More Training or More Sleep?

Decisions, decisions…

Picture the scene. It’s early morning and the alarm goes off. It has woken you from a DEEP sleep. You struggle to open your eyes. When you do, you see it’s dark outside.

The bed is so warm. So comfortable.

And you’re tired.

The kind of tired that makes your eyes sting. You don’t want to be up at this time. You don’t need to be up at this time.

But you promised yourself you’d get up to exercise early, before work.

What do you do? Do you drag your tired, weary body out of bed, or do you fall back to sleep, waking up at a more reasonable time and catching some extra sleep?

It’s a question that people in fitness circles have argued over for years - more training, or more sleep? Which is better?

The reality is it’s impossible to answer with any real accuracy. Tiredness is impossible to quantify - what some people see as exhaustion, others see as a little fatigue. We’re all different.

What we can do though, is give some independent guidance around the question, to help you to decide whether or not you need more training or more sleep. They’re both absolutely vital to health and performance, so it’s not as if one should take precedent all of the time.

Training is important. Really important in fact - it’s one of the foundation stones of great health. What that means is that we have to find time to exercise if we want to achieve true health and fitness. Occasionally, that’ll mean we have to train when we’re tired, but when is it appropriate to train when tired?

To start with, ask yourself two questions…

1. How much training time do you have available?

2. How much training have you done recently?

If you don’t have time to train other than the early morning you’ve promised yourself (but don’t fancy), it will probably have to be a case of get up, get to the gym and get on with it. You may not train your hardest, but at least you’ll have done something.

If you’ve got time later in the day or week, roll over and go back to sleep.

The second question helps to inform your decision too. If you’ve trained hard recently, you’ve managed your sessions, you’ve seen your PT, you’ve attended group classes etc, you could probably do with the extra rest and recovery. You may be so tired because your body is telling you to get some rest!

Next up are the questions around recovery…

1. Have you been sleeping well recently?

2. What has your diet been like?

If you’ve been sleeping well recently and this tiredness is a one-off, you can probably get away with training and catch up with the sleep later on. If you’re persistently tired, you should probably start looking after yourself more and protecting your sleep a little better.

Regarding your diet, if you’ve been eating well, drinking plenty of water and generally looking after yourself, you have probably built up enough in the way of immune system protection to get away with pushing yourself on occasion. If your diet has been poor and you’ve been sleeping badly, address these two problems before you start training hard whilst tired.

Exercise and Sleep are Like Yin and Yang

Over the last few years, the ‘hustle’ mentality has attached a certain kudos to working hard and sticking to a punishing schedule. The problem is with it though is if you work too hard and don’t recover enough, you’re in big trouble. You don’t recover properly from training or work. Your sleep is affected, your immunity is affected, your mental health suffers.

We need balance. Work hard, train hard and recover properly. There’s nothing wrong with being tough on yourself, as long as you reward yourself too.

We have to start attaching more importance to sleep. This article shows how sleep deprived Londoners are. As a personal trainer and somebody who teaches health, this concerns me. We absolutely have to do more to protect our sleep.

Sleep underpins motivation to train, decision making around food, our ability to recover from exercise, our mental health and a whole host of other issues, so forget the whole ‘you can sleep when you’re dead’ rubbish - you HAVE to sleep.

Train hard, recover well. It’s pretty simple isn’t it?

More Training or More Sleep? Final Thoughts…

Training and sleep are of qual importance. You can’t neglect one in favour of the other for too long otherwsise your health will suffer.

There’ll be occasions when you’ll need to drag yourself out of bed to train when you’re tired, but be sensible - don’t try to do too much and make sure you catch up with your sleep as soon as you can.

That being said, don’t make a habit of training when you’re tired. Prioritise your rest and recovery. Make it important to you and your physical and mental health will benefit enormously.

If you need any help and guidance with anything health and fitness related, don’t hesitate to contact us. AdMac fitness is Bow’s best personal training studio, run by people passionate about helping you to achieve your health and fitness goals.

How to Make the Christmas Calories Work FOR You, Not AGAINST You...

When you think of Christmas, there’s a pretty good chance that one of the first things that’ll come into your head is food - lots of it. Pigs in blankets, Christmas dinners, huge desserts, plenty of booze. Whether you like it or not, the Festive period is synonymous with weight gain.

But does that need to be the case?

As your friendly neighbourhood Personal Trainer, I’m bringing good news. The answer is no, it doesn’t have to be like that. You don’t have to gain 10lbs over Christmas if you know what you’re doing. It’s a bit like a holiday - you only gain weight if you let yourself do so!

With a little bit of pre-planning, the excess calories around Christmas time can be used to work for you, not against you.

Let me tell you how…

Essentially, food is fuel. Of course it’s more than that to us, it’s pleasurable, it’s sociable, it can be a comforter and a whole load of other things. Fundamentally though, it’s fuel. It provides our body with the energy to perform all of the essential tasks it needs to in order to keep you alive.

You can make use of this extra fuel by increasing your training - both the volume of it and the intensity. The extra food you’ll have on board is the perfect excuse to try a high volume training plan, or to add in an extra session to your week. Our Group Exercise Classes at AdMac Fitness are the perfect way to put those extra calories to use!

An increase in calories will allow you to work harder and recover quicker than normal, so you’ve got the green light to push harder in your workouts. Join our group exercise classes and we’ll make sure you work harder - bye bye, Christmas food guilt!

Whether you decide to put your extra calories to good use with hard cardio work, high volume strength work or a mixture of the above, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are consistent. Remember calories in/calories out. If you don’t use the extra energy, you’ll gain weight.

Avoiding Weight Gain When You Can’t Increase Exercise Volume

Not everyone will have the spare time to increase the amount of exercise they do over Christmas, so we have to have another strategy. Worry not - I’ve got two for you!

Generally speaking, at AdMac Fitness I teach two types of dieting, Counting Your Macros (Calorie Counting) and Intermittent Fasting (IF). Both are really effective and I’m going to show you how to use either one in the context of Christmas parties, so you’ll know what you need to do in order to enjoy yourself at parties without suffering unwanted weight gain.

The example…

You’ve got a Christmas party tomorrow evening. It’s a meal out, followed by drinks. You’ve already paid for it, so you don’t want to miss it. You know there’s going to be a lot of calories consumed, but you’ve done so well recently and don’t want to lose your progress now!

Here’s how to avoid the weight gain by using one of the two methods I teach…

Calorie Counting

This approach involves eating a specific number of calories to ensure steady weight gain. It’s more involved than other forms of dieting, but it’s very accurate and some people like the control element of it. It’s usually supported via apps such as My Fitness Pal.

Step 1: Plan ahead. The party is tomorrow evening, so you’ve got time on your hands. Prepare your meals ahead and do it like this. Aim to keep the vast bulk of your calories free for the evening. For example, if you’re allowed 1800, try to have a 300 calorie breakfast, a 400 calorie lunch and save the 1100 for the evening.

Step 2: Exercise - buy the extra calories. If you can, exercise the night before the party AND the day of the party. Aim for higher calorie-burning sessions such as cardio or HIIT workouts. Not only will you burn calories, you’ll elevate your metabolism for a few hours afterwards, meaning you’ll burn more calories post-workout.

Step 3: Choose wisely. The lowest calorie drinks tend to be clear sprits with a diet mixer. Think gin and slimline tonic, or vodka with a diet mixer. You can save literally hundreds of calories drinking these all night.

Step 4: Recover. Get back on plan the following day. Don’t fuel a hangover with KFC or McDonalds. Get up, move your body, eat healthy foods to replenish nutrients.

Intermittent Fasting

This approach involves going for extended periods without eating - usually between 16-18 hours, then you consume calories in a smaller ‘eating window’. Research shows lots of health benefits to fasting including reduced digestive stress, improved hormonal regulation and better appetite control.

Step 1: Plan your eating window. If you know the party starts at 7, make adjustments the day before so you know when you’ll be eating. Some people skip one meal and exercise, others skip two and only eat once per day. Whichever you do, plan your window in line with when you’ll be eating.

Step 2: Exercise. Just like the example before, make sure you raise your metabolism with exercise beforehand - ideally the night before the party and the day of the party. Just don’t go too crazy - fasted training is a lot harder than training when you’re fed!

Step 3: Choose your drinks wisely, as above!

Step 4: If you’re truly fasting, you won’t be ‘allowed’ to eat, so bear that in mind. If you really want to eat the day after the party, opt for very light foods if you can and make sure you drink a lot of fluids throughout the day.

Don’t Try to Fight Christmas

Unless you’ve got the willpower of a monk, you aren’t going to be able to ignore the tempting food and drink all throughout the Christmas period. Nor should you either - it’s a time to be enjoyed!

Just employ these strategies and you’ll be able to join in all of the festive fun and celebrations without gaining a load of weight you’ll struggle to shift afterwards. There’s no need to let all of your hard work go to waste for the sake of a few parties.

Need Some Fitness Help this Yuletide?

At AdMac Fitness we can provide you with an amazing training experience, helping you to go through Christmas without worrying about weight gain. Maybe you’ve always wanted to get fit, or perhaps you don't want to leave your fitness plans to be a New Year cliche.

Get in touch with us on 07921465108 or email at admacfitness@gmail.com. We’ll make this your fittest Christmas ever - you can even carry on with the food! We’ll show you how!

Should I Pay Attention to my Step Count?

How Important is Hitting 10,000 Steps Per Day?

Ever since Dr Yoshiro Hatano invented the pedometer in 1965, how many steps per day you walk has been a measure of your activity level. The question is though, should I pay attention to my step count?

Dr Hatano said that the average person should aim for 10,000 steps per day. Although at the time it wasn’t especially based in science, it’s a recommendation that has stood the test of time – there’s a good chance your smart phone will have a step counter built into it. It’ll give you a daily target of… 10,000 steps!

A little maths will put 10,000 steps into perspective…

According to a study by the Arizona State University, the average adult male stride length is 30 inches and the average female stride length is 26.4. Let’s split the difference and say it’s 28 inches…

28 x 2.54 (centimetres per inch) = 71cm

71 x 10,000 = 711,200 cm

711,200/100 (to give us the figure in metres) = 7.112km

7.1km = 4.4 miles

So we should be aiming for around 4.4 miles of walking per day. Sounds a lot, but let’s do some further maths…

The average walking pace is just over 3 miles per hour, so you’d need to be on your feet and walking for an hour and a half. Of course this doesn’t mean you have to accumulate all of your steps in one go – you could walk to and from work, you could walk on your lunch break, you could even walk when you get in from work.

The point is to not be sedentary throughout your day.

A good workout will also be enough activity to hit your activity target.

Is 10,000 Steps a Magic Number?

No, absolutely not. But what it is, is a number that is sufficiently high enough that you can’t reach just by lounging around all day. You’ve got to be up and about, unless you just tie your step counter to the dog, but then who does that benefit?!

There’s plenty of benefits to being up and about, walking around that don’t have an immediate or obvious effect…. 

·      Being on your feet activates postural muscles that are weakened with prolonged sitting.

·      Movement improves circulation and stimulates blood flow.

·      Activity has been shown to improve focus and concentration.

·      Walking at lunch time reduces afternoon energy slumps.

These are just a few of the benefits of regular walking, not to mention it’s the simplest form of exercise there is. Just get your shoes on and get going. You don’t need to plan much, you don’t need equipment, a warm up or a psychological pep talk to convince yourself you’ve got it in you! It’s just walking…

But What if I Don’t Hit 10,000 Steps?

 Here’s the thing… 10,000 steps isn’t a walking target. It’s an activity target…

 Eh?

Yeah, it’s a measure of activity. The reason it was described as a walking target was because it was a marketing tactic for a pedometer, so it made sense to get people interested in a walking target. 

If you hit say, 7,000 steps but still get a great workout in, you’ll have smashed your activity target. You shouldn’t be sacrificing the quality of a workout just to make sure you manage 10,000 steps. Think about it as active time on your feet.

It’s part of the reason a workout at AdMac fitness is structured the way it is. Unlike most commercial gyms where there’s a lot of seated equipment, that’s not really how we train. We’re up on our feet, we’re squatting, deadlifting, sprinting, pulling and pushing. In the gym, we’re not counting steps, but you can be sure in an AdMac fitness workout you’re 100% guaranteed to hit your activity target, irrespective of steps!

The message is simple – pay attention to your steps, but use it as a measure of your overall activity, not just how much walking you’ve done. If you’re not training that day, make sure you hit 10,000 steps. If you are training that day, don’t worry if you don’t hit the 10,000, just work hard in your session!

If you’d like any more help with your nutrition and fitness, contact us on 07921465108 or email us on admacfitness@gmail.com.

Five Easy Ways to Eat More Vegetables

We all know we should eat more vegetables – you don’t need a degree in nutrition to understand that. Despite that, a lot of us don’t get anywhere near enough vegetables into our diet.

Here’s five easy ways to eat more vegetables. Practical advice that won’t make it seem like a chore to get vegetables into your diet.

Add vegetables to smoothies

Even if you don’t like the taste of vegetables, throwing them in a smoothie is a perfect solution because it completely masks the taste of them. They’ll be easily hidden amongst the other ingredients that you put into the mix.

Vegetables such as carrots, spinach, cucumbers and beetroot can add amazing colour to a smoothie without dominating the flavour of the whole drink. They dramatically boost the nutrient profile, adding all kinds of vitamins, minerals and fibre to the smoothie. It’s a quick and easy way to up your vegetable intake.

You can make your own smoothies in seconds, so there’s no excuse. Pick up a blender and you can make healthy food in literally seconds!

Blender Suggestion!

Buy pre-prepared vegetables

A lot of people like the taste of vegetables, but they can’t face the faff of having to wash them, peel them, chop them, prep them etc. That’s understandable (lazy too, but whatever!)

If you fall into this category then pick up some prepared vegetables. Most supermarkets will sell pre-cut veg, some even sell packets with a mixture of vegetables ready prepared for a dish – you can get a stir fry pack of pre-prepared vegetables, which are washed, chopped and ready to throw into the wok. I’ve also a casserole pack where the veg is ready to add to the pot.

Buy a Salad for Lunch

One of the great things about living here in London is that we are literally surrounded by food and places to eat. You don’t have to travel far in any direction to get yourself some good quality food.

Take advantage of the great cafes and delis around us and pick up a salad from them for your lunch. It’ll be freshly-made, packed with all the veg you want and will taste great. Additionally, you haven’t had to do any of the work on it either so you’ll benefit twice – you’ll eat great food and wouldn’t have to do any of the prep work!

Use a Meal Prep Service

The purpose of this article is to give you easy ways to eat more vegetables. The easiest of all (but the most expensive, admittedly) is to use a meal prep service. Essentially you pick from their menu and they will prepare the food for you, then deliver it to your home.

The benefits are that the meal options are usually really good, they’re portion and calorie controlled and they’re also usually really vegetable heavy, which allows them to maintain volume of food whilst keeping calories low. You can also specifically pick the vegetable-heavy options so you can get more vegetables into your diet.

Identify the ‘Easy’ Vegetable Intakes

If you broaden your horizons on vegetables you’re likely to spot new ideas. Think of it like this – some ready meals will contain 1-2 portions of vegetables. Your standard Heinz baked beans are a vegetable. Lots of pre-prepared soups will count as a portion of vegetables.

If you are a pretty lazy or even time-pressured cook, look for the easy wins such as those. They are ways of adding to your vegetable intake without having to go through the process of preparing and cooking them. If you’re not a big fan of vegetables in their ‘normal’ forms then these easy wins could be perfect for you. 

Five Easy Ways to Eat More Vegetables: Concluded

We could all do with eating more vegetables, but it shouldn’t be the source of a lot of stress. Take these tips and use them in your daily food planning and you’ll be eating more vegetables in no time.

 If you’d like any more help with your nutrition and fitness, contact us on 07921465108 or email us on admacfitness@gmail.com.

Press Ups: An Underrated Exercise

There are certain things in life that are great, but you just take them for granted because they’ve been around for so long that you’ve gotten used to them. Think of a hot shower after a cold day – it’s nice, but you’d be lying if you said you truly appreciated it, simply because it’s ‘normal’ now.

Press ups are a similar thing.

Press ups have been around for so long, are so accessible, so simple to do that we’ve forgotten just how useful they are. Without getting too technical about the nuances of why press ups may be the best chest exercise there is, let me just go through a few of the reasons why I love press ups so much and why they feature in so many of my personal training client programmes….

Press Ups are so versatile….

When you think of a press up, you’ll think of the standard version where you are balanced on your toes at one end, your palms at the other and keeping your back straight, you lower yourself to the floor and push yourself up. That’s a great exercise, but there’s so much more you can do with them. You can elevate your feet to make them harder. You can put your hands on blocks to increase the range of movement at the shoulder. You can add weight to your back to increase the weight you are lifting, you can do a plyometric press up, you can do an Atomic press up with a TRX. You’re limited by your capability, not the variety.

Press Ups are Scalable…

Whether you’re a complete beginner only capable of performing press ups from your knees, or you are a calisthenics pro who can perform press ups with all kinds of levels of difficulty, there is always a benefit to be had.

From a technical point of view they’re a simple movement to learn and the benefits are huge. As an exercise that has quite a low metabolic cost (doesn’t require absolute gut-wrenching effort), they’re suitable for people of all levels of fitness. When you’re more advanced, there’s a range of progressions. When you’re an absolute machine, there’s still ways you can make a push up a worthwhile exercise in your programme. As a personal trainer, it’s a really useful exercise to programme. Our current client leader is a guy called Raf and his best in the studio is 39. Not bad!

Press Ups Require Little/No Equipment…

When I’m expecting personal training clients to do accessory training in their own time, an exercise like a press up can be perfect. If you are the kind of person who trains at home, in the park or a really crowded gym, any exercise that can be performed without the need for a tonne of extra kit is really useful. All you need is a floor (and there’s plenty of that around) and enough space to lie down and you can do all the press ups you want (or I tell you to do!)

Press Ups Are Great for Shoulder Health…

OK, I’m going to get a tiny bit technical here. Your shoulder blades are called your scapular bones. In many chest exercises, the scapular are ‘pinned’ and unable to move properly (think bench press, flyes, incline presses etc). This is fine on occasion, but if all the exercises you do pin the scapular then you could be storing up shoulder trouble down the line. With a press up you allow the scapular to move freely and keep a full range of motion. This can help your shoulders regain the movement they should have and keep them strong, healthy and robust for the long term.

Press Ups can be Paired Easily…

As a personal trainer I’m thinking about movement patterns rather than just ‘exercises’, so by adding press ups to training programmes I’m including an upper body push that doesn’t exhaust the client, allowing me to safely and effectively pair them with another exercise in a superset, or as part of an exercise complex. These serve to burn more calories, illicit a bigger training response and see my personal training clients improve their fitness, build muscle, burn more calories and make general progress much more quickly.

Press Ups Train a lot of Muscles…

Perhaps unfairly, press ups are considered a chest exercise because the main muscles

trained are the pectorals. That’s a bit misleading though, because they are so much more than a standard chest exercise. With a press up you are training the chest, the shoulders, the triceps and the forearms. You are engaging your core muscles to keep your back straight throughout the movement. In addition, the erector spinae muscles keep the back locked further in place and the quadriceps muscles at the front of the thighs keep your legs rigid and prevent collapse. Yes, press ups train the chest, but they also train other muscles too.

Press Ups: Concluded

The humble press up is an exercise that is so simple and easily ignored. Not here at AdMac Fitness – we believe in effective training methods, not fads and gimmicks. We don’t select exercises because they look cool or would make great Instagram content, we select exercises because they make our personal training clients fitter, stronger and healthier.

Why not come down to our private personal training studio in Bow, East London to see how we can help you? Contact us on 07921465108 to book a no obligation consultation.

Whether to use scales

Using the scales as a marker of progress isn’t for everyone. It can be a great tool for some people and we do use it in the studio for a lot of clients. However, if after discussions with a client it seems as though they would get fixated on the scales as the ONLY marker for progress OR if they have experienced stress in the past from using scales then we would chose not to use them. Using them alongside photos, strength markers, food/calorie tracking. daily activity tracking can be really effective if its understood that the scales may stay the same (or sometimes go up) but we are still heading in the right direction based on the other markers.

If you are interested in hearing more about how we can help you with your goals, feel free to call AdMac for a chat on 07921465108.

AdMac Fitness has expanded

We are now a team of three - consisting of AdMac and the fantastic female trainers Marta and Larrie. We are focussed on bringing high quality personal training, putting the clients’ needs first using strength training to help lose body fat, strengthen joints and improve confidence.

If you are at all interested in seeing what we do please contact AdMac on admacfitness@gmail.com to book in a trial session.

We are based opposite Bow Church DLR, 5 minutes walk from Bow Road station.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Where to start with bodyweight strength/skill acquisition.

This is hugely dependent on your level of fitness, how often you train and where this lies in your fitness priorities.

However, if you are interested in learning some bodyweight strength exercises but dont know where to start my advice would be to start on one skill for 2-4 months. I made the mistake of trying to learn too many exercises at the same time and progress was slow with a lot of them.

If you train 4-5 times a week, a good place to start would be to complete 4 sets 3 times a week. (If you train less you could start with just twice a week.) Each week you can add a set on per workout until you are up to 24-30 total sets per week. 

As you get stronger, although you are adding more sets per workout, you'll find each set less taxing and therefore will be able to handle more volume. After 2-4 months, or if you are able to complete the skill, you can decrease the sets to just 'maintain' the strengrh it requires to complete the skill and then use the same philisophy to work on a new skill. 

Bootcamp going through the winter!

Bootcamp is still going strong, dont be afraid of the cold! Wrap up warm and come and get a workout in to start your weekend off right! 

Fatigue and stress management

Whether its fatigue or stress, old habits tend to return when control is decreased. This is why striving for balance should be a case of working towards preventing sleep deprivation, not allowing yourself to get too hungry, not overloading your schedule and priotising food shopping/cooking/preparation.

Nothing magic in this advice, but factors that take time and a lot of effort to cement into ones 'normal' routine.

Quick water break in between circuits!

Monday evening HIIT and abs 6.30-7.30pm indoors

I've moved the Monday night class indoors in my studio and have made it an hour long, condensing the HIIT and abs into one.

Next week will be the third week of the class - its pretty intense!

Coach AdMac

Bow, East London Personal Training, class and bootcamps.

NEW CLASS ALERT

Thursday 7-8pm Power Circuits inside my studio. This class has a 14 people capacity. Think battle ropes, TRX, kettlebells, slam balls, dumbbells.

This is booked on a first come first serve basis and already looks like it wil be very popular!

Email admacfitness@gmail.com to book.

Strength training

Here you can see my client Sarah doing a Bulgarian split squat with a kettlebell loaded on the opposite arm to that of the leg that is being worked. This means the glutes have to work that bit harder to stop the knee collapsing in. In addition to this, the video on instagram will show how we were getting Sarah to pause at the bottom of the movement and ensure her hip was as low as her knee. These cues mean her glutes have to really work to control the movement - quite often i see this exercise done almost exclusively using the thigh muscle. Good coaching allows you to target the muscles you want to work in a safe manner.

My studio is based in the Bow Business Centre, E3.

Biggest turnout of the year @ bootcamp on Saturday

Great to see so many people this weekend and i had a lot of positive feedback after the session.  The community is growing AND people are getting fit!

Fitness doesn't have to be a chore!

An important part of the AdMac brand is learning new skills whilst training. I start every session with a skill element, whether it be juggling, skipping, boxing, handstands, yoga or calisthenics:- now this isn't just because i'm a looney, i've found clients enjoy sessions more when they are working towards something more than just a body goal. And guess what, enjoying sessions leads to a better adherence rate to training - which means they actually do a better job of hitting those fitness goals!

Coach AdMac

Bow, E3 based Personal Training, classes and bootcamps.

Coach AdMac's planche progress

Slow progress, but progress nonetheless!

Bow Bootcamp

Working the hamstrings with the clan down in Grove Hall Park, E3. Practice makes perfect with this.

Bootcamps, personal training and classes.  AdMac

Pistol squats

One of the bodyweight exercises that requires a great deal of strength and mobility. This is something i practice twice a week and encorporate into a lot of my sessions with clients.

Simple recipe for those body goals!

-instil a 'slight bit' of discipline with the food and drink you consume

- but then aim for COMPLETE dedication to your training

Aim for these two week in, week out and watch your body take shape

Put another way, dont get too hung up on the two gin and tonics you had in the sun Tuesday evening... those 100/150 calories arent going to ruin your week - however do have a word with yourself if you are skipping your training.

Discipline with your training = freedom in other areas of your life.

AdMac

Personal training, bootcamps and classes in Bow, East London.