week than lightly every day. This is a common mistake made by many people, often believing that more is better. If your goals are something less intense like Pilates or Yoga then you could perform these activities more frequently.

So you should now know the intensity and frequency of your workouts. The final thing to consider, and in my mind the most important, is how quickly you recover. Recovery is the key to any exercise program. You make progress when you recover from the exercise not when you are performing it. Our body learns from each session and through recovery makes it easier for us the next time. This is why you should always increase the intensity slightly over time. We all recover at different speeds depending on age, diet, stressors, genetics etc. Listen to your body and adjust the frequency accordingly.

Consider these 3 simple factors when planning out your exercise regime and you will get the maximum benefits from each workout. My advice would be to start exercising at a good intensity every other day. Listen to your body and take an extra day off if necessary. As you get used to your routine experiment with the intensity and frequency. The harder you work the more time you will need to recover. Don’t forget that recovery is the most important factor but that doesn’t make the perfect excuse for doing nothing at all this year.

Happy New Year for 2010

There have now been over 200 books written on sit ups, crunches and stomach exercises. All intended to flatten your stomach and produce 6 pack abs. What does this tell us? Ab exercises have been vastly explored. Sit ups and crunches don’t give us 6 pack abs. This is fact. There is no magical abs machine or exercise out there. Truth is, exercise has only a very small amount to do with thinning your waist line.  If you want 6 pack abs then you had better look elsewhere.

We frequently get asked to flatten abs and produce a lean stomach. We don’t do sit ups at all and still get the job done. How do we do it? We follow 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Food intolerances. The majority of bloated stomachs come from food intolerances. Simply by following an elimination diet eg. cutting out wheat, simple sugars, pasteurized dairy, and caffeine. This by itself will make a huge difference to your waist line.

Step 2: Reducing Stress. This doesn’t just relate to the general stresses you are under from employment and family pressures, although this is important. No, here we are talking about internal stresses and environmental stresses. Follow your body’s natural rhythm by getting to bed at night. Avoid exercise in the evening. Dim lights late at night. All these factors affect your hormones especially cortisol levels. If you want to flatten your abs then learn to follow your body’s natural rhythm.

Step 3: Stop the Poisons. Smoking, Alcohol, Medication, Food additives. As human beings we have a defense mechanism. We store toxins inside our fat. This protects us from there dangerous chemicals. Problem is, we will never drop the fat until we stop the chemicals. Providing we are taking in chemicals on a regular basis we will always store fat to protect us from them. So, want to lose the stomach fat then lose the chemicals.

Step 4: Tighten the Body’s Corset. Underneath our abs we all have a natural corset that surrounds our midsection. It is designed to be pulled tight to provide us with abdominal pressure and protect our spine. Problem is, most peoples no longer works. By strengthening your inner core through breathing exercises and then integrating it into natural movements you can take inches off your waist.

Step 5: Train the whole body. The body is one complete interconnected machine. It reduces fat in the same way. Once you have followed all 4 of the above steps then the final process is burning the fat and bringing out your abs. Concentrate on full body movements. Avoid standard cardio exercises and work on increasing your muscle tone. Squats, Lunges, Chin Ups, Push Ups, Deadlifts, Clean & Presses etc. Exercise hard and then get plenty of rest.

Happy New Year

Greg

There are much more effective ways to burn fat than running. In fact going for a 20 – 30 minute jog is the last thing that I would prescribe for fat loss. Not only do these jogs magnify injuries in the untrained individual but also reduce your potential for future fat loss. There is a better way to burn fat fast and you don’t even need to move your feet.

Running for extended periods of time in most individuals usually causes some kind of injury. The problem with running lies in the constant repetition and the excessive loads going through the kinetic chain from the foot upwards. Research shows that 4-7 times the body weight of an individual travels through the body with every single foot strike. Now add on top of this 1500 average foot strikes per mile and you get an idea of the repetitive load that the body deals with on a 30 minute run.

This constant repetition is fine if you have perfect posture and the strength to dissipate the load. Unfortunately most peoples posture is far from perfect due to a lifestyle of sitting and desk work. So imagine the impact that just 1 mile or 1500 steps of 360-630 kg would have on an already misaligned body. If you don’t get injured from the first run, you will later as the constant repetition catches up with you. Ankles, Knees, Hamstrings, Lower back, Shoulders and finally Neck, are all common complaints as the force travels up the kinetic chain.

If you are running just to lose fat then there are much more effective ways. Your objective, along with straightening out your diet, is to increase your metabolism. Muscle mass is very energy dependent. In other words, to survive and maintain its size muscle burns a lot of fat. So the more muscle mass you have the more fat you burn, all day and everyday. You also need to temporarily alter your body’s homeostasis so it has to use energy (fat) to restore its natural balance. Running not only decreases muscle mass but isn’t metabolically demanding enough to significantly alter your homeostasis.

So if running is not going to shift that fat and also sets you up for repetitive injury, what’s the answer. Kettlebell workouts exploded onto to the fitness scene a few years ago, made famous in Hollywood and now in most gyms. Basically a hunk of metal with a handle. Most exercises you can perform without moving your feet so the impact load on joints is minimum. With an offset centre of gravity they quickly strengthen joints and increase muscle tone. Just swinging a kettlebell for 30 seconds can feel like a 100 metre sprint.

16 free kettlebell workouts by GB Personal Training