Approximately 50% of people that sign up to the gym in January give up by March. The gyms know this, which is why they get you to sign a 12 month membership. They expect you to fail.

The gym could not cope if all its members used the gym all throughout the year. The place would be too busy and wouldn’t be able to handle the demand of all its members using the gym all year.

2 reason that so many people fail in the gym is because they do not know what they are doing and their expectations are too high.

Get A Clue

When it comes to health and fitness, everyone thinks they are an expert when they decide to get in shape. They don’t listen to advise and think they know exactly what it takes to get where they want to be, despite 10, 20, 30 years of previous failed attempts.

If your car breaks down, you call a mechanic. You have a water leak, you call a plumber. You want to improve your health and well being, why not enlist the help of a professional.

Spending just a few hours with a qualified Professional Fitness Trainer can help immensely in understanding how to reach your goals and what you need to do to get there.

Whilst the internet can be filled with a lot of junk, there is loads of useful free material available too (like on this website). Get reading!!

Your health shouldn’t be taken lightly, and if it was easy to become ripped and healthy, the whole planet would be walking around with 6 packs. It’s not easy, but at the same time, when armed with the right knowledge, it isn’t that hard.

Lower your expectations

Working your arse off for the whole month of January ISNT going to undo a years, 10 years, 20 years bad eating, no exercise and unhealthy living.

Don’t expect that just because you have decided that you want to be fit, that your body is all of a sudden going to become a machine. 

The reason people stop with the gym after January is because they entered the year with such high expectations, and feel deflated when they don’t see the results within 4 weeks.

It’s a shame, because them people are so close to achieving that first notable change in their body, but they give up just before they get there.

Don’t give up and don’t expect too much too soon. Living a healthy lifestyle and getting in shape can’t be achieved over the night, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

It’s not a monthly fad, but it HAS to be a lifestyle change and commitment. The results are worth the work, just don’t give up trying!

Its February and I hope you are all sticking to your new year’s fat loss plan (if fat loss was indeed your goal).

Here are 3 things you should be doing to help you lose the fat, if you are not already doing it.

Resistance Training

At this time of year the gyms are usually full of people filling up the Cardio machines and busting out hours upon hours of Cardio training, thinking that this is the solution to their flabby belly.

Cardio training will aid in burning calories, but doing too much will increase your Cortisol (stress hormone) levels, break down muscle tissue and weaken joints. All of this is bad and will stall your fat loss attempts.

Resistance training, whether it’s free weights, body weight, machines, BootCamp etc will boost your fat loss results in no time.

Not only are you burning calories whilst working out with weights (possibly to a greater extent than you are when doing Cardio), but you are also going to encourage your muscles to grow back stronger, leaner and more toned. Having more lean body mass will naturally get your body burning more calories.

If you insist on performing Cardio, for fat loss, the best thing you can do is keep it intense and short. HIIT training is the perfect solution.

Go Low GI

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not the amount of fat we consume in our diets that is responsible for the UK’s high obesity problems, but it’s the amount of sugar that is consumed and the wrong Carbohydrates that people eat.

Carbohydrates provide our body with glucose which is the primary choice of fuel for our body. So it is essential that we provide our body with what it needs to operate.

Choosing foods that are low on the glycemic index means that the sugars in those foods are slowly broken down by the body and released in to the blood stream at a steady rate, providing our body with sustained energy over a period of time. This will stop any sudden increase in blood sugar levels, which will reduce the amount of insulin our body releases, which will mean our body will store LESS fat and spend more time burning fat.

Resting

January is notorious for busy gyms and people wanting to get in shape for the year. These newly driven people will spend the first 4 weeks of the year going gun-ho in the gym, for hours, every day of the week.

Whilst there drive is certainly respectable, the lack of rest they give themselves is counterproductive.

Your body won’t grow or change in the gym, it needs to rest and to recover and it’s at this point the change occurs.

Furthermore, if you work out day in day out, you are putting a tremendous amount of stress on your body and if you haven’t exercised regularly before, it’s going to be a little shocked at what’s going on and not use to it.

Stress is bad, whether its mental stress from your job, or physical stress from working out to much. Your body becomes filled with stress hormones which will start to promote fat storage.

If you keep your workouts to under an hour, you can avoid the bad hormones and take advantage of the awesome hormones in your body that will make your body change (growth hormone and testosterone).

Hey all,

Apologies for not posting any new articles up in a while, have been busy working on the Ab Challenge and various other things.

I’ll be on it next month with some fresh new content.

For now though, I just want to take the time out and share a video for Blood Cancer. Sounds grim, but every 23 minutes in the UK someone is diagnosed with a blood cancer such as leukemia.

Men are the most likely donors but make up only 12% of the list and given that you have a decent male readership it would be great to let them know how they can help!

For many people with blood cancer, a transplant of healthy blood stem cells or bone marrow is their last chance of survival. But first they need to find a match. The charity has enlisted the help of Hardeep Singh Kohli, who took to the streets of Birmingham and London, on a mission to get 3000 more people to join the Anthony Nolan register. They have filmed a series of videos of his mission to help spread the message.

Hello Ab Challengers

I hope your motivation is still bubbling away at boiling point and that fire of desire is burning furiously.

Right then, I’ll getting straight into the good stuff…

Thanks to the guys at Genetic Supplements we’re pleased to announce prizes for this months Ab Challenge winners.

Prizes are as follows:

1st: £100 voucher*
2nd: £75 voucher*
3rd: £50 voucher*

The winners will also receive personal advice on how best to choose their Genetic supplements. This will help you get the best out of the supplements to support your on-going goals.

Advice will be supplied via email to the winners and will come directly from @neil_j9570.

Cracking prizes up for grabs wouldn’t you agree? So if changing your body for the better wasn’t enough motivation already, these bad boys certainty are!

There’s more!

We’re also pleased to offer you a discount code for 15% off orders over £20.00 at www.geneticsupplements.co.uk. This can be used now!

Code: g3n3t1cwarr10r

Thank you

On a personal note we’d like to thank everyone who has entered Ab challenge.

We’ve had another amazing response with so many before pictures flooding in.

Change doesn’t happen overnight AND that is why you’ve got to keep with it, it will be worth it.

Keep up the hard work and continue spreading the @AbChallenge joys.

Follow @ptchrisspring

Follow @danspring
 

The Chin Up or Pull Up (depending on grip position) is usually described as one of the most intense upper body exercises, and yet its performed with nothing more than your body weight.

It’s a great exercise to target your Latissimus Dorsi and develop that awesome V shape, as well as building bigger biceps.

The move itself is fairly simple to do, but hard to execute. Simply hang from a bar and pull yourself up. Sounds easy enough, but its pretty difficult to do. So here are some tips to help improve your chins:

Negative Reps

A negative rep is the eccentric phase of a lift, i.e. the lowering movement. So for the Chin up, the negative phase would be when you are lowering yourself down from the bar.

Even if you cant do the concentric part, the part where you pull yourself up, you should be able to slowly lower yourself down in a controlled movement.

By focusing purely on the negative movement of any lift you are targeting the same muscles that are used in the Positive phase, however your muscles are 70% stronger in the eccentric movement.

By strengthening your muscles doing just negatives, it will have a cross over effect with your strength when doing the actual pulling up part. So focus on getting better at doing negatives and the concentric phase will become easier.

To do this with Chin ups, you can either Jump to assist with the concentric phase, or use a step or a bench to get into position. Once in position, concentrate on lowering yourself slowly and controlled.

Assisted Reps

If you can’t do Chin Ups using just your bodyweight, a good way to improve is by using some form of assistance.

Many gyms have assisted chin up/dip stations available where you can stand on a platform and this will take a % of your body weight. Using this piece of equipment is a good way to form the strength needed get you on your way to doing body weighted chin ups. Simply focus on reducing the amount of weight the machine takes each time you use it, until you get to the point where the machine is providing no assistance at all.

If your gym doesn’t have one of these, swap gyms.. or grab yourself a resistance band. Tie this around the gyms pull up bar or smith machine and stand on the band. The Resistance band should push you up towards the bar, providing you with some assistance.

Alternatively, grab your gym buddy and get them to hold your legs while you perform your sets of chins. They will be taking some of your weight for you so you won’t be pulling up all of your body weight yourself. As you get better, your buddy can just reduce the amount of assistance he is providing.

Perform Other Exercises

Give the bar a rest for a while and focus on developing your upper body strength with other exercises.

Exercises such as the Pull Down will target the same muscles you use when doing a Pull Up, so head over to your Lat Pull Down Machine and focus on building your back strength up on that first.

Or, you can use a TRX and perform different Row exercises, reducing your angle as you progress. This will again help develop awesome back strength needed to perform a Chin Up.

So, even if you are unable to do one single Chin Up to start, there is no reason why you can’t ever do one, you just need to practice. Give these three methods a try and you should be chinning in no time. Good Luck.

Training for an endurance event like the marathon isn’t just about covering 100 miles in training to get you ready for the big day.

Here are 3 things you must do when training for a marathon:

Interval Training

One of the physiological benefits to interval training when training for a marathon is that it will help break up the long distance runs you will be doing and stop you from growing bored of doing the same type of training. One of the hardest things when it comes to training is actually getting in the right frame of mind to do it, so breaking your training up in to different types will help immensely.

Interval training is also great for improving your VO2 Max (the maximum oxygen uptake) and for improving your cardiovascular system . Basically, it will make you fitter.

Another great benefit is to interval training is that it will help increase your overall running speed and will help your bodys ability to produce more energy.

Weight Training

Marathons and training for marathons will greatly impact your joints & muscles, so its important to focus on increasing the strength, stamina and endurance in your muscles and joints, and weight training it a great way to do this.

Lifting weights doesn’t only affect muscles, but it also increases bone density, strengthens ligaments and helps losen joints.

Since a marathon is an endurance event, your rep ranges should be high and target the slow twitch muscle fibres.

Eating properly for recovery

You are placing your body under some intense strain when participating in long distance runs, so you really need to provide your body with good nutrition to allow it to recover properly, which will also help reduce risk of injury.

Eating a varied, balanced diet is key, making sure that you get sufficient protein and carbohydrate intake, along with your healthy fats. Providing your body with the right balance will help with muscle repair and provide you with enough energy to train.

Also important is your vitamin intake to help with your joints and spare them from damage. Supplementing with Glucosamine and omega-3 will help with recover times and limit any potential injuries you may pick up.

If you require any training, nutrition or supplement advise contact me today and we can work you out a plan to get you in shape for any up and coming event you may have.

Just because a product is labeled as “fat free” it doesn’t mean that its healthy to eat, in fact, it doesn’t even mean its free from fat. It just means that each serving contains 0.5g of fat or less. So if you eat more than the serving suggestion you’ll start pumping up your daily fat intake anyway- which in its self may not be a bad thing, as eating Fat doesn’t necessarily make you fat.

Fat Free yes, but at what cost?

The problem with Fat Free products is that whilst the fat is removed the food is then substituted with sugars and artificial flavourings to provide the taste. As I’ve mentioned before, its mainly due to high sugar diets that people become overweight, so it’s important to cut down your sugar intake, not necessarily your fat intake.

When a company removes fat and replaces it with sugar or flour the actual calorie amount may generally remain the same. Meaning that the fat free product may actually have the same amount of calories as the regular version but contains more sugar, making it less healthy than the original version, which may contain healthy dietary fat that your body can use.

So if you over consume “fat free” products, you may be eating a diet higher in sugar, which is never a good idea. High sugar diets can result in fat gain, diabetes and a whole host of other health problems.

If your goal is bigger biceps then you want to make sure that squats are implemented in to your exercise schedule.

No, I haven’t gone crazy by recommending a ‘leg’ exercise to help build bigger arms, the science behind it is pretty simple.

Full body exercise

Whilst the back squat (where a weighted barbell is placed on the top of your back) is often seen as a leg exercise and will obviously target your leg muscles greatly, it’s actually one of the best compound exercises you can do to target muscle growth throughout your whole body.

The squat is a full body exercise, it gets your core muscles working overtime to stop you from collapsing under the weight, your chest and back are working together in a isometric contraction (without movement) with the arms to support the bar and hold it in place and obviously your leg muscles are all working throughout different phases of the squat.

Release of extra Growth Hormone

The benefit of squatting (as it is with deadlifts, cleans etc) is that because your larger muscles are being placed under stress the bodies release of growth hormone and Testosterone is greater. Its these to hormones that get your muscles growing.

If you was to work out each week without targeting these big muscle groups and solely worked on smaller muscles (like the bicep) your body will not release as much of these hormones, which will limit your growth potential .

Furthermore, your body is pretty complex and clever, it will limit the amount of growth in certain areas to prevent your body become too out of balance and misshaped. Therefore by doing that squats, your body is being worked as one and will grow all over and allow for bigger gains in your biceps (or other muscles).

Keep this in mind

“You’ll never meet a man who can squat 2x his bodyweight and doesn’t have big biceps”

It may come as a surprise, but consuming high levels of fruit in your diet may make your body store more fat.

I have mentioned before how important it is to control your blood sugar levels and insulin, if you can do this, you are on the right path towards fat loss. If you limit your sugar intake you can control your insulin and the amount of time your body spends storing fat. This is true for all type of sugar that enter your body, including the sugar found in fruit.

In the battle against fat loss, we have all heard about calories and how important it is not to eat too many of them. But there is more too calories than just looking at the numbers on a back of a packet.

Not only is it important to eat less calories than your body burns, but you need to ensure the calories you do eat are “nutritional dense” and not “empty”.

In other words, you need to eat calories that give your body stuff that it can use and what it needs. For example, 200 kcals of fish (good source of protein and healthy fats) is better than eating 200 kcals of sugar.

The fish will keep you full up; give your body vital fats and protein, which will allow your body to function healthily. The Sugar will give your blood sugar levels a sharp rise, increase Insulin (which will trigger the fat storage switch) and make you feel tired and sluggish.

Whilst people tend to check how many calories a food has, they never look at where the calories come from. The actual calorie amount isn’t really THAT important if you don’t look at what the calorie provides.

Sometimes eating more calories is better than eating less

What’s better, eating a 250 kcal Chicken breast, or eating a 200 kcal chocolate bar?

It’s a no brainier, you should eat the Chicken breast, its healthier, contains vital nutrients and your body can use it.

Whilst the chocolate bar is less calories, it will increase sugar levels, insulin, promote FAT STORAGE, and make you feel like crap in an hour’s time, which will cause you to perhaps eat another chocolate bar or a biscuit (which will actually mean you eat more calories in the long run).

Choosing the chicken breast on the other hand will give your body nutrients that it needs to function, repair, grow etc.

Choose wisely

So don’t get too bulked down with looking at calories on a packet, just make sure what you eat is what your body will use. If the food packet says it contains lots of sugar, salt and trans or saturated fat, put it down and choose something that provides protein, fibre and unsaturated fats.