SMART TRAINING

Stop wasting your time!
Have you ever wondered why it is that some people work their butts off at the gym, yet never seem to change shape? Unfortunate genetics, right? Wrong!

The bottom line is: everyone has the same skeletal structure, ingeniously manoeuvered by an intricate network of muscles. Lying over this is a layer of stored energy, or body fat. The extent to which you choose to develop your muscle tissue (or allow it to deteriorate) and the degree of excess body fat you allow to accumulate is completely up to you. Big butts and love handles cannot be blamed on your poor old dad, grandma or distant uncle on your mother’s side! Of course, we all have certain genetic traits that may make fat loss or muscle gain a little easier for some, or more difficult for others, but generally, great bodies are not born, they are made.

Quality, not quantity
Despite the growing number of exercise enthusiasts in gyms, I’ve always found that those individuals actually making significant gains are so rare that it is disturbing. The sheer frustration of witnessing this phenomenon over the past 20 years inspired me to get involved with FitnessToGo.com – a revolutionary new system that enables everyone to train smarter, as opposed to the usual solution of training harder, heavier and longer – anytime, anywhere!

Resistance training is the key to a lean, shapely body, and it goes way beyond a simple issue of vanity. As many of you know, our metabolic rate is boosted significantly with every gram of muscle we gain, allowing faster, more efficient energy burn, 24/7. Yet I am still confronted on a daily basis with men and women who have developed an intense fear of exploding into a Schwartzenegger-esque creature if they train hard. Those of us who’ve tried to gain muscle know that it ain’t that easy. Most people who have successfully reduced their body fat will tell you how little muscle tissue they really had once all of the ‘blubber’ came off. It’s no secret that without adequate muscle density, it is impossible to get ‘lean’ without looking like a match with the wood shaved off!

Information overload…
These days you can’t swing a dead cat in a gym without hitting an ‘expert’! Unfortunately, there are more wide spread, contradictory opinions amongst the experts than there are diet books, so who should we choose to believe? How much of what we hear and do is a necessary part of getting into shape, and how much is urban myth? Most veterans are still trying to work it all out, so I can certainly sympathize with the confusion of a novice trainer. Let’s see…there are super-sets, giant-sets, muscle exhaustion, pre-exhaustion, forced, staggered, shock, partials, progressive, split routines, isolation, compound, carb-loading, depletion, high protein, high fat, low fat, high reps, low reps …ahhhhh!

The confusion and dissatisfaction surrounding exercise and fat loss is a growing concern. So what steps can you take to finally achieve the results you deserve?
To make significant changes to our shape and general condition, we must change our body composition by adding lean muscle tissue and losing stored body fat. I’ve heard many people say that ‘all bodybuilders look the same’. The one thing they all have in common is that they’ve achieved a similar body composition. The same could be said about the physique of most competitive gymnasts or track and field athletes.

What is the most effective training method?
More confusion relates to the most effective training method. Whether a beginner or veteran, most of us reach a plateau at some stage. So how do we overcome this?

Should we train heavy all the time?

Are free weights, machines or our own body weight more efficient?

How many sets or reps should I do?

Funnily enough, the same answer can address all of the above – technique and mind-muscle connection.

Most of us become quite efficient at using gym equipment, whether focused on free weights or machines. But how many of you know how to really use your body? By this, I mean being able to focus on the specific muscle being worked, know its precise function and take it through its full range of movement, all the while visualising it in your mind’s eye. I am constantly surprised at how many advanced trainers are not aware of how specific this can become. It is not unusual for me to cut a client’s weights in half, yet increase their intensity 10-fold by simply teaching total focus and isolation.

Once this skill is perfected, not only will you significantly reduce the risk of injury, you will start to mould your physique into whatever shape you desire! Whether it’s muscle size you’re chasing, or simply shaping and toning, without correct instruction, your results will always be restricted.

Unlike weight lifting, increasing the weights used in body building/shaping is not always a sign of positive progress
To give you an example, if your bicep is capable of lifting 20 kilos and you put a 30 kilo dumbbell in your hand, your bicep can still only lift 20 kilos. To lift 30 kilos, your body will accommodate by automatically selecting numerous surrounding muscles to assist, usually leaving your bicep with even less than the 20 kilos it’s capable of.

Many people tend to think that working with your own body weight is an inferior method of resistance training for muscle development. Tell that to an Olympic gymnast! Again, it all boils down to technique. In my opinion, training using your own body weight can be far more challenging than training with weights.

How do we know which exercise/machine is most effective for a particular body part?

I’m often asked which exercise is more effective, pec-deck or dumbbell flyes … lat pulldowns or chin-ups? There is no definitive answer, except to say that the question is irrelevant, once you understand how to work the muscle group at hand. Different exercises for the same muscle group will help to alleviate boredom, but as long as you are taking each muscle through its mechanical range, whether you have dumbbells or maracas in your hands is neither here nor there!