Jeans Challenge Week 4

July 20, 2011 by ·

Halfway there…..

 

So we’re now well past the halfway point in trying to help our six ‘jeans challengers’ into that pair of jeans, and so far the omens are good.  Although it must be said that most of the guys are starting to feel the effects of three and a half weeks of focussed nutrition and training.

 

Week four sees a continuation of us trying to expose the guys to some lower rep, heavier weights, strength training.  You’ll never develop all out strength in two weeks of course, but the idea here is to get both the muscles capable of, and the mind comfortable with, lifting heavier loads – which is the essence of strength training.  It’s an essential part of any program, often overlooked in females because women are wary of ‘bulking’ and also because most personal trainers are wary of confronting the issue – it’s easier not to right?  Maybe so, but it’s worth remembering though that a) women will not ‘bulk up’ with a well designed strength program, and b) physically weak and unstable creatures will always struggle to get lean and toned!

 

Next week the program shifts again and the final two weeks of the program will see a shift into more high rep, low weight, limited rest, metabolic type training – otherwise referred to as cardio with weights or circuits.  This type of cardio-strength training is perhaps the best form of training for fat loss.  The problem with it is that most people are not strong enough to do it.  Strength and structural integrity almost always become the limiting factor, and worse still, lead to injury.  This is why, even given our short timescales, we have moved through a phase of structural balance and a strength phase before we move into two weeks of all out fat loss cardio-strength training.  (We might have had much quicker fat loss had we skipped the previous two phases, but we want to help people get sustainable results, not create physiotherapy clients!)

 

Let’s see if over six weeks we can not only help ours challengers get into their jeans, but also banish the chronic back and knee issues that have been niggling them.  So far, so good – pain has been significantly reduced (eliminated completely in one case) and body fat has tumbled – let’s see what the next two and a half weeks brings……

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Jeans Challenge Week 3

July 12, 2011 by ·

Two weeks down, four to go….

So thats two weeks down and four more to go in our bid to get six regular women into ‘that’ pair of jeans in just six weeks.

We retested everyone at the end of last week and we had some pretty stellar results.  You can see the change in everyone.  The average weight loss was over 5lbs and more importantly the average number of millimetres pinched under the callipers (the true indication of fat loss) was just under 40mm.  To put this into perspective, thats somewhere in the region of 4-5% body fat lost PER PERSON in just two weeks!  Pretty damn impressive.

The first two weeks we’re about setting some kind of structural foundations. Remember that four of these women were not currently exercising, and three of them are carrying either chronic knee or back complaints which need to be factored in and programmed around.  In most cases, we had to include some much needed hip and shoulder stability work, as well as some mobility work (particularly in the ankles and mid-back areas).  A combination of increased mobility and stability going into phase two will allow us to push the guys a little more, but keep the quality of movement.  Despite condensing several weeks into two, we’ve had great results in this area and everyone is moving pretty well.

Over the weekend we gave the guys a much needed ‘one night only’ pass, where they could indulge in the things they had excluded for the two weeks previously.  (As you can imagine, some ‘indulged’ more than others!)  But now we’re into week three and it’s back in the game for ten more days…..

Week three brings a new challenge.  We can now spend a little less time on mobility and stability exercises (we will obviously keep some in), but the resistance training and metabolic parts of the program become more challenging.  The resistance (weights) increase as the repetitions drop, in an attempt to increase strength levels.  And the metabolic work (cardio) becomes slightly more intense.  It’s the same four hour weekly commitment, only we’ll be squeezing more out of the sessions!

The first training sessions this week have gone well – it’s amazing what one night of more relaxed living does for enthusiasm!  Everyone has found their progressed programs more challenging, but they know they can do it and they can see the benefits of the two weeks we have spent previously.

Te same nutritional guidelines and slightly more challenging training – watch this space…..

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Interval Training for Fat Loss

June 1, 2011 by ·

Short, sharp bursts have proved more effective for fat loss.

The argument about traditional steady-steady cardio vs higher intensity interval training is still gathering momentum!  Should we go more slowly for longer or is it more beneficial to go faster in short bursts?

Have a read of this interesting article from the Sydney Morning Herald sent to us via one of our previous members who has since moved to sunnier climates.

For fat loss, we advocate the shorter sharper bursts over the long steady plod.  Why?  Because given the research to date, peoples common fat loss goal, the time constraints most people face, and perhaps most importantly the results we’ve seen, interval training has proved more effective.

Interval training has certainly proved more time efficient.  It’s of course difficult to rationalise the notion that you can burn more fat by working for a fraction of the time, but it’s all about something known as EPOC, or Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption.

Long story short, when you work at a higher intensity, it’s not just the metabolic acceleration of the workout itself, but the increased metabolic rate for several hours after the workout is completed.  (You burn more calories for longer!).  You do not get the same benefits from steady-state cardio training.

Our conclusion……work harder for a far shorter period of time!

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Ronni Ancona gives W10 a shout in the Evening Standard!

April 11, 2011 by ·

Over the last few months we have tasked with helping Ronni Ancona get fit for her Sport Relief Challenge.

For those who didn’t see it, Ronni was not only the most amusing (of course!), but also the fittest on the trip – which is no surprise to us, given all her hard work.

We’d like to say well done to Ronnie; fantastic – a great achievement for a fantastic cause.

Check out the Evening Standard interview Ronni, in which she gives her favourite gym a cheeky plug!

 

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Worth a read: The Primal Blueprint

March 28, 2011 by ·

We’ve all just finished reading The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in their health and improving their fitness.

It’s a very easy read, giving plenty of good information but without preaching, patronising or boring you to tears with long-winded scientific explanations! (although you’ll get just enough to give you a reasonable background/understanding of the topics covered).

Has become a ‘must read’ on our members reading list!

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Adrian’s Ironman Blog

January 24, 2011 by ·

Adrian crossing the line in Nice last year!

Need a goal for 2011?  Keen triathlete, runner or cyclist?  W10 trainer is doing an Ironman triathlon for the second consecuutive year, and this year his dragging his wife Louisa along for the ride!

Adrian is keeping a blog about his training this time around, sharing tips in training, nutrition, rest and recovery.  Should be pretty interesting following the progress of training for something so gruelling.  Visit Adrian’s blog here.

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Guest post by Jason Ferruggia – Top 5 tips for Muscle Building & Fat Loss

January 15, 2011 by ·

By Jason Ferruggia

I was interviewed for a big name fitness magazine recently and they asked for my top five training tips. Here’s what I told them…

Train like an athlete - You should be training for enhanced performance and your strength work and conditioning/ cardio should be hard, heavy and fast. None of the light weight, slow tempo nonsense, and no medium intensity, steady state cardio that drowns your fast twich fibers in lactic acid, turning them slow.

Use big, compound exercises and add in some throws, jumps or strongman training whenever appropriate. Always strive to increase your performance from one workout to the next by lifting more weight, doing more reps, jumping higher, running faster or getting done in less time.

Use exercises that allow you to move your body through space – When you move your own bodyweight (or bodyweight plus resistance) like you do in a chin up, pushup, squat, parallel bar dip, etc. you activate more muscle fibers, thus you will get bigger, stronger and leaner a whole lot faster. As far as conditioning and cardio goes, you have to realize that the human body wasn’t designed for repetitive steady state activity but rather short bursts with a wide variety of different movements. This is exactly what you do when you play most sports. When you pump away on a machine for 30 minutes you are fighting evolution.

So focus on bodyweight and free weight exercises like chins, dips and sprints, play as many sports as possible, and avoid all strength or cardio machines like the plague.

Less is more - When training for size, strength and speed, quality is always more important than quantity. If you undertrain you will make some progress, albeit slowly. If you overtrain you will make zero progress. When in doubt, do less. Limit your workouts to 45 minutes (excluding warm up) and 12-16 total work sets.

Eat only organic whole foods – If a caveman couldn’t eat it you probably shouldn’t eat it. Almost nothing that comes in a box or plastic wrapper or that contains any artificial ingredients whatsoever can be considered healthy. Focus on getting the majority of your calories from vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and lean, grass fed beef, free range chicken and eggs, and limited amounts of wild caught fish like salmon. If you can’t chew all of your protein add in a top quality protein powder likeSun Warrior.

Be sure to drink nothing but pure water and the occasional cup of green tea or glass of red wine. Also, remember to avoid conventional, pasteurized dairy, corn, wheat and sugar as these cause inflammation throughout the body leading to pain and disease.

Sleep - Getting 8-10 hours per day of high quality sleep is simply the best thing you can do for recovery, building lean muscle, burning bodyfat, improving insulin sensitivity, enhancing immune system function, repairing damaged tissues/injuries, improving brain function, etc, etc, etc. If you are not sleeping you have a major problem and it needs to be addressed with high priority.

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How much jogging should I be doing to for weight loss goal?

November 8, 2010 by ·

In most peoples cases, a lot less jogging than you’re currently doing.  People do too much steady state cardio training for fat loss – without realising that long term, it makes people structurally weak and predisposes them to store fat!

We’re not anti jogging and we work with plenty of people who run both competitively and recreationally.  If you like running, or it’s your sport, all well and good – but in terms of losing body fat, running it’s not the most efficient way to go.

The full explanation of this goes beyond a brief Q&A section, but we’ll try and give you the ‘short’ version.

The key to fat loss is good nutrition and increased metabolic activity (exercise). A  run will burn calories and give your metabolism a nudge, for the time that you are actually jogging and for say 4-6hrs after you stop.  The heavy breathing and sweating will help with detoxification, pounding the pavement will strengthen you legs (initially) and you’ll also lose weight when you start out.  Good stuff.

Over time however, long runs break down muscle tissue (disastrous for fat loss), reduce bone density (a very real concern for women especially), and cause a spike in stress hormones, which frankly most of us could do without.  In most people jogging also compromises posture, causes musculoskeletal problems (often knee pain), ankle stiffness, calf tightness and results in imbalances between the muscles at the front and those at the back of the body.  Not ideal.

Also, think about it this way – efficiency is the enemy of fat loss.  The first time you put your pumps on and do your fifteen minutes around the block you burn say two hundred calories.  As you get ‘fitter’ or more efficient, the same jaunt around the block is less taxing and you need to expend less calories to complete it.  So, next time you have to run for say twenty minutes to hit this two hundred calorie mark.  Twenty five minutes two weeks later, half an hour the week after that, and so on (great if you are actually training to run further!).  Before you know it, you’ve trained for a marathon, your knees are killing you, and guess what?  You’re still just as disgruntled with the way you look!

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