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Are You Training or Exercising?

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What Are You Doing In The Gym

Many people come to the gym to exercise in the pursuit of fitness and weight loss. Feeling the need to get out of breath, sweaty and in many cases, sore. More often than not they may be doing a class or several classes a week.

Motivation can be high at first, that feel good factor of the endorphin rush that you get and for many, the early results that you see and feel will be incouraging.
Very quickly though, the results stop coming, the body has adapted to the stresses you have put it through.

You have done a good job to this point. You likely have improved your health and fitness over them first few weeks or so. Infact you have improved to the extent that the very same routine that you are doing is no longer having any improvement benefits on your fitness or weight loss. You may still sweat and get that feel good factor but that's it.

When Motivation Wanes

This is where the initial motivation you had at the beginning wanes. Discipline can keep you going for so long but results are what really drives you and when they fall off so does the discipline and consistancy.

If you carry on doing the same thing you will maintain this level and for some that may be adequate but what if you want more? What next?

Most Get It Wrong.

Most will do one of two things or even, both. Cut the amount of calories they consume or do more classes. What effect will this have?
Regarding doing more classes, the down side is you're likely to push beyond the boundries of getting healthy recovery.
The upside? Well there almost certainly isn't one. At some point more is not better.

Cutting calories is just not a good idea or a sustainable one. The adaptation that you do not want is for your body to become even more effecient with the calories you feed it.
There is a rebound effect if or when you stop following your regime. If you return to the habits you followed before you started out you will probably gain any weight you have lost and possibly more.

What You Don't Want, Your BMR To Drop.

Cardio is never a good stratergy for weight loss. When ever you are performing predominantly cardio exercises to lose weight, your body is in a catabolic state.
Fat loss is not the only tissue that you will lose, you will also lose lean mass including muscle.
As muscle requires energy to maintain, the loss of muscle will result in a drop in your BMR (basal Metabolic Rate).
Basically you will have to eat less to stay the same weight that you were before you started.
If you have ever watched "The Biggest Losers", a very large percentage of these participents gain back all their losses and more.

This is where Training is required.

Training is perfoming planned out activities over a period of time for the purpose of acheiving a short or long term goal. This requires the trainee to be able to periodically increase the stress on the body to ellicit continual adaptation.
The training protocols quickly become impossible to apply in an exercise class setting.
So the trainee needs to devise or have a plan devised for them where they can program and monitor their exercises, dietary requirements and improvements over time.

The adaptations required by an individual can be vary varied. From losing fat mass, building strength, building power, being more athletic, or just getting bigger.
If you follow a good training plan, you are so much more likely to maintain consistancy and move towards your goals.
In summery, if you just like to sweat and get your heart pumping in a social enviroment, carry on. It's still good to be active.
But, if you want specific results you have to train.

Build Muscle At Any Age?

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What You Need To Know To Be Successful.

The human body never loses it's ability to adapt to stresses that we put on it. These adaptations can be good or bad or both in various amounts. The body is in a constant state of breaking down, building and repairing new tissue as a result of the daily stresses of life.

Basically there are two opposing hormone groups. Catabolic (breaking down) and Anabolic (building).

The main catabolic hormones are Adrenaline and Cortisol. These are released when ever we encounter stressful events or sressful periods during our daily life.
Anabolic hormones include Human Growth Hormone, Testostrone and Estrogen. These help us build and repair tissue.

Building muscle is an adaptation to a stress that we put on the body by way of performing resistance exercises. As we age the ability to gain muscle and strength does decline but we never lose it.

To be successful we have to create an enviroment that is more anabolic than catabolic.
In men and women, Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone levels decrease over time.

We can raise these by performing strength training which in turn can help us increase lean mass. Nevertheless, there is a balancing act between optimum training and overtraining. This is the case at any age but the older we are, the finer the margins for error.

There are several factors that we have to optimise as we age to be successful in building muscle and strength. All of these would be unique to each individual.
*The right amount of training.
*The optimum nutrition.
*Rest and recovery.

The right amount of training.

The right amount of training should be just enough to ilicit a stress, recovery and adaptation in your body. More is not better and too much will result in a negative benefit.
For the most part, to continue to get stronger and bigger muscles, the "right amount" will involve "progressive overload". Progressive overload is the increase in one or more of the variables, intensity, frequency and volume.

The Optimum Nutrition.

The optimal nutrition is going to fuel workouts, help build muscle, aid recovery, improve healthy hormone levels. Protein is an essential nutrient that we have to eat to help facilitate the growth and repair of cells. This includes muscle. If we don't eat enough protein the breakdown of tissue will outway the building of new tissue. This is not the environment for muscle growth.
The generally excepted protein intake target for muscle growth is .6gms to 1.2kgms of protein per lb of bodyweight. Fat is another essential nutrient that we have to eat. It helps in the production of important hormones and the obsorbtion of nutrients. Fat also protects our organs and keeps us warm.
20% to 35% our our daily calorie intake should be from healthy fats.

Rest and Recovery.

Rest and recovery and most importantly, sleep, from training and generally from daily life stresses, are so important and underestermated in these modern times.
Sleep is probably the #1 factor to focus on. Especially when it comes to building muscle and strength. Inadequate recovery will prevent the body adapting in the desired manner. Recovery from training will happen but adaptation may not.

So in summery, yes you can build muscle at any age. At the very least you can maintain your muscle mass by doing regular resistance exercise workouts. If you want to live a long active life, staying strong is probably the single most important thing you can do.

Body Re-composition. 10 Myths, Truths & Lies.

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Body re-composition is the main goal of most gym goers and here are 10 Facts to help you focus on that goal.

#1 Women will get bulky lifting heavy weights.

The average women looking for body re-composition will get a fitter, firmer, leaner look by lifting relatively heavy weight. This will increase BMR, your Basel Metabolic Rate.

This in turn will lead to higher calorie burn. Providing there is a slight caloric deficit of the higher calorie demand that has now been created, fat loss will happen fairly easily in the initial weeks and early months of training.

Only Women with a clear objective to get competitively strong as power lifters and body builders are likely to get bulky lifting weights. That training would need to be intensive and certainly doesn’t happen overnight.

#2 Eating Only healthy foods will cause fat loss.

Healthy or “clean” eating, though much more beneficial, will not guarantee weight loss. Energy balance is still the key You still need to eat less calories than you brun everyday.

The way quality whole foods aid weight loss is because they tend to be less calorie dense. Agood balance of fibre, protein and quality fats, helps with the feeling of satiety.
Processed foods tend to be calorie dense and much less filling as they are quickly digested, so it is easy to over eat.

#3 You need to do cardio to lose weight.

Cardio Vascular exercise, the sort that gets you sweaty and breathless, is really effective in the first few weeks of a person’s fitness and weight loss regime. The results will tail off very quickly after this period.

You may have heard or read that exercise is a poor way to lose weight, this is most certainly true. Diet is much more important in controlling body weight.

This is because adaptation happens fast initially as working out in any way from being sedentary will get results. The reason improvements stop is usually down to the exercise regime no longer challenging the body.

Weight loss should be about losing body fat. A much better approach to body re-composition is to do strength training.

A higher lean mass will require a larger amount of energy to maintain, meaning a higher daily calorie intake needed. read strength v cardio

#4 You can target areas to lose fat.

Whatever you may have read, it is not possible to spot reduce fat in any area of the body. Everyone stores fat in a unique way to them. The body tends to lose fat in the reverse way that it gains it.

#5 lifting heavy will hurt my back/lifting heavy is dangerous.

Providing someone has no pre-existing issues precluding them from lifting weight, lifting heavy weight is the single best thing that a person can do to improve overall fitness and increase longevity.

Lifting weight is only dangerous when done with incorrect technique. Learning to lift weight correctly is a fantastically beneficial method of strengthening the back and all other areas of the body.

This will Improve overall strength, balance, co-ordination and physical appearance. Lifting weight can also benefit the cardiovascular system. The same cannot be said for cardio making you stronger.

#6 low weight high reps is a better method of toning for women.

Low weight high reps has an initial positive effect on an untrained individual but the “toning” effect is short lived. Further sessions may have an impact on endurance but that is all.

For muscles to adapt and get bigger, progressive overload has to be the driver. This essentially means that both weight and intensity have to increase.

This is a reason why exercise classes with weights tend to garner quick results that plateau after a number of weeks.

There is a finite limit that an individual, especially female participants can progress doing “timed” weight exercises with high reps. The limiting factor being how much weight that can be lifted safely in such a manner.

#7 Athletes are healthier than the average gym goer.

Although the average gym goer may not be as healthy as an athlete, great health can be achieved without striving too be an athlete.

Athletes are held in high esteem and can be role models when people pursue fitness. The truth is that in most instances athletes are not the healthiest people. An athlete trains in a way to be exceptionally good at a specific event. Optimal health is not the driver of their training regime, it is optimal performance.

Examples- A marathon runner trains for endurance, big strong muscles are not beneficial to the marathon runner but being stronger generally is better for health. Footballers, rugby players and players of similar sports suffer greatly in pursuit of performance carrying and suffering life altering injuries. Most sport stars suffer for their sport. They are fit for their sport but not always for everyday life.

#8 People over 60 should not lift weights.

There are always circumstances that preclude people from weight training but age is not one of them.
People over 60 should absolutely lift weight. Lifting weight or resistance exercise, especially as you age, is the single most important form of training that you should engage in. Studies now show that maintaining strength is the single best predictor of longevity.

#9 A woman should not exercise when pregnant.

I’m not a doctor and a pregnant women that wants to train should seek medical advice. That being said, research suggests that there are many exercises that are beneficial to a pregnant woman, even lifting weight especially if she trained before and upto, pregnancy.

If a pregnant woman is untrained it is probably advisable not to start to train. At the very least, seek medical advice.

#10 You cannot lose fat and build muscle at the same time.

The bro science community will tell you that you have to bulk to build muscle and cut to lose fat. This is a falsehood for the average novice weightlifter although it is probably true for the guys and girls that have years of proper training under their belts.


My own anecdotal evidence is that the body is well capable of build muscle and strength while losing weight. I suffered an injury to the femoral nerve in my left side. This caused my thigh muscles in my left leg to waste away through lack of use. I lost 2 inches in the girth of my left thigh. As I recovered and began to exercise, I not only regained my leg strength and girth, I also lost 3 kilos in weight.

The body is a fantastic adaptation “machine” and when needs must, the body will adapt in the way it needs to.
Untrained overweight individuals can begin a program to lift weight and lose fat on a slight calorie deficit.

Providing the diet has the adequate amount of macro and micro nutrients, the body will get stronger while tapping into the fat reserves to provide the extra energy needed for the training being applied. The effects can be profound at first but will tail off over time.

Training For Strength Or Cardio?

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In the battle of Strength or cardio, Strength wins, lets explain.

Research now shows that as we age, strength is the single most important factor in determining our longevity and quality of life.

In most instances, strength training will improve cardiovascular fitness, cardiovascular training will not improve strength.

At best, some types of cardio exercise will improve endurance of muscle tissue. Cardio will not increase the power output of a muscle. Training for power ie sprinting will promote muscle growth and cardio improvements but power really comes under the same umbrella as strength training.

Cardio and the benefits and negatives.


The average person can achieve a good cardio vascular fitness in a relatively short period. Six weeks of cardiovascular exercise at the right amount of intensity, will achieve the desired conditioning for everyday life. There are diminishing returns from repeated bouts of cardio after six weeks.

That’s not to say that you should stop but that a reduction in the frequency will maintain the conditioning that you have achieved while avoiding lean mass breakdown.

If your goal is to compete in an event though, your training has to become specific to that event. Bear in mind, most athletes are not necessarily healthy for everyday life. Athletes train their bodies to the extreme to excel at specific tasks.

In the short term, cardio exercise can have an impact on fat loss in the untrained individual but long term, cardio exercise is not a good way to lose weight.

Especially when the lost weight includes lean body mass as well as fat. The stress, recovery and adaptation cycle of cardio exercise on the body leads the body to treat extra muscle mass as an expensive commodity that it can not afford to carry around.

Muscle mass has a demand on the energy system of the body and the body is being forced to conserve energy because of the demands of the cardio, so muscle begins to break down. This is why long distance runners are extremely thin and not very strong.

Another factor of the loss of lean mass is that the metabolism slows down. This means that the amount of energy (calories) that is needed to function drops, so it becomes harder to maintain a lower body weight.

Strength Training and the benefits and negatives.


As mentioned earlier, strength training will also greatly improve cardiovascular fitness. That alone makes it a better option to spend your workout time.

The stress, recovery and adaptation cycle of strength training will cause the body to view muscle as a priority, to cope with the demands being made on it and this will cause the increase in lean body mass. This in turn will increase metabolic rate.
In the early days of strength training, it is also very likely that fat will be lost due to the increase in metabolism as well as calories burned.

A good strength program will increase muscle, this coupled with fat loss may mean the scale does not change drastically. This should not be feared.
The scale is not always the best indicator of a persons progress, the visual changes may be more apparent.

Another good way to measure progress from a body re-composition standpoint, is body measurement. This could be waist size, chest size and any other body part you wish to monitor.

Unlike fat loss, where once achieved a new strategy or goal has to be planned. Strength training is almost limitless. Strength can be gained for life though admittedly gains slow down over time.

Another benefit of working with weights as opposed to cardio is the reduction of joint impact injuries and deterioration. Strength training increases bone density and strengthens joints and all other connective tissue.

The downside to strength training, like fat loss or maintaining a lower body weight, if you stop doing what got you to where you are, you will lose your results.

Empowerment

The empowerment that strength gives to an individual far outweighs what cardio exercise alone can give. Being stronger makes being healthier and better looking from an aesthetic standpoint, much easier to maintain.


There is the beginning of a paradigm shift now. The belief that we need 30 mins. of cardio 4 or 5 times a week to stay healthy is being challenged. The belief now, is that getting stronger is more beneficial to living a longer and healthier life.
Get lifting!

Learning Healthy Lifestyle Habits One Step At A Time.

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I’m sure if you are reading this report you would like to be a fitter, healthier version of yourself. The tricky part for most of us with the frenetic lifestyles we lead today, is how we can adopt healthier daily habits and stay consistent.

We make promises to ourselves like joining a gym, going more regularly to the gym, cooking healthier meals, cutting down on alcohol, getting better sleep, the list goes on.

Life seems to get in the way, you planned to cook a healthy meal when you arrived home from work, but something came up to scupper your plans. Now you only have time to grab a snack. The likelihood of you having something healthy already prepared is slim so you turn to the snacks cupboard, or pop to the local drive through.

How many times have you said to yourself at the beginning of the day “I’m going to do that gym class tonight”. You’re full of good intentions, it’s early in the day, you have energy. The day unfolds, work, family, life! Now the energy is low, you’re hungry, tired, your family needs you, you’re stressed. You can’t summon up the motivation to go to the gym or you no longer have time, “ah well perhaps tomorrow I’ll go”.

Does this seem at all familiar to you? How can you change things?

Trying to change everything in one go is not going to work, certainly not in the long run. What you need to do is make small changes, perhaps just one at a time, that you can be consistent with.

Reflect on your own lifestyle and identify behaviours or bad habits that sabotage your attempts to pursue better health.

When people struggle with eating healthily, several important aspects of good health suffer. Regulatory hormone levels become out of whack, the body’s ability to gain all the vital micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) it needs is compromised and sleep can be affected negatively. This means the body cannot achieve optimum daily organ function, brain power and energy levels for normal function let alone exercise. Sleep can affect and be affected by poor eating habits. It can be a vicious cycle.

So, where to start?

When it comes to making changes to your lifestyle that you can ingrain into permanent good daily habits, it’s important to take small steps. Everyone is unique, consequently the process will be different for everyone.

Sleep

If you are someone that gets 8 hours’ worth of quality sleep every night you probably won’t need to read the next section, you lucky person, for the rest of us this is relevant.

There are many factors that can affect sleep. Let’s assume you have a good bed and focus on other reasons you may not get the sleep you need.

Let’s list some negative factors for good sleep,

Not enough time,

Alcohol,

Dehydration,

Too much stimulant (coffee, tea, other caffeine drinks)

Too much light,

Too hot,

TV,

Phone,

General noise,

How many of these factors can you address?

Alcohol-

Contrary to what some people believe, alcohol does not aid sleep. It might induce sleep but the body’s ability to gain the full benefits of the sleep will be compromised by the fact that some organs will be in overdrive having to process the alcohol in the system.

Dehydration-

Dehydration can be a result of alcohol or caffeine consumption but going to bed dehydrated for any reason will influence the body’s ability to process toxins in the blood while sleeping. Dehydration can lead to deficiencies in melatonin which can cause insomnia.

Too Much Stimulant-

Self-explanatory, stimulants influence the central nervous system and will keep you awake or prevent deep sleep.

Too Much Light-

Light has a big impact on our biological clock, too much light at night can delay or advance our “clock” and affect our sleep. You have probably witnessed how you wake so much easier in the summer months when the sun rises as early as 4.00am.

Too Hot-

For optimum sleep, deep REM sleep, the body needs to lower its temperature.

TV-

Watching TV can assist in falling asleep, many of us use it as a tool but it is not a good habit, relying on TV to get to sleep. The subconscious brain will tune in to the sound and light and disturb sleep. If you regularly fall asleep to TV how many times have you woken up from a dream where a program that is on the TV has become part of your dream?

Phone-

Do you find yourself needing to check your phone one last time before you put your head down? Do you keep getting disturbed by notification bells from your various social media accounts? If you use your phone as an alarm, get an alarm clock instead and leave the phone out of the room. There may even be an effect from the Wi-Fi signals but that’s a whole different report.

General Noise-

Some of us are more sensitive to noise than others but noise can have a big effect on quality of sleep.

Some Remedies-

Go to bed earlier, use black out blinds, eye mask, ear plugs, don’t drink caffeinated drinks or alcohol within about 4 hours of bedtime but drink some water, If you have to have TV, set the timer to switch it off, leave your phone out of the bedroom, regulate the temperature for optimum sleep at about 60F degrees and no higher than 68F degrees.

Be as consistent as you can and notice the difference. When you start to feel the benefits and your night time habits are set, it will be time to move on to the next Issue you may need to address.

The next potential issue to deal with is the possible lack of essential vitamins and minerals in the diet if you are someone that struggles with eating healthily on a consistent basis.

Keeping a personal food diary for a week or two would help you to identify vitamins and minerals you may be lacking in your diet.

If overhauling your diet is too much of a challenge at this time, you could consider using supplements containing vitamins and minerals that you have identified that may be missing from your diet.  

This should not be considered a permanent solution but a stop gap solution, until you are ready to move onto the next level of a healthier living strategy.

The benefits of getting your micronutrients from the food that you eat compared to supplementation are many fold. If you eat a varied healthy diet high in complex carbohydrate, fibre, quality fats and protein, all your daily micronutrient requirement should be meet.

As well as this, you will also be more sated.

 Despite being aware of this, many find it difficult to be consistently good at implementing this strategy daily.

There can be many reasons for this, time, lack of culinary skill, culture, intolerance, out and out dislike of many foods or food groups, the list goes on.

Making Time

Time, or lack of it, can negatively impact many aspects of our daily routines including meal preparation and exercise.

When we have a lack of time to prepare healthy meals we tend to make poor replacement choices. We might grab a not so nutritious snack from the larder or fridge or order a “take away”.

This is not to say that snacks or takeaways are always the wrong choice, they just need to be the occasional not the normal choice.

Meal planning and preparation is a skill that needs to be acquired or honed. Before shopping for groceries, plan meals and snacks for the week.

Prepare meals in advance, prepare several meals at one time, pre-cook, freeze.

Make packed lunches, salads, bags of trail mix. Everything that can be done in advance will help prevent making poor choices when under pressure. 

If we find it hard to resist something that we know is not the best choice when in a hurry for a snack, probably best that we don’t purchase that something. We can choose a healthier option. If, in a moment of stress, the choice is healthy only, we are likely to go with it. If the choice is “healthy” or “not so healthy but comforting”, sometimes we will give in to the “not so healthy but comforting”.

Another important part of meal prepping is portion size. Many of us are conditioned from an early age to finish our plates of food. When we eat “out” the portions seem bigger than ever now. When we order takeaways for the family, we always seem to over estimate the quantities we need to go around. Rather than eat until we are nearly full we eat until there is nothing left.

The best way to achieve a healthy satiety is to reduce portion size, always plate up the food, sit and eat at a table when possible, chew slowly, take your time within reason and “listen” to your body. When you feel nearly full stop eating. The ritual of preparing and eating from a plate is much more likely to signal to your body that it has been fed. When we grab a bit of this and a mouthful of that, we never get that satisfied feeling that we have eaten.          

Move More

There are many ways to get some form of exercise in during the day even if we don’t have time to get to a planned gym session. When possible, walk or cycle to a destination. Never take the lift or escalator. Have some equipment around that can be picked up and used whenever there is a spare minute or two. Be creative, any spare time is time that can be used productively to make positive health benefits.

Some examples:-

We spend a lot of time at home idling, like waiting for the kettle to boil, the washing machine to finish or just passing time sitting around.

First, be sure to be sufficiently warmed up though. That doesn’t mean that you must spend 5 minutes going through a gentle stretching movement pattern, although it will always help. If you have been moving around and not sitting around you are good to go, just start off slow and controlled and build up.

Do squats or jumping jacks. Go for 3 or more sets of one minute or 20 reps with 30/60 second rest.

Walking lunges with a weight in your hands (tin of beans), see video demo on group page.

Press ups, Planks, on the spot sprinting, all these activities will have positive benefits on your cardiovascular and anabolic metabolism.

I hope I have given you some ideas on how to perhaps make some lifestyle improvements in your quest to live healthier lives.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have, I’ll do my best to answer them.

My Journey To Better Health

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At 59 (picture left) I realized I had let myself go. Having been relatively fit most of my life, competing in dozens of triathlons and half marathons, I knew I had to do something pretty drastic.

My health was still good but I was not prepared to give in to old age. After doing some research, I made big changes to my diet, joined a gym and began my program. In the past my fitness regime was always about cardiovascular endurance with virtually no resistance work. Consequently I didn’t have great muscle mass and strength, which probably resulted in my gaining weight fairly quickly.

So this meant my program was not going to be about quick weight loss but about being better nutritionally, as well as being fitter, stronger and generally healthier for the rest of my life.

The picture on the right is me, nearing the age of 62, in my own garage gym, with resistance training being my main focus.

Resistance training as we age is absolutely essential. As we age we lose muscle by 1% every year if we don’t work to maintain it. Bone density and strength also diminish as we age.

My health is great, blood pressure and resting heart rate of a young athletic man. Never had to take any medication.

Achieving this transformation while still working a full time job as a family man with two teenage children. I workout no more than about 4 hours per week. My only cardio every week is 2 classes as a spin instructor.

In the previous two and a half years I have also become a personal trainer and fitness instructor as I now have a real desire to help people be the best version of themselves as they get older.