Training while Im away

Here is a list of links to exercises to do in place of our sessions, while Im away for the long weekend. Compared to the sessions we have in studio, we are looking to maintain muscle mass as opposed to really pushing forward. The idea is to follow the same rep range I have you doing in gym. If you are at home and dont have weight, then just do reps to burn. I know some of you have access to a gym while others do not. The main focus should be on short rest periods (30 seconds to 1 minute), and you should also do some form of cardiovascular training (jogging, fast walking). Check below for “interval training” for a good idea of how to exercise efficiently. Dont do any exercises you are not comfortable with, there are alternatives on the link site. Any major questions I am on roaming.

Upper Body –  In Gym

Chest – Dumbell presses            http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/dumbbell-bench-press

Chest – Dumbell Flyes                http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/dumbbell-flyes

Back  –  Cable Row                        http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/seated-cable-rows

Back  –  Lat Pulldown                  http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/wide-grip-lat-pulldown

Shoulders   –  Press                      http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/dumbbell-shoulder-press

Shoulders   – Upright Row        http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/upright-cable-row

Upper Body – At home

Push-ups           http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/pushups

Arm circles      http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/arm-circles

Dips                     http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/bench-dips

Chin ups            http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/chin-up

Lower Body – In gym

Leg Press                   http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/leg-press

Hamstring curl        http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/lying-leg-curls

Lunges                        http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/dumbbell-lunges

Dumbell Squat        http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/dumbbell-squat    

Lower Body – At Home

Sit squats                  (No link, but it is simply sitting down to complete rest, then initialising stand up from glutes (no help from hands!))

Lunges                       (as above but without weights)

Squats                        (as above but grab anything heavy around the house)

Steps                           (up and down stairs till you cant feel your legs)

Abs (in gym and home)

Crunches                http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/crunches

Scissor Kicks        http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/scissor-kick

Oblique Crunch   http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/oblique-crunches

Back extension    http://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/detail/view/name/superman

Cyclical Ketogenic Diet

This diet is for anyone whos primary goal is to drop bodyfat. The CKD is an adaption of the Ketogenic Diet to minimize muscle atrophy (breakdown of muscle), which will happen if you arent eating the right calories at the right time, in order to support muscle hypertrophy (muscle gain, rep range 8-15). Muscular actions (anaerobic) are run off carbohydrates, never fats. So to perform resistance training you must have carbs in your muscles. If you were to follow the standard Ketogenic Diet (Atkins etc), you’re muscles would break down and you would lose your faced paced metabolism (very bad news).

With the CKD, you eat no carbs during the week, and only train each muscle once so to only deplete the glycogen (carbs) in your muscles once. If you trained your legs, and had no carbs before your next session, it would not go very well at all. You would lose your ability to perform heavy lifts, and your body would no longer see your muslces as necessary, so they break down to better utilize the protein fibers their made up off.  The idea then is to only train the muscles once, then load up on carbohydrates for 1 day of the week. This way if you only use each muscle intensely once a week, you are getting a carb refill between each session (think of it as refuelling each individual muscle on this day before you train it again, as opposed to the anabolic window I talk about in the diet guide, where you refuel the muscle just worked directly after its trained).

This way you can drop bodyfat during the week by being in Ketosis (read previous post), but you can restock on carbs to keep your training sessions powered, keeping your metabolism dstrong (everyone wins!). On request I will make up an new dietary intake recommending your nutrient quantities during on/off days.

Counting Calories

Here is a link to an online calorie counter to help you in measuring nutrient values against quantity. The main reason why I havent put this up before, or dont refer people to one is becasue most foods you buy will have nutritional information on them. This used with a kitchen scales will give you an exact measurement. All online calorie databases are very general, giving intakes on standard american food. But thats not how we are going to eat anymore is it?  So, please only use with items like fruit and veg, or with meals you dont cook for yourself. For instance if you make yourself lasagne, I want you add the values of the ingredients used for an exact figure, and not just type lasagne into the search engine. Its an easy alternative. You wont have a grasp on healthy diet (which will stay with you the rest of your life), until you become a calorie counter.

http://caloriecount.about.com/

The Ketogenic Diet – Low to No Carbs

The ketogenic diet is the scientific term behind things like the atkins diet and the bacon diets and so on. They are essentially fad diets that dont bode well high high intensity training like you will be doing with us, as the diet doesnt fully support adequate recovery. This diet is only for short term (1 week to 6 weeks), and dont expect to be too happy in our sessions, you will be exhausted! The Yourfitness diet guide I gave you is a high protein variation of this to more support muscle growth and powering our workouts, which will inturn support a raised metabolism (preventing you from relapse, so you keep the weight off). The Ketogenic Diet is a fast approach to weight loss (when done healthily), so can be good for those looking for a weight loss boost (at the expense of lean muscle gain.. or muscle tone!).

I will simplify the diet. Due to modern mans adundance of readily accessable food, we are constantly ingesting carbohydrates, the bodys easiest to metabolise form of energy. Due to our intake being so conitinuous our bodies are trained to run off glucose (the energy carbs are broken down to). A hormone called Insulin is created in the Pancreas in the presence of carbohydrates to transport glucose to our cells to be used as energy (as glycogen, the muscle energy I say to replenish with high GI carbs after training!). If we exhaust our carbs, insulin levels will drop, and the body will turn to another hormone called glucogen to create glycogen. But, when glycogen ultimately runs out due to lack of carbs, the pancreas starts to break down free fatty acids (fat you take in, and on your body!) for energy. Put simply, you switch from carbs you take in, to the fat on your body for your main energy supply!!! All you do is replenish carb stores on an irregular basis to give to body a chance to rest, and to keep the body from adapting too heavily (to keep the system shocked).

The diet is extrememly scientific so I will provide links to well written articles, also so I wont be writing for days :)

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/keto.htm

The second document refers to a muscle bulking phase (not recommended without my help or approval)

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/keto2.htm

Another sample diet menu can be found here:

http://ironpower.biz/muscleup_diet.htm

Being very complex, come back to me if you are interested in this diet or if you have any questions there-on.

Healthy Snacks

Here are a few lunch/snack ideas for a healthy low-carb diet.    The nutrient is labeled as mainly providing:  (P) for Protein,    (C) for carbs,   (HF) for Healthy Fats  ,  (F) for Fiber

—  Chicken strips (P), hummous (HF), avocadoe (HF+F), Cherry Tomatoe (F) salad

—  Ryvita (C+F) , Smoked Salmon (P+HF) ,Cottage Cheese (P+C), Spinach leaves (P+F)

—  Cottage Cheese (P+C) , sliced apple (C+F) , sliced strawberries (C+F)

—  Non-fat yoghurt (P+C) with Blueberries C+F+antiox) , side of seasoned chicken breast (P)

—  Cottage Cheese (P+C) with Grapes (C+F) and Spinach leaves  (P+F), sunflower/pumpkin seeds (HF)

— Porridge (C) and Flavoured Whey Protein (P),  flaxseed oil (HF)

— Ryvita (C), Chicken (P) and crunchy peanut butter (P+HF)

— Celery, radishes or Carrot sticks in hummous (HF+F)

— 4 eggs (1 yolk)(P+HF) with Tomatoe, onion and brocolli sprouts (F)

— Garden salad (F) , chicken pieces (P) dipped in a low-fat sauce (C)

— Oat biscuits (C) with Cottage cheese (C+P) and spinach leaves (P+F)

— Rye Bread (C) with Tuna (P), light mayonnaise (HF) and lettuce

— Birds eye microwavable Steamed veg (F) with Benecol spread (HF)

I’ll put more up as they come to me.

Interval Training

If you have found that you wouldnt find a 30 minute jog/walk as challenging its time to step it up. Interval training involves cycling exercise pace/intensity to create a high/low wave effect on your heart beat. To fully understand how it works you must understand the RPE scale (Rate of Percieved Exertion). The RPE scale is an imaginary scale where you describe exercise hardness from 1 -10. Imagine 1 as being very easy (light walk), and 10 being the sprint for your life. You would not able to maintain a level of around 8 or above for a long period of time. 

This describes example 2 in the graph. Start off at least 5 minutes normal pace to warm up, about 5/6 RPE ( This is aerobic exercise, as your muscles have time to take in oxygen and exchange for carbon dioxide). Then for cycles of 1 minute out of every 4 minutes increase the pace rapidly to around 9 (you should only be able to maintain this pace around 1 minute!). In this phaze your body can no longer supply adequate oxygen to your muscles to complete full contractions (your breathing is at full lung capacity, you cant take more air in!), so you go “anaerobic”, and you start to feel the burn as lactic acid is a by-product of this energy process.

After 1 min (you should be very tired) of 9 RPE, drop back to your normal pace. This is called your “active recovery” phaze, as your body can supply oxygen to your muscles, flushing out the lactic acid. Repeating this process will create an aerobicwave effect, that is good for training the heart to work at high and low contraction, which is great for burning calories and improving cardio-vascular health and lung capacity.

Exercise Outside Studio Sessions

I have drawn up an easy to understand graph to show recommended exercise on days outside your Personal Training sessions. There are 3 variations to suit whether you train once, twice or 3 times a week. Four exercise sessions per week is recommended to maximise results, while allowing enough time to properly recover. Those well into a training cycle, experienced, or not on a low carb diet may be able to train a fifth time (if they can!). All the sessions in the week are seperated as much as possible to allow for recovery. I would not recommend more than 4 days of resistance training (weight training), so the optional fifth day is for cardio only (your resistance training days outside the studio should already be discussed with us). A typical cardio program would consist of up to a half hour of jogging, light running or speed walking dpending on fitness levels. Please come to me for recommendations for what you may be able to do.

Counting Calories in Anabolic Window (for those looking to lose weight!!)

(Note this doesnt effect people looking to gain, as they have the carb allowance). It has come up about portion size during the anbabolic window. It is hard to say what the body needs after various sessions. There are many variables icluding, size of muscles worked (legs bigger than biceps), size of individual, and how hard trained. I say you need carbs always in the morning, and either at lunch or before/after training. In my calorie guidelines there is allowance for an “off-day”. In a perfect world you would use this higher allowance of carbs on your training day, as you need more carbs to make up 3 servings (morning,before + After training), as opposed to just morning + lunch. I know I told some of you to only take in 30-40 gms of carbs a day, but I also say you need that amount after training alone. It is a contradiction.  As you will be more likely to eat out at weekends, you should use “off-days” on days like these where you know you have less control over your diet (birthday dinner etc). So to remedy this, those looking to create a drastic calorie deficit  can take in 20-30gms (based on session intensity) of  high GI carbs, which they do not have to include in their intake amount. These carbs are not stored (check the guide for why). But only after resistance training!! Jogging etc doesnt require extra carbs, as you dont go anabolic!!! (no window!)

0% Fat Yoghurt

This is a pic for those of you looking for the 0% Fat Yoghurt we.re always on about. Not sure where its available but we find it in Tesco

Sample Shopping List for Strict Dieting

Meats/Poultry/Fish

– Primarily cooked or uncooked Chicken/turkey. If packaged %100 breast           -Protein
– Fillet of Salmon/Mackerel or other Oily fish                                          -Protein + Healthy Fats
– Lean cuts of Beef or Pork Steak. No mince (unless steak mince)                    -Protein

Fruit + Veg   (all primarily for Fibre)

– Spinach
– Any green vegetables, lettuce, brocolli* (mangetouts a good snack)
– Onions, tomatoes, red/yellow peppers
– Apples, Mandarins, Bananas (after training)

Dairy etc.    (Contains Protein, but limit due to carb levels, dairy can also cause bloating!)

– Low Fat Milk (organic if possible) – No Soy!!! Very bad for you.
– Low Fat Cottage Cheese
– 0% Fat, diet Greek Yoghurt (good for digestion)
– Laughing Cow Low Fat Cheese Spread

Other

– Lots of Eggs                                                                                                               – Protein (some yolks for Omega-3/6)
– Mixed Nuts (Almonds, Brazil nuts, Pistachios are beneficial            – Protein + Healthy Fats/ Fibre
– Mixed Berries (or whole Blueberries/Raspberries)                             – Antioxidants/ Fibre
– Linwoods Milled Organic Flaxseed and Goji Berries (health food section)       – Healthy Fats/ Fibre
– Nairns Oat Biscuits,look for “Low GI” on box (or other oat biscuits. not oat cakes!)  – Low GI Carbs
– Flahavans Organic Porridge Oats                                      – Low GI Carbs
– Ryvita Seeded                                               – Low GI Carbs / Fibre