Design Your Own Weights Program: Part 1 - The Theory

I don't know why, but I've aimed this post particularly at girls. However, the theory also applies to you guys, so enjoy the information and insight into the feminine psyche... well, mine at least.

So, girls, do you want the good news or the bad news first about weights training?

Well, the good news is that when doing weights training it takes a lot of effort to really bulk up, and takes a dedicated type of training, despite what you hear. When you start doing weights you can appear to bulk up as during and after the exercises the muscles swell while being repaired. However, this is not permanent and won't leave you looking like Arnie for the rest of your life. So that's the good news (unless you want to look like Arnie, that is).

However, the bad news is that unlike the men, we lose our muscle tone really, really quickly. While I was training I was told by my coach that basically without continuing exercise, in four days you beginning to lose it. Four days!

So if you are trying to build up strength so you can take on your work colleagues in arm wrestling, doing weights just once a week is not going to be enough. If you want to maintain and then increase your strength, you need to flex all your major muscles at least twice a week.

Now, this doesn't have to be a separate workout, as will be discussed next time, but can be just three sets of squats and pushups at the end of your jog if that is all you can manage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with body weight exercises.

However, if you secretly want to sidle into the weights room and shove some macho-man out from in front of the mirror, girl power to you.

Here is some of the knowledge you need to develop a safe and effective weights workout.


Disclaimer:

As much as they are loved by female gyms such as Curves, and as easy and stress free as they seem, I do not endorse weights machines. They have one advantage in that often you can't get the movement too wrong, and so can't inadvertently injury yourself.

Having said that: they are aimed at working individual, particular muscles. But your body is not made to have individual muscles built up by themselves. You need to also be building up the stabilizers around those muscles to prevent injury.

Doing free weights adds in a risk of incorrect technique, but also allows your body to naturally build up all the elements required for the movement. As I will have great videos next week on good technique (by people who know what they are talking about, and vetted by me), I therefore recommend that you be brave and go free. 


Where to start:

There are two aspects you need to take into account to design a program:

1. the major muscle groups:

When designing a weights program over the cycle of the week, you want to make sure you have exercised all of the major muscle groups or else you are going to do bad things to your body, as well as eventually looking funny.

As a beginner, it is probably best if you try to include all the major muscles in each strength workout, as you won't be doing enough sessions to split them up.

When starting out, it's perfectly alright to think of your major muscle groups as:

Arms - Legs - Core 

(Core = abs and back... never forget your back, trust me on this.) 

Work those out for a few months, and then you can get into more specialized muscle training.


2. the different types of weights training:

All weights training does not produce the same results, and unless you are specifically specializing for competition, it is generally best to work out across at least two of the types. Now there are probably a thousand different terms and concepts that people have developed for describing the different types of training. However, for simplicity I'm sticking with Wikipedia on this one, who use a table from Siff (2003) which you will see next week. This table focuses on the following 4 types of weights training. 


4 Types of Weights Training:

Strength: While we often refer to all weights training as 'strength training', in particular this means being able to lift heavier things. The more you can lift, the stronger you are. Building up strength is useful for everyday life, such as being able to lift your partner off the ground when they tease you for being weak (it also works well on brothers, just saying.) 

Power: power is work per time. While a strong person might be able to lift 100kgs, a more powerful person can life it in less time. This can also be referred to as dynamic strength. I like to think of it as being bouncy. You know those people that just spring up flights of stairs two at a time? Well, they have serious power in their legs, and it is a great thing to have.

Hypertrophy: This is your 'make big muscles' type training. If your goal is purely to bulk up - this is your baby. It also explains why guys with big muscles tend not to be as useful around the house: none of the power, strength or endurance to actually use it all. Pah. I'm not actually a fan of big but useless muscles, so I would generally leave this one out of my training programs, but that's just me. 

Endurance: this is how long you can go for at a lighter weight. Instead of lifting up your partner, think about lifting up your baby cousin as you play aeroplanes again, and again, and again. That's endurance.

And with these strength powers combine, you too can be Captain Planet! Or at least functionally strong.

Tune in next time for how to practically design your amazing new program!

Now Is The Perfect Time To Reassess Your Fitness Program

Some of you will be excited by all the motivational talk about jumping into fitness, starting new programs, looking forward to a fit new year.

For these readers, in my third ever post, I gave you 4 steps to starting a fitness program.

Quickly outlined for those who haven't read it and can't be bothered going back:

1. Test your fitness to work out where you are at and where you you might be particularly weak.
2. Look at your schedule and find spaces where you can realistically do exercise.
3. Start slow - you are starting a lifestyle of fitness, not training for a competition next week.
4. Be fit for fitness sake - that is to say, make sure you have your motivation sorted out.

However, some of you will have been plodding or powering away at a program for quite a while.
In Australia, you might have started it in spring with the warming weather, so have been going for 3-4 months on your program. You find all this talk of starting anew a little bit boring, and want something more aimed at you.

Well, this is aimed at you: start again fresh!

When was the last time you tested out how much fitter you are now? Have you reviewed your program? Have you taken into accounts changes in your schedule this coming year; new family member, changes to your working hours, a new must-see TV program?

Every few months you should be reassessing your fitness and the program to make sure it is correctly adapted. Are you increasing the distance, weight or speed to make sure you are being challenged, and your muscles have not just adapted to the same repetitive motions?

Here are some steps to help you reassess your current program:

- review your goals: are you still aiming for the same thing, or have you found something new to aim towards?

- what have your results over the past few months been like? Have you continued to improve, or have you actually seen a decrease in performance? Can you pin-point what is working and what isn't?

- Is your program balanced? For a while you might want to focus on improving a particular area, such as increasing your arm strength, but for long term health and vigor, you need to make sure you are building up all aspects of your body in equal proportion. This will reduce the risk of injury (and funny bulging muscles out of place!). Also, mix up your high intensity with slower, longer sessions to build both speed and endurance (as well as allowing your body to recover, see below).

- Time for variety! No matter why you are exercising, every now and then chuck in something completely new just to keep your body on its toes. If you are a jogger, try a crossfit workout. If you are a weight lifter, maybe a gymnastics class. Be adventurous and look out for new things!

- Finally: are you factoring in enough rest? Muscles are built when your body repairs from the work of a session. So if you don't give it time to repair, you are just damaging yourself. Hard sessions can easily be mixed in with some aerobic exercise which will increase your fitness and means you don't need to do nothing on your rest days. 'Active Recovery' is what it is all about, just make sure it is recovery and that you don't start pushing yourself again. 

Now that you have considered all this, here are some more practical thoughts on your training plan.

The plan should be both weekly (eg. Monday - Strength training, Wednesday - Endurance/long run, Friday - speed work, etc.) and on a larger cycle to ensure increased performance over the year. 

For evaluating the actual weekly activities, keep in mind FITT:

• F - frequency - how often should/can you exercise?
• I - intensity - how hard should you exercise?
• T - time - how long should each session last?
• T - training activity - what exercise or training activity will help achieve your fitness goals?

An easy way to develop the larger framework of a program is to work in four week cycles: for the first 3 weeks increasing speed/strength/distance by 10% each week, and then fourth week is a recovery week, so keep everything light. Then start again and keep building up. The week recovery will make sure you aren't over training.

So, this week's challenge is to actually take the time to sit down and write out your goals and plan a proper program for the next few months, until it starts getting cold (a good time to change your exercise patterns to include more indoor activities!)

And if you have any questions, or good suggestions, please share!

Sneak Preview: 

Tomorrow I'll look at some tips for starting a strength training program. They are really nothing to be scared of, and can leave you feeling (and looking) great! Climb steps in a single bound, carry shopping with one finger! All this, and more...

It's That Time Of The Year Again: Goal Setting!

 

Ah, Monday 31st December, 2012. To be honest, I always love this time of year. It is a great period for reflection and building up motivation for the coming year.
I am not a fan of resolutions, to be honest. I've tried making them a few times, and found that they just add pressure, stress, guilt and finally a sense of failure.

So, I'm sharing with you my top secret approach to finding motivation in 2013.

Ready?

Forget goals, forget resolutions, what you need is a 2013 Bucket List.

Instead of telling yourself what you must do, give yourself one off challenges that will lead to 2013 being a year of triumph, achievement, excitement, fulfillment and adventure.

What is an annual Bucket List?

In 2012 I made a list of the top 70 things I wanted to try. I divided this into 7 different categories (which might have overlapped a bit) to make sure I was creating a balanced lifestyle. I have seriously enjoyed myself and done quite a few things I didn't think I would.

With 70 items to tick off, you need to be doing 1-2 things a week, which keeps you on your toes, but allows you to choose what will best fit in with your schedule that week.

The nature of the items should vary in difficulty. I had some which were super easy and would cheer me up, such as buying myself flowers just because. Therefore, if I was having a bad week, my bucket list would make it all seem brighter. And as previously posted, I had much harder things such as doing a 21km ergo, which gave me a huge sense of achievement when I completed it.


How to Make the List: 

It's easiest to start by working out your categories. These are areas that you want to develop in your life. For me I had 7 categories, but you can vary this number as much as you like, and I think I will add a few extra categories this year.
This year, my areas are going to be:

- Sport/Fitness
- Culinary
- Spiritual
- Cultural
- Relationships
- Adventure
- Creative
- Learning
- Business
- Finance

Under each I'm going to come up with 7 - 8 items that I want to achieve, making sure I have a good range. For example:

- Sport/Fitness - Complete 10km in under an hour, try a brand new gym class.
- Culinary - Cook a pecan pie, go to a tapas bar.
- Spiritual - Spend a weekend at a convent, read Augustine's 'City of God'.
- Cultural - Go to a Melbourne Theatre Company play, read Faust.
- Relationships - send all my facebook friends a letter, surprise someone for their birthday.
- Adventure - Go on a hiking trip, ride a motorbike.
- Creative - get a book accepted by literary agent/ publisher, go to a writing conference.
- Learning - do a painting short course, learn to use MYOB and keep all business accounts for 2013. 
- Business - monetize fitbuster, create a niche site.
- Finance - save $10,000, start a managed fund.

Some of those will take about an hour, such as cooking pecan pie, and others, such as saving $10,000, will probably take effort all year.

When I did it last year, I also left some spaces blank for a few days and got suggestions from people, which gave me a few great ideas. So don't feel it all needs to be done by tomorrow, it is a work in progress.


My 2012 List?

Now, to be completely honest with you, I didn't tick off a lot of things on my list, in fact I'm only just over halfway. But for that I have competed in a rowing regatta, gone to the races, said 'yes' to a strange invitation, gone to the ballet, spent a day in silence, and learned to cook almond croissants just to name a few. So, looking at the list, it's been a pretty good year.

Therefore, I'm highly recommending this as a great motivator for those who hate resolutions and goals.

Sneak Preview of 2013 at Fitbuster:

I've been doing a lot of reading, and learning about blogging and thinking particularly of Fitbuster and how I can make it better and more useful for you.  2013 is going to be a great year for health and fitness, and I'm going to keep giving you great content and new ideas.

Particularly, I'm looking feedback on fitness programs or ideas that you want to know more about, and I'm searching for volunteers who would be happy to test things out. I'll be offering free stuff to be reviewed or incentives for longer programs. So if you are interested in being on my list of volunteers, either comment below or email me at b.greentr@gmail.com
I will be setting up an email subscription soon, just to let you know, which will include invitations to guest post, try out products and programs, first chance at giveaways, and useful information on designing and developing your own fitness projects. So, keep an eye out for that.

Also, as you can see from my list, I will be trying to monetize the blog. However, I don't want want it to detract from the information and utility of the site. I've signed up with Nuffnang, so it will be very Australian focused, which I think is great. While I know quite a few of you are from overseas and I will continue to provide great content for you as well, I particularly want to encourage Australians to get out and experience health and fitness in our great country.
Any feedback on the advertising; if you find it annoying or you have other great ideas, is always welcome. Email me at b.greentr@gmail.com

Thanks for a great 2012. Better is yet to come. 

The Joys and Sadnesses of Walking in the Country

I am currently staying with my parents, who live in a small country town, for the Christmas period. One of the added advantages to this, aside from family etc., is that the surrounding countryside offers great opportunities to get out and be active in nature.

Therefore, in an attempt to continue knocking off items from my 2012 Bucket List, I had planned to jog/walk a half marathon through the tracks and trails in the local state forest.

It was a brilliant plan. Was being the operative word.

I was walking out to the car on Christmas day and felt my back go 'spragggg&%*$'. Basically, something crushed a nerve, which then threw all the muscles in my lower back into defense mode, and left me crippled and only able to hobble.

Two days and varying amounts of heat and drugs later, I am just able to walk upright again. Sort of.
But you shouldn't take back pain lying down, so this morning I decided I would try a short walk to see if I could loosen it all up.

Even just walking down the road offers some refreshing scenery. How often do you see this on your treadmill at home?

So, I was walking along thinking about life, the universe, this blog, and my back, when I noticed a kangaroo lounging on the grass just off to my left. Kangaroos are a total rarity for city folk, but reasonably common in the country.

So I pulled out my camera and took a photo, think I would write to you about how wonderful it is walking in the country. Just have a look at him (or her, didn't get that close):

I thought he would get up and hop away but he seemed to be ignoring me, so I crept in a little closer.
I then worked out that he wasn't ignoring me, he was trying to crawl away with his arms as his legs were paralyzed. In case you are wondering, that's not a good sign in a kangaroo.

So I pulled out my phone to call Mum and Dad and find the number of Wildlife Victoria. My sister was a volunteer for a while, but quit as the majority of her job turned out to be shooting injured wildlife, which wasn't really what she had in mind when she joined up. (having said that, we did get to save a baby wombat one day, just look how cute he is!)

Anyway...

As I was dialing, someone else pulled up and said it was better to call the police so they could come straight out and shoot it. Hard life for a kangaroo. They kindly took over for me and I hobbled on my way, trying not to think about the harsh realities of life.

So walking in the country can be a mixed blessing.
And not so good when you overexert yourself and your back stiffens up again.
But otherwise walking is great. So get out there. 

This post is dedicated to Skippy, birth... unknown, death: 27th Dec, 2012.

Heifer International Fundraiser - Check Out My Writing Blog!

Time for a bit of cross promotion!

Instead of running the fundraiser on both of my blogs, I'm just going to direct you across to my writing blog where I've pledged to donate $1 per comment on the Heifer International post.

This money will go towards buying a useful and cute (usually) animal for a needy family through the efforts of Heifer International. 

Here are some of the animals I'm hoping to get if I raise enough money:

Duckies!

If I raise $20 I can get a flock of ducks. Useful, and so cute.

Goats

For $10 I can get a share in a goat, or for $120 a whole goat. Who doesn't want a whole goat?

Llama Face!

How cute is he? I can get a share in a llama for $20 or a full llama for $150. (Keep commenting!) 

 

Honey, Honey.

 

For $30 I can sponsor a beehive and give a village honey and help pollinate the veggies. Not so cute, but pretty sweet! (ha, that's worthy of my dad.)

It's Christmas, so I'm more than happy to donate as much money as I can raise, so don't be afraid! The more comments, the more cute and possibly fluffy animals a needy family gets, so get commenting!

It's Christmas - Panic!

Christmas dinners, Christmas parties, Christmas drinks, gifts of chocolates, wines, sweets, days of just lazing around...

You get the idea. Christmas, from a health point of view, is one of the most dangerous time of the year.

And no, you really aren't going to lose the extra weight later. Or possibly ever.

There are many suggestions in magazines to help you stop putting on weight: things you can swap, ways to try and be good. Sometimes they are okay, sometimes they are insane.

Having tried and either failed or been dissatisfied the whole season, I'm trying a new method.

The Zero-Tolerance Method.

Chocolate is just not an option.

I should explain that I am a recovering chocoholic, and I mean that more seriously than I used to.

I always knew I loved chocolate, and relied on it for emotional support, etc. which I knew, but I used to just laugh about it, because there was no way I could do anything else.

But a few months ago I realised two awful things:
1. I had fooled myself I was only eating 1/2 a family block of chocolate a day, until I realised on day that no, I had actually opened this block this morning, and now it was all gone by 3pm and I wanted more.
2. Stephen King was describing his (or someone else's, I can't quite remember) alcoholic period, and how he used to be asked 'how much do you drink' and he would look at the person as if they were crazy, 'all of it.' He replied. And I realised I knew that feeling.

I would eat chocolate from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. I would eat it until it was all gone or I was unconscious. And just occasionally I woke up to find I had been eating it in my sleep. Seriously.

That was a few months ago now.

I went cold turkey. Completely. Absolutely. No chocolate.

Since then I've snuck in a few bits here and there, and the truth appears to be that having nothing is easier for me than to have just a little. Once I start, I cannot stop.

So this Christmas I'm not going to start.

Worked quite successfully today at my work Christmas party, even though there were maltesers (a big favourite), Lindt balls, chocolate biscuits, cakes, etc. (you get the picture). But I didn't touch any of them. This was partly helped by my second practical method: calorie counting.

This holidays I am going to keep track of ALL of my calories. It is very illuminating, and scary.

I've used Calorie King in the past, which worked really well for me and the forums are great. I'm actually currently using My Fitness Pal, largely because it was recommended to me and it has a bar code scanning function which makes it a lot easier.

Trying to track calories over Christmas is hard, but even just the attempt makes you think about everything that goes into your mouth. And you will be very surprised.

So those are my two methods I'm going to try and use. I have a plan, worked out my strategy, and am going in prepared.

And you can all hold me accountable.

Just to warn you, to make the Zero-Tolerance method work, you really do need to have your will power and motivation stocks up at full, and in the next few posts I'll look at how to do that.

But for now, think about whether you can just stop at one, and if not, don't even have one.

Apps I Actually Use: Nexercise

There are so many different apps out there for fitness and health, and so hard to discover them without someone recommending them to you. Also, if you are like me, you tend to download a lot and after trying them a few times, never use them again.

So I thought I would  start an intermitten series on apps that I'm using at the moment which are really working for me.

Today's app is Nexercise, which has got a lot of attention with high profile reviews and recommendations.

Purpose: Basically it gives you points for doing different types of exercises, which you collect and use to rank yourself against other people.

How I found it: Jenny (my little sister) found it and asked me to join it with her. We are now in competition to see who has the most points.

Good points: Other than being free, which is always a good point in my book, it is great for helping to motivate someone a little less fit than you to exercise.

It allocates points more on time spent exercising and consistency (eg. you get a daily log-in bonus, extra points if you exercise on a Monday, or on a few days in a row, etc.). You do not seem to get many extra points for running instead of walking, though there is a 'motion bonus' for how much you move your phone while doing it.

This means that my little sister is encouraged to go for walks while I might be pushing myself to do interval training. As Jenny said, if it were purely on calories burnt, she would have given up because I would have been so far ahead.

The competitive aspect also only looks at the last month, so if I have a great month and Jenny gets really far behind, she knows that she just needs to keep going and soon my points will start dropping off again.

Not so good points:
If you aren't competing against someone, I think it would be a bit boring. The major reason I log on is to keep my points up to encourage Jenny to keep exercising. As the points don't actually relate to anything such as distance run or calories burnt, I would use a different program if I were by myself.

Overall Review:
Make sure that you have at least one friend that wants to sign up with you, or find a group online, because then it can be a lot of fun and very motivating.