Monthly Archives: March 2011

A Beginners Workout to Help You Sculpt an Incredible Body with Bodyweight Training

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Welcome Back!

Here is a simple and intense 2 -part workout, each of which you can perform 3 times a week in the comfort of your own home, at the park or beach using just your bodyweight.

It combines strength with intense cardio and uses the interval / HIIT protocol. This means that it has a high metabolic cost, will burn fat during the workout and more importantly for hours afterwards.

Background Information:

  • A circuit is when you move from one exercise to the next without resting in between.
  • Then rest for no more than 2 minutes before doing the next circuit.
  • All rest should be ‘active’ rest where you do not stand still but just keep moving by walking around. Not only will you get your breath back more quickly, but you will add the overall metabolic cost.
  • Reps are a guide only – if you can do more reps then do so, if less then that’s okay – match your efforts to your capability.
  • If push ups are too difficult substitute them with push ups from your knees.
  • Chin / Pull ups:  if you can’t do the reps then use one leg on a secure (ie won’t slip or tip) chair to assist in pushing you to the top of the movement.
    • Once there ‘lock’ your arms & back and fight your weight all the way down. This called an eccentric contraction and will give you sore muscles but will also help you develop strength more quickly.
    • Concentrate on bringing your elbows to your ribs rather than your chin over the bar. This activates your back .

      Like a squat for your upper body...

  • Rope Jumping (skipping) count every second step. If 100 is too many aim for 50 & then work up from there.
  • Add 1 more round each week until you are doing 8 rounds, and then try another workout.
  • Try to add at least 1 rep each workout to your push ups, lunges & squats. Aim for 10 reps with the Chin / pull ups. (When you get here you will be stronger than just about everyone else you’ll come across in your life!)

Work out #1:

Three (3) rounds of:

  • Rope Jumping, 100 Count
  • Push Ups, 10 reps
  • Forward Lunges, 10 reps each leg
  • Rope Jumping 100 Count
  • Chin / Pull ups, 5-10 reps
  • Squats, 20 reps
  • Rope Jumping, 100 count

Complete 1 circuit and rest for 2 minutes and then go again until you finish all 3 rounds. Do this 3 days a week.

Work Out #2

Do this work out the days in between the body weight workout above – 3 days a week.

Go to the park (or if you are feeling particularly adventurous) the beach and do some sprints.

Why sprint? Well ever seen a fat sprinter?

Not everyone wants to look like this - but the point is, sprinters are not fat!

Sprinting fits into the HIIT protocol, is challenging, has a high metabolic cost and will help you burn fat. It also gives your workouts balance. It should take no more than 20 minutes.

  • Gently jog around the park / along the beach to make sure that your hips, knees & ankles are loose and your leg muscles are warmed up.
  • Step out 50 metres
  • Run the 50 metres as fast as you can
  • Don’t stop moving at the 50 metre mark but drop to walking / jogging speed and take a 2 minute period whilst still moving.
    • This ‘active rest’ is important as it helps move lactic acid out of the working muscles and stops them from tightening up.
    • Keeping moving also adds to the overall metabolic cost and post workout ‘Afterburn’.
  • Repeat until you have done 3 rounds.
  • Work up to 10 rounds by adding 1 round every second work out.

Do some hamstring & quad stretching afterwards when the muscles are loose & pliable and stretching will do the most good.

Upping the Ante:

Body Weight Work out:

Once you are able to hit or exceed the rep targets in the body weight work out you can add intensity a number of ways.

  • You can do more reps
  • You can do more rounds
  • You can add exercises into each round (add a set of burpees /  squat thrusts after the push ups and after the Chin ups for example)
  • You can vary your exercises (try spiderman push ups instead of regular ones, or jumping lunges instead of split ones for example.)
  • You can add weight via a vest.

    Great way to up the ante for working out at home!

NB weighted vests are NOT recommended for chin ups – This is for 2 reasons – firstly using your own bodyweight on this exercise is challenging enough by itself and it will take some time for you to work up to doing 10 reps a time. Secondly, and depending upon the type of home chinning bar you are using, you will find that most home chinning bars are not strong enough to handle added weight  – I weigh 100KG and if I added even the lightest vest I own I will be close to its top rating of 110 kg.

However if you are using a chinning bar that is part of another, stronger set up feel free to add weight once you can do 10 reps. Adding weight before then will be counterproductive.

Sprint Intervals:

  • Take note of your time and try to get faster over the same distance.
  • Increase the number of rounds.
  • Increase the distance from 50 to 75 metres and then from 75 to 100.
  • Try doing your sprints uphill
  • If at the beach try doing using the dunes (super tough!!)
  • Set a timed protocol where you sprint for 20 seconds, jog / walk for 40 and then repeat for a period of 5 minutes initially working up from there.

  • Go long or go hard...

    Use Tabata intervals – 8 rounds of sprinting for 10 seconds followed by 20 seconds of active rest.

  • You can add weight via vest – again be careful – the vest must not only fit snug enough so that the weights don’t beat you half to death by moving around whilst you are running but also allow your chest to move freely so you can breathe. NOT recommended except for those looking to become superhuman.

Well there you have it a simple, do-it-in-the-comfort-of-your-own-home work out that fits into my philosophy of reconditioning & improving the efficiency of your metabolism through interval / HIIT training.

You will burn fat and become leaner just with the body weight training – adding in the sprinting will increase your fat burn and metabolic efficiency but is not an absolute necessity.

However your results will be greater if you do both.

Let me know what you think and don’t forget to ‘Like’ use on Face Book below…

Strength Training & Metabolic Boosting

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Welcome back!!

A few posts ago I wrote about Interval training, particularly HIIT – high intensity interval training and why it is the best exercise protocol to use to lose fat – and it is.

Great for HIIT or 'normal' strength training...

Especially when you combine it with some form of resistance (ie strength) training. Thing is combining HIIT with strength training is VERY intense and can lead to burn out very quickly if you are properly familiar with how to use them correctly.

So what do you do if you can’y do HIIT everyday?

As you know if you have been a regular reader – you can’t out run or out lift a bad diet. But you can recondition your metabolism through a variety of means.

My choice is to keep eating the right way (low processed carbs, high protein, high fruit & vegetable intake) and to use strength training when I want either a break from HIIT or just as an alternative.

Resistance / Strength training, involves using weights, bands, kettlebells, body weight, weighted vests or other forms of resistance to force your body to move differently and work harder than it does in everyday life.

By working differently from our everyday activity and challenging our bodies at the same time we can increase our metabolic rate.

Going for a run, performing a HIIT session or doing a strength training workout and the way they affect your metabolic rate is quite different.Previously we have seen that HIIT (Interval) training has the greatest efffect on overal metabolism.

Remember it is how long for and by how much any activity boosts your metabolism that really has an impact on your ability to lose body fat when your diet is under control.

Let’s talk about the components of our metabolism:

First we have our resting metabolic rate, or RMR. This is the energy needed (counted in calories or kilojoules) to keep our bodies alive – our heart beating, our lungs breathing, etc.This is the ‘lying on the couch & not doing anything’ measurement.

Our RMR makes up about 60 to 80 percent of our total metabolic rate, so the more we can boost this the more fat we will be burning. To raise our RMR we need to recondition and boost our overall metabolism. Increasing physical activity, especially by using HIIT & strength training can directly change RMR.

Next there is the Thermic Effect of Activity, or TEA. Basically this is a measurement of how many calories are burnt by our bodies through movement. This includes walking, mowing the lawn, bringing in the groceries and so on. So your TEA is higher on the days you play touch football than the ones where you watch DVDs all day because it covers all of the activities that we engage in every day to live our lives. .

The more active you are, the more your total metabolic rate increases.

The easy way to view Metabolism

Third, we have the Thermic Effect of Food, or TEF. This is the amount of energy that your body expends to consume and digest food and then put the nuturients in the food to use to create more energy, repair the body etc. As you know you can increase your metabolism simply my eating more protein, more fibrous fruit & vegetables and less processed carbs & fat. Why? Because protein & fibrous fruit & vegetables can use up to 22% more energy to process than processed crap. As for fat – our bodies are the utimate fat storage devices so fat processing (&storage) requires virtually no energy at all.

So we can view our metabolism as the total number of calories (or kilojoules) our bodies use each day for each metabolic component.

This total energy expenditure  can be derived by using this simple formula: (TEE) = RMR + TEA + TEF.

Because we are all different the enrgy used by each metabolic component is different for each person, resulting in unique metabolic rates.

But why Strength Training?

Strength training increases our TEE by elevating the amount of calories expended in activity (TEA). The harder you strength train, the greater the amount of calories you burn through exercise. This in turn leads to the creation of more lean tissue (which is more metabolically active) which burns more calories at rest.

So strength training not only raises your TEA but also your RMR. Next to HIIT it is the best way to do this.

In turn, if you keep eating clean and also watch that your calorie / kilojoule intake does not exceed your TEE then you will lose body fat.

If you conduct your training session with intensity then they all – strength training , HIIT or running – will increase your energy expenditure both at the time of activity, and for a few hours afterwards. This elevation of your RMR that follows on in the hours after exercise is often called the ‘Afterburn’ and for fat loss it is essential. It can also only be gained by either using a HIIT protocol or through strength training.

By using multiple sets of a challenging weight, scientists have shown that the energy expended afterwards, known as EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) can be elevated for 24-36 hours.

Isn't this what we want to achieve?

Strength training can boost your metabolism, but it has to be more challenging than activities you do every day. two or three pound dumbells won’t make much of a difference if the groceries you carry or the child you hug weigh more than this. The key to an elevated metabolism is to challenge your existing strength boundaries.

Otherwise your body won’t  get the challenge it needs to build muscle, lose fat and look better in your clothes – or out of them….and that’s what we’re all looking for, isn’t it?

The Truth about Saturated fats – part 2

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Welcome back!

Well last week’s post got a few folk up in arms with their main question being:
“Do we actually have evidence that saturated fat may actually be good for us?”

The short answer is a resounding YES!!

Let’s take a look at a few examples….

The Masai, Samburu, and Fulani tribes in Africa all have diets that see them eating loads of red meat,

Fit, lean & red meat loving!!!

drinking lots of raw 9unpasteurised) milk and (ick!!) Cow’s blood. Their average saturated fat intake is about 5x that of overweight folk on the ‘healthy’ western, processed carb diet.

Now despite what our dieticians & Doctors would call a very high saturated fat intake, the people in these tribes have low body fat levels, and suffer virtually no heart disease or diabetes. (yes they tend to exercise more than us but remember you can’t out-run a bad diet!)

The same holds true for many of the Pacific Island nations whose traditional diet is very high in saturated fats such as palm, coconut, and cocoa oils. They too were lean and had virytually no heart disease or diabetes.

One last example – the Inuit – the Eskimos – are one of the best researched of all peoples in terms of the efffect of a western, processed carb and low saturated fat diet.

Like our African & Islander friends – Inuit who ate the tradional high saturated fat diet were typically free of heart disease and diabetes.

You’ll notice that I use the past tense – you see whenever any of these peoples moved to a western diet they started to experience & shaow the same diseases that we have in such abundance. Whenever tribesman  moved out of their native lands and started eating more western ‘modern’ day diet, their blood chemistry skyrocketed with heart disease risk factors. Likewise when researchers followed up with Inuit and Islanders that had moved away from their native land and adopted a typical western diet, the heart disease risk factors were through the roof.

These are good solidly researched examples of people who started to show our illness profile when they began to eat LESS saturated fat and more processed western foods and INCREASED their heart disease factors.

The usual arguments get thrown up whenever these saturated fat loving, red meat eating, healthy folk are mentioned – ‘Oh they have superior genetics.” This is absolute pap!

In the past, the Inuit were strangers to diabetes & heart disease...

Whilst it is true that saturated fat CAN increase your levels of LDL ( the bad cholesterol) , it actually increases your HDL (the good cholesterol) even further, resulting in an improved ratio and lipd profile.

It is the cholesterol ratio which has been proven to be more important that just your total cholesterol level. (actually cholesterol is not the real issue… inflammation is, but that’s a  different topic for another blog).

So what is saturated fat made up of?

Saturated fat is largely made up of different types of acids – the 3 most common types are stearic acid, palmitic acid, and lauric acid.

Animal fat & cocoa have high levels of stearic acid and research continues to show that stearic acid has no negative impacts on heart disease risks. In fact it has become to be largely viewed as either neutral or beneficial. Stearic acid is broken down your liver into a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, which you may recognise as the same type of fat that constitutes most of heart-healthy olive oil.

Bet you didn’t know that!

Tropical oils (like coconut or palm olis) are the best sources of lauric acid.Lauric acid is a beneficial saturated fat as well. It has not only been shown to increase your HDL good cholesterol levels significantly, and it has also even been shown to have some powerful immune-boosting effects potentially. Theis fat is lacking in ost western style diets.

Palmitic acid – the other main component of saturated fat – has been demonstrated to affect the increase of HDL & LDL levels to the same extent (actually slightly more for the HDL) which makes it either neutral or beneficial, but certainly not bad for you.
So, despite the best efforts of lots of researchers over the years since Keys gained his notoriety to prove that saturated fat is linked to and a cause of heart disease they have failed. Research has time & again shown just the opposite.

NOT the result of a high processed carb, low saturated fat diet...

Diets low in saturated fat & high in processed carbs with low saturated fat intake are the ones where heart disease & diabetes are the most prevalent.

So what are the real causes of heart disease risk?

Here they are:

  • Trans fats also known as hydrogenated oils
  • Inflamation causing heavily refined vegetable oils such as soy, cottonseed, corn oil, etc which typically throw the omega-6/omega-3 balance out of whack..
  • Too much refined sugar of any type in the diet –  especially HFCS (high fructose corn syrup)
  • Too many processed, denatured refined carbohydrates such as white bread, flour, white pasta, low fiber cereals, etc
  • Smoking
  • Stressful lifestyle
  • Lack of exercise
  • Lack of sleep and Other lifestyle factors

The real FACT is that saturated fat is a neutral substance in your body, and even is beneficial at times. It is not, nor has it ever been proven to be a deadly risk factor for disease.

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