Intermediate Workout

This circuit is a bit more involved the exercises are harder and the whole thing is designed for someone that is quite comfortable with body weight exercises and exercising.  This routine is time based rather than reps based you should spend a minuet on each exercise with a 30 second rest period between.

Cat Dips
Targets - Shoulders 

Cat dips

You should start in a downward facing dog pose with your body at a 90 degree with hands and feet on the floor you should then bend your arms and in a slow steady movement and flatten your body then arch your back and end in an upward facing dog.

Hip Raises
Targets - Hips flexors and lower abdominal

Start in a normal crunch position with your legs at 90 degree angles lift your legs off the ground keeping your upper back on the floor as much as possible then gently lower your legs back down.

Hip raises

Star Jumps
Targets - cardio
Start with your feet together and your hands by your sides jump and move your feet to just over shoulder width apart and at the same time move your hands above your head then jump and return to the start position.

Press ups
Targets - tri-ceps, chest and biceps

start with your toes on the floor and your hand under your shoulders you should have a straight line from your shoulders to your heels try not to sag in the middle or let your bum stick in the air, then you bend your arms so your chest is just off the floor and straighten to return to the start point.

Sit-ups
Targets - abdominal 

You will need to anchor your feet jamming them under a couch or something similar will work great you want your legs bent and you back flat on the floor.  cross your arms over your chest and bring your elbows over your knees keeping your back as straight as possible and gently return to the start position.

Burpees
Targets - legs, arms and cardio 

start in the press up position perform one press up then jump your legs in so your feet are level with your arms and spring up then squat down and move back in to the start position.

Squats
Targets  - legs

stand with your legs shoulder width apart fold your arms in front of you and hold them at shoulder height you want to bend your legs and hips making sure that you knees don't move over the front of your toes till your legs are bent about 90 degrees.

Plank
Targets  - abdominal

Start in the same position as press ups and hold the top position.

Dips

Dips

Targets  - triceps

you'll need a bench or a chair or something similar start out with your hand on this and sitting in front of it your fingers should be facing the same way as you are and and your feet should be out in front of your with your legs straight know you should straighten your arms keeping the 90 degree angle at your hips and your leg straight then go down so your almost back on the floor.

Tuck Jumps
Targets  - legs, abdomials and cardio

start standing making sure that you have enough headroom the exercise is to jump up and to bring your knees to your chest and bend your knees when you land.

You can use this as a whole body workout with a Carido part if you really want to push it dial the carido sections up and do them for a 90 seconds instead.

Beginners Circuit workout

Here a cool circuit you can do at home this should help you get fit once you've completed this circuit you will have done 300 reps in total.

Jumping Jacks 15

Crunches 15

Squats 10

Leg kicks 10

Press Ups 10

Back extensions 15

Lunges 10

Spotty Dogs 15

Repeat 3 times

Sex and Performance

This is an idea that many people have from pro athletes to gym rats.  the idea that having sex the night before may hinder your performance by lowering testosterone and expending energy is well established.

This idea seems to have started with boxers who were told to abstain from having sex even for weeks before a fight in the hope that this might give them the edge in the ring or out of fear that, that edge might be taken away.

The couple of studies that I have been able to find on this subject seem to test things like grip strength VO2 max and aerobic power.  But this idea seems to be most prevalent in sports that place a high importance on aggression i.e. boxing or American football.  So these tests may not be the best to gauge the effects that can help athletes like aggression.

There seems to be little or no evidence that points to sex actually lowering testosterone and I have found some evidence that states it might actually increse testosterone but nothing conclusive. 

So maybe the coaches are not specifically worried about the physiological effects of sex but the psychological effects.   The idea behind the psychological effects is that it might lower an athletes aggression and competitive spirt, but on the other hand having sex hte night before might help to reduce strees and relax the athlete which could lead to a better night sleep.

Some coaches state that the reason they make their athletes abstain from sex the night before has nothing to do with the effect sex has on the athlets but it is that having sex the night before or going out looking for sex the night before may cause the athletes to lose sleep and this is shown to adversley effect performance.

Last of all the idea that sex might sap energy from an athlete also seems at least in the sciencetific community is not true as several authors state that sex burns between 30 - 50 calories one even stateing that sex frequently can't be too exausting as many sessions last only 5 minuets.  So i guess the moral of this is if your having boring, short sex then this won't affect your performance by reducing the amount of energy you have availble but if your having fun sex for a long time this might.

Cold Hands can Lead to a Longer Workout

According to new research by the American Heart Association, keeping your hands cold can help you to workout for longer.

New exercisers frequently say that they stop working out because they feel uncomfortable and hot.  This research shows that something as simple as holding a cold bottle of water can help to either increase the intensity that you can work at or increase the time you can work out.

This is because holding something can cool your palms and pull heat away from your body cooling your core and this keeps you from feeling overheated and uncomfortable.

As well as having this great stamina enhancing effect it is also important to stay well hydrated while working out and having a bottle of water with you will make you more likely to drink whilst you are working out.

Weight Loss: Resistance vs Cardio

In this post I'll look at what is more effective for losing weight resistance training or cardio.


According to to a new study in the American Journal of Physiology cardio training is the most effective way to lose weight is cardio training.

The training that was measured in this study was: 1)Resistance Training, which comprised 3 days/wk, 8 exercises, 3 sets/exercise, 8-12 reps/set 2) Aerobic Training, which was equivalent to 19.2 km/wk (12 miles/wk at 75% peak O2 uptake and 3) was both of these combined.

For this study "weight" was measured by the change in the amount of Fat (both subcutaneous, visceral, and liver fat) you can clearly see from the graph below that resistance training was clearly a lot less effective at reducing these type of fat as Cardio training and a combination of them both according to the authors of the study were statistically indistinguishable from just cardio.

But if you take a look at this table what you see is that resistance training does make you lose subcutaneous fat and this is the fat beneath the skin which is the fat that make you look fat, and the combined training increased the amount of this fat that was lost.  This study would suggest that if you want to lose fat then doing a combined Cardio and resistance training program is best but if you really want to choose one over the other then you should go for cardio.

However this doesn't take into account the other benefits of resistance training so I would recommend doing both types of training because then although you may not lose that much more fat you will increase the muscle tone and this will make you look better as well.

How to Build Muscle

This topic really deserves a blog all of its own and I'm sure that I will come back to this topic in the future but just a quick simple skeleton guide to what you have to do to build muscle.

The obvious thing when building muscle is that you will have to do resistance training of some sort be this body weight or the more traditional free weights or resistance machines.  Which one you choose depends on what you have available and what level of training you already have.  Obviously if you don't have access to a gym then you will likely not have any resistance machines and may not have a wide weight range of free weights.

If this is the case then you will need to be using body weight exercises of course you have the old classics of Push-ups, Sit-up and chin-up but there are obviously other exercises need to build a strong body.  To get a full body work out the important thing is to be able to work all of your muscles and to build muscle those exercises will need to be hard enough that you are only able to complete 8-12 reps per set.  I'll go into more detail about exercises in another post.

Try telling this guy body weight exercise can't get you strong!

If you are using a gym or have a nice selection of free weights at home then you have a lot more options you will be better able to isolate muscles and change the angle at which you do the exercises.  If your just starting you might want to start on the resistance machines that most gyms now have as these are a great way to practice the action of weight lifting and to build muscle that you may not have used extensively before.

If your already quite experienced you might want to go straight to free weights and this has been the most popular type of training for guys to build muscle.  The reasons for this may be as simple as you look more manly lifting weights than using the machines or doing push-ups but there are also performance reasons lifting free weights means that you need to stabilise the weights as you lift them and this leads to more muscles being activated as well as a greater amount of flexibility you can use free weights in so many different ways that you can work out your body in more ways than the resistance machines and you can more easily add weight to this more easily then with body weight.

So when you've picked the exercise you want to do the next stage is to decide how to train do you do a full body work out every day or choose a split routine.  I would recommend a split routine as you want to put your muscles into an overloaded state and this will likely result in muscle soreness the day after training and a split routine will allow you to recover whilst training other body parts.  An example of a split routine would be chest and back, biceps and triceps, shoulders and legs and with all of these I would do core work as well.  There are other splits you can use it comes down to what you prefer really this is just one example.

as to how much weight you should use and how many reps and sets you should do the all come down to weather you want strength or muscle mass increases.  As the strength continuum below shows the two variables are intensity and volume (or weight and reps) as the reps increase the strength benefits decrease and your able to do more reps.  so ideally if you were wanting to develop just strength the best thing would be 1rep at maximum intensity but this isn't a great way to train as it can be dangerous but 4-8 reps to to the point where you can't complete the exercise without your technique failing is great for training strength.  but for muscle growth of (hypertrophy) the sweet spot is the 8-12 rep range to technical failure this will give you the best muscle size increases.  for both of these anything from 2 - 5 sets is fine for strength you'll probably only get to about 3.
                     

Is Weight Loss Really What Your After?

When I ask people what there goals are and why they want to start working out more often then not the reason is that they want to lose weight but I doubt this is a big shock to anyone.  However this may be what the think they want but lots of people who set out to lose weight are still unhappy with there appearance after they reach there target weight and this is because there real goal and what they wanted to look at the end of there "diet"wasn't really about weight loss what they wanted was body re-composition.

What most people really want to do is change the way they look not really how heavy the are.  What you need to do is both exercise and have a healthier diet.  This means that through the dieting you will lose fat and through exercise you will gain muscle and muscle definition.  Even if you don't lose much weight by the end of this diet you may look significantly different but going just by the scales this won't be reflected.

You have to remember that muscle weighs more than fat and this is frequently why people become disheartened when begging there new diet and exercise regime as they may lose some fat but also put on some muscle and the scales will show this as a negative but maybe the mirror will have a different story.

When thinking about your goals you should take this into account and perhaps instead of i want to lose 4 kg maybe a goal should be to lose inches of your waist or to drop clothes sizes maybe even to just fit into that favorite piece that you can't get into right now.

Also it is important not to check too much if you start a diet and measure your waist or jump on the scales every day because you won't see results straight away and this may just take away all your enthusiasm for your new diet and exercise regime.  wait a week or two and you'll be more likely to see results and carry on and get to your end goals.

Tabata Protocol

I'm a big fan of the Tabata protocol i think it really helps my fitness goals but what is it, whats it good for and how should it be used.

Firstly what is a Tabata workout well here goes a full Tabata work out takes 14 minuets. first you should warm up at a low intensity for 10 minuets so that your muscles are warm and ready to perform at maximum effort.  Then you have your 8 sets of 20 second burst of activity at 170% of your VO2 max (you probably won't know this figure as it take lab tests to determine) with rest periods of 10 seconds between these this will take 4 minuets.  Now if you have performed a true Tabata workout then you shouldn't be able to in any way complete another round you should be completely exhausted and this is what people don't tend to understand just how hard you have to work to achieve 170% VO2 max.

Now how should you use the Tabata protocol during the study the group used this protocol 4 times a week and also did a 30 minuet steady state workout once a week.  So despite what some people say you shouldn't do Tabata workouts exclusively you should maybe use them twice a week as part of your training program .

Based on the results from the study it would appear that Tabata training can help improve performance but after about 3 weeks the benefits start to wear off and trainees can experience a plateau and it might be better for them to switch to a different type of exercise.

So by all means use Tabata training but don't think its the miracle to all your training needs like everything the most important thing when training is to have variety.

Strength Training for the Outdoors

When doing any sort of strength training outside the obvious problem is that you don't have much in the way of equipment and this means that you need to get creative with some body weight exercises if your trying to build true strength then you'll need to be doing exercise which you can't complete over 10 reps with if you've just started training you'll probably be able to achieve this with standard press-ups, sit-ups, squats and similar exercises, but pretty soon you'll find that you are unable to get the same benefits from these exercise.

So what are some great ideas for training outdoors the best advice I can give is to find a kids playground (obviously free of kids at the time) or the fitness trail that are present in a lot of parks at the moment, these areas have some of the best outdoor fitness equipment strangely sometime the kids playgrounds are better then the areas designed for exercise.

So when strength training outside you want to be doing things like incline sit-ups, inverted like in these pictures or you can go for cheap exercise equipment like resistance bands, I love these there great if you want them to build muscle you'll need on of the extra strong ones.  They are good for lateral raises and chest presses, shoulder presses, rows and tricep extensions the only thing I find hard to do with them is Bicep work I just find that you don't get even pressure through out the movement otherwise great piece of kit.

The general rule of strength training outside is to be creative try new things if you hear about some new crazy exercise try it out and decide for yourself the worst that will happen is that one exercise in your workout might fall flat or you'll struggle to do it or maybe look a bit silly doing handstand push-ups against a tree.

Outdoor Training

Here is my list of pros and cons for outdoor training.  I love running outdoors mostly because I like interval training and tabata training and this is almost impossible to do properly on a treadmill so i find it personally much better training outside but there's defiantly some down sides.

Pros

So what are the upsides to training outdoors

• You have things to look at
• Its free
• You can soak up some sun and get your daily dose of vitamin D
• You can go as fast or slow as you want and change how fast you go instantly
• Its more functional for daily activities
• If your training for a race these tend to be held outdoors so you'll be used to this.
• You can mix it up and keep it interesting by picking new routes
• Can be more motivating
• People report a greater sense of accomplishment when running outdoors
• It tends to be more challenging and to use more calories then running on a treadmill

Cons

• Its dependent on weather
• Its difficult to keep to a constant pace
• Its hard to keep track of how far you are going unless you have expensive equipment to keep track or plan your route before hand
• You can't just stop and leave if you've run away from home or your car you need to go back
• There can be personal safety issues especially if running at night

Inverted Row

My new favorite exercise this is great this simple exercise can be done easily great for working your back and arms and also give you a bit of a core work out as well.

Where I train I need to climb trees to do pull ups and this can get old fast especially when doing multiple sets so this exercise is a great alternative.  Also if your goal is to be able to chin ups this is a great way to develop the necessary muscles.

Also as I train outdoors it is hard to train the shoulders and upper back and this is a fantastic way around that, I love to super set these with wide arm press ups to get a great upper body workout.

As for matters of injury prevention you need to develop your back as much as you do your chest other wise you will have muscular imbalance and this can lead to poor shoulder stability and ultimately increases your chances of injury or chronic pain.

Work Smart Not Hard

To get great results from your training be it cardio gains or muscle gains or just health gains, it is very important to get your training program right its no use doing 5 sets of 15 reps if you goal is to be a power-lifter, you'll just never get there if your not lifting high weights for low reps and doing compound movements like clean and jerk and dead-lifts and most importantly of all overloading your muscles.  But if your goal is to improve your fitness build bone density or just tone up 5 sets of 15 is probably fine.

Similarly its also not the best training plan for a long distance runner to just run the distance they are aiming for, yes your cardio system will get a great work out but and you'll know that you can make the distance but you'll struggle to get faster if you don't do resistance training especially on your legs or if you don't do interval training to increase your VO2 max which helps you run faster for longer.

In short there are different training programs for everyone's goals and for different people wanting to achieve the same goals.  In the end the best training for you is probably the training you enjoy the most.  the reasons for this are obvious if your not enjoying a work out your unlikely to stick at it.

Now this can pose a problem for people wanting to get fit who just don't like to work out who have tried all sorts of sports training program and activities but just can't stick with them.  But if your problem is that you don't want to spend hours at the gym or running in the park you don't have to if you structure your work outs properly you should be able to get a great full body work out in 30-40 minuets including cardio.

Using training ideas like supersets or trisets and doing cardio exercises like star jumps or stepping between your sets is a great way to both shorten the length of your work out, without compromising results.  It will also help you to mix up your workouts training in different ways shocks your body and can help you to avoid the dreaded plateau if your a seasoned trainer or getting bored if your just starting out.

Stay tuned I'll have more on this soon.

Alternative Benefits of Strength Training

So I've been posting a lot about cardio workouts and the benefits of interval training but I've been neglecting the other side of working out resistance (or weight)  training.

So here goes resistance training should always be part of everyone's work out plan regardless of your goals if your trying to lose weight, become healthier,  get arms like this guy or just open that jar at home resistance work can help you.

Training for functionality is really important if your training goals aren't about image or being some crazy strong superman, resistance training can still help you.  A great benefit of being stronger is that you are able to more easily to preform everyday tasks like carrying shopping or taking out the rubbish ect.

But the benefits of resistance training don't stop with body image and functionality, resistance training has also been shown to have health benefits strengthening the heart muscle as well as increasing bone density and can help to prevent injuries by strengthening joints.  

It has also been shown to help patients with kidney problems increasing blood flow through the muscle and improving phosphate removal also patients with a greater amount of lean muscle mass have a higher survival rate.

Here is a great article about the benefits of strength training.