Wow, what an amazing day it is down here in Exeter today. A quick morning blog post and then I’m off for some tasty food out in the sunshine and grab some rays and vitamin D. The weather really changes the way I feel!
First of all, sorry for the lack of blog posts recently. It’s because I’ve been working on this weight loss running ebook which is being designed next week so should be ready the week after that. Today I’ve pulled out one of the questions featured in it – the Q&A section is literally packed with some really excellent questions and I know that if you’re thinking about running to lose weight or just want to find out more to help you, you will love it. There’s also beginner running plans and loads of other useful stuff to get you started. Whether you want to run your first 10 minutes, mile or 5k, you’ll be shifting weight quickly. But remember, it needs to be coupled with good nutrition. Ok, here we go…
Question: I’ve heard about using my ‘target heart rate’ for training. What is it and how do I use it?
Answer:
Exercising within a target heart rate zone is an easy way to monitor how much effort you should be putting forth when you run. When using this method, your body is telling you, via your pulse rate, when you should back off a little or when you could pick it up a notch. So what is a target heart rate?
In the medical world, the easiest way to get a picture of what your heart is doing at this very moment is to measure your pulse, that is, the number of times your heart beats per minute. When resting, your heart should beat between 60 and 100 times per minute. Any rate over or under that indicates a problem. Generally. Well-trained athletes may have a natural resting heart rate below 60 beats per minute, and that’s ok. Your doctor will determine if your resting heart rate is in the appropriate range. If you monitor your heart rate during exercise, you will get a pretty good picture of the demands you are placing on your body. A ‘target heart rate zone’ is the range of heart rates that indicates you are exercising at a level that is enough, but not too much.
Finding and measuring your pulse is easy enough, it just takes some practice. There are two places on your body that you can easily find a pulse while exercising: 1. the palm side of your wrist, below the thumb and 2. your neck, just below your chin, on either side of your wind pipe. To find your pulse in either area, press lightly with the tips of your index and middle fingers until you feel a beating with those fingers. This is your blood pumping through your veins. Once you have found that pulsation, count the number of times you feel a beat in 15 seconds. Multiply that number by 4 (4×15=60seconds), and you have the number of times your heart beats in one minute.
“Ok, I’ve found my pulse- now what?” Now we crunch some numbers. To find a target heart rate zone, you first need a maximum heart rate. In general, you can get your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. For example, a 40-year-old’s maximum heart rate would be 180 beats per minute (220-40=180). I say ‘in general’ because some cardiac medications can lower your maximum heart rate. So here’s the disclaimer for this article: always consult your doctor before starting an exercise program. When exercising, you want to be in a heart rate zone of 60-85% of your maximum heart rate. For a 40-year-old person, this zone would be 108-153 beats per minute (180×0.6=108; 180×0.85=153). If you’re just starting an exercise program, aim for the lower end of your target heart rate zone (60%). Gradually build up to maintaining activity at the higher end (75%). Eventually, you may feel comfortable at the 85% rate.
You may want to think about getting yourself a good heart rate monitor such as the
Key points:
-Your target heart rate zone is the range of heart rates that indicates you are exercising at a level that is enough, but not too much.
-There are two places to find your pulse while exercising, your neck and your wrist.
-Your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age.
-Your target heart rate is 60-85% your maximum heart rate.
The best way to measure your heart rate is with a good quality heart rate monitor such as the Polar F6 – if you’re serious about running and tracking your heart rate zone then this is a good option, although there are plenty of other makes available.
While I’m on the subject of cool gadgets for running, the Nike + Sports band seems to be the new cool. Nike + is put into special shoes (or a holder on the front of your existing shoes) which then tracks how far you’ve run. You can also track pace, time and calories burned. You then plug it into your computer and can track your times. I’ve used it and it’s pretty awesome.
If you’d like more free running tips and want to know when Running For Weight Loss: Ultimate Beginners Guide is released please enter your details below:
I often talk to people about how it takes a bit of time to develop habits. When a habit is formed, it becomes powerful and repetition is the key! You see, that can work in both ways, good and bad. When we eat enough crap, we form a habit, when we don’t go to the gym or exericse, we form a bad habit. But by a bit of repetition and making the first step, we can push things in the right direction.
Now here’s the story behind this video. When I was a youngster, I was never good at any sports and when it came to things like gymnastics at school, I never had guts to flip myself around, I never thought I was capable, so I stuck to tapping away on the computer!
About six months ago, after starting morning bootcamp at Exeter Gymnastics Club, an evening class started for adult gymnastics. How much fun was it! Brilliant, and so I signed up and I’ve been having a blast ever since. Needless to say I’ve been keen to overcome that fear I had as a child. Last night I broke it with my first unassisted backwards somersault on the trampoline, and it was caught on film. Anyway, the message of this post is, take the step to form new habits and they will be formed. It’s whether you’re willing to make that first move…
If you’re a parent to a new child, can I recommend that you get your kids early into gymnastics clubs, it’s awesome fun, builds confidence, helps them develop great friendships and who knows, you could have an olympic athlete in your family.
You know, sometimes you just need to see something to change your state. When I say that I mean, move you from an OK state to a smiling state, or from a bad mood state into a smiling state. State change happens all the time. Maybe when you see someone you don’t like, your state changes. When you see someone you love, your state changes. By writing down when most of your state changes take place and coming up with ways to make sure you surround yourself with people who put you in positive states, you’ll be well on track to getting the life you want.
So, let’s demonstrate state change and tell me, which one of these made you smile? Comments please! So nice to be blogging again but I have tooth ache today, bad times! 
Never too old or cold to exercise!
The Fitness Triangle
Hey everyone.
If you read my posts regulary then you’ll know that I take care of every element of losing weight, not just healthy eating and not just fitness. While each of these elements is important on their own, togther they compliment each other and if you really want to see fast results you need fine tune both. So what if I told you that my training systems used a three-pronged triangle approach that you could also implement into your own programme. Would you be interested? Yeah of course you would… Check out the following details where I explain the triangle method, at the heart of New Body Bootcamp and my Rapid Weight Loss Programme. If you’re not seeing great results, it may be because you’re doing too much steady state cardio work and this post explains why…
The Rapid Wight Loss Triangle…
Weight Training
Strength training increases muscle and boosts metabolism, so it’s no wonder why it’s a massive part of the rapid weight loss programme protocol. Metabolism: The rate at which we burn calories per day. The majority of the calories we burn per day (70‐90%) are while at rest. So let’s get that number as high as possible. What we know: Metabolism decreases 10 % per year if we leave it alone
Metabolism can be increased 40‐60% through nutrition and exercise. Too many programs by average trainers concentrate on burning calories during the session. But what about the other 23 hours in the day? That is where we concentrate and why our programs have been so successful.
Nutrition
Here’s what we know‐every time you eat you are boosting your metabolism. It take energy to digest and assimilate the food that you eat. But if you are only eating 2 times per day there is too much time in between feedings. Your body will think it is in starvation mode and will preferentially store the food you consume as stored bodyfat. So we are going to fill in these gaps with small evenly spaced meals throughout the day. Now we are boosting your metabolism 5‐6 times per day instead of 2. Plus your body is much more likely to give up stored bodyfat when it sees that nutrition is coming in like clockwork every few hours. We will help you make better food choices so that eating like this will become a part of your new lifestyle. We will have you bring in a food journal which will review with you every time to make sure you are on the right path. Together we will determine what to eat and when. We will be manipulating the ratios of the 3 macro nutrients: Protein, carbs and fat.
Cardio
First of all we do not use standard “steady state” cardio as a primary fat loss tool. When you walk on a treadmill (or whatever) for 45 minutes, you are burning cals while you are doing it but it has ZERO carryover to the rest of the day. ZERO. Also your body adapts to it very rapidly. This means your body will become more efficient at using fat for fuel – WHICH IS NOT GOOD. It is called “Intervals” or “sprints”. We have you go hard for 30 seconds, then rest for 60 seconds and then repeat. We will play with the rest and work intervals as well as what exercise we have you use to keep your body guessing. The cool part is it only take about 15 minutes‐that’s a fraction of traditional cardio. On top of that your body will be burning extra calories 38 hours after the workout. That means if you workout on a Monday morning, Tuesday night you are burning extra calories because of that workout.
You can see this same effect in Olympic sprinters‐those guys have a bodyfat percentage of about 4‐6%. All they do is short intense bouts of exercise, with limited rest. Plus they have to eat like horses because their metabolisms are so fired up. Now if you look at marathon runners, those guys have a BF of about 11‐14%. And they run for literally hours at a time. Plus they look very emaciated – not a healthy look at all. We want your workout to be short – intense and effective.
So, when it comes to your training, and eating, use the triangle method, let me keep you motivated and you will get to your goal…
Hannah Waterman has been all over the TV at the moment and to be honest, good on her. She’s managed to completely transform her body by performing high intensity interval training which is the type of exercise at the heart of my rapid weight loss and boot camp training programmes. I wouldn’t normally promote a DVD like this as most of them are awful, but the training style she uses is sound, and the results speak for themselves.
The ex Eastender managed to pile on the pounds but needed to get in shape for a new west end role of Calender Girls. She was told that she’d had to get naked for the role and that was her ‘tipping point’ as well as the one photo, which is explained in the video below. I’ve spoken about ‘tipping points’ before. Maybe it’s when someone says something to you about your weight, maybe it’s the death of a family member because of heart disease, maybe like me it was bullying. But look at the transformation, she’s changed her body and this has had a massive effect on her confidence levels.
If you’re not able to sign up for my new personal training rapid weight loss programme or join my bootcamps and you want to train from home then Hannah’s DVD is worth a look, and with a familiar face to work out with, maybe this is just the thing that you need to help you get in shape in the new year.
If you are interested in Hannah’s Body Blitz DVD, click here to find it on Amazon. Combine this DVD with The Lunch Box Diet (click banner above for all-new recipes) and you will do very well. Better still, get yourself to Exeter and let me work on you myself! Ha!
I’d imagine that many of you will be diving into the gyms in the new year, maybe even down here in Exeter, if so hopefully I’ll bump into you! Now if you’re new to the gym, please please make sure you get yourself an induction by a qualified trainer, otherwise you could find yourself in lots of bother! For starters, the trainers will teach you how to perform the exercises correctly, how to pair them together to meet your goals and show you the proper selection of reps and sets, again based on what you want to achieve.
Here’s a very common exercise in the gym, it’s called the Seated Row – it’s great for developing the back muscles, particularly in the upper area, and if you sit in an office all day, the seated row can really help to pull the posterior muscles back help you look taller and more confident!
More exercises like the one below can be found within Training Buddy
Hey! We’re in 2010, welcome. Do you know what, I’m so happy! Why? Well, A) You’re going to feel absolutely amazing this year B) It’s my mission to change more people’s lives than I did last year and C) I’ve got so many treats ahead for you, I’m so excited. Oh and thank you so much for reading my blogs, emails and more – thanks for your support in 2009 and let’s together make this year one that delivers you the body, confidence and passion to do more than just lose weight or get fit! Agreed?
By now you should know if you’re not involved in some kind of fitness then you should be. It changed my life and even when I was busy, when I ‘got into it’, it changed my life. I am aware though that for a lot of people, finding the time to exercise and just getting that ball moving is a real struggle. That’s why, you can now download Fitness, Even When You’re Really Busy - there’s 50% off and an added extra discount for 24 hours only using the code ‘happynewyear’.
This new ebook is for anyone who needs a good kick start in the new year. If you want more energy, to feel a real zest for life and remember what I said in ‘The Snowball Effect’, if fitness isn’t in your life, it simply has to be.
Picture the scene, it’s Christmas day and my dad opens his latest present. It’s a power ball grip strengthener – i’ve done a post featuring these before, but since I’ve just acquired a lovely new flip video camera for christmas myself, I thought i’d update the blog with what I think is a quite a funny video. On a serious note, these powerballs aren’t gimmicks – they seriously help you build up arms strength, particulary the wrist which is great for tennis, squash, badminton, body building, climbing, bowling and many other sports. If you have generally poor strength in the wrist then this will affect the way you perform your exercises in the gym. This little tool is brilliant, as you’re about to see. I cant wait for your comments on this one…
I’ve included some links below to powerballs if you want them… There are now 4 of these between our houses!
Click Here for Powerballs @ Amazon.co.uk
Click here for Powerballs @ Amazon.com (USA + WORLDWIDE)
Ouch, my head is still bruised. In our final bootcamp of 2009 this morning, I decided to create a game using the big red boxes at our gymnastics club – they’re great, we jump over them, push them, wrestle with them and more.
I decided it would be fun to stand them all up tall and create ‘Chase The Elf’ with my little green hat stuck over my eats to amuse my bootcampers. After several hilarious games with screams from the girls as they caught each other (you can’t really see each other as they’re so tall, so it installs that sense of unknown), I decided to get involved.
In a split second before ending the session I decided to go to knee height – Alison, our new bootcamper (who has been doing great coming to pretty much every session since she started, well done you), ran directly into my head. As a result, the following photos show the evidence.
The message of this post! Erm, exericse is can be hilarious, but sometimes you can get a few bumps and bruises, you just have to get up and carry on. Needless to say, I had a lovely email from one of the bootcampers after this morning’s session which I thought i’d share to give everyone some motivation to find a bootcamp or something close to you that offers the same enjoyment as New Body Bootcamp here in Exeter.
A bicep curl is an isolation exercise
I wanted to do a quick post today to show you the difference between what we call compound and isolation exercises. It’s quite important to know the difference if you’re using weights which you should know by now are important not only for building muscle, but also losing weight, as the more muscle in the body, the less room for fat. If you’ve not implemented strength training into your programme then you need to, and I’ve got a great solution for you which I’ll come onto in a moment.
But first of all, what’s the difference between a compounds and isolation exercise?
A compound movement is where several muscle groups are being used at once. So, in the example below we have a press up. The press up is a big ‘pushing movement’ which develops the pectorals (chest), triceps (back of arms, or bingo wings!) and delts (shoulders). A compound exercise is great because when multiple muscle groups are recruited, you get more bang for your buck – perfect if you’re short of time and want to get the whole body exercised. By putting a series of compound exercises together in what we call a circuit, you can seriously increase the heart rate, which is ideal for fat stripping workouts.
Compound = Pressup
Now an isolation exercise is where one muscle group is being recruited, such in the example below of the tricep kickback. These exercises are great if you’re looking to build a certain area of the body, but if you’re looking to get overall strength, you can easily make do with big compound movements. In my bootcamps we tend to work large muscle groups (compound), which create more of a hormonal response, thus generating more fat stripping and weight loss cells.
It would take three isolation exercises to get the same benefit of the pressup. You would have to perform a tricep exercise, a shoulder exercise and a chest exercise. By executing compound movements, these are what we call functional exercises, movements that your muscles would require for day to day operation, recruiting multiple muscles, at different intensities.
Isolation = Tricep Kickback
Where isolation exercises are definately beneficial, I think they tend to be overused for many people who simply want to lose weight – bigger compound movents such as squats, deadlifts and the above pressup are fantastic for both. People get conditioned in the gym to working all of the isolation machines, where they could simply hit the compound movements and get the same results. Plus remember your rep ranges 15 for toning, 12 for size and 8 and lower for strength. Having said that, you need to work until you feel uncomfortable remember, let the lactic acid in the muscles build up until it’s like a balloon about to pop!
If you’re looking for more exericse demos, with all the muscles used then head over to http://www.strength-training-anatomy-exercises.com
If on the other hand you’re looking for specific fat burning workouts then one of which I would highly recommend is Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulance Training System which I have arranged you a $4.95 trial of.
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