Single Limb Training - No Weak Links

One of the areas of training that has been getting a lot of attention over the last couple of years is single limb training. You’ll sometimes hear it being called isolateral training, and the purpose is to isolate each individual limb as part of an overall training programme.

The thinking is that if you isolate each limb during training, you make it strong because it is forced to work fully, developing strength.

When an exercise is performed unilaterally (both sides at the same time), there can be a tendency for the stronger side to dominate the movement - this is certainly the case with barbell exercises such as the bench press or squats, but it also happens on machines such as lat pulldowns, chest press, leg press etc.

If this happens over a long enough period of time it can create a significant strength imbalance between both sides, resulting in a higher injury risk.

Cross Over from Professional Sport to General Population

Single limb training isn’t anything new - it has been used in professional sport for decades. In sports where there is a great emphasis on a single limb such as jumping or throwing sports (athletes take off on the same leg, or throw with the same arm over and over again), single limb work has been predominant for years.

The big crossover came when strength and conditioning coaches such as Mike Boyle started to announce he was using single limb variations of training for not just his sports clients, but his general population clients too. He argued that it was more functional, less likely to result in injury and led to greater health and fitness gains across the board. It’s hard to argue with these points too, for a number of reasons…

1. Single limb work uses lighter weights to achieve the same training effect, which reduces injury risk

2. Single limb work means each body part has to work independently, improving general strength

3. Technique improves because there’s no compensatory movement patterns

The switch to single limb work is often the change your body needs and acts as a stimulus for wider training adaptions. We know from research that with single limb training you still benefit the opposite site of the body. Across multiple studies the same results occur, where even the non-trained side of the body benefits from strength improvements.

There’s also research that suggests using dumbbells results in better muscle recruitment and activation than barbells. The same can also be said for kettlebells. When assessed, single arm kettlebell swings were shown to achieve greater abdominal and back muscle activation and recruitment, which will translate to greater strength adaption. Interestingly, the single arm swing activated the sling patterns in the body, so when the swing was done with the right arm, the upper right limb and lower left limb were recruited, aiding stability and helping to prevent possible back issues.

Single Limb Training at AdMac Fitness

We pride ourselves with being abreast of the research and ensuring that the advice we give our personal training clients has justifiable evidence pointing towards its effectiveness. This is why when you work with an AdMac Fitness personal trainer, you’ll be taking part in effective workouts that will include single limb work where appropriate.

So next time in your session at AdMac Fitness, when your personal trainer reaches for the kettlebells or dumbbells and tells you you’re going to so something like single arm rows, single leg squats, alternating shoulder presses or the like, you know why!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

How Important is Breakfast Really?

One of the oldest sayings in nutrition is that ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’, but have we ever put this to the test, or are we simply accepting it as a known truth? Is it merely a marketing claim or is there significant, strong evidence that points towards the claims being true?

We all have different breakfast habits - some people wake up absolutely staving and ready to eat a horse within minutes. Other people don’t need to eat for hours upon waking. Proponents of intermittent fasting will argue that this is not only a good way of approaching your nutrition, it’s in fact better than the traditional ‘early breakfast’ approach.

The problem with a lot of how we approach nutrition questions such as ‘is breakfast important?’ is that we look at them with a bias - such as weight loss.

When we ask the question, we’re doing so with too narrow a focus. When most people ask how important is breakfast, what they’re really asking ‘does eating breakfast help with weight loss?’ In this article we’re going to address the breakfast question from three different angles….

1. Does eating or avoiding breakfast help with weight loss?

2. Does eating or avoiding breakfast help with cognitive function?

3. Does eating or avoiding breakfast help with physical performance?

By looking at the same question through three different lenses, I hope be able to provide a better quality answer than ‘yes or no’.

Does eating or avoiding breakfast help with weight loss?

Regardless of the time or type of food we consume, weight loss is governed by energy balance - calories in versus calories out. Whether you eat breakfast or not, if you eat more energy than your body needs, you’ll put on weight. The reverse is also true.

What the weight loss and breakfast research shows is that there’s no clear and well-established link suggesting it’s either good or bad. You can find studies supporting both approaches - here’s one saying eating breakfast is good for weight loss and here’s one suggesting that eating breakfast is bad for weight loss. The best advice here is that do what suits you - if you’re hungry in the mornings, eat. If you’re not, don’t.

There is some thinking that says skipping breakfast certainly reduces overall calorie intake, but it may also reduce energy levels throughout the day, making you move less and therefore burn fewer calories, reducing weight loss. It’s a question of balance - if eating breakfast helps you feel more energised throughout the day, go for it. If not, maybe don’t.

I know that’s a pretty vague answer, but the key takeaway is that your weight loss isn’t purely determined by what you eat or don’t eat first thing in the morning. It’s down to energy balance and you can affect that at all different times of the day with your actions and food choices.

Does eating or avoiding breakfast help with cognitive function?

This is where things begin to become a bit clearer. We go from being able to make casual links between breakfast and an outcome to being able to test the effects of breakfast on cognitive capabilities. That being said, the brain is a pretty complex machine so results will vary!

What we’ve learned from looking at the data is that there are some elements of brain function that eating breakfast helps, almost without doubt. The big one is memory - eating breakfast has been shown to improve both short and long term memory in participants.

Other aspects of cognitive function that appear to be improved by eating breakfast include ‘executive functions’ - an umbrella term that covers working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. This is interesting, because it links back to the weight loss point. If eating breakfast helps to improve self-control, it stands to reason that it will help those same people with making better food choices.

There’s differences in opinion about how different foods impact cognitive function in the mornings, with arguments about whether or not fat dominant foods, protein dominant foods and carbohydrate dominant foods are the best. In the absence of clear evidence, the AdMac Fitness suggestion is for you to experiments with all three and see what works for you.

Does eating or avoiding breakfast help with physical performance?

Here’s another area where the nuance makes for a difficult recommendation. Some people who have been intermittent fasters, or those who have become fat-adapted through long term ketogenic dieting for example, may struggle to train having eaten breakfast.

Other people may need some food in their system to help with their physical performance.

The reality is we’re all built differently and blanket advice doesn’t allow for nuance. What we do know is that when studied, a light breakfast (around 120 calories) appears to have a beneficial impact on performance. The research isn’t strong enough to suggest a light breakfast as advice as such, but the evidence points towards it helping.

For reference, 120 calories is roughly a large banana.

Further study suggests that skipping breakfast may reduce exercise capacity later on, suggesting that if you are a morning exerciser, you’ll need to eat something in the morning in order to maximise your ability to train. The evidence suggests that training whilst fasted will (for most people at least) reduce your exercise capacity, which has a knock-on effect on calorie burn and fitness improvements.

If we combine the advice across multiple different studies, perhaps a good bit of advice would be to eat a light (120 calorie) breakfast ahead of morning exercise in order to maximise training output. If you train later in the day, it’s not as important.

How Important is Breakfast Really? Final Thoughts…

Based on the evidence, breakfast is important if you’re an early trainer, or you’re going to do something that’s going to require a bit of brain power early in the morning! If either of those apply to you, eat something small, healthy and easy to digest.

When it comes to weight loss, it’s not that important - making sure you don’t overeat throughout the day is far more important than what or when you eat your first meal of the day.

Don’t obsess over the small things. Stick to what you know works for you and you won’t go far wrong!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

A NEAT Way to Improve Your Fat Loss Results...

The vast majority of personal training at AdMac Fitness originally come to us because they want help losing weight. They see our results and want our expert personal trainers to guide their own fat loss journey.

We approach fat loss with our personal training clients in three ways…

1. Exercise

2. Diet

3. Lifestyle

Ultimately fat loss comes down to creating a calorie deficit so all of these elements have to work towards the same goal - helping to burn more calories than you consume.

We don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to fat loss, because we’re all so different. A dietary approach that works for one won’t always work for somebody else because of factors such as time, access etc. This is why we approach it from a ‘coach the individual’ model. It’s our job to make sure your personal training is personal to you.

No two AdMac Fitness personal training clients will be on the same workout plans. There’ll be similarities, but weights, sets, reps and rest may be tweaked for a different outcome.

There is one element of fat loss though that we encourage all of our personal training clients to embrace and that’s something called Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, also known as NEAT.

What’s Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis?

This is any calorie-burning activity that isn’t specifically exercise based. It could include anything such as walking the dog, doing housework, DIY, gardening and anything in between.

By promoting general non-exercise activity we increase calorie burn throughout the day. It’s actually an incredibly powerful fat burner - you don’t always need to be working at a very high intensity for the calories to be burned. In fact, this comparison study between running and walking showed that walking burns around 75% of the calories running does, highlighting exactly how effective NEAT can be for promoting fat loss.

If you can make your days more active, you’ll certainly accelerate your fat loss. You don’t even need to make drastic lifestyle changes.

Simple Ways to Increase Your Daily NEAT

None of these ideas are absurd, nor do they require a complete transformation of how we live our lives. They can be included around hobbies and daily tasks, with the upside being the additional daily calorie burn…

• Cycle to work: For an average person in reasonable conditions, they’ll burn between 500 and 1000 calories per hour whilst cycling depending on speed, wind resistance, incline etc. If your cycle commute is 30 minutes each way, that’s an around an extra 2500 calories per day burned.

• Walk to the shops: There’s two benefits here - the first one is that you’re walking, which is obviously great. The second one is that you are doing a weighted carry on the way back as you carry for shopping too! Depending on the distance, there’s a lot of extra calorie burn here!

• Head out for lunch: If you work at home or in an office, make a point of going out for lunch. Even if you carry a packed lunch with you and eat it when you get to a fixed destination, just make a point of including daily steps in your day.

• Get off the bus or tube a stop early: If you have to commute to work via public transport, jump off a stop early. It’s a good way of adding the extra steps into your day and it’s not even that big of a hassle - if anything it might be a nice stress-reliever after a tough day at work!

How Much Difference to my Fat Loss will Increasing my NEAT Really Make?

A massive one, in all honesty. If you can increase your NEAT by 300-500 calories per day (which is really quite easy to do - it’s about 10,000 steps per day and is possible by following the tips earlier), you’ll be burning an extra 2100 - 3500 calories per week. Across the course of a year that’s 766,500 - 1,277,500 calories.

OK, those numbers are crazy, so let’s put them into context.

In a single pound of fat there’s 4086 calories, so by getting your NEAT up and assuming you don’t consume any further calories, you can accelerate your fat loss by an extra 0.5 - 0.9LBS per week. If you were on a long term weight loss plan, increasing your NEAT could add a further 25 - 50LBS of fat loss across the course of a year, which is a remarkable number for such low-intensity activity.

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Why We Track Your Progress at AdMac Fitness

Since we’ve been allowed to re-open and move our training back inside the studio, our AdMac Fitness personal training clients have been FLYING!

We’ve added new space, new equipment (new kettlebells, new squat rack etc) and have started to integrate them into training plans. The new training options, the new enthusiasm and our growing team of personal trainers has meant we’re back off to a flying start! It’s the best the gym has ever been and we couldn’t be happier or more proud of our clients!

This progress isn’t opinion either - it’s fact, which is the topic of today’s blog post… why we track your progress at AdMac Fitness.

There are lots of ways to measure progress when it comes to exercise, not all of them are as obvious as weight loss - in fact for many people, weight loss is a nice by-product of a process that makes them feel happier, healthier and generally fitter.

The important thing is that progress is being measured and we do it for a number of reasons…

It helps us as personal trainers to know we’re having the right impact…

Our job is ultimately to have a positive impact on your life. As a personal training client of AdMac Fitness, we’re interested in far more than your stats - yes, we want to track your weight loss, body fat loss etc, but we also want you to love your exercise with us. We want to know if it’s helping you mentally as well as physically. We want to be able to see tangible progress in your fitness, as well as your health.

By tracking your progress across a number of different factors, we can help you to see the bigger picture of how you are getting on. There is also credible research showing that this rewarding positive behaviour is motivational and will keep you working towards your bigger, longer term goals.

It’s difficult to always see your progress, because you’re with yourself all of the time and watch the progress as it happens. There’s the longer-term differences you’ll notice (clothes no longer fitting, belts need tightening etc), but day-to-day motivation is a little harder to spot. That’s one of the reasons we track your progress, so we can remind you of how far you have come with your training…

It helps us to keep on track of goals

By monitoring your progress on a regular basis, we can tell how close we are to achieving your goals, therefore helps us with our planning for each phase of your nutrition and training strategy.

Say for example you wanted to gain a certain amount of muscle before dieting and taking your body fat level back down. We might have set a target bodyweight to reach, at which point we’d switch track. By monitoring your progress, we’d know where you are in relation to each phase of the goal and therefore when we could switch things up.

You might have wanted to reach, say, 90kg for starting your diet. Unless we tracked it, we’d never know if you were close to the target weight or not! It means we can get ready for the next phase of training, so once you’d hit your goals we could immediately make the switch to the new training plan, with renewed focus.

Personal training works…

There is strong proof that personal training works (which we already knew), but what has become clear through the research is that it not only works, but it helps to change attitudes towards health living. By constantly reminding you of how well you are doing, the positive reinforcement from your trainer, coupled with the tangible proof of progress serves to motivate you further.

This can often be the trigger to enjoy exercise for many people. If you’ve spent your entire life feeling unmotivated or like a complete failure who can’t lose weight, then having a professional in your corner, supporting you and helping you to overcome obstacles can be utterly transformative.

This friendly approach is the reason we have so many successful AdMac Fitness clients. We’ve helped hundreds of people to change their attitude and enjoyment of health and fitness for good.

Maybe you could be another?

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Hot Weather Training - Follow Our Advice!

After a cold few months the mercury is beginning to climb and the summer has finally made itself known. The mornings are lighter, the days are longer and after all of the time spent indoors, we’re finally at a point where the outside is where we’d rather be. For many of us, that includes our exercise - outside of our PT sessions we’re heading out to walk, to run and to cycle.

Whilst the warm weather is amazing, there are a few important things to remember if you’re going to make your outdoor workouts as effective and safe as they can possibly be. Follow our guide to warm weather training and make the most of the summer exercise…

Sweating and hydration - how much drinking is enough?!

The most obvious aspect of exercising in the heat is making sure you’re adequately hydrated. What we know from research on the topic is that generally speaking, the higher the intensity of exercise in hot weather, the more we sweat. That sounds obvious, until we look into the data more. Generally speaking, the fitter you are, the more acclimatised to the heat you are and the more able to work at higher intensities you are.

This means the fitter and more acclimatised to the heat you are, the more you’ll sweat and therefore you’ll need more hydration. So if you’re a regular runner for example, don’t think “I won’t need a drink - I’m pretty fit” - the evidence shows you’re more likely to need a drink than an unfit person who won’t be working as hard as you!

General sweating rates are around 1.5 litres per hour in untrained people and up to 3 litres per hour in fit people, so account for this when exercising. Do so by drinking before you train and topping up during your run or ride.

Wear sunscreen!

Again, another obvious one but we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t mention it. Some people are worried that sweating reduces the effectiveness of their sunscreen, but what the data shows is that the effect isn’t as dramatic as people think.

In a study assessing factor 50 sunscreen applied for exercise, the research showed that even when sweating for 6 hours the sunscreen had only reduced to factor 30 protection, so is still a very effective block against the sun. This gives you peace of mind if you’re out for a long time, for example during a long bike ride or walk.

Apply the screen 15-30 minutes before exercise to allow it to soak into the skin properly. If you apply it then immediately work at a high intensity, you risk much of the screen being washed off.

Hydration - it’s more than just water!

The answer to every hydration question is usually ‘drink more water’, but it’s not quite as simple as that. When we sweat, we lose more than just liquid - we lose electrolytes as well, which are important minerals used in the contraction of muscles. That’s why we cramp during periods of high intensity exercise, because of lost minerals.

When rehydrating during exercise, it’s a wise idea to consume a drink containing electrolytes. There’s evidence to suggest they improve performance and also help to rehydrate more effectively than water alone, simply by optimising water absorption during exercise. This allows us to work at a higher intensity for longer, so are ideal if you’re looking to push for a PB!

Dress appropriately

This is more a practical tip than a performance one, but a few seconds checking the forecast before you head out is a way to save you a whole world of issues when you’re out. If you over-dress for the heat you’ll be stripping off layers quickly and you’ll have a lot of extra clothing to carry with you.

Also, focus on layers, not thickness. If you have multiple layers you can add and remove as you like. If you simply wear a thick layer with little on underneath, you give yourself no options!

Choice of materials is also important. Go for light weight, sweat-wicking materials that can help you stay comfortable in the higher temperatures. Materials such as cotton can absorb a lot of sweat, making you less comfortable, with clothes sticking to you as you get sweatier! These aren’t ideal for your fellow exercisers either, because they can begin to smell!

Exercise in the heat - final thoughts

We love outdoor exercise - in fact we did it over the winter thanks to the rules! But we want you to make sure you do things properly. Exercise safely, effectively and take into account our advice. Get outside and enjoy the best weather of the year in comfort! Take plenty of fluids, wear your sunscreen, drink isotonic drinks and make sure you dress appropriately for the conditions!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

How Hard Should I be Working?

No pain, no gain… One of the most well-known phrases in fitness, but how true is it? And how important is it in order to achieve a great level of health and fitness?

In this article we’re going to look at the evidence around exercise intensity and how hard training affects our fitness levels. We’ll look at what the evidence suggests is hard work, and exactly how hard you need to be training in order to achieve great health and fitness.

Finally, we’ll look at the influence of a personal trainer and whether or not there’s a scientific rationale behind hiring a personal trainer to work with you on your health and fitness goals.

Workout Intensity - What We Know

Sports science has progressed to a point where we understand that achieving excellent health is more than just absolute hard work. There’s essentially three main aspects to health improvement…

1. Training effectively (exercise)

2. Fuelling properly (food and nutrition)

3. Recovering fully (sleep, tissue repair)

All three are as important as one another - you can train hard, but if you eat a crappy diet, your progress is limited. You can eat really well, but if you’re not training effectively, the same thing happens. Finally, you can eat well and train well, but if you don’t recover fully you’ll limit progress.

So we know for certain that simply training super hard isn’t enough alone. But for now, let’s focus on exercise.

Recommended suggestions for exercise…

The generally-accepted western advice for exercise can be summed up by this recommendation from the American College of Sports Medicine…

To promote and maintain health, all healthy adults aged 18 to 65 yr need moderate-intensity aerobic (endurance) physical activity for a minimum of 30 min on five days each week or vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity for a minimum of 20 min on three days each week.

But what does this actually mean? It’s fine to make these suggestions, but there has to be a solid number attached to them, otherwise it’s down to personal opinion and perception of what hard work actually is.

Thankfully, there is a scientifically-established series of guidelines on what constitutes the various exercise intensities. Here they are…

There’s a lot of data in the table, but don’t worry if you don’t understand the terminology - most of it is information used by sports scientists. The bits you can take the most information from are the RPE scales (Rate of Perceived Exertion), although bear in mind these again are down to opinion.

The better one is the %HRMax, which means the percentage of your theoretical maximum heart rate. The closer to your HRMax you are working, the higher the exercise intensity.

If you’re wearing a heart rate monitor you’ll be able to see in real time exactly how hard you’re working, so you’ll know if you’re hitting a high enough intensity to make a meaningful change in your fitness levels. The app support on a heart rate monitor will also help you monitor and track your progress over time.

Adapting the Guidelines

It’s worth pointing out this too - these are a base minimum guideline for people to be ‘healthy’. This is the least amount of exercise you need to do in order to maintain an acceptable level of physical fitness.

At AdMac Fitness we don’t want our clients to be minimally fit - we want to push you to bigger and better things, maintaining a level of health and fitness that far exceeds the basic level. It’s why we have you deadlifting, swinging kettlebells, slamming ropes and the like!

The British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) suggests that once you’ve managed to hit the baseline guidelines for around 6 months, you can increase your weekly exercise from 150 minutes to 300 minutes and see a lot of extra benefits - we at AdMac Fitness agree. As long as you’re fuelling this correctly and recovering properly, your goal should be to exceed the 150 weekly minutes guideline.

For reference, 300 minutes per week is just over 40 minutes per day across 7 days, or an hours per day across 5 days (this would be our suggestion as it allows for a couple of recovery days).

Using a Personal Trainer Helps… A LOT!

The problem when you’re training yourself is you’re never going to push yourself beyond your normal capabilities - certainly not as much as you could or should. This has been proven time and time again with people attending gyms for years and not changing shape. It’s a fact that stacks up in the research too. In this study a group was split in two - one group had a PT, the other didn’t.

They were asked to select weights that would allow the completion of 10 reps of different exercises. In the experiment, the PT consistently lifted significantly heavier weights than the ones who selected their own weights. Over time this large difference has a huge impact on the weight lifted, the strength gained, the fitness improvement, the muscle built and the weight lost.

If you want to make better, faster progress… hire a personal trainer!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Posterior Chain - Go Muscles, Not Show Muscles

Last week on the AdMac Fitness blog we spoke about kettlebells and the amazing exercise versatility they can offer us. In one section of the article we spoke about the posterior chain and how it can be trained really effectively using kettlebells.

In this article we’re going to look at the posterior chain in more detail, outlining what it is and how and why it should be trained. We’ll look at the implications of not training your posterior chain and how a strong posterior chain will benefit you both athletically and from an injury prevention standpoint.

The Posterior Chain

To refresh your memory, the posterior chain is the group of muscles that run up the back of the body, from the head to the heels. They are interconnected to form a chain of muscles responsible for posture, movement, force generation and stability.

The main muscles in the posterior chain are the calves, hamstrings, gluteals, erectors, lats, traps and rhomboids.

Many people, especially those new to fitness, will ignore their posterior chain in favour of training more aesthetically important muscles. To those who are seeking aesthetics, they may question why you’d spend so much time training muscles people aren’t bothered about - who is going to be impressed by big hamstrings?!

The answer lies in the structure and function of the posterior chain.

Posterior Chain and Injury Prevention

It has been well-known for years that exercise is an effective treatment option for lower back pain. However, more recent research has shown that specific posterior chain exercises are more effective than general exercise when it comes to dealing with back pain.

The research was a meta-analysis, reviewing multiple back pain studies and the results were clear - by strengthening the posterior chain, sufferers of back pain experienced a reduction in pain with fewer adverse effects than those using conventional general exercise as their treatment approach.

There’s also research that shows the importance of stretching the posterior chain muscles to prevent injury. In a study of 545 Navy servicemen, a lack of flexibility in the posterior chain was an effective predictor of lower back injury. This information builds on previous reports that we can’t ignore flexibility work when it comes to an injury prevention approach. We can make an evidence-based claim that strengthening and stretching the posterior chain will serve as an effective treatment option for existing back injuries, but even better, it’ll help to prevent them occurring in the first place.

Posterior Chain and Sporting Performance

The posterior chain is one of the areas of the body that helps to generate force, which is obvious important for sport. We know from the research that the kettlebell swing improves maximal and explosive strength, which is in part down to the effect it has on strengthening the posterior chain.

We also have research data from studies on CrossFit athletes. This is useful information because the demands of CrossFit are so varied - it’s designed to challenge all aspects of fitness.

What the research says is that posterior chain training should form part of the daily or weekly programming for CrossFit participants, because it helps with movement proficiency and injury prevention measures. We can largely ignore the CrossFit part of the conclusion and extrapolate those findings to a wider active audience. If posterior chain training will help people to move better and reduces injury susceptibility, then it’s a good thing regardless of your choice of sport or exercise. Essentially, all athletes and should be both strengthening and stretching their posterior chain as a matter of their daily programming.

How to Train the Posterior Chain

The posterior chain responds better to movement based training rather than isolation work. Perhaps this is because it’s a series of interconnected muscles rather than isolated ones, but from an anecdotal perspective we prefer deadlifts and swings to hamstring curls and calf raises. Essentially any movement with a hip hinge will help to train the posterior chain in some way. Here’s a good selection of posterior chain exercises for you to try…

• Kettlebell swings - single arm, double arms or American

• Deadlifts - Romanian, stiff legged, single leg and standard

• Hyperextensions - ideally on a GHD

• Hang Cleans

• Farmers walk

Our suggestion is that you try these exercises with a variety of different weights, sets, reps and time spans. You’ll get the most out of your posterior chain training if you challenge it in different ways. True fitness means your body will be strong and adaptable, so if you only train it the same way you’ll only be developing a limited, one-dimensional fitness.

The other important point to remember when training your posterior chain is flexibility - you have to ensure you maintain a good level of flexibility and mobility by stretching. This not only allows you to exercise more effectively (you’ll be able to get into better positions, improving exercise technique), but you’ll also prevent injury through muscle tightness.

In conclusion, training your posterior chain regularly and effectively will help to prevent injury and will make you a fitter, stronger and more all-round athlete! Start doing it today…

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Kettlebells - Amazing Exercise Versatility

At the AdMac Fitness studio in East London, we’ve been upgrading some of our kit since we re-opened after lockdown. One of the new items our personal training clients may have spotted (and even used) is our new heavy kettlebell.

We invested in a heavy kettlebell because we’re big believers in training being more than just about aesthetics. At AdMac Fitness we want our clients to not only look fit and strong, but actually be fit and strong. One of the ways to achieve this is to continually present new challenges, making personal training interesting and varied, forcing the body to adapt in a positive way.

The new heavy kettlebell is the latest member of our kettlebell range at the personal training studio…

The AdMac Fitness kettlebell range…

Why kettlebells are so effective

We’ve written before about how important compound movements are in training, and the kettlebell swing is a classic example of a compound movement. In one single exercise you can effectively train all of the muscles along the back of the body. Not only that, you can improve movement quality, reduce injury risk and burn a lot of calories too!

Kettlebells train the ‘posterior chain’ muscles - the group of muscles that run up the back of the body, including the calves, hamstrings, glutes and back. The other thing that makes the kettlebell unique is that the exercise they’re most famous for, the swing, makes these muscles work eccentrically. This means they lengthen under tension.

This is known to help build more muscle and strength, plus it helps to lengthen the muscle which makes it more flexible and less susceptible to injury. It’s not often that you can say a resistance training exercise improves flexibility, but in the case of the kettlebell swing it’s absolutely true.

The muscles of the posterior chain…

Kettlebell Swing Technique

The biggest issue people have with the kettlebell swing is that don’t hinge properly - instead they lift with their legs and arms. The purpose of the kettlebell swing is to engage the hips and drive the weight forward. You don’t lift the kettlebell, you swing it, and the momentum is a big part of the exercise.

If you look at the video below you’ll see what we mean - note the focus is on keeping the legs almost straight, then swinging the kettlebell by driving hard through the hips. This movement engages the entire posterior chain, stretching and strengthening the muscles throughout. It’s a powerful movement and is supposed to be done with as much controlled ‘snap’ as possible.

The back stays straight throughout the movement and the spine as neutral as possible.

Benefits of Kettlebell Training

As we said earlier, the goal at AdMac Fitness is for our clients to not only look fit, but actually be fit. We know from research that the kettlebell swing has huge cross over into ‘real life’, not only does it improve the strength of the posterior chain, it also improves flexibility and mobility of the lower body - both of which reduce injury risk.

You can adjust the training effect of the kettlebell swing as well, just like any other form of weight training. You can lift a heavy kettlebell for strength and power development, or a lighter one for higher rep numbers which will develop endurance capacity.

Kettlebell training has a direct impact on your sporting ability too. Studies show that kettlebell swings directly improve strength and explosive power, which are really important in sport. By simply adding regular kettlebell swings into your training you’ll not only make yourself fitter, stronger and more injury-resistant, but a better athlete too!

You don’t just have to swing kettlebells…

Endless Exercise Versatility

Another benefit of kettlebell training is the endless exercise versatility you have with them. Kettlebells are like dumbbells in that come in a variety of weights, which lends itself well to different training approaches. You can perform lots of different exercises with them, for a start…

• Swings

• Single arm swings

• American swings

• High pulls

• Snatches

• Squats - overhead, goblet squats, front squats, split squats

• Lunges

• Presses - bench, shoulder

• Sumo Deadlift High Pull

• Deadlift - suitcase, stiff leg, single leg

• Rows

Alongside their specific use (swings etc), you can use them in place of dumbbells in lots of cases, such as with presses, snatches, rows and the like. This level of versatility is one of the many reasons we love them both as personal trainers and as people who like to exercise ourselves! Kettlebells are an excellent tool that will help anyone to get fit, regardless of their goals.

If you’ve never used kettlebells before they will add a whole new dimension to your training, increasing your gym skill level and challenging your body in lots of new ways. Our PTs are big fans of kettlebell training as well, so even if you’re not using them in your current training programme, they probably aren’t far away from making an appearance in your training!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Flexibility Underpins Fitness - Here's Why...

One of the most common problems we see as personal trainers is the complete lack of flexibility and mobility most people have when they first come to see us. A lot of us spend a huge chunk of our lives sat down, and the impact this has on our flexibility (and general health and fitness) is dramatic.

You may not think you spend that much time sat down, but think about your day for a second…

• We sit down to eat breakfast

• If we drive/get the bus/train/tube to work, we’re sat down

• If we work at a desk, we’ll be say down

• We’re sat down to eat lunch

• We’re sat down on the commute home

• We’re sat on the sofa

• We’re sat as we eat our evening meal

Now that may not apply to all of you reading this, but it’ll certainly be applicable to a lot of people. It might not seem like a big deal, but the issues that a lack of mobility causes aren’t immediately apparent - they come on over time and they get worse.

A lot of bad backs, hip issues, knee, shoulder, ankle and wrist issues stem from poor flexibility at one area or another. If the lack of mobility is allowed to get worse, it can cause much more severe issues in old age where movement is already compromised.

What Research Shows About Flexibility

There’s conflicting research about flexibility, but we know without question that flexibility and stretching exercises are prescribed by physiotherapists as a way to improve muscle and joint mobility, which reduces pain and enhances movement quality.

This is backed up in a lot of research that has been conducted over the years.

Interestingly, we don’t just have to perform stretching exercises to improve our mobility and flexibility. In this study, it shows that by performing strength training exercises to full range you can increase flexibility and enhance range of movement.

Whilst this has been known anecdotally in strength training circles for a while, it shows a wider audience that actually you don’t have to spend weeks doing yoga to improve flexibility, you can strength train too! (Although as shown in research, yoga is very effective at improving flexibility too!)

There’s also evidence that shows in high impact sports, or sports that will involve lots of high intensity sprints, twists, turns etc, that a stretching protocol will help to prevent injuries. This is because the muscles and tendons will become more flexible and compliant with movement, reducing the injury risk. It’s important to note however that if you’re not doing these sports then there’s no discernible benefit to a stretching practice from an injury prevention point of view.

Benefits of Improving Flexibility

Irrespective of what the research says, there’s no doubting the anecdotal evidence that improved flexibility makes you feel better. Feeling stiff and tight isn’t good, but the feeling of movement and freedom you get having gone through a thorough stretching session is great.

Where the scientific debate around when and how stretching is best applied, one thing is for certain and that’s that regular stretching is an effective way to retain long term full range of motion and that’s an important aspect of joint health and maintenance of movement quality. As we’ve discussed in the article, you don’t need to be heading down to the yoga studio every day to reach spiritual Nirvana, but thoroughly stretching post workout a couple of times a week should be sufficient to help keep your joints moving and your movement quality good.

How Flexibility Enhances Exercise Quality

There’s a direct correlation between movement quality and the effectiveness of an exercise. This comes down to a couple of main factors…

1. Better flexibility improves the range of motion that you have so you can perform exercise with better technique. This makes an exercise much safer and controlled.

2. A bigger range of motion allows you to increase the time under tension, which research shows is an effective way to improve strength and muscle size.

The research also shows that training with a full range of motion can lead to greater strength gains, so improving your flexibility may lay the groundwork for you getting stronger. In fact, if you’re struggling to improve your strength numbers it may well be worthwhile investigating whether or not your flexibility is holding you back by limiting your range of movement.

In all honesty, no matter what your training goals are it makes sense to optimise all areas of your health and fitness. Flexibility is a key part of that.

By improving flexibility you can impact a lot of other aspects of your fitness and movement quality, which will reduce injury, improve sporting technique and enhance your overall athleticism. For the sake of 15-20 minutes 2-3 times per week, you can make significant physical gains that will have a disproportionate impact on the rest of your being.

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

How do we 'Rate' Exercises?

If you’ve had personal training at AdMac Fitness, or anywhere else for that matter, there’s a good chance you’ll be familiar with a lot of the exercises we use in most of our programming. They’re not secret exercises, we didn’t invent them - our job is to use them in the correct way to help you achieve your health and fitness goals.

The question then is why do different variations of the same handful of exercises seem to appear in training programmes in different gyms, all over the world?

The answer lies in human movements. There are 7 human movements…

1. Push

2. Pull

3. Squat

4. Lunge

5. Hunge

6. Twist

7. Gait

All high quality training programmes feature a variation of exercises that are based around these movements. We employ all kinds of variations of deadlifts, presses, pulls, rows, twists, lunges, squats and runs to make sure our programming helps you to perform them effectively. The benefit of training the body in the way it likes to move is that you benefit from both the fitness improvements and functional capacity.

For example, when you’re performing a deadlift, the movement you’re actually performing is a hinge. The will make lifting and carrying easier in your day to day like. When you lunge, you improve your ability to do things like walk up stairs. When you perform twists, you improve your core strength and reduce the chances of back injuries etc.

Making exercise work for the client

Our job as personal trainers is to make sure that we select the right variation of an exercise for you and your goals, rather than just throw together a series of exercises that look good together. We consider your movement restrictions, your goals, your technique, your experience and your physical abilities.

Take squats for example. There are lots of variations of squats…

Back squats, front squats, goblet squats, split squats, pistol squats, jump squats, overhead squats, pause squats, sissy squats, hack squats, negatives etc etc

Your personal trainer will assess all of these options and select the right one for you, your goals, your abilities and your needs. You’ll then be coached through the movement, and your weights, rest periods, sets, reps, tempo and the like will be tweaked to keep you progressing and challenged. It’s not like in a generic training programme where you’re given an exercise and left to your own devices.

Personal training at AdMac Fitness is personal to you as an individual…

How are exercises rated?

The vast majority of your training programme will be based around what we call ‘compound exercises’. These are exercises that use multiple body parts in one go, such as squats (legs, back, bum, core), or overhead presses (chest, shoulders, core, arms), or deadlifts (legs, lower back, core). We make sure these are the bulk of your programme because they’re the most effective exercises.

We bias compound exercises in training programmes because they are the best for improving fitness and physique.

Scientific research shows that compound exercises improve strength more effectively than single joint exercises (such as bicep curls). There is also a hormonal response to the training as well, with evidence showing that resistance training improves the rate of muscle building hormones in people of all ages. This means that even if you thought you were too old to benefit from strength training, the evidence shows you’re wrong!

Once we’ve done the compound exercises, we move onto the rest of the session. That could consist of specific core work, accessory work, isolation work, cardio work or the like. It would have been programmed in advance by your personal trainer.

So are isolation exercises such as curls pointless?

No, they’re not pointless at all, but they have to be used at the right time. You don’t want to put them early into a session, before the compound exercises because you don’t want to be tired by the time is comes to the compound work. They still offer benefit to us, but like any good recipe, it’s about applying the elements at the right time!

The same goes for things like workout finishers - we need to make sure we do them at the right time. If we do them too early, you’re exhausted for the rest of the session, which compromises workout quality. Do them at the end of a particularly hard session and you’re too tired to work at a high enough intensity to make them worth it.

Effective exercise is all about balancing the wants, needs and abilities. That’s why at AdMac Fitness, we’re expert personal trainers with a long track record of delivering excellent results for our clients.

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Hydration - What You Need to Know

Over the last couple of weeks a different kind of drinking has been in the news, so I’m going to try to drag your mind back to health and fitness with an article about a different kind of hydration! The one that keeps your body functioning well and doesn’t result in a beer belly and a hangover!

There’s lots of information about hydration and how much we should be drinking, but the problem with a lot of it is that it’s just generic advice, thrown out without any additional guidance or nuance. As with most things fitness and nutrition related, when the question is ‘how much water should I be drinking?’ the answer is usually ‘it depends’.

There’s a widespread claim that we need to drink 8 glasses of water per day, but what’s a glass? A pint glass? A shot glass?! You see suggestions that we need 2 litres, per day, but what if it’s particularly warm?

In this article we’re going to look at what the science says and give you clear advice on how to stay adequately hydrated. We’ll look at adjusting the fluid intake levels appropriately so you’re able to perform at your best.

Hydration - the Key Points

We know that hydration isn’t merely about the water we drink. We can be hydrated through the foods we eat too, especially fruit and vegetables which can contain (in some cases) 90-99% water.

We can also be dehydrated by fluids because of the diuretic effect of sugar. Evidence shows that reducing sugar intake has a positive effect on fluid balance in the body, improving blood pressure.

With water the purpose isn’t simply to increase the amount of fluid in the body - it’s also a vehicle to replace lost minerals.

Like our calorie requirements, our water requirements vary depending on the circumstances - the environment we’re in, the activity we’re doing and the food we’ve eaten.

We’re all different, so ascribing a blanket figure to hydration is pointless. A 7’ man will require a lot more fluid than a 5’ woman.

Bearing these factors in mind we have to forget about hydration ‘rules’ and adapt accordingly. The temperature, our exercise, our diet and our personal requirements. All of these factors will help to determine what we need to do with regards to how much fluid we take on board.

What the Science Says…

We’re not going to focus on severe dehydration here, because we’re unlikely to ever be near that. Instead we’re going to focus on the impact of mild to moderate dehydration on our health and performance.

We know that dehydration is linked to a drop in performance. As little as 2% dehydration has been shown to impact our physical performance. In extreme cases (long duration events in high temperatures) athletes have been known to lose 6-10% of their bodyweight, so hydration is key.

When it comes to rehydration and recovering performance, relying on water isn’t always a good idea because although it contains the fluid, it may not contain enough of the essential minerals that are lost through sweating. Instead, either consuming water with a post-exercise meal or an electrolyte drink is a better and more practical solution post exercise.

Dehydration and in particular mineral loss is linked to muscle cramping, so a good solution is consume a banana and something salty to replenish sodium and potassium (which is one of the reasons you’ll see many endurance athletes eating crisps or salty nuts during very long events).

Factors Affecting Hydration

These are the main points to consider regarding your hydration. Bear these in mind and you’ll be able to stay on top of your hydration levels regardless of the activity you’re about to undertake…

• Diet - have you eaten anything sugary or salty? Up the water intake if you have!

• Diet - have you eaten a lot of fruit? You may not need to drink as much.

• Exercise - are you training hard, so you’ll be sweating? More fluids (ideally electrolytes) needed!

• Temperature - is it hot? Drink more!

• Size - if you’re a big guy, you’re likely to need a lot more than 2 litres. If you’re a small woman, 2 litres may be more than enough!

Ultimately hydration can be decided on by how you look, feel and perform. If you’re feeling sluggish or have a headache, often the first thing you can do is drink some fluids and wait 10-15 minutes to see if you feel any better. Don’t worry about hitting targets, just drink as much as you need to feel good.

By keeping up with your quality fluid intake, you’ll give yourself a great platform to maintain skin, joint, muscle, bone, brain and eye health.

A simple measure of your hydration status is simple - is your urine clear? If so, you’re hydrated enough! Keep it up!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

We're BACK in the Studio! Come and See Us!

This week was a massive one for all of us in the fitness industry - we were allowed to take personal training sessions inside again for the first time since December. Having been training our clients outside through the depths of the winter, on April 12th we were allowed to re-open the personal training studio doors.

Working inside is better for a number of reasons - we’re not exposed to the elements like we were, we have more equipment available, we can make more precise session plans and we’re able to make use of our new overflow area, complete with our new squat rack!

Moving back inside is a new experience for us as well - for the last few months we’ve adapted our way of working to cope with the outdoors. Our session plans, our exercise selection and the way we design training programmes has had to change to make the most of the outdoor environment. As we switch to training back indoors, we’re going to be focussing more on re-educating technique, because we’re back to using kit that our personal training clients haven’t been using for a while.

We didn’t take our barbells outside, so many of our personal training clients haven’t trained with a barbell for months, so we’ll be taking the time to re-educate on perfect exercise technique in the sessions.

In our new overflow area we’ve added additional kit, including a new squat rack. It’ll mean we’ll be able to add a lot of exercise variety to our workouts. Heavy squats, rack pulls, lunges, overhead work etc will all be back on the agenda for more people now.

Whether you’re looking at fat loss, muscle gain or a bit of both, the new kit additions at the studio will ensure we can help you get there.

As a team we’re all really excited about heading back inside to train clients. We’ve enjoyed being outside, it has challenged us to learn and grow, but back inside we’ve got access to even more tools to offer excellent and effective workouts. We’ll be back to our deadlifting, squatting, pushing, pulling and the like, but all the while not leaving behind what has worked from the outdoor workouts. By combining the indoor and outdoor elements we can work on a hybrid training plan, allowing us to deliver the best of both worlds to our clients.

What Changes for us?

For clients, there’s little in the way of obvious change - apart from being inside, you’ll still be getting the same top quality service you’ve come to know and love from AdMac Fitness. We’re going to continue to deliver excellent sessions, we’ll be maintaining our standards of cleanliness and we’ll be adding the additional variety into the sessions thanks the extra kit we have available to us in the studio.

We’re doubling down on the educational side of training and nutrition, teaching you more about how to file your training and recovery. For many people, especially new clients, it’ll be the first exercise they’ve done for a long time and it’s our job to ensure that the return is a safe and effective one.

We understand that a lot of our clients will be eager to pick up where they left off, but that’s a one-way ticket to injury! We’ll ease you back in at a safe and effective rate.

We haven’t stopped still during the lockdown, we’ve invested in new kit, new ideas and continued to up-skill as a team. We’ve introduced a newsletter and are making plans to bring back our group sessions when the time allows.

Lockdown has been difficult for us all, but it looks like we’re back on our way out of it! Onwards and upwards!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Why Exercise Variety is a Good Thing

When you come to our private personal training studio in Bow, East London, you’ll see our clients doing a lot of different exercises. There’ll be variations on standard versions, for example we might replace a barbell with dumbbells or a kettlebell. We may even use resistance bands or bodyweight for a different challenge. The cardio will be mixed up - not two sessions are ever the same.

Where this variety may seem like it’s change for the sake of change, there are lots of good, credible reasons for changing exercise stimulus. In this article we’ll share some of our thinking behind exercise variety, why we put it into personal training client’s workouts and why you should be doing the same thing if you want to maximise your results. We’ll show you some of the research that shows how and why we should mix up our training.

Exercise variety is important for both fitness progression and injury prevention, so read this article and think about how you could switch up what you do and how you do it - your body will thank you!

Exercise Stimulation and Muscle Activation

One of the main reasons to switch up exercise technique and equipment is to provide a new challenge to the muscles. If we take this research from 2016, we see that different exercise technique and equipment results in a variation of muscle stimulation, which brings about different results. If we were to stick to the one way of doing things, we’d repeat movement patterns, never switch up stimulus and never make any meaningful progress beyond a certain point.

There’s also solid research that backs up the inclusion of iso lateral exercises (single limb) in training programmes. What the science shows is that exercises such as single leg squats and using dumbbells for upper body work can correct any strength imbalances between the sides, force additional muscle activation and also help people to come back from injury quicker. There’s also a strong suggestion that it could improve strength more than bi-lateral movements, as we’ve seen in this study.

Training at Different Speeds

As well as training with single limbs, there’s a lot of research that shows switching up the speed at which you train can have a beneficial effect on your physical capabilities. In a meta study concluded in 2017, researchers made the observation that ‘to optimise contralateral strength improvements, cross-training sessions should involve fast eccentric sets with moderate volumes and rest intervals.’

The benefits don’t just come from speeding up lifting either - one of the oldest tricks in bodybuilding is to increase muscle size by slowing down the tempo with which you lift, increasing the time under tension. This slow down (especially in the eccentric phase of a lift) is said to increase the muscle-building capability of the lifts, a claim which has been proven by the scientific research on the topic.

Mixing up Cardio Helps too

The benefits of a change don’t just exist in weight training either - switching the cardio exercise you do will help to prevent overuse injuries (too much of one thing has the potential to cause problems). It’s also a way to increase your calorie burn.

An old (1996) study suggested that treadmill running was the highest calorie burner when compared to an Airdyne, a cross-country skiing simulator, a cycle ergometer, a rowing ergometer and a stair stepper. Of course this research is to be taken with a pinch of salt, because movement efficiency etc plays a part in the energy output. The reason I’ve shared it though is because it shows not all cardio is created equal, so there’s value in the variety.

We encourage our clients to exercise outside of the studio too, because we see value in exercise variety. We also know that the movements they perform outside of their time with us will be different from those they’ll do with us, adding to their overall fitness.

Exercise Variety Helps Progression

Your body has a remarkable ability to adapt to a training stimulus - that’s how you get fitter and stronger, meaning we have to keep increasing workout intensities and the weights you lift . By mixing up training approaches, exercises, training angles, resistance methods and the like we’ll keep your body guessing, keep it stimulated and keep that progress going for the long term.

As you can see from the various studies we’ve shared in this article, there’s plenty of research that backs up our approach of mixing your training. We pride ourselves on our client results, which we achieve by listening to the science and adapting our training approaches accordingly. If you train with AdMac Fitness in our private personal training studio, you too will experience this training and make the fitness progress you want to!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

High Intensity Workout Finishers - a Few Ideas

One of the most effective ways to increase the calorie burn in a session is with a high intensity workout ‘finisher’. These are an exercise or series of exercises performed in a short burst with the emphasis being on maintaining high effort levels. They’re always at the end of a workout because the idea is to work hard enough so there’s not much left in the tank afterwards!

In this article we’re going to look at a few different workout finisher ideas and give you some guidance so you can put them into your own training. Used effectively, they can be transformative for your fitness and physique goals.

We use workout finishers at AdMac Fitness, because we believe they have a double whammy of effectiveness…

1. They increase the overall calorie burn of a session

2. The client ends the session on a high, knowing they’ve given their all

Workout Finisher Guidelines

As a rule of thumb, the finisher should be short but high intensity. If it drags on for too long, you won’t be able to maintain the high intensity required. Also, if it’s lower intensity and longer duration, what you’re basically doing is cardio training and that’s a different thing altogether!

Here’s a few guidelines to make your workout finishers more effective…

1. Make the movements simple to do - as you fatigue your technique will suffer, so don’t do anything that requires complex movement patterns.

2. Keep them short - less than 10 minutes. The goal is high intensity, not long duration.

3. Mix them up between workouts - don’t repeat the same movement patterns over and over.

4. Make them appropriate - don’t throw in high intensity sprints if your client is morbidly obese and struggles to walk.

5. Use resistance training often - don’t rely on pure cardio approaches.

Sample Workout Finishers to Transform Your Fitness Results

Throw these into your workouts and thank me later - they’re a mixture of weight training and cardio workout finishers and they’re all very, very effective.

Burpee Swings into Push Ups

Take a medium to heavy kettlebell (16-20kg women, 20-24kg men) and perform 20 swings followed immediately by 10 push ups. Get to your feet and perform 18 swings and 9 push ups, followed by 16 swings and 8 push ups.

Repeat down to 2 swings and 1 push up.

30:30 Rowing Machine Sprints

Start with a gentle 30 second row, then once you reach the 30 second mark row as fast as you can for 30 seconds. Repeat this for five minutes. This simple pattern can be used across all kinds of equipment or approaches, not just rowing machines - you could do it on a spin bike, air bike, treadmill, ski-erg etc.

Burpees for Time

Pick a number that’s sufficiently challenging and the task is to complete that many burpees in the quickest time possible. Generally speaking, for a fit person 100 burpees will take around 6-8 minutes. Vary the number depending on the fitness of the person training, but most people will shoot for 50 or more.

3:2:1

Pick three different exercises and perform three reps of the first one, two of the second and one of the final exercise. Personally, I like to do air squats, pull ups and push ups because it’s a great all-body workout.

In practice it looks like this… I do 3 air squats, 2 pull ups and 1 push up. I repeat this for a designated amount of rounds or time. I’ll either keep repeating the circuit as many times as I can in 5 or 10 minutes, or I’ll do the 3:2:1 for 20 rounds, which is 120 reps.

Hill Sprints

If you like to train outside, there are few better finishers than the good old hill sprint. All you need to do is find a steep hill, 30-50m long and sprint up it, walking back down. Repeat as many times as you need to!

Tabata

The Tabata protocol is simple - you work at all out intensity for 20 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds. You repeat this for 4 minutes. It’s simple, but brutally effective. You can use this approach with either resistance training exercises (such as squats, push ups, kettlebell swings etc) or cardio exercises.

Rope Slams into Jump Squats

This is a simple two-move all body finisher. Perform 30 seconds of high intensity rope slams. Once the clock hits 30 seconds, drop the rope and immediately perform 30 seconds of jump squats. Repeat for as many rounds as required.

Simple Sprints

Either on a treadmill or a field, sprint as fast as you can until you can’t go any longer. When you reach that point, stop and walk for 20 seconds. Repeat until you physically can’t run any more!

Prowler Circuits

If you have access to a prowler, set a start point and put out 3 cones in a row, 5m, 10m and 15m from the start point. Push the prowler to the 5m cone and back, then the 10m cone and back and finally the 15m cone and back.

Repeat as often as you need.

Circuits

Pick a number of different exercises and perform a micro circuit class - between 30 seconds and a minute per exercise. Don’t rest between exercises, just move straight from one to the next without a break. Keep the intensity high and the finisher short (10 minutes tops).

Programming Workout Finishers

Unless your goal is simply ‘general fitness’, programme your finishers with a goal in mind. That might be to increase calorie burn, to increase explosive strength under fatigue, to do more hip hinge movements (kettlebell swings etc). It’s part of the workout, so use it to the client’s advantage.

You can use your finisher for far more than simply getting someone more tired (although that’s a secondary benefit!)

Always keep your finishers at the end of the workout, because if they’re done properly your client (or yourself) won’t have much energy left to carry on with the session. You’ll also compromise your movement quality for the work coming later!

Keep them simple and effective. The idea is to work hard and complex movements don’t lend themselves brilliantly to high intensity, hard work at high volumes.

Adding finishers into your workouts can transform your fitness and physique. Give one of the suggested workouts here a go and see how you get on - you’ll make a huge difference to your conditioning in a short space of time.

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

AdMac Fitness: Arch 457 Robeson St, London E3 4JA

AdMac Fitness South Woodford: Unit 4 Marlborough Business Centre, 96 George Lane, South Woodford, London, E18 1AD

Why We're Principles Based, Not Tools Based with our Personal Training

One of the reasons our personal training is so effective here at AdMac Fitness is because we’re principles based, not tools based when it comes to our approach to fitness and personal training. Rather than be married to a single way of exercising, we select a method that is most appropriate to the individual, their goals and their abilities. No two programmes are alike, but no two people are alike.

What this means for the personal training client is that they get to enjoy the process more, because they aren’t forced to train or diet in a way that they just can’t cope with.

There are a lot of personal training studios in London that have an identity, a way of doing things and an inflexible approach. This can be a problem, because if your goals aren’t aligned with their training philosophy, you’ll never make progress towards what you want to achieve.

It’s like the old saying… ‘If the only tool you use is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’.

At AdMac Fitness in East London, our job is to help you achieve your goals. We do that well, which is why our clients stay with us for years and achieve levels of health and fitness that they never thought was possible…

The Key to Success is Enjoying the Journey

One of the common myths around weight loss is that it’s temporary and that most people put weight back on in time. Whilst some of that is true, it depends on the circumstances and how they’ve gone about losing the weight, plus the support they’ve received along the way.

At AdMac Fitness we support our personal training clients and make them a part of the process. Research shows that this is one of the most important aspects of maintaining one term weight loss. The support and encouragement makes our clients feel comfortable, which is another vital aspect of them staying part of our group and making the long term progress with us.

It’s not just about weight loss though…

When you study exercise adherence, one of the most important factors that jump out is working with clients appropriately. In practice, that means the exercise selection, the frequency of training and the intensity of the work have to suitable. By pushing people to do too much, too soon we’d be more likely to push them away from training, killing motivation and enthusiasm. That’s the opposite of what we try to do.

We celebrate wins with clients, reminding them of how we’ll they’re doing and how far they’ve come…

Training the Person…

In our private personal training studio, we choose methods that suit the person, not methods that we bias towards. In some places, they train everyone the same way and whilst that may work for some, it won’t work for all. Our approach to personal training here in East London is to be as inclusive as possible, so whether you come to us wanting to be strong as an ox, or you simply want to lose a few kilos, we adapt our approach accordingly.

If you check out our AdMac Fitness Instagram you’ll see people of all shapes and sizes performing a wide variety of exercises. There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach here, it’s just not how we do things. It would be a disservice to our personal training clients, who put their faith in us to help them achieve their health and fitness goals.

If you’ve never had personal training before, take the idea of being shouted at right out of your mind. We don’t do that - we’re coaches, not drill sergeants! If you want to be shouted at, join the army! If you want to be encouraged, guided, pushed, helped and empowered, get in touch and see what we can do for you!

What a personal training session looks like at AdMac Fitness

I said earlier that there’s no single approach, but there are similarities in the sessions. We always start with an appropriate warm up and that will depend on what we have going on in the session that day. There may be a cardio element to it, followed by some movement prep work.

Next up we’ll go through the strength/resistance training part of the session. Here the weights and exercise selection will be appropriate to you and your goals. Some may be bodyweight exercises, some may use the TRX, others will be dumbbell, barbell or kettlebell based.

Finally, we may end with a finisher which is a high intensity element - it could be circuit based or cardio based depending on what the personal trainer has in mind. We may also do our core and abdominal work in this part of the session too. A finisher is designed to improve cardio capacity and burn a lot of calories at the end of the session. They’re VERY effective!

Finally, we’ll stretch and cool down. You’ll leave the session feeling great, having achieved something and worked hard, releasing those endorphins you get having gone through a great workout!

If you’re looking for personal training in East London, get in touch!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Slow and Steady is More Effective than Fast and Failing...

We live in a world where we want everything immediately… Next day delivery, a whole TV series in one go, super fast broadband and the like. Patience is a virtue that is diminishing fast, which isn’t ideal when it comes to fat loss.

Let me explain how…

If you look at your present state of health and fitness, it will have taken you a lifetime to reach that point. All of your choices and actions, whether good or bad have led you to where you are now. Whether you’re fit, unfit, fat, lean or somewhere in between, you are a result of your actions and your choices.

But reversing it takes a common sense approach. A slow and steady plan that will see you progress at the appropriate rate. The goal is to make sure you enjoy life whilst losing weight and improving your fitness. At AdMac Fitness in East London, we believe that health and fitness should be a part of your life, not dominate the whole thing. As personal trainers, we don’t live like monks and we don’t expect our clients to either - that’s why we build weight loss plans and approaches that allow you to live a real life yet still achieve your health, fitness and fat loss goals!

As appealing as rapid fat loss is, the reality is if you want to drop huge amounts of weight in a very short space of time, you’ve got to make sacrifices that will absolutely destroy your enjoyment of life….

• Zero cheat meals

• Zero booze

• Early nights

• Daily training

• Minimum 8 hours sleep every night

• No caffeine

• Limited salt

• Count every calorie

Is that what you really want? Are you honestly willing to sacrifice all the fun in life for the sake of faster fat loss? Or are you willing to adopt a plan that will work for the long term but still allow you to enjoy a few treats and nights out (when they return) every now and then?

In the fitness world, the slow and steady approach never really appeals to people.

At AdMac Fitness we’ve met people who have done no exercise for 3 years and then suddenly expect to be running 40k every week. We’ve met people wanting to do 4 strength sessions in 5 days after a decade out of the gym. We’ve met people who want to attempt a PB on their deadlift in their first session back after a year.

If that sounds like you, STOP!

Injuries are inevitable in this scenario, and your body hasn’t let you down, common sense has.

The people who want this way of working are either motivated by external factors (competition, prize money, they’re on TV, it’s a medical life or death scenario) or more likely, they simply crash and burn, failing after a couple of weeks when they realise what the reality of that approach looks like,

If you’ve spent the last 3 years gaining 0.5kg a month, and then setting yourself a goal to lose it in 10 weeks you’re either going to have to sacrifice your entire life to achieve it, or you’ll be very disappointed. It took you 156 weeks to gain the weight, it’s going to take a lot longer than 10 weeks to lose it!

Unless I’ve got my wires crossed I’m pretty sure slow and steady works just fine in other areas of life, as these random examples show…

• It takes years of hard work and financial discipline to save up a house deposit

• It takes three years to earn your university degree

• It takes an average of 44 weeks to learn to drive

• It takes an average of 1.5 years to learn Spanish with an hour per day of practice

• It takes 3 years to learn to be an electrician

If you want to achieve something worthwhile, you’ve got to be willing to put the time and effort in over the longer term.

The lesson applied to fitness and fat loss?

Stop rushing out of the gate, full of enthusiasm about your new found mission and expect to lose 3 stone in 2 months. It just isn’t going to happen. The human body isn’t set up to give away fat stores so easily - instead, stay consistent, stay dedicated, stay patient and watch the progress happen. We’re experts at this, let us do our jobs, trust the process and we promise that you’ll achieve fantastic results.

If you can’t train with us but only take one lesson away from this blog post… Make sure it’s if you’re returning to fitness soon, plan a sensible, progressive first month!

Let us help you…

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Scale Weight Variables - Could You be Full of S**t?!

One of the key things to address when dealing with weight loss is the difference between ‘weight’ and ‘fat’. As personal trainers, it’s a key lesson we teach all of our fat loss clients, because an obsession with weight leads many people down the wrong roads, focussing on the wrong things.

How much your body weighs has relatively little to do with how fat you are. Standing on a scale and being upset because you’ve gained a pound or two doesn’t really make any sense, because there’s so many factors that can affect your body weight. We’ll discuss these in further detail in the post and hopefully, it’ll help put your mind at ease about unexpected weight gain.

When you appreciate just how complex a machine your body is, you’ll begin to understand just why weight can fluctuate by a few pounds, even when you’ve done everything right. Our focus is on changing your body composition - how much of your body is made of fat tissue, muscle tissue and bone. Weight is a secondary concern.

The Difference Between Weight and Fat

When we eat excess energy (calories), they are stored as fat tissue. If we overeat by a lot, or for a long time, we store more fat so our weight goes up.

Fat isn’t the only element of weight gain though. We can be heavy because of additional muscle mass, because of food we’ve eaten, water we’ve drunk or fluid we’re retaining. In fact, there’s a very simple experiment you can do to prove this…

1. Stand on the scales and take a note of your weight.

2. Drink 1 litre of water as quick as you can (you don’t want to go to the toilet during this time otherwise it ruins the experiment!)

3. Stand back on the scales - you’ll likely be around 2lbs heavier.

There’s a clear difference between weight and fat. You’re not any fatter - you haven’t eaten! You’re just heavier, because of the additional water weight you’re carrying inside your body.

Factors that Affect Scale Weight

Here’s an overview of the factors that can affect your scale weight, so if you stand on the scales and find yourself downhearted because you’ve seen a number you don’t like, take a moment to see if any of these apply to you…

Time of day: You’re almost always lighter first thing in the morning. You haven’t eaten overnight and your body has digested and used all of the food you’ve been consuming. You’ll typically lose between 1 and 4lb overnight.

Stress levels/Inflammation: Stress hormones and inflammation can cause water retention, which increases weight. If you’re injured, unwell or suffering from high stress, don’t be surprised if you’re a little heavier. When inflammation drops, weight is likely to drop too.

Medication: There are certain medications and medical conditions that cause water retention - in some cases this can add well over 10lbs to your weight. There are re-distributions of fat that are possible, there are appetite changes that can happen and also changes in mineral balance that can impact water weight. Common medications that can impact weight gain include corticosteroids, antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs.

The Menstrual Cycle: This can have a dramatic impact on weight gain for some women, although the effects are temporary and vary widely. The subject has been studied widely and the conclusion is that the weight gain is down to fluid retention in the build up to the menstrual flow, which then eases afterwards. If you’re gaining weight without obvious reason (you’re eating well, training well etc), this could well be the reason.

Hydration: As we mentioned with our example earlier, water levels can dramatically impact weight. For clinical examples of how fluid loss can impact weight, in this study professional footballers were shown to lose up to 5lbs in 90 minutes of football in hot countries.

Been to the toilet?!: This sounds crazy, but it’s a huge point to consider. When studied, people with irregular bowel movements can carry over 10lbs of faecal matter in their gut. By addressing this problem with high fibre diet, plenty of liquid and movement, you can clear this out and lose a lot of weight you didn’t know you had!

Fat Loss, Not Weight Loss

Our goal at AdMac Fitness is to educate you about your body, as well as train you. When you understand that fat and weight are different, you start to view weight with less importance and start to consider the additional points around what might be happening.

We also use additional data points to assess your progress, far beyond just weight. We take body far assessments, tape measurements, physical capability measurements and talk to you about how you are feeling. The number on the scales are just one of the factors we’re interested in, and it’s certainly not the most important one!

You can be fit, lean, strong and heavy. Always remember that.

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Coaching the Person, Not the Method...

One of the reasons AdMac Fitness is one of the most successful private personal training studios in East London is because of our people-first approach.

At AdMac Fitness, we don’t subscribe to one particular training method, but instead we base our approach on the person. Our job as personal trainers is to help the client to achieve their goals in the most enjoyable way possible, so we work with them, establishing a training approach and diet that factors in their needs, their wants and their goals.

It’s an aim of ours to provide a great training environment for people from all walks of life, with all kinds of different goals. Whether you’re a brand new exerciser, someone looking for a push or a vastly experienced exerciser looking to be pushed to another level, we can provide that environment for you.

When you train with us at AdMac Fitness, you’re not a number, you’re part of a community. A supportive fitness family who help each other, support each other and build each other up. It’s part of the reason we work with clients for a long time - years in many cases. They come for the training but stay because of the community and the atmosphere.

Why we don’t stick to a single training approach…

Personal training by its very nature should be individualised, and we’re all so different. There are plenty of personal trainers out there who train people with one approach, regardless of their goals. We made a conscious decision early on to be different, to not do that and instead build our business based on a people-first approach.

When you first sign up with us, we do a consultation with you. One of our first questions is to ask what you’d to like to achieve - we ask that question because the goals should come from you. It’s not up to us to decide what you’d like to be or do, our job is to make it happen. Too many trainers make the decision for the client, which can often lead to them training all of their clients in the same way. It’s crazy to think a 65 year old grandmother looking to lose a little weight and improve her mobility would be training in exactly the same way as a 23 year old man with muscle-building ambitions.

We put the client first and the results show.

There are fitness studios who stick to a method - there are weightlifting clubs, yoga centres, bodybuilding gyms, Pilates centres etc, but we don’t see training as a one-size-fits all thing. Our personal trainers at AdMac Fitness all have different areas of specialism and interest, so we can pair you with a personal trainer who best aligns with you.

Personal Training transforms attitudes to exercise

One of the most enlightening things a lot of our clients tell us is how much they enjoy exercise with a personal trainer. Whether it’s because they feel less intimidated in our private studio environment, or because they have the peace of mind of knowing they’re doing things correctly, it’s a nice compliment to receive.

Many clients join us as a last resort - they’ve tried everything else, so they give a personal trainer a go as a last roll of the dice. They’ve told themselves that they don’t like exercise or they don’t like the gym, but that’s because they’ve not found an approach that works for them. Thanks to us taking the time to listen, to understand and to learn about our clients, we build exercise programmes for them that not only get results, but also transform their attitude towards exercise and healthy living.

By trusting us with their training, many of them fall in love with exercise and start living a healthier, more fulfilling life. That’s arguably the most rewarding part of our job at AdMac Fitness.

Personal Training during lockdown…

We’re still open for one on one personal training at AdMac Fitness. We have strict safety protocols to protect our members against COVID-19, all of our sessions are delivered outside under a shelter and our equipment is spotlessly clean.

We can promise you’ll receive the best personal training in East London from the AdMac Fitness Personal Training team!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

What Do Successful Personal Training Clients Have in Common?

Here at AdMac Fitness we’ve worked with enough personal training clients to have a solid understanding about what makes someone successful in their personal training journey. Over the years we’ve helped hundreds of people lose weight, improve their fitness and reach more of their potential. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say we’ve changed lives, helping people to reach levels of fitness and weight loss that they’d previously thought of as impossible.

As we edge closer to normality, with the nation’s physical and mental health at perhaps it’s lowest, we’ve decided to share our observations on what makes the most successful personal training clients. If you can have adopt these habits yourself, you too will enjoy the success that so many of our clients have had…

Progress Monitoring

Our most successful personal training clients all take part in some kind of progress monitoring. Alongside the monitoring we do in the gym, they’ll also stay on top of their progress at home. That might take a number of different directions - it could be recording their weight, taking progress photographs, keeping their measurements.

There’s also the fitness and nutrition monitoring, whereby they’ll track their calories, steps, activity levels etc. Although this sounds like a lot of work, technology has made it really easy. Apps like MyFitnessPal are available on your phone, and there are lots of watches available that help to keep track of exercise and activity levels.

Short and Long Term Strategy

Whilst it’s great to have a long term goal, it’s important to remember that it’s really difficult to stay motivated for something so far in the future. A way to maintain motivation is to break down your long term goal into many smaller, short term goals. It’s an approach we like to use here at AdMac Fitness and have seen it work consistently and effectively with lots of people.

Rather than focus on the long term goal such as ‘I want to lose 60lbs’, instead bring your focus towards ‘I want to lose 5lbs’. It’s a much closer target and keeps you striving for the next one. Once you’ve achieved that, look towards the next 5lbs, then the next and so on. It’s a key motivator.

Regular Reviews

One of the most important aspects of behaviour change is accountability. At AdMac Fitness all of our personal training clients work with their coach who is a fully qualified personal trainer. It’s the PT’s job to programme the workouts, assess the progress, coach the client through the journey and help them to adapt to the health lifestyle changes. One of the most important aspects of personal training is the review process.

Reviews with your coach is a chance to discuss what is going well, what your are struggling with, how you are coping with the training and the new eating programme. During these reviews your coach can make changes, suggestions and adaptions to your plans, helping to make sure you continue to make progress. The regular check in is a key reason is ensuring progress is maintained.

Strong Relationship with their Coach

This is so important and builds on the previous point. The closer your bond is with your coach, the better the experience will be for both of you. This is why at AdMac Fitness we employ personal trainers with different interests, backgrounds and personality types. We can make sure you get the best fit in terms of your coach.

The client-coach relationship is a special one. The coach will know when to push you, when to lay off. They’ll celebrate your successes, help you through your failures. This is one of the reasons so many of our clients at AdMac Fitness stay with us for years - because they become friends, part of the family and an integral part of the AdMac Fitness experience.

Performance Goals - Not Exclusively Weight Loss

It’s important for people to look beyond weight loss, because whilst it’s important, the truest measure of your health is your performance. Feeling great, not just looking great is fundamental to our ethos. Whilst of course we’ll help anyone lose weight if that’s what they want, we’re particularly interested in making you the fittest, strongest, healthiest version of yourself.

Once you’ve hit your weight loss targets, it’s time to shift focus and turn you into an absolute superstar, whatever that looks like to you. Whether it’s to lift a certain amount, run a certain distance or reach a particular level of health and vitality that’s personal to you, we’re here to help!

Take a look at our gallery to see the successful client transformations we’ve built up over the years - these are just a small few of the literally hundreds of people we’ve helped over the years. Perhaps you could be next?!

AdMac Transformation Gallery

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Periodisation - Applying it to Muscle Building

When it comes to fitness writing, we’re often guilty of focussing too much on people who want to lose weight and body fat. It’s an easy trap to fall into, because as personal trainers that is what the majority of people who come to us want help with.

What happens when we get people lean though? Then what?

Usually, the answer is they want to build muscle. In today’s article we’re going to discuss the concept of periodisation and how you can apply it to your training year. You can take the principles of periodisation and use them to structure your workouts, your diet, your travel plans or whatever you’re aiming for!

What is Periodisation?

The principle of periodisation is structuring your training to achieve a particular physical peak at a particular time.

It comes from sports coaching and was first practiced as far back as the 1950’s when Russian physiologist Leo Matveyev compared the training plans of successful and non-successful athletes from the 1952 and 1956 Olympic games. He noticed that athletes whose training plans varied in intensity and outcomes were more successful, so using this data he began to plan annual training cycles that varied in intensity and allowed periods of focus on particular physical capabilities.

Proving successful, the concept was further developed by the Soviets throughout the 60’s and 70’s, where it spread around the world. The method was expanded to include ‘Macro’, ‘Meso’ and ‘Micro’ cycles which varied depending on the sport.

The macro cycle would take up the majority of the programme, with the underlying main physical requirement would be the focus for the course of the year. If we use a distance runner as an example, the macro cycle would be where there’d be a focus on pure stamina building - not particularly intense, but gradually increasing the underlying stamina.

The meso cycle would be a shorter, 2-6 week block where there’d be a focus on a particular overarching goal. Using our runner example, it might be speed endurance - the ability to increase the pace for a sustained duration.

The micro cycle would be much shorter periods of time, perhaps 1-2 weeks where the body would be allowed to recover from the macro and meso cycle work by focussing on a very nuanced aspect of training. In runners, it might be their sprint finish. Not important enough to require huge amounts of training, but a good chance to allow recovery from the longer duration work and switch focus for a while.

Applying Periodisation to the Muscle Building Year

Adding muscle is great, but we have to increase calories to allow the muscle to grow. This is never an exact science so we usually end up with some extra body fat. This is fine for the most part, but applying a periodised approach to muscle building means we can’t focus on pure volume of training all year, because we’ll burn out. Instead, it’s worth picking a time of the year for a reduction in training volume, where the focus switches from muscle gain to weight loss, allowing us to be lean enough to enjoy the hard work we’ve put in!

Look at the example below to see how this might look…

This approach shows you focussing on adding as much muscle as possible in the winter months. You’re not on the beach anyway, so the gain in body fat isn’t a huge issue. You just keep working at a high volume and intensity to force the muscle growth. Your aim isn’t to go too crazy on the weight gain though, because it’ll take longer to diet the weight away in your meso cycle of weight loss.

After three months of intense muscle building, the April/May switch up in training focus will help with motivation and also injury risk. Research shows that it brings about better outcomes in strength training and in part that may be down to managing the longer term training loads and intensity, allowing us to avoid injury and stay fresher for higher workloads throughout the year.

In the summer months, June through August, the focus is to maintain. That includes eating sensibly, training at a level that will maintain fitness and avoid injury. Enjoy your hard work!

Towards the back end of the year, you can relax the diet a little, ramp up the training and add more muscle ahead of next year. There may have been some muscle loss as the intensity dipped throughout the summer, but those meso cycles are important because they allow your body to recover and allow your mind to enjoy a new challenge and a switch in focus for a while, both of which are important for long term motivation.

We’ve written about how to gain strength muscle before, so follow our tips here… Increasing Strength - How to do it Properly.

Applying Periodisation to Muscle Building: Concluded

We wrote this article because we wanted to show you there’s life after fat loss and that your fitness goals can shift with time. When you’re in the midst of a fat loss mission it might feel never ending, but there is a point when you’re lean, so keep going!

It’s also helpful to view your training year as something that evolves and changes throughout. It’s not just about 'training all year with no change in focus’ - it’s good both physiologically and psychologically to mix up your challenges.

Embrace the mindset of multiple targets within the year and see your fitness and nutrition as something you’re in charge of, not at the mercy of!

At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!