She travelled a round trip of 11 hours(!) and her opponent threw in the towel half way through the second round.  She has been working very hard on her conditioning recently, but so far she hasn’t had a  fight long enough for it to pay off!  But that fight will come, and when it does she will be ready for it!

Well done again Bex!

They are coming to the gym 3 times a week, their diet is “pretty healthy“…so what is going wrong?

Here is one common reason…

To lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume.  So you should be all about maximising your calorie burn.  People often make a simple mistake:

Thinking about exercise and calorie burning only when they are in the gym.

Don’t make this mistake and isolate and compartmentalise your life like that.  Just as our bodies are single complex interacting systems and not just a “bunch of parts”…our lives are a single complex story, not just a “bunch of parts”.

Example

Let me give you an example of 2 hypothetical identical twins.  They are exactly the same as eachother.  They have the same lives, same jobs etc.  They only differ in their Peak and Background Activity levels.

Person A

• Peak Activity – Train for 1 hour, 6 times every week.
• Background Activity – Because they train hard so often, they just relax and put their feet up the rest of their spare time.

Person B

• Peak Activity – Train for 1 hour, 3 times every week.
• Background Activity – Equal measures of sitting around and gentle walking about.

Remember, other than the above, these 2 people have exactly identical lives.  So who is going to lose weigh quicker?

The simple answer would be Person A, because they go to the gym twice as much as Person B!  They must lose weight more easily!

So lets do some rough and ready maths to see if that is the case.  First of all, we need to assume:

• There are 168 hours in every week (24×7=168)
• They both sleep 8 hours a night, or 56 hours per week (7×8=56)
• They both work sitting at a desk for 37 hours per week
• They both have 75 hours left in the week for training/leisure/sitting/walking etc (168-56-37=75)
• They both burn 60 calories per hour asleep
• They both burn 102 calories per hour in work
• They both burn 68 calories per hour when sitting
• They both burn 612 calories per hour when training
• They both burn 224 calories per hour when walking

If I plug all the above info into a spreadsheet and look at the numbers over 1 week, we get the following results…

Calories burned over 1 week (click to enlarge)

(I know the above is not a very realistic example, but it demonstrates the point I want to make very well).

You can see that although Person A has a Peak Activity level twice that of Person B, they are are not going to lose weight as quickly because their Background Activity level is so poor.

And this is the mistake made by many people.  They think:

“I go to the gym regularly, so I don’t need to bother about anything else”.

For general health and fitness, going to the gym a couple of times a week won’t cut it.

You need to try to live and active life.

Our bodies evolved when we were still cavemen to deal with the following Background and Peak Activity levels:

• Background Activity – Walking miles every day, tracking animals, securing territory borders, gathering and preparing food and drink, making and repairing tools and clothes etc.
• Peak Activity – Hunting and killing animals most days, fighting for your life against rival tribes most days etc.

Our bodies are simply not designed to sit around at a desk/computer/TV all day.  But this is the habit that most of us have fallen into.  And this is why nearly 2 thirds of us are overweight or obese.

So the simple truth is, to improve your health, fitness and bodyweight, change your behaviours and habits and increase your Background Activity levels.  It is very simple to do and there are millions of ways to do it including:

• Use your car less than you do now
• Park your car further away from your destination than you do now
• Avoid all lifts/escalators
• Sit down less than you do now.  Get off your arse and walk about a bit every 10 minutes at least!
• Get a backpack and carry more/heavier loads when out shopping for your fresh fruit and veg
• Take a real pride in the fact that you physically move more than the people around you.

Put simply, all the above can be boiled down to a simple line:

“Always avoid the easy option”.

Live your life by this rule, and you will have the foundations of a healthy and fit body.  And with the right foundations, you can build up to anything!

Do you recognise anything here?

I work in a gym and I do!

If nothing else, these should make you smile (I cracked up at the “babys head” line!)

]]> http://www.myshotokan.com/blog/gym%c2%a0intervention/feed/ 0 http://www.myshotokan.com/blog/gym-intervention/ http://www.myshotokan.com/blog/gym-intervention/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:08:30 +0000 Cerin http://cerin.wordpress.com/?p=882 Related posts:

1. Gym Intervention
2. Form follows function.
3. Fundamental mistakes in the gym

We were looking at Karens current training timetable and she cycles through “hard” and “easy” days each week.  What this meant was, she would crank it up to 11 and go all out on her “hard” days, but simply ease back and go through the motions on her “easy” days.

This kind of thing is ok for getting your body in the right condition, but doesn’t really do anything to improve your technique.  You can’t improve your technique if you are concentrating solely on going fast…and you can’t improve your technique if you are “going through the motions” and disengaging your brain.

So we simply changed the names of her workouts…nothing else has changed…just the names.  They are now “intensity” days and “technique” days.

• Intensity Days - the priority is working at a high enough intensity to improve her conditioning.  Don’t worry too much if the technique is a bit raggedy…just work the body hard enough to get a training response.
• Technique Days - the priority is getting her form perfect.  Don’t worry that she is not so fast today (she is supposed to be taking it easy today anyway), just make sure the form is spot on.

This way every training session has a goal to aim for and has a purpose.  There is never any “going through the motions”, and you don’t run the risk of burning yourself out by over training.

Even though only the names have changed, psychologically speaking, this makes a hell of a difference!

The same idea can be applied to any event.  We get better by working hard and getting fitter…and by moving better and more efficiently.

So instead of having “rest” or “easy” days…have “technique” days.  It keeps us moving and avoids us just filling time with “stuff”.

• Running a marathon
• Sprinting 100m
• Throwing a javelin
• Stepping into a ring for a fight

Now you might think “what the hell does this have to do with me…i’m not doing any of them, I just want to get a bit fitter for health/life/performance“.  Well here’s a real world situation…

I was talking to a new client in the gym the other night.  She is self employed in the restaurant business.  She regularly does 11 hour shifts where she is constantly on her feet, dashing from the front to the back of the house dealing with customers.

Now she was saying that she thought this would keep her fit.  But when she goes for a 10 minute burn on the treadmill with her friends, she ends up sweating, panting and more uncomfortable than her friends.

Does that mean she is not fit, she asks?

Hell no!  It just means she is fit in a different way.

Take a look at her training programme and get our heads round a few of training terms.  These are:

• Duration – quite simply how long something takes.  Something that lasts a few seconds is short duration, while something that lasts a few hours is long duration.
• Intensity – what fraction of “maximum effort” does an activity require.  eg a flat out sprint or a high jump will require 100% effort (your running very fast) but only for a short duration (therefore is high intensity).  A marathon might only need 50% effort (your running a lot slower) but for a long duration (therefore is low intensity).
• Training – this is all physical activity done by the body.  It is NOT just the time spent inside a shiny building with the word “Gym” on the front.  Your body adapts to physical stresses.  It does not know or care if it’s stresses in the gym, work or in your leisure time etc.

Low/High intensity Workouts

The vast majority of her current training is of fairly low intensity but very long duration (walking quickly for up to 11 hours in a shift).  She has been doing this training for years, so her body has adapted well to it and it comes easier to her now (how many of you can manage 11 hour shifts!).  But when she plays with her friends in the gym, she runs fast for 10 minutes on the treadmill.  This is a much higher intensity and much shorter duration than normal!  No wonder she finds it hard!  But it doesn’t mean she is unfit…far from it.  She is just fit in a different way.

At the moment, she will probably be very good at endurance events, and will almost certainly leave her friends for dust!  But she will find shorter, more intense events more of a challenge.

The moral of this story is that fitness is very specific…

“You get good at what you actually do”

So if your lifestyle/sport/hobby involves fairly fast and furious activities (like Karate etc) then make sure the bulk of your training reflects this.

If your lifestyle/sport/hobby involves less intense things that last longer (like hiking etc) then make sure the bulk of your training reflects this.

If you don’t, you won’t be as good at your lifestyle/sport/hobby and there is a chance you will become less good at them!

And as for getting hot, sweaty and out of breath being a sign of lack of fitness…Bullshit!

Usain Bolt looking hot, sweaty and out of breath.

Think back to any Olympic Games and remember how the athletes looked after they had just won their races…they all looked hot, sweaty and out of breath.  This does not mean Olympic Gold Medalists are unfit…it means they had just been working hard!  Which is what we all need to do to improve our fitness for health, life and performance!