I’m the first to admit I am no expert in this department, so if you are, let me know where I’m going wrong.  But the guidelines are 60 pages long, so here are some of the bits that caught my eye, and my personal comments in brackets… 

Health risks for obese women and their babies.

Weight management when pregnant.

If your BMI is 30 or above, you and your unborn child have higher risks of: 

• Impaired glucose tolerance and gestational diabetes.
• Miscarriage.
• Pre-eclampsia.
• Thromboedolism.
• Maternal death.
• Gestational hypertension.
• Induced/longer labour.
• Instrumental delivery.
• Caesarian section.
• Spending longer in the hospital during delivery.
• Fetal death.
• Stillbirth.
• Congenital abnormality.
• Shoulder dystocia.
• Macrosomia.
• Obesity in the child later in life.

General guidelines.

These are general guidelines for all women who are/have been/will be pregnant.  Note that they are identical to the guidelines for all populations.  They are: 

• Diets should consist of less junk food and more “real” food.  (take a look at what a “healthy” diet should look like by clicking here, or by following these simple rules here…These healthy diets are the same for everyone, not just women.)
• Don’t go mad on portion size.
• Increase your Background Activity levels.
• Use behaviour changes to bring about changes in your weight (instead of “quick fixes” that have little long term value.  To help change your behaviour, click here.)

Before Pregnancy:

If you are planning on getting pregnant, try to ensure you fulfill the following: 

• Having a BMI of less than 30 will reduce risks to both the mother and baby (risks include those outlined above).
• Having a BMI of between 18.5 – 25 is even better.
• Even a weight loss of 5-10% of your weight will have significant health benefits.

During Pregnancy:

• The mothers weight before pregnancy is a better health indicator than the weight gain during pregnancy (so try to be a healthy weight before you get pregnant).
• Dieting during pregnancy is not recommended, but eating healthily is recommended.  (Remember, eating healthily is not “going on a diet”.)  Lose any excess weight after the delivery.
• There are no evidence based UK guidelines on weight gain during pregnancy.  It varies widely between people.
• Moderate intensity activity, eg swimming, quick walking and strength conditioning, will not harm the mother or baby.
• Aim to maintain fitness, rather than reach peak fitness.
• If you have never done exercise before, start with 15 minutes of continuous exercise 3 times a week.  Gradually move towards 30 minutes of continuous exercise every day.
• If you regularly do exercise anyway, you should be able to continue with no bad effects.
• There is no need to “eat for two” when you are pregnant.  Your energy needs do not change for the first 6 months, and only increase by about 200 calories a day (only equal to a 4 finger Kit Kat!) for the final 3 months.
• It is important NOT to be sedentary.  Start/keep walking and take stair instead of lifts (when possible/practical), and avoid sitting for long periods of time.
• Do not weigh yourself repeatedly.  Only if there is a clinical or nutritional concern (you have more important things to be thinking of).

After Pregnancy:

• If the pregnancy and delivery was ok, then “mild” exercise such as walking, pelvic floor exercises and stretching can begin immediately.
• After a complicated delivery, check with your care-giver during your first check-up, 6-8 weeks after delivery.
• Avoid “high impact” activities too soon after delivery.
• Increase your Background Activity levels again.
• Eating healthily and taking regular exercise will not effect the quantity or quality of their breast milk.

If this has been of any interest to you, a while back I listed more specific recommendations for exercise during pregnancy.  You can take a look at them by clicking here… 

And if you really like what I’m writing, you can even subscribe to this blog by clicking on either the email or RSS thingy at the top right of this page. 

And if you think the sun shines out of my bum…and you live in or around Skipton, you can even hire me to train you.  Click here for details…

What parts of the body are involved?

Because they are an upper body pushing exercise, the main working muscles are: 

• Pectorals (chest muscles)
• Anterior deltoids (front of the shoulders)
• Triceps (back of the arms, or “bingo wings”)

But many other muscles are also involved, mostly in supporting roles, including your abdominals. 

Why are pressups so good?

• They are a big, compound move (they move more than one joint at a time).
• They match basic, everyday, practical moves, where we push something/someone away from us (one of my friends imagines she is pushing blokes away in the pub!)
• They can help teach the body to move in a more coordinated fashion.
• They can help increase bone density in your arms if you are at risk of osteoporosis.
• Depending on your current abilities, they can increase your muscular strength or endurance.
• They are free and you don’t need any equipment to do them.
• They are a good Keystone Ability.

How to do the ideal pressup.

First of all, remember that I am describing an “ideal” pressup here.  None of us are “ideal”.  I know I’m not.  But that shouldn’t stop us from trying our best.  If you have difficulty with an “ideal” pressup, don’t panic!  Just don’t stop trying either and you will get there in a few days/weeks/months.

The start.

Support your weight on the floor with your hands and toes. 

• Your hands should be directly beneath your shoulders, but a couple of inches wider than shoulder width.
• Your arms should be vertical when seen from the side.
• Your whole body should be dead flat from your head to your heels, with no bends/kinks in the spine or hips.

Good Pressup - Body flat with no kinks.

Bad Pressup - Back and hips are bent all over the place.

The descent.

• Keeping your body rigid at all times, bend your arms until your chest is nearly touching the floor.  Remember, no sagging/bending/kinking at the belly/back/hips.
• At the bottom, your hands should be roughly in line with your nipples, your forearms dead vertical and your upper arms making a roughly 45 degree angle with the side of your body.
• Your shoulders should be tucked back and down.  In other words, they should not be hunched.

Good Pressup - At the bottom of the pressup, your body should still be flat and rigid.

Good Pressup - Your upper arms should make a roughly 45 degree angle to the side of your body.

Bad Pressup - The body is arched, hips are too low and arms not bent.

 

Bad Pressup - The upper arms are stuck straight out to the sides.

 

The Ascent.

• Keeping your body straight and rigid, push your hands into the floor and return your body to the start position. 
• Make sure your body moves as one, single unit
• Don’t let your hips or your head/shoulders lead the way.

How to make them easier.

• Do everything exactly the same, except put your hands on a step/ledge/box so they are further away from the floor.
• The higher the step, or the greater the incline of your body, the easier it becomes.
• As you get better/stronger, use a lower step.

The greater the incline of your body, the easier the pressup becomes.

 

How to make them harder.

 

• Do everything exactly the same, except put your feet on a step/ledge/box so they are further away from the floor.
• The higher the step, or the greater the decline of your body, the harder  it becomes.
• As you get better/stronger, use a higher step.

The greater the decline of your body, the harder the pressup becomes.

 

Now everyone go out there and do some pressups.  They are good for you! 

Click here to read the whole news article.

Childhood obesity

Here are the conclusions of the study:

Conclusions Physical inactivity appears to be the result of fatness rather than its cause. This reverse causality may explain why attempts to tackle childhood obesity by promoting Physical Activity have been largely unsuccessful.

In other words, for the children in the study, being fat caused them to be less active, rather than being less active caused them to be fat.

So if in activity was not the cause of obesity in these children, what was?  The only other culprit can be the food/drink they ate.  As I say to all the people who come in asking for help to lose weight, a couple of times in the gym isn’t going to do it!  If you want to lose weight, you need to change your diet…and in some cases, your whole lifestyle!

I’m trying to put together a little article with lots of lovely graphs (God!  I love a good graph!) to illustrate the impact that exercise, and changes in your diet, have on your waistline.

Exercise is good, fantastic and everyone should do it for a better life and to make you fitter and stronger.  But it is not the ideal tool to lose weight.

It can be used to make you lose weight, just like you can use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail…but its the wrong tool for the job and you are better off using it for something else.

In the meantime, if you are wanting to lose weight, click here for the basics, and if you want/need more help and life in the Skipton area, contact me today!

Exercise Workshop

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, I had plenty of positive feedback (all of which was “good” or better!) and I think everyone learnt some new and important things over the 2 hours.

In fact, the only problem was my usual one of not keeping an eye on the clock (if you have ever trained with me, you know what I’m talking about!), so I had to rush through the last couple of exercises a bit quicker than I would have liked.

Exercise Workshop

Apart from that teething trouble (which I will have fixed by next time), we managed to go through everything I wanted.

The most important thing was the concept of Midline Stabilisation and various exercises to identify and develop the muscles to needed to maintain it.

Then we moved on to the 8 main, fundamental exercises of the workshop.  These were:

• The Plank
• The Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
• The full Deadlift
• The Squat
• The Lunge/Split Squat
• Barbell Row
• The Pressup/Bench Press
• Shoulder Press/Overhead Press

Exercise Workshop

I chose these exercises because they are big, compound moves that involve much of the body all at once.  Many of them can be classed as Keystone Abilities, and all can improve everyones performance in the gym, in their sport or just their everyday life.

We went over how to do these exercises, and importantly, some of the more common mistakes to avoid.  And the part that I tried to emphasise the most (hope this came across) was how to maintain the all important concept of Midline Stability during these exercises.

But at the end of the day, I had a fantastic time, I was asked some really good, relevent, questions and I think we all came away knowing something new.

Thank you once again for making it a success!

But there are good and bad ways to go about this.  One of the best ways is to work from the general to the specific.

This means you spend time getting the fundamental, foundation principles right before worrying about the minute details.  Get good at the general stuff first, then move on to the specifics.  For example:

• In the gym, make sure you have all-over, full-bodied, balanced strength and the ability to move correctly.  Have this before you start over analysing how many reps of bicep curls and tricep kickbacks you should be doing, or god forbid, which muscle head you are “hitting”!
• In Karate, make sure you can move forwards and backwards without tripping over yourself, and you can actually hit a target without busting your wrists/elbows/shoulders.  Then start worrying about your flying kicks.
• In your diet, make sure you are consistently eating the right things in the right amounts, before shelling out for diet pills/protein powders.
• If you want to be a brain surgeon, you got to spend years of hard graft on the wards before you go poking around a skull with a scalpel.

The important thing to remember is:

“Don’t try to run before you can walk”

And don’t over analyse and worry about the minute details, and end up missing the obvious.

“Don’t miss the woods for the trees”.

Examples of the general to the specific for the 3 main reasons people do exercise are:

• Getting Fitter - Make sure you can last at least 10 minutes at a steady pace before you even think about heart rates or being in the “fat burning zone” (the most pathetic programme on any cv machine!)
• Getting Stronger - Make sure you are consistent and competent in full range, compound (multi-joint) moves such as standing shoulder press, pressups, rows, squats, lunges and deadlifts.  Before this, any small, isolation (single joint) moves such as curls, kickbacks or flies should be done last and take up no more than 5 minutes.
• Losing Fat - make sure that at least half of every main meal is colourful vegetables, and the other half should not be processed or man-made food.  Only after you are consistently doing this should you start thinking about meal frequency or timing or any pills/potions.

Some things just need to be nailed before others.

Some things are just so fundamental that without them, other things are simply not going to work.

Some examples include:

• Getting a cars engine and chassis right before worrying about the paintwork.
• Getting the foundations of a house right before worrying about the wallpaper.
• Getting the fundamental compound exercises right before worrying about bloody bicep curls (did I mention that I will be covering this very topic in my Exercise Workshop on Sunday 4th July?  Click here for details )

So I am trying to put together a small series of booklets about the fundamentals of being fit and healthy…and I need your help to proof read them for me (you know, check for spelling mistakes and to make sure I am not talking out of my own arse etc).

So my first offering is as fundamental as I could get…It’s about our lifestyle in general.

Click here to download the pdf document and let me know all the good/bad bits, spelling mistakes and your thoughts about it in general.  Leave a comment below or you can get in touch with me by clicking here.

Hope you enjoy it!

She needs to know exactly where every part of her body is.

And knowing just where all your bodyparts (head, hands, feet, elbows, knees etc) are, is called proprioception.  And it is vitally important for everyone, at every level.

Basic level – Knowing where your own feet are so you can balance and not trip over them.

Advanced level – A gymnast knowing where every part of their body is so they can pull off a complicated acrobatic trick.

Without knowing the technical name for it, I now realise I first started to coach proprioception years ago in my Karate sessions.  We had to be able to hit a moving, unpredictable target (opponents head/body etc) with small parts of our body (our fists/feet/knees/elbows etc).

To be able to do this with any degree of success, you have to first know where your own fist is and where it is going.  It sounds simplistic, but I have rarely seen this ability in many people who have not been fairly proficient in some sort of sport or dance.  But the good news is that it is very easy to improve your own sense of proprioception.  It only took a couple of sessions before one of my brand new Karate students were able to move confidently, safely and quickly in all directions (up, down, forwards, backwards, up and down).

And it seems this is also what I will be mostly coaching in my Workshop.  Simply coaching where peoples bodyparts (hands, feet, hips, chest etc) are, where they want to go to, and the best way to connect the two points.

If you are interested in this ability to be self aware, and how to move well, book yourself into my Workshop by clicking here today!

The Romanian Deadlift (RDL)

What does it do?

Romanian Deadlift (RDL)

This exercise strengthens the back, bum and back of legs.

Why do it?

• To strengthen the back half of your body.  A lot of us are over-strong in the front and weak at the back of the body.  So this can help redress the balance.
• Can help improve your posture (only when done correctly).
• It is a great first step to learn the harder, normal deadlift.
• Teaches people to use the strong, powerful hip joint, instead of the weaker, more delicate spine.

This is one of the first exercises we will be covering in my Exercise Workshop here in Skipton on Sunday July 4th.  If you are at all interested in learning how to do safe, efficient and effective exercise, click here and book yourself in!

Click here to book your place on line, or you can come see me in the gym at Craven Fitness Centre.  Bare in mind, I’ll only be there in the mornings these next couple of weeks.

Book your place if you can, and if you can’t, tell your friends about it and get them to book in!

It will be an indepth tutorial on how to do some of the main, fundamental resistance exercises and how they cross-over to virtually every other exercise you do.

It will cover how to do things, how not to do things, and most importantly, why.

There will be room only for the first 15 people who book themselves on the list, so as soon as you have signed up, please tell your friends so they can join in too!

I’ll put up all the details, and ways to book your place over the weekend.  So check back again soon!