Exercise of the Week

Side Plank

The side plank is a great exercise for your obliques and transverse abdominals and is a great addition for any core workout.

The do this exercise correctly start in a push-up position, then lift one hand off the floor and turn your body so that it is side on to the floor keeping your body in a straight line from head to toe.

The exercise can be made a lot more difficult by going into the star position as show in this picture, this makes you a lot more unstable and forces you to work a lot harder.

Or the exercise can be mad easier by keeping both feet on the ground and spacing your feet wider to increase your stability.

This is a static exercise the position should be held for at least 30 seconds and you should do 3 - 4 sets remembering to do the exercise on both side of course.

Do You Want A Free Personal Training Session

Do you live in the Brighton and Hove area.  Are you looking to get fit.  Fancy trying Personal Training but never had the money.


Throughout June and July I am offering free taster sessions for anyone who is interested in getting fit.

Just call or e-mail me and we can chat about your goals and what sort of training you like then we can arrange for your taster session which will consist of a 45min fitness session with both cardio and resistance training elements.

After the session we can talk about perhaps carrying on training with me on a regular basis or I can design a workout plan for you to follow to achieve your goals.

Exercise of the Week

1 Leg Romanian Dead-lifts 

This exercise may look a little silly when your doing it down at the park but it is great for building up your Hamstrings, an area which can sometimes be a problem for someone just training using body weight exercises.

To do this exercise correctly start stand with your feet shoulder width apart arms out straight in front of you.  Then lean forward lifting one leg off the floor as in the picture, taking care to keep your back straight and your leg in line try to touch your toes with your outside hand.

Repeat this motion on the same leg this time touching your toes with your inside hand.  then switch legs and repeat this is one rep.  This motion should always be done in a smooth slow manner resist the urge to move down to quickly and to whip back up the whole exercise should be one smooth fluid motion.

If you need to make this exerise a bit easier you can do it as a normal Romanian dead-lift and leave both feet on the ground and if you want to make it harder you can stand on a pillow or other soft surface and this will force you to work harder to keep your balance.

Ice Baths - What Are The Benefits

When I used to compete a lot in judo I was at a competition and my last fight of the day was for the bronze medal I'd had about four or five other fights that day then a little break and my fight for the bronze was against a black belt from Minorca it was a tough fight and went to golden score and finally to a judges decision all in all the fight was pretty flat out for 8 minuets of actual fight time the clock being stopped when we were.

Anyway after the fight when I staggered off the mat the doctors, who were there to watch as the comp was part of the Island games, said that I could have done with an ice bath, at the time I wondered what that would have done.

Ice baths work by causing the blood vessels in the muscles to contract forcing blood filled with lactic acid away from the muscles allowing new blood to fill the muscles it also will reduce any swelling and similar things that arise from . 

According to research by the university of ulster this Cryotherapy is useful in reducing muscle soreness by up to 20% for four days after some intense exercise the test subjects stayed in the baths from 5 minuets up to 25 minuets.

However its not necessarily the best method for reducing soreness for one its not exactly comfortable, despite what this happy fellow looks like, the effect of prolonged use of ice baths are also unknown.  Also most studies that have been carried out were carried out on elite level athletes so the benefits may not apply to the same extent with the general population.

Building Muscle - High or Low intensity?

New studies have shown that low intensity high repetition training is equally effective in increasing muscle mass as high intensity low repetition training which goes against the traditional opinion of most trainers.

A study carried out by Mc Master university performed a variety of experiments changing different elements of a resistance workout, intensity, volume and muscle time under tension.

They have found that you get similar results from low intensity high volume training that you do from high intensity low volume training of course there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches if you find it hard to lift weights and don't like to push yourself to the very limit then the high intensity training won't be for you however if you don't have hours to train the low intensity training also won't be an effective way to train as this is very time consuming.

This study claims that the important thing is working to the point of fatigue not how many reps it takes to reach this point and that groups doing three sets of 80% of their 1RM and groups doing three sets of 30% of their 1RM had significant gains in muscle mass with little difference between the groups although the heavier group did gain more strength.

They also had a group doing 1 set of 80% of their 1RM this groups saw about half the muscle gain that the other groups did which is hardly surprising.

This study isn't necessarily perfectly accurate and I'm not sure of their sample size or composition but it is an indication that if muscle gains are your objective you don't have to go the typical gym rat route and lift big heavy things.

Body Weight Exercises

I have recently started a new exercise program which has lead to me walking around in a lot of pain but that's a good thing I'm almost sure it is although it doesn't feel like it.  The program comes from 'Your Are Your Own Gym' by 'Mark Lauren'

I love this book it's got load of great body weight exercises some really inventive stuff using house hold things, but mostly pure body weight stuff and some stuff that looks almost impossible like this.

The work outs that I'm doing at the moment are all based on ladders you start with one rep and each set you add a rep until a set where you reach failure then you take a rep off each set.  I find this is an effective if lengthy workout and that the first few and last few sets seem wasted as even after going to failure 2 or 3 reps  always seem to be easy.

The entire program is split into a periodised plan with 4 sections the first the ladders is an endurance approach which should be followed for two weeks the second section is a power approach, the third is all about power and finally it has a mixed period combining elements of all three to keep your body guessing.

I will report on how i find the workouts in the next section of the book when I have been doing them for a little bit.