Fitness Tips
born2move Personal Trainer discusses the top fitness tips necessary to help achieve your goals, by Matt Kay
When you make the conscious decision to get fit it is easy to let your motivation get the better of you before even planning where you want to go or how you are going to get there. In this short article I will help provide some practical fitness tips you can use to help give you the best possible chance of success.
Fitness Tip #1: Start with the end in mind
Before you pull the door open and set off on a run stop, get a piece of paper, a pen and write down what you really want to achieve. This is a useful step to take if you are new to fitness or not, either way it is so important that you connect with your goal first to help you realise where you need to go. Once you have this on paper you have to ask yourself the question: How much do I want to achieve this goal? This is a question we ask our clients all the time. The reason for this question being important is that you will never achieve your goal if you are not prepared to make the lifestyle changes necessary for success. For example, it is typical for a client to come and see me and say I want to lose weight. After conducting our Born Coding assessments it is clear that their current lifestyle is significantly affecting their fat gain and their hormonal system, which is leading to mass fat storage. Therefore, I would prescribe a course of action that would involve a particular exercise routine conducted 3-5 times per week, I would develop a specific eating plan, herbal supplements to support the nutrition and for this client to consistently stick the plan for 6 weeks. Now I know that the programme I have just created with my client will help them achieve incredible results in a relatively short but healthy period of time if they are prepared to make significant lifestyle changes necessary to implement it. Unfortunately, most people are just not prepared to make these lifestyle changes or they do but do not consistently stick to them. If your emotional desire to achieve your goal is strong enough in your own mind your actions on a daily basis will be driven with your end goal in mind, whether this be weigth loss, muscle gain, improved fitness, improved health and vitality etc. So my fitness tip number 1 is 'Start with the end in mind' to achieve long term success!
Fitness Tip #2: Plan your fitness routine around your goal
I regularly see guys coming to see me asking to look more muscular or ladies asking to lose weight yet the training that they are doing is not the correct training to achieve their goal. In both circumstances the goal of the client is to reduce body fat. If your goal is to generally look better (improved body composition) then you will always want to keep your body fat low and then condition your muscles for the desired aesthetic look specific to your goal. For example, most guys want to see a six pack. One of the things you must understand is that everyone is born with the a six pack and the only thing stopping your revealing that six pack is body fat and the same goes for other body parts. For those people saying they want to lose weight, what they are really saying is that I want to look slimmer, which in other words means lower body fat. The other goals people come in asking for is based around sports performance e.g. Marathons, rugby, football, cricket etc. For the purpose of this article I will focus on reducing body fat and discuss sports performance in another article.
Reducing body fat requires a very different approach for different people based on a number of codes that can be specifically identified by undertaking a Born Coding Assessment. However, if you are not able to visit born2move to receive a Born Coding Assessment there is a few misconceptions you should know about reducing body fat.
2 Big Fitness Tips to help reduce body fat:
1. Cardio should be combined with weight training
The traditional way to look at reducing body fat is by adopting a calorie in, calorie out approach. Unfortunately, this is not the best way to approach fat loss. What you are more interested in is increasing your resting metabolic rate so that you are burning more fat at rest, not just during your workout. The best way to increase the rate at which you burn fat at rest is to increase your lean muscle mass. Ladies in particular should not avoid weight training as IT WILL NOT MAKE YOU BIG. In fact the opposite will occur if you adopt the correct principles as ladies not have the correct hormones necessary for muscle growth. As a general rule of thumb you want to be working out with cardio and weights in a series of short circuits. By doing this you will tap into each of your 3 energy systems. An example of a circuit focusing on the arms would be:
Step with bicep curl - 8-10 reps - 0 rest (this should be a weight that is so heavy that you can't lift any more than 10 reps)
Narrow grip chin ups - 12-15 reps - 0 rest (this should be a weight that is so heavy that you can't lift any more than 15 reps)
Tricep dips - 24 reps - 60 secs rest
2. Workout with intervals for the best results
Time and time again I see people spending up to an hour mixing between cardio equipment with little or no results. Most of these people conduct their cardio workouts at a steady state and never push themselves to work any harder. If you train at a steady state, also known as the fat burning zone, your body will be burning fat at a higher rate for just 30-45mins after training. For the best results you have to keep your body guessing with intervals. When you conduct interval training your body will burn fat at a higher rate for 3-4hours after training. An example of a running interval programme would be:
2min steady state
30secs hard run
1min easy run
1min hard run
1min easy run
2min hard run
1min easy run
1min hard run
1min easy run
30secs hard run
If you combine both weight and interval training at the highest intensity you can manage your body will be burning fat at a higher rate for 48-72hours following your workout! This is the perfect state to burn as much fat as possible through exercise so give it a go and see your results improve.
If you are series about losing weight or fed up with failing to do so time and time again contact born2move and start letting go of bofy fat today!
08454 503073
info@born2move.co.uk
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