Side Crunch

Name:  Side Crunch

Also known as:  Oblique Crunch

Main muscles used:  Sides.

Other muscles used:  Stomach.

Top tips:

• Crunch your upper body up in exactly the same way as a normal Abdominal Crunch.
• Try to keep both knees together, and twist your hips and legs to one side, resting your knees on the floor.
• When doing the crunch, your upper body should remain square, with both shoulders moving equal amounts at the same time.
• Having your hands to the side of your body (as shown in the animation) is the “easy” version.  Moving your arms/hands further up the body makes the move harder.
• Keep your eyes and chin pointing up towards the ceiling.
• Keep your lower back pressed firmly in the floor.
• Do equal amounts of work with your hips twisted to the right and left sides. 

Side Crunch

Common mistakes:

• Not twisting the hips far enough around, so the knees are still pointing up in the air.
• Not doing equal amounts of work on both side of the body.
• Twisting the upper body and shoulders when crunching up.
• Pressing the chin down onto the chest.

Comments:

By twisting your hips, more work is being done by the oblique muscles that are found at the side of your stomach.  These tend to be a bit harder to do than normal Abdominal Crunches, because the muslces involved are used a lot less on a day-to-day basis.

As with the normal Abdominal Crunch, this is only a small move.  Your upper body (chest and shoulders) will only tilt upwards a few degrees.  Don’t try to make is a Full Situp, and end up sitting vertically.

Name:

Also known as:  Ab crunches, crunches.

Main muscles used:  Stomach.

Other muscles used:

Top tips:

• Lay with your back and feet flat on the floor.
• Keep your eyes looking straight up to the ceiling, and your chin up at all times.
• Think of pressing your lower back into the floor, while tilting your ribcage and shoulders up a few inches.
• Your spine needs to flex/bend upwards.

Common mistakes:

• Pressing your chin onto your chest and whipping your head, as you come up.
• Lifting your lower back off the floor.
• Keeping your shoulders/ribcage touching the floor, and only “nodding” your head back and forth.

Comments:

This is only a small move, and the idea is to restrict that movement to your spine and ribcage.  Nothing else should move, not your hips, knees, feet, neck.

In the animation above, the hands are placed on the floor next to the hips.  You can think of this as “Stage 1″.  To make the exercise harder, gradually move the arms further up the body, towards (and even beyond) the head.

But don’t be macho and try to do a harder version, only to let your form collapse.  It is much better to do easier ones right, than hard ones wrong.

The Side Plank – Good

Name:  Side Plank.

Also known as:  Side Bridge.

Main muscles used:  Stomach and sides.

Other muscles used:  Shoulders.

Top tips:

• Look down your body and make sure your shoulders, hips, knees and feet are all lined up straight.
• Try to arch your hips up if you can.
• Line up the elbow on the floor and both your shoulders in a dead vertical line.
• Work both sides of your body equally.

The Side Plank – Bad

Common mistakes:

• Folding at the hips, so your body is bent and jack-knifed.
• Sagging the hips down, so your body slumps.
• Twisting your upper body so your supporting elbow and both shoulders are not in a vertical line.

Comments:

The Side Plank is a progression of the Front Plank.  It helps strengthen your body and “core” muscles that support and stabilise your spine.  These strong muscles then act as a solid foundation in a different plane, from which our limbs can generate effective force.  So when you push/pull an object, it moves and your body does not buckle/collapse.

It was the first week back off the easter hols, so we had a nice easy session this week.

The group was split into 2 groups, and they alternated between shuttle runs and the following exercises…

The plank

The Plank

Bodyweight Squats

Bodyweight Squats

Bicep Curls

Bicep Curls

Star Jumps

Star Jumps

Back Extension

Back Extension

Lunge

Lunge

Shoulder Press

Shoulder Press

Spotty Dogs

Spotty Dogs (start)

Spotty Dogs (end)

Because of films, magazines and the media, about 99% of people seem to think that weight training = bodybuilding.  This is not true.  Bodybuilding is only a small subsection of weight training. 

Instead I want you to think of weight training as a car mechanics garage… 

Sounds odd I know, but bare with me…people take their cars to a garage for a number of reasons: 

• A simple tune up
• For their MOT
• For repair
• To improve everyday performance
• To improve racing performance
• To improve off road performance
• To change appearance slightly (simple paint job)
• To change appearance drastically (to totally pimp their ride)
  

  Pimped Car

   

And bodybuilding can be thought of as “pimping your ride”.  For both, the priority is on appearance and style while little to no thought goes into substance and performance. 

You can’t fail to notice them and they certainly look impressive…but neither of them are necessarily much good at anything else. 

But the point is, when you take your car to the garage, you don’t have to get tinted windows and a custom paint job installed. 

And when you do resistance exercises, you don’t have to do sets of 8-12 and isolate your biceps/pecs/abs/glutes etc. 

There are loads of different reasons why people might train with weights, including: 

• To freshen up a stale workout
• For injury rehabilitation
• To be able to perform simple, everyday tasks
• To improve sporting/athletic ability
• To change their appearance slightly (giving a more “toned” appearance)
• To change their appearance drastically (to get huge and ripped)
  

  Pimped Body

   

And for all these different reasons for weight training, you would train in different ways.

For an introduction to these different forms of weight training, take a look at my Introduction to Weight Training.

And don’t forget, if you live in and around Skipton, contact me for Professional Coaching and advice.

After yesterdays post about exercise during pregnancy, there was a question about what specific reps and sets of resistance should be done.

So here goes…

…I have a short, official, answer and a long, unofficial, answer.  Here is the short one:

There are no specific recommendations for sets/reps at present.

What this actually means is that in all the studies done so far, no one has been able to show if one sets/reps range is better/worse/safer/more dangerous than another.  So no one is going to say “do this” or “do that”.

So this leads me to my longer, unofficial, answer.

Disclaimer!!!

Please bare in mind that from this point on, I am purely giving my own opinion built from my own understanding of the subject.  If anyone out there knows for a fact that I am wrong, please let me know.

The factors I take into account are:

• Women should try to maintain their fitness/strength, rather than improve it.
• Joints can become “loose” during pregnancy.

With these factor in mind, I suggest that women could do far worse than simply

continuing with their usual sets/reps that they did before pregnancy, but decreasing the intensity as pregnancy develops.

eg – if you usually did 3 sets of 10 reps at 20kg…continue doing 3 sets of 10 reps, but with maybe only 15kg.

But because of the loosening of the joints, I would do exercises that involve both arms/legs simultaneously.  eg shoulder press/squats instead of tricep kickbacks or lunges.  This way, one limb can help/support the other.  My thinking behind this is, if  something happens to the joint in one limb, at least there is the other one there to take over/save the day.

This is the same reason you always find 2 pilots in airliners.

Of course, the above advice is fine if you have been doing exercise before you became pregnant (and I hope you have!).  But what if you are new to exercise?

If this is the case, my advice would be to go to your local leisure centre and find/join a class for mothers-to-be.  10 minutes of hands on, face to face advice is worth a million web pages!

Good luck and congratulations!!

People want or need to gain strength for a number of reasons, but they usually fall into one of two camps…

Practical reasons and aesthetics.

• Practical reasons – This includes health benefits.  A strong body is generally more injury resistant than a weak one.  Or a person may have had an injury and are now in rehab, needing to regain lost strength, or to improve strength beyond a certain threshold to help prevent future injury.  Or a person may need increased strength for their job (eg a soldier), or a person may be an athlete and greater strength means a greater chance of winning.

• Aesthetic reasons – These can be put simply as “looking better naked” and I think we all know about this already.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

However (and I’m going to sound sexist here again), there are a group of people (usually women who are naturally at higher risk of developing osteoporosis, or brittle bones) who are scared of improving their strength for fear of waking up one morning looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is like refusing to wear a seatbelt in case the edge of the belt saws their head off…they are avoiding a vital piece of safety because they are afraid of something that just will not happen.

Chest Press

But I digress.

Because of this and many other reasons (not least of which is the very good reason that many people do not know where to start) I am going to give you my absolute beginners guide to getting stronger.

Now different people want/need to get stronger for different reasons.  2 extreme examples are:

1. The 16 year old spotty kid wanting to look like Arnold.
2. The 60 year old little old lady simply wanting to be able to carry her shopping home and not injure herself if she falls.

Now these two examples are about as different as they can get.  Their aims might be totally different and their attitudes towards training might be polar opposites.

“Despite this they are both absolute beginners and their training programmes and aims should be virtually identical.”

When I say virtually identical, I obviously don’t mean in the actual weights used.  But I do mean what exercises to do, the number of times to do them etc.

Initial aims for an absolute beginner

• To learn to use the body in a mechanically safe and more efficient way.
• To strengthen the soft connective tissues of the body (ligaments, tendons etc)
• To strengthen the hard structural tissue (our bones)
• To strengthen the muscles that support and move the body.

Seated Row

So whether you are the spotty 16 year old, or the granny.  Your initial aims should be very similar…building the foundations and doing the groundwork to allow specialisation later on.

What type of training programme?

There are loads of different training programmes available out there.  All of them will have their good/bad points and will be more/less appropriate for different people.  But I have found the following programme template to work quite well with absolute beginners:

• Thorough warm up.
• Chest Press   :   1-5 (sets)  x  5-10 (reps)
• Seated Row   :   1-5  x  5-10
• Leg Press   :   1-5  x  5-10
• 1 other exercise of your choice
• The Plank   :   60 seconds worth (broken into as many sets as needed)
• Static stretches.

Leg Press

And that is it.  The whole thing should be easily done in less than half an hour and it comprises of less than half a dozen exercises.  And the reason I use this template is as follows:

Number of exercises.

Keeping the number of exercises low means you don’t have to learn loads of new moves.  If you have to learn too many new exercises in one go, all that happens is that you end up forgetting them and doing them wrong.  This will almost certainly lead to future injuries and/or a waste of you time and money.

I have 4 main exercises in the above template, and then an extra “1 other exercise of your choice”.  This is because everyone has a different attitude/personality, and the most important thing is that you enjoy your training.  Use this final exercise to enjoy yourself.  Make the workout your own and do what you want to do.  Boys can do their bicep curls and girls can do their tricep kickbacks if they like.  Just make sure they are done after your main workout and they don’t interfere with it at all.

We don’t have to be perfect all the time.  As long as we are good most of the time, we can get away with being a bit naughty sometimes (just don’t let the naughty times interfere with the good ones!).

The Plank

Number of sets and reps.

One possible difference between my hypothetical 16 year old boy and little old lady would be here.  Pandering to a gross stereotype,  I might have the 16 year old doing 1-3 sets of 10 reps, while the sweet little old lady doing 3-5 sets of 5 reps.  The reason is:

• The boy is much more likely to let his ego take over and try too much weight too soon.  By keeping the reps up, this forces him to keep the weight down a bit and so means less chance of him breaking himself.
• The lady is more likely to tire sooner, so this way she gets to have more rest breaks.  This also means her form/technique is less likely to suffer.
• They both end up doing a similar number of reps, so they both get a similar amount of practice at doing the actual move.

Types of exercise.

All the actual exercises are big, compound moves.  In other words, each move uses lots of joints  and muscles working together at the same time.  The reasons are:

• It’s more time efficient.
• Helps teach mechanically efficient moves.
• It spreads the load across more of the body, so if they have any particularly weak parts, they are not exposed immediately to stresses directly to that weak spot.
• Helps develop strength evenly across the body.  Young boys tend to over emphasise their chest and biceps, while older women tend to over emphasise the backs of their arms.  This kind of “nit picking” is rarely a good idea for both practical and aesthetic goals.

What to expect during/after the first training sessions

• Don’t expect too much hard work.  Do less than you think you are capable of.  If you don’t you will probably pay for it the following morning in the way of aches and soreness.
• Don’t try too many different machines/exercises.  Do half a dozen at most, and learn the basic do’s and don’ts of them.  It is much better to do a few things properly and safely than loads of things crappily and dangerously.
• Even if you do less than you think you are capable of, there is a definite chance you may feel aches/stiffness after your first or second session.  So far, I have never been with anyone who was stiff after the third go.  Your body adapts to the work you give it very quickly.

What to expect during/after the first month

• You will “feel” stronger and be able to do more work and shift heavier resistance/weights.  This will not be because you have built more muscle (you will build virtually no muscle in the first month) but because the muscles you already have will have “woken up” and you will be using more of your original potential strength.  Anyone feeling “bulked up” in this first month is almost certainly just carrying more fluid in their body.  This will settle down within a couple of weeks.
• Your various limbs and bodyparts will start to feel a bit more coordinated and your body will hold itself less like a saggy, water filled balloon, but more rigid and secure.
• Any aches and stiffness you may have felt the day after your initial training will be a thing of the past and wont be occurring now.

Conclusions.

The above is a good example of a beginners strength programme for virtually everyone, from spotty kid to little old lady.  But of course their different attitudes will react to the programme in different ways.

Young lads usually want to do too much too soon.  They will probably want to do the latest bodybuilder routine they saw in a glossy mag with a HUGE bloke on the cover.  Please realise that the latest bodybuilder routine done by HUGE blokes is not suitable for an absolute beginner! You will end up breaking yourself, I promise!  You need at least 6 months foundation work to get your body ready to do anything close to the routines you see in muscles mags.

Little old ladies may be against the idea of ever increasing the weights.  This is a mistake because we get strong enough, and no stronger, to do what we are actually doing.  If you never increase the weights you are lifting, you will never get stronger.

I hope my ramblings here have not confused you too much!  If so, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer any questions!

It’s the new year and we have loads of people coming to the gym for the first time wanting to “lose weight”.

There are 3 places where we lose fat.  In order of priority, these are:

1. In your head
2. In your kitchen
3. In the gym

In your head

First we need to learn and accept that:

“our bodyweight is the result of months/years of our behaviour and habits.  To change our weight we need to change these behaviours and habits.”

This will almost certainly mean:

• Eating foods that we rarely/never have.
• Cutting out foods we have nearly every day.
• Doing physical activity that we usually avoid.

We can make this easy or hard for ourselves.

To make it hard for ourselves:

• Reject and fight against the idea that we need to change our behaviour and habits.
• Have a negative attitude towards the subject (or be a “glass half empty” kind of person).
• Think of losing fat as a “chore” to be endured and fought against.
• Look for “loopholes” in the fat loss programme that allows you to fall back into old behaviours/habits.

To make it easy on ourselves:

• Accept and rejoice in the idea that we are going to change our behaviour and habits.
• Have a positive attitude to the subject (or be a “glass half full” kind of person).
• Think of losing fat as some kind of exciting journey full of fun and adventure (sounds corny I know…but it works, I promise).
• Look for interesting and unique ways to add to the fat loss programme (we usually enjoy and believe more in our own plans than those from other people).

The final bit of head doctor advice is:

“Don’t Panic!”

In your kitchen

What you do and don’t eat will have the greatest direct impact on your fat loss by far!  So this is where we must put most effort into changing bad behaviours and habits.

First of all, read, re-read, then re-read again the 10 simple rules to healthy eating.  We are going to change our habits and behaviours by actually following these, 1 rule at a time (don’t panic and think we have to change everything all at once).

9 out of 10 people will read these rules and say:

“but I eat healthily anyway!”

I’m sorry, but if we are carrying a lot of excess fat…we are not eating healthily.  What usually happens is that we remember that we ate half a carrot last week, but forgot that we had a takeaway every other day.

Remember what I said at the start of this article?

“our bodyweight is the result of months/years of our behaviour and habits.  To change our weight we need to change these behaviours and habits.”

Now choose 1 rule.  Any rule you like.  But follow it to the letter for 1 week.  Follow the rule 100% with absolutely no deviations whatsoever.  Never break the rule for 1…week.

This is a simple but effective way of getting into a new, good, habit.

After this initial week, follow the rule for 5-6 days out of 7.  Once we have a habit established we can take it a bit easier on ourselves.  We tend to follow the rule “out of habit”, and it really doesn’t matter if we break a rule once in a blue moon.  It’s not the end of the world.

Now we do the same for the other 9 rules.  1 rule per week, until 10 weeks later we have a whole new set of good behaviours and habits and the bodyfat will be dropping off!

In the gym

To be honest, when I say “in the gym” what I really mean is “any and all physical activity”.  And again, we need to change our habits and behaviour when it comes to physical activity. 

Western civilisation is based on 1 thing…making things easier and more convenient.  Here are a few of examples:

• Cars (make travel easier)
• iPods (make listening to music more convenient)
• Supermarkets/department stores (make shopping more convenient)
• Home shopping channels (so easy to shop you don’t even have to leave your home)
• Ready meals (easy and convenient way to prepare food)
• Sliced bread (so easy we don’t even have to pick up a bread knife! )

We have all grown into the habit of thinking/saying:

“I’ll take the easy option every time”.

But if we always take the easy option, we just get fat and lazy.

When it comes to fat burning, we need to change that bad habit and get into the good one of:

“I’ll avoid the easy option every time”.

So in the gym, this means we should try to make our workouts:

• More frequent (do them more times per week)
• Harder/faster/heavier (gradually shift the levels/speeds/weights up)
• Last longer (add a couple of minutes per workout/week)

A good fat burning workout is one that includes a good mixture of both cardiovascular exercise (stuff that gets you out of breath) and resistance exercise (shifting heavy weights around).

And don’t worry about “getting bulky”.  If you are losing weight, you will be losing muscle also.

And because I get asked this every week, there is no exercise that will burn the fat from your belly/bum/thighs/bingo wings etc.

Take a look at my article about losing weight, and pay extra special attention to the bit that says you cannot target fat loss.

The best analogy I have heard about how we all lose body fat is:

“Fat loss is like draining the water out of a swimming pool.  It doesn’t matter where the plughole is, some parts of the pool (the shallow end) will always drain first.  But keep going and eventually every part of the pool will be drainied”.

And that is like our bodies.  It does not matter what exercises you do targeting what muscles in what order and with what sets/reps/weights.  Your genetics determine what part of your body losses fat first and there is NOTHING we can do to change it.

So just keep at it, enjoy the ride and your body will eventually burn fat from your problem spot.

And finally…

Some common excuses I have heard and even made myself include:

• But I don’t like that food – when was the last time you actually tried that food?  There is a good chance it was probably years ago and you just had a bad experience from it and now you just expect to not like it.  Why not try it again but with an open, positive attitude.  I used to hate mushrooms.  I had never actually tasted one, but I just didn’t like the idea of eating a mold…now I can’t get enough of them!
• But I can’t live without my (insert any item of junk food here) - this is just plain silly.  I used to say things like that about chocolate until I realised I sounded like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum.  Since then I have tried to act a little bit more grown up.  Sorry this sounds harsh, but it is true.
• I hate exercise - the vast majority of people who say this have had a bad experience of exercise in their past.  Maybe you, like me, had a complete idiot for a PE teacher in school?  If this is the case, please give it another try.  Or read my strange post comparing exercise to shoes.  Trust me, there are a million kinds of exercise out there.  There is a kind you will like.  Don’t let one bad experience ruin your life.

My sister told me about these guys when she had a go….she loved it!

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!)