Do you wan to lose fat from a specific area?

Of course you do and now for the first time its possible. I like every other personal trainer used to say that you can’t spot reduce. If I got a pound for every time a lady came up to me and said they wanted to lose their bingo wings, I’d be so rich I would be writing this article from my hammock in Barbados instead of my humble abode in sunny Sutton Coldfield . Each time I would patiently explain that performing 60 sets of triceps extensions regrettably would not budge the blubber. I didn’t say blubber to them, as I’m far too polite. I would then explain that they needed an all round approach to losing fat including sound nutrition, training plus supplements and that the fat would come from where ever their genetics dictated. In steps Charles Poliquin with his 20 plus years of experience and proved myself and every body else wrong by giving us the wonder that is BioSignature.

Oh I’m still right about the training; perform basic compound exercises like squats, dead lifts, chins ups and press ups for 8-15 rep max for a slow tempo. Combine with intervals like kettle bell snatches followed by round the body passes and forget all that nasty cardio! Oh and I’m pretty much on the money with nutrition as well.

BioSignature developed by Charles Poliquin is a unique system that uses skin fold fat measurements to analyse how certain hormones are functioning within the body. So if you have ever wondered why it is that you can lose fat but there always seems to be a stubborn area that just won’t go. Well now you know, the fat gets laid down in each person due to their hormonal profile. Imbalances in hormones cause you to store ft in particular places. For example the amount of fat on a person’s stomach is related to their ability to deal with stress. The amount of fat on the thighs is related to oestrogen. So the only by eating, training an supplementing in a way that can correct this imbalance can you reduce fat from the area.

So what is the really good news? Oooooo I’m on the course next week so as of March 10^th I’ll be using the BioSignature methods will all my client (and myself of course). I have been trying to do the BioSignature course now for a couple of years but each time it has been here I’ve missed out or not been able to get a space. So from digging around and researching I’ve tried my own personal version of Biosignature which is how I got into the shape I was in on my banner. I’ve also been using my personal version on clients and having great success, but I’m pretty sure the man himself has got protocols that are far more effective than mine!

As you can tell I’m pretty excited about it, as its not often you get to pick the brains of one of the worlds greatest training minds. Rest assured I’ll be sharing any snippets I pick up with my personal training clients. For more information on BioSignature take a look at my soon to be completed page on the main site.

Personal Trainer – Mobility Drills

I’m like a bus, they don’t come for ages and suddenly two come at the same time! I said yesterday that I would talk about mobility training a little more so that’s what I’ll discuss in this blog. In my personal training plan I do about 10 minutes of mobility exercises when I wake up each morning and then another 10 to warm up for my actual sessions. So what is the idea behind mobility training then?

Well there are two aspects of joint health, the first of which most people are well aware of. This is the flexibility of the muscles surrounding the joints. If the muscles surrounding a joint are tight then the joint will have less range of motion. The classic example here is when a person can’t touch their toes they have tight hamstrings and lower back muscles.  This is also observable in people with poor posture. Rounded shoulders are due to chronically tight chest and shoulder muscles. It is common knowledge that if you stretch the muscles you increase the range of motion at the joint. What people don’t know is that conventional stretching is very ineffective at getting the job done. I’ll discuss stretching more at a later date. If you need to know now then get in touch and make an appointment!

The second aspect of joint health is the actual joint itself. People only tend to become aware of their joints when they have a direct problem such as a damaged cartilage or arthritis. Joints are relatively complex structures, but they can be likened to hinges on a gate. When the joint is well oiled it opens and closes easily but without oil it creaks and becomes stiff. Just like the gate your joints go through years of use and abuse. The more use they get the more looking after they need. Instead of oil the joints have synovial fluid which gets released when the joints are used. So the simple way to increase the amount of synovial fluid is to use the joints more.  Normally as we get older we get calcium deposits in the joints which make them less mobile.

It is for this reason that I personally perform mobility drills every day when I wake up. Another reason is just to loosen my body off for the day. It doesn’t mater how flexible you are people get stiff when their body is kept in the same position for a prolonged period of time. By doing mobility drills you reawaken your proprioceptors and get things functioning again. So another excellent time to do a quick set of mobility exercises would be after a long flight or drive. What ever time you choose to do them, performing daily joint mobility exercises can slow down the degeneration of joints and sometimes reverse it.

The drills can be very simple or a little bit more imaginative. In my personal plan I like to keep things simple. I like to start from the extremities and work my way to the centre of the body. Whatever the movement is I simply work that joint through its full range of motion. I tend do just do ten repetitions in each direction unless something feels particularly tight in which case I’ll add in more. My personal routine includes; multi-directional head twists, shoulder circles, elbow circles, wrist circles, ankle circles, knee circles, hip circles, cork screws, Hindu squats, and press ups. There are lots of others that I thrown in as and when I choose, but the one thing that is guarantied is that I feel much better and more ready to face the day afterwards.

So who are mobility joint drills good for? Well just about anyone unless you have a pre-existing condition in which case it is better to check with your doctor first to be on the safe side! Ok, enough from me today. Next time out I’ll just talk about my training for that day.

 Whats My Personal Training Plan?

Wow so for much for my plan to keep regularly updating you guys about my progress. I’ve been run off my feet and not had time to sit down and get typing properly.  The last month has been spent developing my online Metabolic Typing program and now for the first time I’m offering Metabolic Typing to non training clients. Also the modelling seems to have picked up again so I’ve been back and forth to London quite a lot. Who said being a personal trainer is easy? Well me normally, but that’s because I enjoy what I do and gain an enormous amount of satisfaction from seeing people transform themselves and improve their health. Sorry I digress!

 Today I’m going to discuss my training or the focus of my training at the moment. From my last blog you will know that my primary concern is with improving my conditioning for tennis. You will also know from my last blog that I have picked up a few injuries recently, so my priority is to reduce my risk of injury in order to improve my level of conditioning. To achieve this I have been forced to drastically change my training regime. I’m still training 3-5 times a week but the focus on increasing my flexibility. Flexibility training is something that I have often neglected because I don’t tend to enjoy it, but I have made a real effort this time to stick to my plan. I’m also doing about 15 minutes of mobility training after waking up.

 My workouts are pretty short lasting around 60 minutes including warm up, training and cool down. As any good personal trainer will tell you doing intense short workouts is the best way to maximise growth hormone production. The very same personal trainer should also tell you that this is vital for reducing body fat and increasing muscle mass.  So my warm up of joint mobility exercises is lasting 10 minutes, the strength component is lasting 30 minutes which leaves me with 20 minutes of stretching. I’ll cover stretching more in another blog but rest assured I am not using static stretches because they are almost futile if you want to seriously improve flexibility.

 Another aim of my sessions has been to not push myself as hard. I’ve been guilty in the past of training to hard and unfortunately this can be as damaging if not more than under training. The body only has a limited ability to cope with stress and just like sitting in traffic, paying bills or your boss shouting at you; exercise is also a stressor on the body. In moderation stress is a good thing, but too much can cause major problems. At this point I will add that my eating and supplementation plan are also designed to support me by helping my body deal with stress more effectively.

So there you have it. This is how I am focusing my training at the moment. I’m sure it may not be quite what you were expecting. Normally when you think of conditioning you think of running and really increasing the heart rate. For the most part this is true especially for a sport like tennis, but being injury free and healthy is the first piece of the puzzle. By increasing my flexibility and reducing the stress imposed on my body my conditioning will increase long term rather than break down.

 When designing a training program it is very important to look at each piece of the puzzle. If your personal trainer doesn’t ask questions about your health and injuries then you need to start asking a few more questions of them. Next time I will talk about my mobility training in more depth.

Personal Trainer New To Blogging

Ok, being new to this whole blogging game I’ve been having difficulty deciding what to write about. I was torn between whether to provide factual information and advice, preach like a holy one or just make humorous comments and make fun of strange ineffective fitness and diet fads I spot as I go about my daily life (like that drop a dress size crap that was on the other week – there is nothing like sensible eating?). After reading lots of people’s blogs from experts to run of the mill trainers that you know don’t really have a clue, I’ve made up my mind!

Several blogs stood out to me and these were the blogs that followed people’s personal experiences. Blogs from men and women who are working as trainers but also following their own advice and reaping the rewards. I find it inspirational when I hear or read about someone in great shape and achieving success and it interests me to know what people have to go through to achieve it.

So my blog is going to follow my quest for health and fitness. I’m going to detail what I train for and how I eat and train to achieve it. I’ll list some of the problems I encounter along the way and what I do to overcome them. Hopefully there won’t be too many problems though! Please bear in mind that everybody is different so although some of the things I do will apply and be good for you, others may not. This is even more true when I talk about food, the foods that I eat are very specific to me and for other people could cause serious health problems. It is very important to seek the help of a professional when designing a training and diet plan.

If you have seen my website, you know that I’m in pretty good shape…. Hey its’ true…. Despite the fact I have abs my health hasn’t been the best and to be honest I think being healthy is far more important than looking good on the beach. Just like many others the economic down turn (how “PC”) hit me hard and my work as a professional model dried up for a while. During this time with the added stress I picked up a few niggles and I was quite run down. I still worked really hard on the diet side so I have maintained my physique, but my fitness has really gone down hill.  My aim over the next few months is to stay healthy and really work hard on my level of conditioning. I play tennis competitively and I’m hoping for a much better season than last year.

Before I finish I want to say that one of the most frustrating things as a trainer is when you give everything you have to a client and they just won’t help themselves. Luckily most of the time this doesn’t happen and its very rewarding helping people to improve their lives. Don’t be one of those people, if you don’t look after your health and fitness then no one else will. My hope is that by writing this blog I will inspire other people to take charge of their own health. If it helps to line my pockets with gold by sharing snippets of my knowledge then that’s all good as well.

Right my grilled chicken, cashew nuts and celery have gone down so I’m off to work up a sweat with the bells and fold myself like a Russian! If you want to know what I’m on about keep checking out my blog!

Why Does It Always Seem So Hard?

It’s the start of another year everyone is full of turkey and probably a lot of chocolates too! It’s the time of year when people are reassessing themselves and their health and fitness. Worryingly for so many people that is as far as it gets, they know they want to be fitter, they know they want to lose weight and start exercising but for some reason it just wont happen. Those same people have been thinking the same for the last who knows how many years, but every year their best intentions never turn into solid actions.

We all know the benefits of exercise:

• Look and feel better
• Lose weight
• Reduce stress, feel more positive and improve your outlook
• Improve posture
• Increase balance, flexibility, stamina and strength
• Prevent diabetes
• Reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and many more……………

So why is it that it is so hard to lose weight and get in shape?

You are a product of what you really want deep down. If you really want to change your body and your live you have the power to do it. Just think for a moment what you really want? Is it fitness and good health or are you genuinely happy being over weight having all the risks that comes with it?  When you have decided what you really want, you must accept that the things you do in your life need to be in line with your desires. You can’t expect that actions out of line with your desires will bring about what you want to happen. If you know you want to lose weight but keep reaching for chocolate, then it isn’t going to happen. Make the decision –“ok, no more chocolate” then praise your self when you stay away from it for the next two weeks. When you have seen that you can do it, it will get easier an easier. You just need to make small changes and adjust your behaviour to fit in with the life you see for your self.

That is one of the main secrets; decide what you want and make positive steps to achieving it. Start by making a list of the fitness goals; thing you want to achieve relating to your health. It could be to lose a stone, to drop 2 dress sizes, to see more definition in your arms or even just to have more energy. What ever they are write them down. Mental goals stored in the head are easily forgotten so write them down and keep them safe. Even the palest ink is stronger term than the strongest memories!

Next make a list of things that you need to do in order to achieve these goals if you don’t know what you need to do hire a personal trainer that specialises in what you want to achieve. If your goal is to lose weight then make sure you look for someone who specialises in nutrition. If your goal is strength then chose a strength and conditioning specialist. Having someone there to take all of the guess work away can make all the difference in the world. In the end what matters is that you find out exactly what you need to do.

When you have your list of the things you need to do……. DO THEM!

If you want to lose weight and get in shape then now really is the time to do something about it. If you keep putting it off it will never get done. You weren’t born out of overweight you got that way through the choices you made in life. So by making small but definite changes you can regain control of your body and health.

Good luck to a new year and a new you!