5 Gym Gold Nuggets

1. Crush the bar.

No matter what the lift wether it's flat bench, dead-lifts or cleans upon first touch of the iron rod get a grip as if you're trying to crush a soda can. This excites your nervous system, and causes receptors/motor units to prepare your body for the lift.

                              

2. Attitude is a choice!

I've trained a few athletes/clients who've come to me saying they're having a below par (sh#t) day. The thing is if you have one of these days on match day you still have to rise to the occasion. Best thing to do is rate your day with a percentage, let's say it’s a 60% day, make it your best 60% day possible... You could go for the same program thats been set out on that given day but lessen the volume of work.

You never know might just surprise yourself!

3. What is your Underlying Motive!

This is probably the most important factor to acknowledge in terms of getting the best results possible. I see so many clueless zombies approaching the gym with no goal, no motive or direction. You have to want and know the end result you’re trying to achieve. 

The most common answer I get is "I want to tone up and lose weight" ummm hello, slap yourself immediately! 

Here's some real motives:

My husband left me, I have low self confidence and I want to look great at my best friends wedding in 4months. (ok that took some digging). 

I want to walk again. (She did)! (after 6months and medical practitioners had written her chances off).

I feel insecure in the changing rooms around other players and I want to improve my athletism so I don't get cut from the team. 

Soz not soz...

4. Always Build Strength and Fitness on a Solid Foundation.

If you have achy joints, dodgy posture, muscle imbalances, reoccurring injures etc You need to work on these areas before trying out complex lifts (such as olympic lifting). This is where many people have failed. Depending on your training age (how many weeks, months, years) you’ve been an athlete or gym goer it is detrimental you do the preparatory work before complex lifting.

A good trainer will always work on form, muscular imbalances and corrective needs prior to flogging a dead horse so to speak!

5. Let Food be thy Medicine.

Fats, Carbs and Protein are all essential nutrients for your body and the way it functions so cutting back will leave you feeling terrible.

Drink plenty of water and ditch the carbonated, sugary or caffienated drinks.

Keep it simple and try to prepare your meals a day ahead so you don’t over indulge or cause mindless eating.

You know what real food is: things that grew in the ground, on a tree, came out of the sea, ran on the land, or flew through the air.  Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts are all great examples of REAL food.

On top of that, you know what crap food is: food that comes from a drive-thru window, a vending machine, box, bag, or wrapper.  If it has an ingredient list longer than A Game of Thrones, it’s probably not good for you.  If it started out as real food and then went through fourteen steps to get to the point where you’re about to eat it, it’s probably not good for you.

10 week transformation

Week 1 of 10 week Transformation

I freaking love my job... I meet people from all walks of life whom all have unique goals and motives for hiring a personal trainer. More than anything I love a challenge. As much as it’s a job for the trainer to plan in order to get results you need a dedicated client that is willing to put in the hard yards and commit to the set plan. When the going gets tough, fatigue sets in you have to remind one of the goal/ end result to ultimately create a NEVER GIVE UP ATTITUDE leaving no room for failure.

Everyone responds to training differently depending on genetics, lifestyle, hormones, sleep patterns, nutrition, stress and age. If you can iron out a few of your vices (namely late boozy nights and junk food) nest up at a decent hour and you might have a chance of succeeding in the gym. Always sort your health out and stress levels before loading physical stress to your system.

Diego (pictured) he loved a night out, his stress levels were rather high and he mainly focussed his workouts on cardio-vascular activities such as running, boxing and classes at his local gym. 

Together we set a challenge of 10weeks to get him ripped and beach body ready. To add a little competitive twist we got his workmates to each pay £100 towards an office biggest loser competition (highly competitive environment) 11 people signed up and the weigh-in commenced. The winner was the person who had the biggest percentage loss of body-fat. (Trainers out there reading, I highly recommend this type of competition in your facility) I’ve never seen the gym so busy!

To Diego's surprise in the first 3 weeks I told him he needed to raise his calorie intake (good calories), ditch the cardio for now and focus on getting strong.

We utilised heavy compound lifts tapering to some isolated muscles in a split program of Anterior Chain/Posterior Chain and Total body dynamic training. 

Example Anterior:

Front Squat. 5/5 (sets/reps)

Flat Bench

Incline Press 

Arnold Press

TRX standing Triceps

Staggered Push ups

Example Posterior:

Conventional Dead lift 5/5 (sets/reps)

Hammer Grip Chins

Kneel b/o Rows

TRX Low Rows

Reverse Flies

21s Curls.

Example Dynamic: A brutal total body circuit which could consist of whatever is available to you on the day. It could be a Modified Strongman session, hill sprints or bringing a piece of equipment like a kettle bell to the park and attempt as many exercises as you can. What I want out of this session is to shock the nervous system and the result is a training stimulus you won’t achieve from conventional gym training.

You can include these as an example.

Sled drags/pushes

Kettle bell swings

Battle ropes

Box jumps

Tire Flips

Leopard Crawls

Prowler

Farmer Walks

After that training block he'd already packed on a solid 1.5kg lean muscle and shed from 14.5% body fat to 9% even though he was eating a lot more than usual of quality food.

Skin-fold Callipers to ensure a subjective result.

As you can imagine we were both happy by the results so far but we had a long way to go and I didn't want him to lose motivation or fall off the rails. 

I told him to keep doing what he was doing nutrition-wise but we were going to formulate a new training block. This time we went for more of a 8/12 rep range and more total body including super sets to failure.

KB front squats

Joining in on the fun!

To push him along I competed with him during a few of the Dynamic Circuit Training...

Some weight Ab work for icing on the cake in the final week!

Row intervals (Game face).

In the final training block Diego started to deplete his calorie intake in order to lose the last bit of  body fat. We figured if he got to around 8% there was no chance he'd lose the comp.

The session plans in the final weeks were intense, we were super setting and added some blasts of boxing/rowing/sprints etc in the sessions with limited rest periods.

                 

So there you have it he now struts the beaches sporting the bod from god! The hard work paid off and he’s £1100 richer. Final Body fat was Just below 8%. Well done champ!