Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness - What the science says...

Anyone who has ever done exercise will have almost certainly experienced the post-exercise muscle pain known as DOMS. If you’re just getting back into training after lockdown, you may well be experiencing DOMS like you haven’t done for a long time!

What we’re going to explore in this article is what the science says about Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness and how we can manage it ourselves.

DOMS - What is it?

The early study and investigation into delayed onset muscle soreness started in the 70’s and 80’s. For a long time there were a number of theories under investigation, ranging from lactic acid build up, enzyme build up, muscle damage and toxin accumulation. What the science has largely settled on is that DOMS is the result of micro-trauma in the muscles caused by exercise, in particular eccentric contraction. The other theories around lactic acid etc have been largely discredited by science.

For those of you unaware, eccentric contraction is when a muscle lengthens as it contracts, rather than shortens. A classic example is in the hamstrings during kettlebell swings.

Two other anecdotal observations around DOMS is a change of stimulus, so for example imagine you typically weight train and instead decide to go for a run, because you’re not used to running you’re likely to suffer from DOMS, even though you may already be physically fit.

Another potential cause of DOMS is the intensity of the exercise. By increasing workout volume and intensity you may well be creating the conditions for muscle soreness. This is especially poignant at the moment because so many of us are ramping our exercise intensity back up post-lockdown, so are potentially more likely to be suffering from DOMS.

Why is DOMS a problem?

This largely depends on your training goals. If you’re an athlete, DOMS can be a big problem because being in pain makes you unable to train at a very high intensity. This can translate into poor performances in competition. Additionally it reduces the amount of force that your muscles are capable of generating and the speed at which they contract, all negatives from a performance standpoint.

The more significant effect of DOMS for the rest of us is the increase in injury risk associated with the problem. We know from research that the condition has an adverse effect on the ability of the muscles and connective tissue to absorb force and impact, which is a huge element of injury prevention, especially in those who run or walk a lot, or play sports even at an amateur level.

Additionally DOMS is known to affect the muscle sequencing and firing patterns, so trying to learn a new physical skill whilst suffering from the problem is not a good idea. If you’re taking up a new sport or physical skill, don’t do it whilst suffering from DOMS because you’ll find learning the skill harder and you’re more likely to pick up an injury in the process.

How can we avoid DOMS?

The obvious thing to do is to avoid spending much time in eccentric contraction, especially when returning to training. Although there’s a school of thought that suggests eccentric contraction is where muscle growth occurs, there’s significant evidence that suggests this isn’t actually true. Placing emphasis on explosive concentric elements of an exercise will be helpful and avoiding any kind of ‘negatives’ in training.

You can still train at a very high intensity and not experience much in the way of DOMS - excellent approaches to this are exercises like prowler pushes, olympic weightlifting, sprinting, boxing, rope work and the like - these tend to not have much in the way of eccentric contraction so you can effectively work as hard as you like and not suffer delayed onset muscle soreness.

You’ll still have to recover appropriately, but the likelihood is you won’t be sore after the workout.

How do we cure DOMS?

The short answer is we don’t, but we can reduce the effects of it! The longer answer is that there are various ways to reduce the effects of the muscle pain that have various levels of success.

Generally speaking the best advice is to take an active role in recovery - massage therapies, warm/cold immersion therapies (sauna/ice baths etc), wearing compression and infrared garments and finally making sure you are well rested with great quality sleep, well nourished with plenty of protein and adequately hydrated.

Should DOMS ever be a goal?

For all the reasons above - DOMS should never be a goal on its own. In the bodybuilding community there is a lot of bro talk where they almost make DOMS out to be a good thing. The only real occasion where a bit of DOMS occurring might not be the worst thing in the world would be the end of a 6-8 week hypertrophy block of training where the volume has been increased week to week and there is a planned rest/de-load week after the block. And even then it shouldn’t be a goal just a bi-product of very well organised hypertrophy training.

Following the advice in this article will see you fighting fit and doing your best to avoid DOMS!

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!

Post Lockdown Weight Loss - How Fast Can I Lose Weight and How Do I stay Motivated?

In this article we’re going to look at the questions ‘how fast can I lose weight and how do I stay motivated?’ We’ll look at the research, the evidence and the practicalities of post-lockdown weight loss.

With gyms opening back up and Personal Training sessions returning to normal levels, people are heading back to fitness after their enforced break. If my social media is anything to go by, a lot of people have found the return hard - they’ve lost fitness, gained weight and are finding the sessions much harder than they used to!

Not only are they finding it physically tough, but it’s also mentally tough to get up and back at it. Motivation to exercise has waned in a lot of people because they’ve gotten used to the easier time on the sofa. The gyms being closed has given them the perfect excuse to not train, so the guilt associated is less severe! The psychological hurdle to jump over is just as hard as the physical one in many ways, so we’re going to cover that too.

We’ve already written about returning to fitness sensibly so in this article, we’re going to cover the other topic people are interested in - how fast can they lose the lockdown weight and how can they stay motivated?

Defining ‘weight’ - It’s not what it seems!

What most people mean when they say they want to lose weight is that they want to lose fat - the two things are different. In fact, you can do a little experiment to prove so…

1. Stand on some scales and see what you weigh

2. Drink a litre of water as quickly as you can

3. Stand back on the scales - see what you weigh now

Chances are you’ll be around 2lbs heavier than you were a couple of minutes earlier. You’re no fatter, you’re just heavier. Use this as an example of how weight and fat are different, and then accept that your fluid levels have a huge impact on weight, so not all weight gain is bad news!

There are certain diets that promise rapid weight loss, but the impressive weight loss numbers you see are just water weight and within a couple of weeks, a more ‘normal’ rate of fat loss occurs.

When measuring weight loss, we’re looking for a long term trend - there may well be day-today fluctuations in weight, there may well be weight gains, but if over the medium to long term the weight is coming down, that’s what we’re hoping for. Generally speaking, acceptable weight loss is around 1-3lbs per week, depending on your time lines and your physiology,

Speed of weight loss

When you’re losing weight, the temptation is to rapidly reduce calories to see early results, which is no bad thing. Seeing early results is an excellent motivating factor, but it’s hard to keep up and you should understand that before embarking on a fast drop approach. The research shows that people who take this approach are often successful in the short term, but through biochemical changes will often see a return of weight gain unless they strictly control their food intake.

The evidence maintains that after a rapid weight loss phase, a slower phase of weight loss of around 1-3lbs per week is optimal over the longer term, giving time to adapt behaviours in a more sustainable way and also reduce the physical impact.

The study then goes on to suggest that ‘maintenance visits’ are useful to ensure that the motivation and behaviours required to lose weight are maintained for the long term. The great thing about hiring a Personal Trainer or joining in with our group classes is that those maintenance visits are happening on a regular basis, so we take care of that one easily!

In the research, the rate of weight loss, the maintenance of the weight loss and the rate of weight regain are all improved by the use of maintenance visits, proving again that they most successful weight loss approaches always involve some sort of check in and accountability.

Weight loss motivation

What the evidence shows is that long term weight loss motivation is maintained when the dieter ‘owns’ the goal - it’s something that they want to achieve and are willing to overcome obstacles and difficulties in the way to make it happen.

By making the goal one that you decide on and want to achieve, your chances of success are far higher. Of course for most people, lockdown weight gain is likely to be fairly limited (5-20lbs) and that is the kind of weight that can be lost in a few weeks, but the reality is it still takes motivation to achieve. There will be times when it’s both physically and mentally tough and those are obstacles that will have to be overcome - with the help of a coach and the internal drive to succeed, it’s possible.

Losing lockdown weight: Concluded

What we’ve learned from the article and the research is the key to ensuring fast and maintained weight loss. These are the key points to make sure you manage it effectively and succeed with your weight loss goal…

1. You can start fast by dropping calories very low, but don’t stay there - use it as a kick start to lose water weight and boost motivation.

2. Use a coach! Maintenance visits help to keep you accountable, keep you on track with actions and behaviours and also help to motivate you.

3. Make sure it’s YOUR goal - not someone else's. Weight loss isn’t always easy, so you’ve got to be willing to tough out the hard times.

4. Maintain a calorie deficit that will see you lose 1-3lbs per week, which research shows is the most sustainable.

5. Train regularly - it helps you create the calorie deficit and boosts your physical and mental health!

With the AdMac Fitness team by your side, you’ll be sure to succeed in your weight loss and fitness goals!

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 Welcomes a New Personal Trainer - Nadine Palmer!

At AdMac Fitness we’re always looking at ways we can expand our services and grow the client offering. With that in mind, we’re delighted to announce that Nadine Palmer has joined us as our brand new Personal Trainer!

Nadine will be working alongside both myself and Giancarlo to deliver excellent Personal Training sessions and fitness coaching. We’ve got a strong vetting process at AdMac Fitness and only work with high quality personal trainers and Nadine is just that.

As a team we’re looking forward to introducing Nadine to everyone and letting our members experience her training style. We’re sure you’re going to love how she works and the fun you’ll have during her sessions! Alongside her excellent fitness knowledge, he also has a brilliant sense of humour and will make personal training sessions fun (as well as tough - don’t forget that bit!)

At AdMac Fitness we’re trying to come out of the lockdown stronger and better than ever before, working as hard as we can to make sure that maintain everything you knew and loved about the gym, as well as expanding what we do.

Bringing Nadine on board gives us an extra dimension to what we offer and we’re sure you’re going to love working with her. When you see Nadine in the gym, make sure you say hi!

Here’s a little more on Nadine (and Giancarlo!)

If you’re interested in working with Nadine, get in touch with the studio here and arrange a consultation.

AdMac Fitness is Back! A Few Updates Around our Guidelines...

After a seemingly never-ending lockdown, life is slowly returning to normal. Whilst we aren’t out of the woods yet, fitness facilities have been given the green light to re-open (which is great news as far as we’re concerned!)

With that in mind we’ve got some news and guidelines about AdMac Fitness and our own opening protocols. We’re doing our best to get things back to a version of normal and whilst some restrictions still apply, we’re doing what we can.

A Few Guidelines and Announcements…

• The studio is open for 1:1 and 2:1 personal training. We can control the spaces and because we’re a fully private facility, we can can control exactly who enters the gym and when. Continue to use your usual booking method for the sessions.

• The Monday evening group class won’t be starting up at the moment because of social distancing guidelines - there are just too many people for the space we have available. As soon as this changes we will let you know and classes will be returning.

• The Saturday morning Bootcamp will resume in mid August, stay tuned for the date. We’ll make an announcement as soon as we can via all of the usual channels.

Our Standards of Cleanliness…

For those members and clients who have concerns, be assured that social distancing can be controlled as we work with small numbers in the studio.

The benefit of being a private facility is that we can control the numbers who can enter the building, so we’ll never have any more than an appropriate number of people in the gym.

Our standards of cleanliness are already excellent, but we can promise you all that cleaning will be increased. We’ll be cleaning the gym and the individual bits of kit multiple times per day. We’ll also provide hand sanitiser, but of course if bringing your own will make you feel more at ease, feel free to bring that too.

Let’s all enjoy a return to fitness and gym use and please remember - we at AdMac Fitness would NEVER do anything to harm your health and safety, so you can turn up to train relaxed and ready to go. We’ve got you covered and are well-prepared to make sure your session and safety have been put front and centre of our minds!

One other thing…

We’ve got a new Personal Trainer too! We’ve had Nadine join the AdMac Fitness team. Keep your eyes peeled for a little more information about here - you may even see her in the gym!

Let AdMac Guide Your Training!

As professional personal trainers, it’s our job to help you exercise safely and effectively. We also work out of our private studio in Bow, East London. We operate in a safe, socially-distanced way and assure you that our standards of hygiene and cleanliness are second to none.

If you want to let us help you reach your fitness and physique goals, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Weights, Reps and Sets... When to use High or Low Reps

For years it was believed that you needed to lift heavy weights for muscle and strength, but light weights for endurance and fat loss. There’s an element of truth in that, but like all things fitness there’s a million shades of grey in there too. In this article we’re going to look at weights, sets and reps, discussing what the science tells us about different rep ranges, loads and volumes of resistance training.

As always on the AdMac Fitness we’ll link to studies that tell us what the science shows, giving you the proof that here we share science, not opinion.

Last week we discussed weight training for fat loss, but today we’re going to look in more depth at the nuances of weight training and how you can adjust your lifting to suit your different goals.

Weight Training - The Physiology

At the most basic level, weight training works by breaking muscle tissue down through excess loading. This breakdown of the tissue forces a physiological and hormonal adaption, making the body build more contractile fibres. This makes the muscle stronger and able to cope with more load in future.

To help you visualise what happens, the diagram below shows the physiology of muscle tissue. What weight training does is increase the quantity, size and density of the myofibrils. These are the contractile units that determine the strength of a muscle and its ability to handle load.

It would be wrong to assume that all weight training does is to increase the size and density of the myofibrils. You can adapt weight training methodologies to bring about a different response in the muscle tissue, so all weight training isn’t the same.

What we know from the science is that weight training affects the body differently when we use different weights, sets and rest periods.

Adjusting Weights - What Happens

When the body lifts different levels of load, it creates a change in the outcome for the muscle. It used to be thought that heavier weight increases muscle mass more effectively than lighter weight, but it turns out that that isn’t strictly true.

Whilst heavy weight can be effective for muscle building, light weights have been shows to effectively build muscle too. In fact, some studies show that light weights can be more effective at building muscle. This is because of the volume of training - they typically do more training as the rep ranges are higher, and in lots of cases, more reps leads to more muscle tissue stress and more adaption. Although the muscle growth was higher in the study though, strength didn’t improve as much as in the higher load group.

If you want to improve strength, the loads have to increase. Study after study shows that if strength improvement is the desired outcome, then load becomes more important than volume, especially in trained populations.

In untrained populations there’s evidence that volume is more important than load, but this is possibly due to a neural response rather than a forced adaption at a physiological level. If you’re reading this as someone who has some training experience (more than 1 year), the load is more important than volume when it comes to strength improvement.

Overwhelmingly in trained populations, the evidence shows that strength adaption is forced by lifting progressively heavier weights. If we take a look at this study it shows that pushing heavier weights (up to 90% of 1 rep maximum) at a high intensity showed significantly greater strength gains that moderate or low load weight training. What’s important to note here is that the rest periods were longer in the strength group, allowing them to full recover between sets, meaning they were fresher for each high load set.

So to conclude, light to moderate weight with high repetitions leads to more muscle growth. Heaver weights with fewer reps and longer rests leads to more strength gains.

Adjusting Sets - What Happens

The volume question is important, because it brings into account levels of fatigue and expected outcomes of training. We know from the previous sections that higher volume tends to increase muscle mass, with higher loads increasing strength, but is there an optimal number of sets and reps?

The answer appears to be no, there isn’t an ‘optimal’, but typically speaking higher volumes will show greater improvements in the desired outcome. For clarity, what we mean here isn’t about the load lifted - that should always be specific to the goal, but more the number of sets and reps.

For example, if when training for strength we lift with around a 1-5 rep range, it appears that additional sets will be beneficial. So, rather than do 3 sets of 5, research shows that 5 sets of 5 would likely produce a better result because the volume is higher for the goal. The same goes with muscle building - if you would normally do 4 sets of 10, evidence suggests 5 sets of 10 would be better.

More volume at a given rep range appears to be more effective than lower volume. Whether you increase the volume during a workout (by doing extra sets in the same workout) or you increase the volume across the week (by doing additional workouts) doesn’t seem to matter, what matters is that you just do more.

What’s important though is that you recover.

Recovery from Exercise

There is a limit to the rate of muscle protein synthesis, which means the rate at which your body can physically build muscle tissue. Search shows that in older populations, additional volume is more beneficial than in younger populations, so your training history is something to bear in mind.

Your job isn’t to destroy your body in training, it’s to stimulate it and provide the best conditions in which muscle can be grown. Train hard 3-6 times per week, but recover well too. Where the research shows high volume is effective when it comes to weight training, it also tells us there’s a point at which extra training ceases to become effective. Your job is to listen to your body and when it’s telling you it needs a rest, you give it one!

Let AdMac Help You Weight Train!

As professional personal trainers, it’s our job to help you exercise safely and effectively. We also work out of our private studio in Bow, East London. We operate in a safe, socially-distanced way and assure you that our standards of hygiene and cleanliness are second to none.

If you want to let us help you lose weight, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Weight Training for Fat Loss - How and Why it Works

A lot of people wrongly assume that if you want to lose fat, you do cardio, but if you want to build muscle, you lift weights. It’s easy to understand where these assumptions come from, but they’re a little wide of the mark.

In this article we’re going to discuss weight training for fat loss - something our clients here at AdMac Fitness will be well aware of. It’s a fundamental part of our training approach and is one of the major reasons our clients achieve such excellent results.

We’re going to discuss how and why weight training for fat loss works, and why we use it as our go-to approach.

A History of Fat Loss

What we know to be true is that in order to lose fat, we need to create a calorie deficit. By burning more calories than we consume, the body is forced to use up fat stores to satisfy our bodies energy demands. No matter which approach you take, fundamentally they all abide by this core principle.

The reason historically it was believed that ‘cardio’ is better for fat loss than other forms of training is because we know that cardio burns more calories. Sounds logical.

The thing is, it’s not that simple.

Cardio is fantastic at burning calories whilst you’re doing it, and a little while after. These factors are enhanced when we perform HIIT (high intensity interval training), which is the approach we use here at AdMac Fitness. Research has consistently shown that HIIT combined with moderate calorie restriction sustained over a long enough period of time is a very effective way of producing a sustained loss of body fat.

What we also know is that relying on cardio and diet alone isn’t a particularly good long term fat loss strategy, and here’s why…

A combination of calorie restriction and endurance exercise is shown to increase muscle atrophy (muscle loss). This can be slightly offset if the person following a cardio and calorie restriction approach includes a lot of protein in their diet, but even then significant lean body tissue loss occurs. This isn’t what we’re trying to do - we want to preserve our lean body tissue, whilst losing fat.

It’s possible to lose weight by weight training and doing no cardio, but it’s a process that takes longer and it means you have to be tighter on a diet. Many people prefer to eat slightly more but burn more calories in the gym. If you aren’t going to do any cardio, you have to be strict with your calorie intake - without a calorie restriction, fat loss using weight training alone is very difficult.

Weight and fat are different things altogether, because you can be heavy and lean.

Research show that what happens when you combine weight training with a calorie restricted diet, is you effectively prevent all muscle loss yet you maintain the rate of fat loss seen in those who do cardio. This is a huge result, because muscle is both an aesthetically pleasing tissue and a metabolically active one, which means it burns a lot of calories at rest, giving you a little more headroom when it comes to your dieting.

More muscle typically means a high metabolic rate, so you can afford to eat a few more calories in your diet, which is never a bad thing when you’re trying to lose fat!

Is There a Weight Training Strategy That Works Best for Fat Loss?

The short answer is that no, one approach over others is not known to be significantly better, because there are too many variables at play. People work at different intensities, with different weights and selecting different exercises. There are commonalities though, which we’ll discuss in a few moments.

What we can be sure of though is that throughout various studies, the most effective approach to fat loss and general health improvement includes both a resistance training and cardio training element. Ideally the cardio element is high intensity interval training and the resistance training is full body, high intensity. Whether the resistance is provided by bodyweight, dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells etc is basically irrelevant.

Frequency of training appears to be very important as well. Results from this study show that when subjects trained 4 or more times per week, they lost 3 times more fat than those who trained 2-3 times per week.

Here are the key elements of a resistance-based training programme for fat loss….

• It has to be high intensity. The aim is to help create a calorie deficit, so keep rest periods short and weights relatively high.

• Training has to be done 4+ times per week if fat loss is the goal.

• Workouts should be full-body. More muscle trained = more calories burned.

• The workouts should contain a cardio element, ideally HIIT and not low intensity, steady state training.

Weight Training for Fat Loss Conclusions

What we’ve learned is that weight training mixed with a cardio element is better for fat loss than cardio or weight training alone. We’ve learned how to go about the session, what elements we need include and what type of cardio we should go for.

Weight loss is what we specialise in here at AdMac Fitness, so don’t worry - you’re in very capable hands when it comes to your fat loss journey!

Let AdMac Help You Lose Weight!

As professional personal trainers, it’s our job to help you exercise safely and effectively. We also work out of our private studio in Bow, East London. We operate in a safe, socially-distanced way and assure you that our standards of hygiene and cleanliness are second to none.

If you want to let us help you lose weight, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Functional Abdominal Training - What Does a Good Ab Workout Look Like?

Regardless of what you’ve read in magazines, seen on TV or heard from a friend, let me (as a qualified and experienced Personal Trainer) tell you something… sit ups aren’t a particularly effective core exercise. In fact, if you want to see your abs, all the sit ups in the world won’t help you. That’s a case of reducing body fat.

But that’s another blog post.

Today, we’re talking about ab workouts. When it comes to magazines, ab workouts are generally poorly-written, not very effective and in a lot of cases, downright dangerous. They can cause back problems and hip problems because they force an over reliance on hip flexors, rather than engaging the target muscles.

In this article I’m going to teach you about ab workouts - how the core works and how to train it properly.

Ab Workout Misinformation

If you read an article about ab workouts, you’ll probably see the same handful of exercises repeated in slightly different orders, with slightly different rep ranges. They won’t differentiate between goals particularly and there won’t be much in the way of regard for muscle balance and back health. They’re mostly written by journalists, not personal trainers with a deeper understanding of training, so they don’t go into proper details about what an ab workout should look like.

To combat the spreading of poor ab workouts, I thought I’d give you a template of what a good ab workout should look like and why. I’m not going to give away all of my secrets (you have to come and train at AdMac Fitness for those), but I’ll steer you in the right direction!

We’re going to talk about how we train the abdominals, what movements we need to focus on and what the science tells us about abdominal training.

The Purposes of a Good Abdominal Workout

It’s important that we cast aside vanity at this point, because although abs are synonymous with health, being lean and looking good, they actually serve a far more important purpose. They provide back and torso stability and they allow the safe and effective movement of the upper and lower body. They contribute to balance, to power transfer and spinal health. So yeah, being able to see your abs is great, but having abs that do the job they’re supposed to do is even better!

A good abdominal workout is more than just exercises to help see the abs though - it trains all of the muscles of the core through various planes of movement, testing them and strengthening them through a variety of movement patterns and loads. The benefits extend far beyond looking good as well…

A strong core will reduce injury risk, improve injury rehab rates, overall strength and power, posture, exercise technique, balance and general health.

Defining the terminology…

We have to define a few of the terms here as well, so to avoid doubt as we progress, I’m going to explain what they mean. These terms will be used throughout the article so it’s best I explain them before we go any further, that way you’ll understand everything we’re discussing as we go….

• Abs - abdominal muscles. Multiple layers of muscle (top layers are known as superficial and the more hidden, internal muscles are known as deep).

• Core - the connected system of muscles on the front and back of the torso, including muscles of the abdominals, lower and mid back, obliques (sides) and hips. The core muscles are also superficial and deep.

• Torso - the mid section of the body, extending from the hips to the neck. Doesn’t include the limbs, neck or head.

The picture below will give you a good idea of what we are talking about when refer to an ab or core workout….

The problem with most ab workouts in magazines is that they focus purely on the rectus abdominis, neglecting the rest of the muscles. This can create back problems and leave you with a core that doesn’t function effectively because it only strengthens one area, not the whole thing.

What does a good ab workout look like?

To be truly effective a core workout has to strengthen all of the muscles in the region across various planes of movement that the core does most of its work in. Essentially, the core is responsible for three main movement functions…

1. Balance - keeping you upright

2. Hinging - folding you in half, then straightening you back out

3. Rotation - allowing your body to twist

So our exercises have to focus on these three movement patterns. We also have to make the muscles work with a variety of weight and rep ranges, meaning that a proper core workout won’t consist of just sit ups - it has to include exercises that involve weight transfer, hinging and rotation in order to be truly effective.

There is also a link between the type of exercise performance and the amount of core engagement. It seems logical to assume that exercises such as planks would activate the core more than back squats for example, but research shows that this isn’t true - squats engage the overall core more than planks.

Designing a Functional Ab Workout

Knowing what we do about abdominal form and function, we have to make sure that the exercises we pick include a balance element, a hinge element and a rotational element. With these in mind, the workout begins to look a lot different to most ‘core’ workouts you’ll see in a magazine.

Here’s a few exercises that will help you build a strong and healthy core, but also will offer crossover benefits to other aspects of your health and fitness. Experiment with them - start light, but increase the weights and reps as you get used to the techniques and the movement patterns….

The Front Squat

By front-loading the weight, your core is forced to work extra hard to maintain an upright posture and balance. This engages the core and the erector spinae, which are the muscles running alongside the spine. Also, it’s one of the best leg exercises you can do, so you kill two birds with one stone!

Barbell Rotations

The barbell rotation forces the core to engage as it rotates, forcing it to strengthen the oblique muscles, the rectus abdominis and the muscles of the lower back. It’s an excellent exercise when done well and translates well to sports requiring rotation.

Kettlebell Side Bends

These are an exercise that engage the superficial and deep muscles of the abdomen, plus they also train the oblique muscles down the sides of the torso. It’s a nice and simple exercise, but it’s also very effective. It’s excellent as a high-rep exercise too.

American Kettlebell Swings

This is a controversial exercise in kettlebell circles, especially amongst purists. They believe the only effective kettlebell swing is the Russian Swing, but a lot of people programme American Swings because they offer more in the way of core engagement. I like them because include lower back, core, balance, hinge and overhead stability elements to a workout. Be careful when you do them, but that’s a rule to follow with any exercise…

Functional Core Training - Concluded

There may be exercises here that you wouldn’t automatically consider with a core workout, but hopefully you’ve learned a little bit more about how the core works and what movements help to build a nice, strong and functional torso. Experiment with them in terms of weights you use, rep ranges, sets etc, but make sure you expand your thinking around exercises and you’ll see the benefits quickly.

These aren’t the only exercises we use for core training at AdMac Fitness, but if you want to know everything you do, you’ll have to come along and train with us!

Let AdMac Guide You Back to Fitness

As professional personal trainers, it’s our job to help you exercise safely and effectively. We also work out of our private studio in Bow, East London. We can operate in a safe, socially-distanced way and assure you that our standards of hygiene and cleanliness are second to none.

If you want to let us guide you back to full fitness in the best way possible, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Post Lockdown Cardio - How we do it at AdMac Fitness

The next article in our returning to training series is about cardio and how we do things here at AdMac Fitness. It follows on from our more generic article on returning to training which can be found here.

One aspect of training that a lot of people are confused about is cardio and how to do it post lockdown. Having reduced their running, cycling and swimming during lockdown, some who rely on longer duration work will be feeling the effects of reduced cardiovascular fitness. If your cardio was gym based with rowers, cross trainers and stair masters etc, you’ll have suffered too.

We’re going to give some pointers about how we’re returning to cardio post lockdown at AdMac Fitness. It’s not a guide on returning to running etc, more a how and why we’re going to re-introduce the cardio element to our programming for our members.

At AdMac Fitness, our approach to cardio doesn’t rely on the long duration, steady-state work that most people associate with cardio exercise. Our clients have all round fitness and physique goals, so we have to approach our cardio training differently. We use a variety of exercises, rep ranges, timed intervals etc to bring about a cardio response. We use ropes, prowlers, weights, kettlebells, intervals and a hole host of other approaches to ensure our clients don’t just look great, they also have the stamina to match!

How We’re Returning to Cardio at AdMac Fitness

We’ve got to balance out the needs of the clients with that fact that they’re likely to be reconditioned.

It’d be stupid of us to go flying straight into the highest intensity work otherwise we’re likely to cause problems. Instead, we’ll be adjusting exercises, rep ranges, weights and work intervals. We’ll stick to our principles of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which allows us to manipulate exercise selection and workloads.

We’ll build our clients back up at an appropriate intensity, starting with lighter loads, shorter work intervals and lower impact exercises. This flexibility means we can adapt workouts to make sure clients safety is put front and centre. If we were relying on running, swimming or cycling alone, we wouldn’t have the ability to tweak workouts so effectively.

For anyone returning to cardio post lockdown you should start with baby steps and build up your intensity as you go.

How we do Cardio at AdMac Fitness

Our cardio approach involves a short burst of high intensity work towards the end of the session. The evidence base in support of HIIT is just too strong to ignore and the positive results are proven time and again across multiple studies.

There’s nothing wrong with going for a long run, it’s just not the most effective way to get our clients into the shape they want to be in. If we were training runners, great - we’d have them running. We’re training people who want a high level of general fitness, a healthy amount of muscle and low body fat. That’s why we do the kind of cardio we do.

More and more, personal trainers and strength coaches are blurring the lines between ‘cardio’ and ‘strength’ training and recent analysis of the research around the topic suggests that most of the benefits of high intensity strength training cross over to both.

The effects of this kind of cardio are both wide-ranging and significant for people across the age ranges. Evidence shows that high intensity resistance exercise is effective for people of all ages and the benefits extend across the physical capabilities.

A lot of people assume that resistance-based HIIT is only safe and effective for young, fit people. However, evidence is showing there are huge fitness benefits for older exercisers using the approach as well. In this particular study, the subjects were older men and they underwent a period of twice weekly training sessions. The effects were monitored across a range of physical capabilities, with the evidence showing that the training benefitted not just their strength and muscle mass, but cardiovascular fitness too.

An AdMac Cardio Blast Example…

Typically we use ‘finishers’ - high intensity ends to a session, designed to burn a lot of calories, raise the heart rate and improve stamina. We use short, high intensity work intervals and the exercises may be a mixture of rope work, slams, sprints, mountain climbers etc. We’ll perform multiple rounds and circuits, bringing about the training effect we’re looking for.

These may be timed for 30 seconds, with a 15 second rest between exercises, for example. This varies depending on the exercises, the goals of the session/client and the state of fitness.

We’re in the results business, first and foremost. Our clients come to us because they want to get fit, improve their health and see the physical and mental benefits of effective exercise. What we do is decide our approaches based on what the evidence suggest. In the case of our cardio, we listen to the science and programme accordingly.

Let AdMac Guide You Back to Fitness

As professional personal trainers, it’s our job to help you exercise safely and effectively. We also work out of our private studio in Bow, East London. We can operate in a safe, socially-distanced way and assure you that our standards of hygiene and cleanliness are second to none.

If you want to let us guide you back to full fitness in the best way possible, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Returning to Training After Lockdown - How to do it Sensibly

Following on from our nutrition series, we’re now going into a training series. This is the first article and it’s about returning to training after lockdown and how to do it sensibly…

After more than three months of lockdown, the return to the gym is getting closer. Getting back to gym training is going to be a big adjustment. If you train in a commercial gym, make your peace now with the fact that it’s going to be busy, equipment will be hard to come by and you’ll probably have to wait around for the kit you want to use!

Then there’s the physical aspect…

Even if you’ve been exercising regularly throughout lockdown, you’ll have done well to have maintained the intensity and the loads that you would normally be lifting in the gym. That means the reality of how you’ll feel when you start training again will be a bit of a shock!

This isn’t just a ‘Christmas break’ or a ‘holiday break’ from the gym - it’s probably closer to FOUR MONTHS! You won’t be back to square one, but the likelihood is that you’ll certainly feel like it!

How to Return to Training

At AdMac Fitness we’re int he business on making you fitter and stronger - not injuring you. That means we do things the right way, at the right time and with the right intensity. As professional personal trainers, we know how important that is - we don’t want our members to be injured most of the time. It’s not good for us or them!

Here’s our advice…

You’ve got to take your time when it comes to getting back into training. By taking your time I don’t mean going slow and not pushing yourself, but you certainly shouldn’t be trying to lift what you used to lift before lockdown. Thanks to a principle of training known as ‘reversibility’, your body will have lost strength, you’ll have lost muscle tissue, your connective tissues (ligaments and tendons) will have stiffened slightly and your physical capabilities will have dropped.

The rate of muscle and strength loss is individualised, but it would have happened. Bear that in mind when you start loading a bar up with weight you were lifting before lockdown! Understand that you’re FAR better off easing back in, giving your body some time to adapt and then pushing on from there.

The good news is, it won’t stay like that forever. Your body will bounce back relatively quickly.

In the same way that muscle atrophies (breaks down), the process of resistance training creates hypertrophy (muscle growth). There are different mechanisms by which this occurs, but essentially progressive resistance is fundamental to tissue change and adaption.

We know from research in the area that resistance training benefits not just the muscles, but the connective tissues (in particular the tendons) too. Despite this, we have to exercise with caution around load when we return to training. I’ll explain why in the next section….

Load and Volume in Training

As we’ve discussed before, load and volume are completely different things. The load is the weight you lift - the volume is how much you lift.

The reason this is particularly important when you return to training is because your body tissues adapt at different rates. Muscle tissue has an excellent blood supply, an elastic tissue type and a number of highly-responsive contractile units. Adaptions can occur very quickly (within days), whereas ligaments and tendons have a poor blood supply and take longer to adapt.

Research shows that tendons in particular will take weeks/months rather than days to adapt to load, so the best advice you can follow in the first couple of months is to lift light-medium weights, but increase the volume. This will help to build a lot of muscle tissue, will improve strength and will give the connective tissues the time they need to adapt to lifting heavy loads again.

To use a building analogy, lifting heavy loads with tissues that aren’t designed for it is like building a sky scraper on jelly - it’s going to come crashing down!

As tempted as you are to lift heavy right from the start, be sensible - you don’t want to be the fittest person in the physio room.

After 6 weeks or so, you’ll be able to lift heavy again. You’ll be back to where you were in no time, but you have to be patient, be safe and do things the right way. There’s only one person who loses out if you overdo it and that’s you. You’ve already had your training adapted for a few months - a few more weeks won’t hurt! Follow the advice in the article and make your return to training a safe and effective one.

Let AdMac Guide You Back to Fitness

As professional personal trainers, it’s our job to help you exercise safely and effectively. We also work out of our private studio in Bow, East London. We can operate in a safe, socially-distanced way and assure you that our standards of hygiene and cleanliness are second to none.

If you want to let us guide you back to full fitness in the best way possible, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Diets of the Nations with the Longest Life Expectancy - What We Can Learn...

In the final instalment of our nutrition blog series, we’re going to assess the commonalities of the diets of the longest living nations and see what we can learn from them.

It is well established now that our nutrition is a key aspect of overall health and is a major risk factor when it comes to heart disease, cancers and metabolic diseases such as diabetes. It stands to reason then that diets are key driver of health outcome measures.

Regional diets have been lauded for some time, with the ‘Mediterranean Diet’ held in high esteem by many. Since the last 90’s attention has turned to Japan and the far eastern diets. When you compare the two (Mediterranean and Far Eastern) diets, there appears to be a clear winner in terms of life expectancy.

According to Worldometers.info, four of the top five nations in terms of longevity are in the far east…

When 80% of the longest living people in the world are from a particular corner of the globe, there must be a commonality there. Whether this is genetics, culture, cuisine etc isn’t immediately clear, so you have to investigate it further - are people from the far east less likely to suffer the ill-effects of poor nutritional choices, ruling out their diet as a key reason for longevity?

The answer is no, they’re just as likely to suffer from poor choices as westerners. Research conducted in 2008 compared American and Japanese people and concluded that the risk of obesity, diabetes and related co-morbidities is the same between the two races.

Further evidence that there is no genetic resistance to lifestyle diseases that naturally occur with the Asian population can be found in this research from the OECD, showing that although the Japanese have made excellent strides in reducing Cardiovascular disease, there are high incidences of end stage kidney disease and circulatory diseases (such as high blood pressure) with their figure suggesting they have a 39% higher than average mortality rate from such disorders.

Now we know that Japanese people aren’t ‘immune’ to the effects of poor lifestyle choices, we can investigate further the nature of their diets and what we can learn from them.

Far Eastern Diets

The commonalities between the far eastern diets are clear - even across the various different cuisines, there are some very obvious similarities between the make up of dishes, the cooking processes, seasonings and the variety of fruit, vegetable and protein sources used.

Here are some of the major commonalities in far eastern cuisine…

Lower calorie cooking methods

Across the major cuisines in the region, there is a lot of steaming, boiling and simmering. Other foods such as fish and vegetables are eaten raw or very lightly cooked. It’s known that heavy cooking and high temperatures can reduce nutrient density of foods, so where possible switching to a healthier cooking method will have significant advantages.

Seasonality and Variety

The variety of ingredients across the regional cuisines is enormous. Seasonal vegetables, a huge variety of seafoods, seaweeds, meats, mushrooms, rice, tubers, legumes, fruit, spices, seasonings and fermented foods are eaten by those in the far east. Eating a wide variety of nutrient-dense, lightly-cooked foods in season is said to improve gut flora and that is known to improve various overall health markets.

Portion Size

The interesting point with far eastern cuisine is that dishes tend to be much smaller than we’re conditioned to eat in the west and meals are often started with a soup or broth, which helps to fill the stomach and reduce the need for larger portions. This is followed with a mixed meal of carbohydrates, fibre and protein.

‘Clean’ Carbohydrates

Rice is the dominant carbohydrate in far eastern cuisine, which is important because it is filling yet easily digestible. It’s less associated with allergies than many grain-based alternatives, is largely unprocessed and has a good nutrient profile. It’s also easy to cook in a healthy way, with steaming, boiling and simmering all used.

Seasonings

In the far east the seasonings are much lower in calories than those we have in the west. Common seasonings include soy sauce, spices, miso, sake, rice wine vinegar, mirin, wasabi, pickling and sauces made with fermented foods. These are significantly lower in calories than the oil-based dressings, sauces and gravies we use in the west.

Snacking

Most of the cultures in the far east don’t have the same snacking habits that we have in the west. Compared to western diets, this will save hundreds of calories per day, which is a lot of saved weight.

What can we Learn from Far Eastern Diets?

There’s an awful lot that we can learn from the food cultures of the far east. Whilst I’m not suggesting that everyone should start living off sushi and tofu, there are lessons to be learned. By adopting a few of the principles for 80-90% of the time, you can enjoy a few drinks and meals out with friends guilt-free!

Here’s the main takeaways (pun intended!)…

1. Cook differently - instead of frying or roasting something, perhaps pick foods that could be boiled, steamed or flash fried. The calories saved over the course of a year will be huge.

2. Eat a varied, seasonal diet - challenge yourself to try new things, to mix your foods up and experiment with new flavours. Also shop seasonally - food in season has higher vitamin and mineral density, plus it tastes better.

3. Get a grip on portion sizes - sounds so obvious, but so many of us get it wrong. Eat as much as you need to eat. Some practitioners say eat until you’re 80% full. That will help!

4. Cut the snacks down - another obvious one, but snacks are almost always highly-processed, abundant in sugar, fat and salt and rarely offer much in the way of a vitamin and mineral profile.

Far Eastern Diets - Final Thoughts

Given we know that people from the far east don’t have some magical physical make up that protects them from lifestyle diseases, we can attribute their low rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease to their diet and lifestyle. By copying the principles of their diets, we can make ourselves healthier and leaner in the process.

If you’d like some help using these principles to improve your health, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Other blogs in our nutrition series…

All About Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss…

The Ketogenic Diet - What, Why and How…

Vegan Eating - The Good, The Bad and The Realities…

An Overview of the Paleo Diet - What You Need to Know…

For more information on who we are, what we do and how we can help you achieve your health and fitness goals, contact us on… 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Our locations are…

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

An Overview of the Paleo Diet - What You Need to Know

The fourth instalment of our nutrition blog series sees us talking about the Paleo or ‘Paleolithic’ diet. It’s a diet that grew in popularity through the early 2000’s, reaching a peak around 2012 or so. It was synonymous with CrossFit in the early days and that spun out into a wider ‘ancestral health’ movement.

It’s still popular and when done right is a very effective diet, so in the article we’ll delve a little deeper into the Paleo diet, what it is, why it’s popular, who should follow it and what the research says…

What is the Paleo Diet?

The paleo diet is an umbrella term for an eating approach that removes all processed foods. Essentially the rules are you follow a diet that the paleolithic man would have eaten. He wouldn't have access to much in the way of grains, starches (rice and potatoes), processed sugars, legumes and pasteurised dairy, so these are all out.

Typically that leaves you with meat, fish, eggs, berries and seasonal fruit and vegetables, healthy fats and raw dairy. From a drinks point of view, you’d be left with water and perhaps coconut and nut milks - caffeine, alcohol and sugary drinks would all be out.

Food quality is important too, so on the paleo diet you should stick to organic fruit and vegetables, grass fed meat, line caught fish and free range eggs. The idea is to align your eating with as natural an approach as possible. Eating unprocessed foods, in season and with little in the way of additional sauces beyond stock made from bones and vegetables is the paleo diet in a nutshell.

Paleo can be confusing…

A lot of people wrongly assume that paleo automatically means ‘low carb’, when in fact you can still eat a lot of carbs on the paleo diet.

The term paleo is more in reference to the kinds of foods you eat, not the macro split itself. In a food quality sense, it has more to do with veganism than a lot of other diets in that there are a lot of foods that are off limits because of their origin. Followers of the paleo diet aren’t just about eating as much meat as possible - it’s about eating well-raised, high welfare, grass fed meat because it has a better nutrient profile.

It’s actually possible to be a vegetarian on the paleo diet, with your protein coming from eggs, nuts, seeds and clever combining of vegetables to ensure you get a complete amino acid profile in your diet. It’s not as easy, but it’s certainly possible.

Why follow a paleo diet?

Proponents of the diet suggest that because you’ll be eating a more natural diet your body will respond accordingly, reducing inflammation, boosting immunity, reducing risk factors of cancer, cardiovascular disease, neural degeneration and the like. It stands to reason that if your diet is full of nutrient dense foods and you’re no longer consuming unhealthy, high sugar foods then you’ll be healthier.

A lot of the claims are evidence-backed too. In this 2009 study the Paleo diet was shown to improve markers of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. A study published in 2012 suggests that a paleo diet may improve digestive hormone profiles, helping to regulate hunger and appetite more effectively and control obesity in some patients.

When it comes to weight loss, no one diet is particularly better than any other - it’s a calories in versus calories out equation, but what paleo does have in its favour is it’s a diet that promotes an all-round version of health and is naturally low in the kind of foods that make you gain weight. Paleo won’t make you lose weight faster than another diet, but it may make you healthier than others.

If you are from a family with significant numbers of sufferers of diabetes, cancers, heart diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, I’d seriously consider following something like the paleo diet. Even if you’re not 100% strict, using it as a template and reducing dairy, grain and sugar intake probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Why is paleo so popular?

The paleo diet is popular because it’s one of the more enjoyable ways to eat and it helps you to get off sugar more easily, because it’s simply not an option. It’s almost like following an abstinence-based recovery from drugs!

A lot of early followers of the diet used this as a challenge - they did the 30 days of ‘clean’ eating, which meant for 30 days they essentially followed a paleo diet, removing all sugars, booze, coffee, tea, grains etc. A lot of people lost a lot of weight, felt great and carried on with it forever. The 28 and 30 day challenges are still popular on social media because they’re short enough to be doable, but long enough for most people to see some fantastic results.

On the paleo diet you’re not counting calories or weighing out foods - you’re eating good quality food and avoiding certain food groups. There’s also the feel-good boost of removing junk food. You’ll feel great pretty quickly when you’re not drinking alcohol and caffeine, eating processed sugars, grains and dairy. The immediate feel good is motivating for many and they’re likely to stick to it afterwards.

Who shouldn’t follow paleo?

The reality is that paleo isn’t for everyone. Some people can tolerate carbs very well and therefore there’s no need to avoid them. Additionally there’s people who are fine with dairy, can control their sugar cravings and don’t struggle with inflammation. If that’s you, carry on as you are - there’s no need to change what you’re doing! If you’re fit, lean and doing well with what you’re currently eating, stick with it!

Is paleo for you?

What the research shows is that there are benefits to the paleo diet. It may not be the answer to every nutrition question, but there’s no doubting that a diet high in vitamins, minerals, fibre, protein and good fats, whilst low in sugar, allergens, alcohol and caffeine is a good starting point.

Even if you’re not strict paleo to the letter (that’s when it’s restrictive - eating out can be a massive problem!), it’s a good starting point for a diet.

If you’d like some help following the paleo diet, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Other blogs in our nutrition series…

All About Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss…

The Ketogenic Diet - What, Why and How…

Vegan Eating - The Good, The Bad and The Realities…

Vegan Eating - The Good, The Bad and the Realities

Next up in our nutrition series is the vegan diet. It’s an approach that has grown in popularity over the last decade or so, going from a niche nutritional practice to a mainstream diet. In the last five years the number of vegans has quadrupled, with over 600,000 people in the UK now claiming to be full time vegan.

Few diets spark moral and ethical furore in the way that the vegan diet does, with supporters and opponents of the diet clashing in person, in the media and online. In this article we’re going to dig a little deeper into the diet, its effects on health and performance and finally, whether or not you should follow it.

What is the vegan diet?

The vegan diet is a diet containing no animal products in any form - even ethically raised and sourced. It differs from a ‘plant based’ diet in the sense that it removes animal products in their entirety, whereas plant based diets allow non-meat animal products such as eggs, cheese, milk and in some cases animal fats. In many ways it’s an ethical choice as much as nutritional one, but not all vegans are following the approach for moral reasons.

Is the vegan diet healthy?

This is a matter of huge debate and interest in nutritional circles, mostly because the evidence is non-conclusive in the sense that it depends on so many factors - the person eating it, their health status and their nutritional deficiencies. There are both positive and negative links to health outcomes regarding vegan diets, but unfortunately statistics and research are often twisted to back up a previously-held agenda.

The general consensus is that eating a largely plant based diet is a good thing. However, avoiding all animal products isn’t generally recommended for health because of the sheer diversity of vitamins, minerals and protein quality found in meat and fish.

A lot of people report feeling fantastic on a vegan diet, but in many cases this feeling is a relatively short-lived experience. The reason they feel better is because by being vegan they won’t be eating a lot of junk food and are likely to be eating far more fruit and vegetables. This factor alone is going to make you feel better - if you’ve gone from a diet of takeaway curries and fish and chips most nights to eating vegetables and drinking water, of course you’re going to feel better.

Despite the nutrient density of vegetables however, people following a plant-based or vegan diet are more likely to suffer from nutritional deficiencies because they are excluding food groups containing important complete amino acid profiles and associated minerals such as collagen. These can be supplemented, but it’s far more difficult when following a vegan diet.

What isn’t in doubt is that a diet high in fruit and vegetables is a good thing, given these foods are the most nutrient dense of all.

Veganism and exercise

Despite the low calorie element of a vegan diet, studies have shown that it’s easy for vegans to achieve adequate calorie intake to exercise well. What is of greater concern to an athlete is the amount of protein in the diet and in many vegans, protein intake and absorption has been shown to be significantly lower than recommended, which certainly will impact on recovery and subsequent muscle building.

Most studies suggest no clear differences in the physical performance in healthy young subjects, when they are ensuring adequate intake of all macro and micro nutrients within their diet. In fact, some studies even suggest that for endurance sports vegans seem to post higher VO2 max scores.

The effects of a vegan diet seem to impact various age brackets in different ways. There is evidence to suggest that in older populations, a vegan diet is less effective when it comes to maintaining and building muscle mass. This is particularly noteworthy, because maintenance of muscle mass as we age is a key factor in longevity, therefore it would suggest that in older populations a vegan diet is rather a bad idea.

When it comes to sporting performance the vegan documentary ‘What the Health’ has been heavily criticised for misleading the public, claiming certain athletes were vegan at the time of their sporting success, which has since been disproven. Examples include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Novak Djokovic and Lewis Hamilton. The reality is that at the top level of sports, there are very few vegans.

What is important is that you don’t look at a few examples and extrapolate too much meaning from them. For example, using a handful of successful vegan athletes as justification for going vegan yourself is nonsensical - it’s like taking up smoking because you heard of a smoker who lived to 100.

Should you go vegan? Final thoughts…

The first question to ask yourself here is what would be the reasons for going vegan?

If it’s because you think you’d be healthier, chances are that’s not the case. You’re more likely to be nutrient deficient if you follow a vegan diet than an omnivorous one. You can always eat more fruit and vegetables alongside your meat and fish if you were worried about your fibre/vitamin intake.

If your reasons are because you don’t want to eat animal products, that’s a whole different ball game. If they’re your reasons, go ahead. Just be aware that you’re likely to be making yourself less healthy, you’re going to be missing out on some vital minerals and amino acids unless you supplement well, it’s likely to cost you a lot more money and finally, your eating will be a lot more restricted and difficult.

Generally speaking, veganism isn’t a great idea for many. It’s certainly more difficult to get right and be healthy with, it’s far more restrictive and there are simpler diets to follow.

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

The Ketogenic Diet - What, Why and How?

In the second instalment on our nutrition series where we look at a few of the popular diets at the moment, we’re going to take a look at the Ketogenic Diet. You may have heard of it referred to as ‘Keto’. What' we’re doing in this article is looking at what it is, why you’d do it and how you’d go about it.

In the series we’re staying away from opinion and sticking to facts. We’re not promoting one diet over another, we’re just giving you the lowdown on each.

What is the Ketogenic Diet?

The Ketogenic diet is a high fat, low protein and almost zero carbohydrate diet that is designed to force the body to switch from using sugar (glucose) as its primary energy source and instead use ketones.

The diet achieves this by feeding the body no carbohydrates, forcing it into a state called ‘ketosis’ once all of the available sugars have been used by the body. Ketosis refers to a state in which the body breaks down fats and uses them for energy, giving off ketones in the process.

The ketogenic diet was originally designed in the 1920’s as a treatment protocol of epilepsy. It remains to be an effective treatment for the condition, but its use is limited because it’s really quite difficult to follow compared to standard medication.

Recent research into nutrition has highlighted benefits of fasting, low carbohydrates and ketosis, bringing the diet back into the spotlight for a number of reasons.

The Importance of Monitoring on the Ketogenic Diet

In order for the Ketogenic diet to be strictly followed (and therefore useful in its purest sense), you have to reach and remain in a state of ketosis. You check this by testing your urine regularly for ketone bodies.

You’ll need to stay within a range of 0.5-3.0 mmol/L to be in nutritional ketosis. If you are below this level, you’re not in ketosis - your body is still burning glucose. If you go too far above this level you risk tipping into a state called ‘Ketoacidosis’, where the levels of ketones in the body become too high, poisoning the body.

It’s important to understand this before you embark on a ketogenic diet. If you’re aware of the need to monitor and are happy to do so, you’ll make the diet far more successful.

Isn’t Keto Just Atkins?

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s the Atkins diet became the most famous diet in the world - its low carb message swept the world but there’s a big difference between low carb and ketogenic diets.

On a low carb diet you’re still allowed to eat carbohydrates, just not many. Most low carb diets will have you eating below 100g of carbs per day, with some going as low as sub 50g. The rest of your energy comes from a lot of protein and fat, which is why people on Atkins were famously eating steak, bacon and eggs all day!

On the ketogenic diet, you’re essentially banned from eating carbohydrates if you want it to be successful - you’ll possibly be able to get away with around 20g per day, but that varies from person to person.

You also have to dramatically reduce your protein, so only around 20% of your total daily calories will come from protein sources. This is because of a biological process called ‘gluconeogenesis’, whereby your body produces carbohydrates form protein.

A lot of people think by going on the ketogenic diet they’ll live on steak and eggs all day, when the reality is completely different.

What Can I Eat on a Ketogenic Diet?

Your diet will be around 80% fat and 20% protein, so will be made up things such as omelettes with a lot of butter, or really fatty cuts of meat with cheese. Oily sea food will play a bit part too because it fits a ketogenic diet profile.

You’ll also have the option of a few very limited plants to eat. Avocado with its high fat content is acceptable, as is broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, various forms of lettuce, nuts and seeds. It’s important to avoid the high carbs plants, so no wheat products, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, squash, pumpkins, fruit etc. They’re all far too high in sugars and will knock you out of ketosis quickly.

There has been a growing market for ketogenic diet snacks and now a lot of companies are providing both sweet and savoury snacks that allow you to stay in ketosis. Whether or not they all taste good is another matter entirely, but it certainly helps you to add a bit of variety into your diet!

Does the Ketogenic Diet Work? Concluding Thoughts…

It does work, but it only works in the same sense that any other diet works - it feeds your body fewer calories than it needs.

The best use for the ketogenic diet may lie in a medical field, because there are medical reasons why you could or should consider a ketogenic diet. Some early research suggests it can help people undergoing cancer treatment, but of course consult your specialist before taking matters into your own hands. There are also people who struggle to metabolise carbs effectively such as diabetics who may benefit from a ketogenic diet. Again though, talk to your doctor first.

When it comes to weight loss, there are arguably more successful approaches, as backed up by research. There are certainly diets that are easier to follow - ones that don’t involve counting carbs, avoiding every possible carb-based temptation and testing your urine daily for ketone levels!

The ketogenic diet does work, but it’s VERY strict, very hard work and is likely to be difficult for the vast majority of people to follow. For most people, there’s a simpler diet that’d be easier to follow.

If you’d like some help using the ketogenic diet for weight loss, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

All About Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss...

Over the next few weeks we’re going to do a mini nutrition series on the AdMac Fitness blog, where we’ll be taking a look at a few of the more popular diets approaches, breaking them down, discussing the good, the bad and the ugly about them. We’re taking opinions out of this and are giving you the facts, backed up by what the science says.

We’re approaching these from a weight loss perspective primarily.

The first blog in the series is about Intermittent Fasting - an approach that has gained in popularity over the last decade. Intermittent fasting continues to be popular and is the subject of a lot of research, discussion and books.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Simply put, intermittent fasting is a dietary approach where overall calorie intake is reduced by undergoing periods of fasting.

The fasting period can be adjusted to suit the requirements and preferences of the dieter, but typically most people will fast for 16-24 hours at a time. During the fasting window they’ll only be allowed to consume water (if following the fast strictly), but other people allow black coffee or BCAA drinks as well.

Essentially there are two schools of thought on Intermittent Fasting approaches. Some people who follow intermittent fasting will eat every day in an ‘eating window’, which will last from 1-8 hours. Other people will fast for 24 hours, then eat ‘normally’ for the rest of the week. There’s no right or wrong way of doing this - the choices are largely down to personal preference.

Does Intermittent Fasting Work for Weight Loss?

The short answer to this question is yes, it does.

The longer answer is that yes, it does, but only if you eat normally when you’re back into your eating window.

Intermittent Fasting works the same as any other diet, by restricting your calorie intake. In this case, it does it by reducing the amount of times that you eat. If you skip meals, but simply over-indulge when you’re allowed to eat again then you’ll still gain weight. The important thing with intermittent fasting is to treat the eating window normally - keep your portion sizes appropriate and still eat healthily.

Yes, it may allow you a little extra dietary flexibility, but it certainly isn’t a green light to eat a load of junk.

Does Intermittent Fasting Help in Other Ways?

Pre-clinical studies are showing remarkable health benefits across the board when it comes to fasting. In research by Cabo and Mattson, fasting protocols have been shown to be beneficial to patients suffering with a wide range of clinical issues including caners, age-related neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular diseases etc. Whilst it’s too soon to claim fasting is a miracle approach, it does back up earlier research around autophagy.

Another interesting observation from the research shows that there are psychological benefits to do with fasting. Research shows in the early stages of fasting people can become irritable and angry, but once this first wave passes (usually after an hour) then the fasters become much calmer and able to control emotions around food more effectively. Other research shows that in lots of cases, people following a fasting protocol experienced ‘positive affective experiences of increased sense of achievement, reward, pride, and control’.

For me this last line is important, because I’ve seen a lot of dieters fail because they lack control when it comes to food. If by using an intermittent fasting approach for weight loss they could regain a sense of portion control it could lead to them feeling empowered and more able to resist cravings and urges to make poor choices around food.

The black and white nature of fasting - you’re either eating or you’re not, can be easier to deal with for some people than the need to make lower calorie choices when faced with a more appealing (yet higher calorie) option.

Should we all be Intermittent Fasting?

No, not really. It’s important when we talk about training and nutrition to not put everybody in the same boat - we all metabolise food differently and we all have different requirements from our diet. It’s also important to say that although there’s a lot of positives around the research with intermittent fasting, it’s not a magic approach that will guarantee weight loss - it still needs discipline to work effectively.

What the research does show us is that it’s possibly an effective way for people to regain control over their emotions with food, and it’s also a simple way to control calories - IF you don’t over-indulge when you’re allowed to eat again.

Furthermore, there is positive research around digestive stress and improvements in biomarkers concerning a wide range of health and disease issues. If you are suffering with diabetes, COPD, heart disease etc then this may well be worth looking into with more depth to make a decision as to whether or not this approach will work for you.

Intermittent Fasting for Health and Weight Loss - Concluding Thoughts

It’d be wrong of us to suggest that intermittent fasting is the golden ticket to health and weight loss on it’s own, but it certainly is an approach that has helped millions of people around the world lose weight, improve their health and regain a sense of control over their lives.

Speaking from a strictly weight loss perspective, it’s no better or worse than standard calorie reduction, but it might be far more suitable for people who lack control around food. In that case, it may prove to be far more effective than relying on yourself to make lower-calorie decisions.

The important point to take away is that if intermittent fasting works for you, keep doing it. If you’ve unsuccessfully tried other approaches and they haven’t worked, maybe give it a try to see if it helps you to lose some weight and improve your health.

If you’d like some help using intermittent fasting for weight loss, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Sleep - The Biggest Performance Booster There Is?

The most overlooked aspect of health and fitness is recovery. Most people know that they should be training regularly and eating well, but very few people would give rest and recovery the same amount of respect as the other two.

The truth is, proper recovery is every bit as important as the others if you want to make serious health and fitness progress. Sleep is regenerative - it’s during our sleep that our bodies rest and recover. Tissues are repaired and re-modelled. Sleep is when neural connections are made to improve muscle function, co-ordination and balance.

Sleep and Physique Improvement

During sleep our endocrine (hormonal system) works its magic. It balances hormone levels, regulates appetite (have you ever noticed that when you’re tired, you want to eat more - especially sugar?), increases human growth hormone production, reduces stress hormone secretion and helps to regulate digestion. Research on sleep disturbance has even said…

Sleep disturbances and, particularly, deprivation are associated with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes and insulin insensitivity

The evidence literally says if you don’t sleep enough, you are at a higher risk of obesity and diabetes. There’s more than that though - a lack of sleep can have a negative effect on muscle strength as well.

In a study on the relationship between sleep and muscle strength in young men and women, there was a marked reduction in the muscle strength of the male students who had slept for less than 6 hours when compared to those who had slept 7+ hours.

What the evidence is showing is that whilst a lot of people take pride in their work ethic and not getting much sleep, they’re doing themselves no good physically, or even mentally. When it comes to brain function, sleep is a huge factor - in this comprehensive review of sleep and cognitive performance studies, researchers noticed that sleep deprivation has a negative effect on all types of memory, recall, special and reaction tasks. There was not a single cognitive function that was improved by sleep deprivation.

The effects also spill over into motivation and mental health, so a fundamental aspect of self-care needs to be making sure you have enough good quality sleep. The crossover benefits of good sleep are literally life-changing and far too numerous to list here.

How do we Improve Sleep?

This is the million dollar question and the good news is, a lot of the answers are common sense. Here’s an overview of the current guidance…

1. Get comfortable. If your mattress is uncomfortable, get a new one. It isn’t a luxury, it’s an investment. You spend more time time bed than you do almost anywhere else, so make it a good one!

2. Sleep in a DARK room. Research shows that the darker a room is, the better the sleep. Turn your phone face down so it doesn’t light up with alerts. Cover clocks that emit light. Buy blackout blinds - juts make the room dark.

3. Avoid stimulants before bed. This is obvious.

4. Reduce screen time before bed - eliminate it in bed. If you’re staring at a phone or TV in bed, you’re going to reduce sleep quality. Read a book instead.

5. Use a sleep hypnosis podcast. These are a pretty new thing in the mass market, but research is suggesting hypnotic suggestion can be effective.

6. Supplement. There is good research around the use of CBD oil as a sleep aid. ZMA (zinc and magnesium) supplements have also been linked to sleep quality.

Follow these bits of advice and you’re likely to have a great night sleep, which will cross over into other aspects of your life. Your physical and mental performance, your physique, your appetite, your stress levels and your mental health are all likely to improve on the back of these improvements to your sleep quality.

Jump on my Home Workout Classes

To help the AdMac Fitness members stay on top of their fitness whilst under lockdown, I’m offering two online zoom sessions a week. These are held on Monday’s and Thursday’s, 6.30-7.30pm.

Each class is £5 and free for NHS staff members.

To enrol, send me an email or WhatsApp (click the link and it’ll let you do it) and I’ll send you the meeting number and passcode to access the session.

AdMac Fitness is keeping the world active during this, you can rely on us!

DOMS - What, Why and How Do We Get Rid of Them?

You know that post-exercise muscle pain you get? The one that makes you feel as though you’ve been battered with a baseball bat? The one that make getting off the toilet an actual mission? It’s called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). In this article we’re going to look at DOMS, what it is, why you get it and how you can ease it.

There has been a lot of debate over DOMS in Sports Science circles - for many years its origins were unknown. Some scientists argue that we still don’t know the exact source of them, but we do know fair amount. We know for example that DOMS is likely to be a series of micro-tears in the muscle tissue that occur during training.

These micro-tears are tiny wounds that occur at a cellular level when we break down the muscle tissue during exercise. As they repair themselves, they form scar tissue. Movement of the muscles during this repair process is agitating the scar tissue, causing the pain.

It only occurs after exercise rather than during it, hence the ‘Delayed Onset’ Muscle Soreness.

Why do we get DOMS?

The main answer is above - we get it via muscle tissue breakdown during exercise. When we disrupt the repair process, it causes soreness. But that’s not the whole picture.

DOMS occurs through a chance of stimulus, not just workout intensity. For example, say you are really ‘gym fit’, which means your body is used to lifting heavy weights, pushing prowlers, doing pull ups etc regularly and then you go out for a 10km run, expect to get pretty serious DOMS.

It’s not that you weren’t fit before, it’s because you’ve changed your stimulus. Your body can deal with the weights and prowlers because it’s used to it. Make it do something it’s not used to, in this case running, and it’ll suffer as a result!

The good news is that your body is adaptable, so whatever you expose your body to regularly, it gets used to. That’s why you don’t exist in a permanent state of soreness every time you go to the gym.

There are other ways we can create DOMS, even if we are doing things we’re used to. What we have to do is create a change in stimulus again. One of the most common ways we can do this is via a technique called ‘negatives’.

In a given lift, say bench press, there are two phases - the ‘positive’ or ‘concentric’ phase (pushing the bar away from you) and the ‘negative’ or ‘eccentric’ phase (returning the bar to your chest). If you slow down your negative phase to a count of 5 seconds, you’ll prolong the eccentric muscle contraction and create more ‘damage’ than normal. This will likely result in more acute DOMS.

DOMS is NOT Indicative of a Good Workout

One of the things that needs to be cleared up is that DOMS is not a sign of a good workout. OK, it’s sometimes strangely nice to feel soreness after a workout, but don’t confuse how sore you are with how hard you’ve trained - that’s not a good measuring stick.

You can create DOMS simply by doing something your body isn’t used to, or by doing a lot of really slow, eccentric training. If that’s not in line with your training goals though, it’s a waste of time. All you’d be is sore and stiff - no closer to hitting your goals.

How do you get rid of DOMS?

There’s good news and bad news here! Let’s start with the bad news…

You can’t get rid of DOMS, it just doesn't work like that. Your body needs time to repair itself and any movement during that time will be a bit sore. It’s rarely anything more than a bit uncomfortable, despite what people may say. Nobody ever died from DOMS!

The good news is that there are things you can do to ease the discomfort and speed up the healing process. Here’s a few of them…

1. Consume protein straight after a workout. Research shows that post-exercise protein consumption helps to speed up recovery and reduce DOMS.

2. Sauna use helps. Again, research has shown that exposure to heat post exercise can help to ease the feelings of DOMS. If you can’t get to a sauna, a hot bath will have a similar effect.

3. There are recovery clothing lines that evidence shows can improve recovery. These are scientifically proven, not some marketing nonsense.

4. Sleep! One of the key aspects of recovery is sleep. If you train hard, don’t try to get by on 5 hours of sleep per night. Shoot for 7-10.

5. Drink plenty of water. Drinking water has a massive knock-on effect for overall physiology. Muscle tissue is around 65-70% water, so stay hydrated and it’ll keep muscle tissue healthy.

As sore as you are with DOMS, it’s still a good idea to keep moving. It’s not a reason to stop exercising, so make sure you remain active throughout. Even if you need to adapt what you’re doing, don’t use DOMS as a reason to skip exercising. You want to stay as active as you can throughout (and follow our tips!)

One final thing…

Jump on my Home Workout Classes

To help the AdMac Fitness members stay on top of their fitness whilst under lockdown, I’m offering two online zoom sessions a week. These are held on Monday’s and Thursday’s, 6.30-7.30pm.

Each class is £5 and free for NHS staff members.

To enrol, send me an email or WhatsApp (click the link and it’ll let you do it) and I’ll send you the meeting number and passcode to access the session.

AdMac Fitness is keeping the world active during this, you can rely on us!

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

Training Principles - What You Should Know

There are certain training principles that have to be stuck to in order to make your fitness programme successful. Without following these basic guidelines, no amount of hard work will be effective over the long term. The training principles are what we follow at AdMac Fitness.

The training principles are closely linked and become increasingly important the more seriously training is taken. For a large majority, adherence is the first factor that arguably comes ahead of these - the good workout programme you’ll follow is better than the perfect workout programme that you won’t, so go back to these training principles when you’re designing your workout plan.

So without further ado, here are the training principles that you should know in order to make you training programme more effective.

Specificity

The principle of specificity dictates that in order to achieve your goals the type of training and/or exercises you do need to be specific to the desired outcome.

I’ll explain that in English…

If you’re a powerlifter and your main aim is to get stronger, you need to be focussing specifically on strength. There’s little point in you going for a long, slow jog because it contradicts your goals. A slow jog isn’t going to help you get stronger, so it’s a non-specific form of exercise.

Overload

The principle of overload means that any training you do must be enough stimulus to drive changes.

If you’re a runner, that may come in the form of running longer, running faster or running up more hills. If you’re a bodybuilder wanting to build muscle, you’ll have to lift heavier, you’ll have to do more reps and more sets.

The principle of overload means you overload your body to force it into further adaption by making it work harder than it’s usually capable of for a period of time.

Fatigue Management

Physical improvement can only occur if you put a lot of focus into recovery.

When you’re training hard, demanding a lot of yourself and making sacrifices in other areas of life to make progress, you need to look after your energy levels. Giving yourself adequate recovery time to manage your fatigue is really important.

You can look after your recovery in lots of ways - getting enough sleep in and looking after your nutrition are the big two, but other approaches such as active recovery and regular sauna use have been proven to be effective as well.

Programming

Exercise programming is more than just ‘3 sets of 10 bench press’. There are lots of other variables that require the attention of a personal trainer.

At AdMac Fitness we are looking at frequency, intensity, duration, exercise selection and movement patterns during our workouts. If you’re unaware of fitness programming, you may come into a class or a personal training session and wonder if it’s a thrown-together series of random movements, but it’s actually a thought-through and considered series.

Good programming is the difference between clients getting results and clients drifting through their training without making improvements.

Individualisation

The principle of individualisation is really important and it’s one of the reasons we are so successful when it comes to results.

It’s a case of considering a client’s training history, lifestyle, family/work commitments, injuries etc that can inform programming decisions. If you’re brand new to exercise and have a history of injuries, your programming can’t be the same as someone who has 5 years of strength training and conditioning under their belt.

Training Principles: Concluded

This is a simplified view of the training principles, but the article can serve as a good reminder for areas you might need to focus on whilst you’re programming your own exercise.

These principles might also give clues as to why your progress hasn't been what it could be - perhaps you’ve been going about your training with the wrong approach. If you need any help or advice, get in touch with our team at admacfitness@gmail.com.

Failing that, jump in with us…

Jump on my Home Workout Classes

To help the AdMac Fitness members stay on top of their fitness whilst under lockdown, I’m offering two online zoom sessions a week. These are held on Monday’s and Thursday’s, 6.30-7.30pm.

Each class is £5 and free for NHS staff members.

To enrol, send me an email or WhatsApp (click the link and it’ll let you do it) and I’ll send you the meeting number and passcode to access the session.

AdMac Fitness is keeping the world active during this, you can rely on us!

Maintaining Weight Loss in a Lockdown...

I’ve had a few clients say to me “I’m working out more but I’m putting on weight” recently, so I want to address maintaining weight loss in a lockdown in this week’s blog post.

On first glance, this may sound like a strange situation - how can it be possible? Once we dig into the data a little bit more, it begins to make sense.

A typical AdMac Fitness client pre-lockdown was doing 4 x gym sessions a week. If we assume they’re burning around 350 calories per workout, then that’s around 1400 calories a week in the gym alone.

But there’s more to that…

Throw in daily life. They’re hitting around 8k steps a day, which adds an extra 2000 calories burned a week. That brings us to 3400 calories burned from steps and exercise combined.

An excellent weekly calorie burn, combined with healthy eating and good sleep. They’re kicking arse, feeling good, lean and fit. Daily life is easy, they’re getting stronger and fitter all of the time.

Throw in a lockdown and restricted movement…

Now they doing essentially zero walking. Even if they are doing 6 workouts a week from home, they’ll be burning around 2100 calories from steps and walking. They’re down from a usual peak of 3400 calories burned every week.

That’s 1300 calories per week that they’re not burning now. Over time, that’s going to have a larger and larger effect on their fat gain, so it makes sense that despite the fact that they’re working out more, they’re gaining weight. We covered the importance of walking in this blog post previously.

How Do We Lose Weight in a Lockdown?

The principles of weight loss remain the same. Your body doesn’t change because it has been told to stay indoors. We have to address the calories in versus calories out.

I could tell you that all you need to do is reduce your food intake (and it’d be right advice), but life is already tough enough in a lockdown. Instead, I’m going to suggest you increase your calorie burn and there’s a good reason for taking this approach.

Let’s assume that your diet hasn’t changed that much. You should still be eating healthily. Perhaps tighten that up a bit - maybe drop 100 calories per day. You’ll barely notice it.

But that’s not all.

At AdMac Fitness we would encourage you to go down the route of burning more calories due to the positive impact on mental health. Getting out of your four walls will do a huge amount for you both physically and mentally. It will help to get rid of the feelings of claustrophobia and make this whole thing far more bearable.

When it comes to the extra movement to burn calories, unless you are someone who is used to doing a massive volume of training each week, adding in more intense training probably isn’t the answer. It may work for a week or two, but the injury risk and damage to long-term motivation is just too high.

What we suggest is either a very slow steady jog/cycle to burn extra calories or find a way to get the steps up by walking. Perhaps you could combine the walk with calling loved ones/friend or listening to a podcast. To observe social distancing measure you should pick a suitable time to do it - we suggest mornings and evening walks or runs if you can do them (when the streets are quieter).

You have to be safe first. You don’t want to be the fittest person in the hospital.

Jump on my Home Workout Classes

To help the AdMac Fitness members stay on top of their fitness whilst under lockdown, I’m offering two online zoom sessions a week. These are held on Monday’s and Thursday’s, 6.30-7.30pm.

Each class is £5 and free for NHS staff members.

To enrol, send me an email or WhatsApp (click the link and it’ll let you do it) and I’ll send you the meeting number and passcode to access the session.

AdMac Fitness is keeping the world active during this, you can rely on us!

The AdMac Home Fitness Recommended Kit List

Now everyone is having to do more training from home, the home fitness equipment market has gone bananas. Seriously - once the lockdown was announced, suppliers of home gym kit thought Christmas had come early.

Everywhere had sold out of multi gyms, treadmills, exercise bikes, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells and the like.

Not needed….

The fitness industry had never seen anything like it.

Even the suppliers who typically only sell to the trade had sold out of stock. People were so desperate to get hold of kit that they were buying commercial grade equipment for home, which means there are people all over the country who spent thousands of pounds on exercise kit in a moment of desperation, only to realise they don’t really know how to use it or have anywhere to store it!

Gym owners all over the country will be keeping their eyes peeled for bargain equipment when the lockdown is over!

As I’ve just mentioned, if you don’t know what you’re buying you can waste a lot of money on home fitness equipment that you just don’t really use. Even if you don’t buy commercial grade, you can spend a lot of money on kit that will never be as good as what we have at AdMac Fitness (or your own local gym).

So here’s the official AdMac Home Gym Recommended Kit List…

This list has been put together with a few criteria in mind. Each bit of kit on the list has to tick these boxes…

1. It has to be inexpensive. Not everyone has thousands to blow on an amazing home gym.

2. It can’t take up much space. There’s no point having a huge squat rack if you live in a studio flat!

3. It has to be versatile. Single use kit is too indulgent for a home gym.

So straight away you can start to discount a lot of what people think of when they go for a home gym. A treadmill costs hundreds or thousands of pounds (if you want a decent one), plus it’s massive and it’s only single-use. You can also go for a run outside, so count that out.

Olympic barbells and bumper plates are out. Again, they cost a lot but they take up lots of room, plus if you live in an apartment with neighbours below you, they probably won’t appreciate you dropping heavy deadlifts onto your living room floor.

So what should you buy for a home gym? The reality is you’ll be able to head back into real gyms very soon, so you only need to buy kit that will keep you ticking over for the short term. With that in mind (and the criteria above), here’s what I think you need to put together a decent home set up…

TRX or Suspension Trainer

A TRX (or other suspension trainer) is probably the most versatile and best value bit of kit you can have. They can fit to doors, be hung over goal posts, park equipment or even tree branches. They are light weight as well so can be put in your suitcase for a holiday workouts, or hotel room workouts if you’re travelling for business.

In terms of exercise variety, there’s a huge range of exercises you can perform using a suspension trainer. Just make sure you buy one with a door anchor, which will make the home use much, much easier and safer.

You can use a suspension trainer to do rows, pull ups, bicep curls, ab workouts, lunges, squats, hamstring curls and hundreds of other exercises.

Adjustable Dumbbell Set

I’ll start by saying this - some of the prices for adjustable dumbbell sets are RIDICULOUS at the moment, so bear that in mind. I’ve linked to the kind of thing to look for in the title, but don’t want to suggest you buy any of those in particular. Try not to spend more than £80 if possible - less ideally.

When it comes to adjustable dumbbells, you want to buy the heaviest you can afford because as you get stronger, you’ll outgrow them. You may start off struggling to shoulder press 5kg, but that won’t be forever, so buy them with your strongest exercise in mind.

Dumbbells are great for squats, lunges, floor presses, shoulder presses, curls, lat raises, ab work etc. They’re also really easy to store so are a better addition to a small home gym than a barbell.

Rings

These are ideal for more advanced users in the same way that suspension trainers are - they’re great quality, don’t cost much and are REALLY easy to store. If you’re advanced enough you can use rings to do gymnastic movements and calisthenics, but even if you’re not up to the more advanced bodyweight exercises just yet, you can still use them for rows, pull ups, dips and push ups.

It’s a lot of versatility from a relatively cheap bit of kit. It’s another one that’s easy to transport with you as well, so you can take an exercise option with you when you travel anywhere.

Bands and Glute Loops

These are a couple of super versatile and and really inexpensive bits of kit. They weigh next to nothing (great for travelling with again) and can be used to supplement hundreds of exercises. The bands can be used to make exercises such as push ups and bodyweight squats and more difficult, or they can be used to perform exercises in their own right such as lat raises and face pulls. If you buy the long loops, you can make pull ups easier too, which is great if you have a home pull up bar or something to hang it off.

The glute loop is great for making squats more difficult, as well as making lateral bands walks possible. Glute bridges are made tougher with a glute loop too, so it gives you extra home workout variety.

Home Gym Kit: Concluded

If you’re joining in on the AdMac Zoom Classes (just email me if you want to - you can join from anywhere in the world!) buying some of the kit here can give you a whole load of extra workout variety without breaking the bank!

Just don’t go buying kit you won’t need in a few weeks. These home gym equipment suggestions give you plenty of workout variety at home, keeping you fit and healthy without costing you a fortune or forcing you to move all of your furniture around to accommodate your new gear!

Top 5 Home Workout Mistakes to Avoid (and a bonus tip!)

Thanks to the COVID-19 enforced shutdown, a lot of people are having to workout at home. I’m seeing the same kinds of home workouts all over social media and the same mistakes keep coming up. To help the AdMac Fitness family and readers to make sure they get the most from their home workout, I decided to write this post.

Here are the top 5 home workout mistakes to avoid…

Mistake #1 - Too much HIIT, not enough strength work…

It’s easy to assume that without weights, you can’t really grow much muscle. People equate weight lifted with muscle built. Whilst that’s true to a point, it’s not the only way to build strength and muscle. You can build muscle at home with targeted exercise.

A lot of people fall into the trap of ‘if it’s not hurting, it’s not working’, so fill in their workout time with really high intensity efforts that raise your heart rate and get you sweating a lot. These are great for cardio and calorie burning, but they’re generally terrible for strength building. There’s definitely a time and a place for HIIT work, but don’t fill your workout with burpees and running on the spot - you’ll lose a tonne of strength if you do.

Mistake #2 - Not pushing to failure…

When you sacrifice weight, you have to increase volume. There’s no point in sticking to sets of 10 if sets of 10 aren’t a challenge for you. You have to create overload if you want your muscles to grow - overload can come in the form of volume (do more reps), weight (add more resistance) or intensity (reduce your rest period between sets). All of these will push you to failure.

What counts as failure? That’s the point where you can’t complete the exercises with good enough form. ‘Good enough’ is the important bit - your form doesn’t have to be perfect under fatigue, but it has to be good enough that you’re still hitting the target muscles.

Push to failure on every set of every exercise and you’ll see some strength gains.

Mistake #3 - Too much focus on isolation movements…

There’s a simple rule in muscle building - the more muscle you use, the bigger the muscle gains you make. If you train a lot of muscle in an exercise, you stimulate more muscle and you release more growth hormone. That’s the reason compound exercises such as squats, pull ups, deadlifts, shoulder presses are better for muscle growth than bicep curls, lateral raises, tricep kickbacks etc.

A lot of people are using their resistance bands to perform curls, fly’s, kickbacks etc but that should come AFTER you’ve pre-exhausted your muscles with exercises such as squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups (if you can). Your home workout isn’t likely to consist of a huge range of exercises, but the ones you do have to be a high quality if you want to make it an effective workout.

Mistake #4 - Not using progressive overload…

What progressive overload means is that you’re not making your workouts progressively harder. If you don’t have weights at home, you can’t measure the increase of weight you’re lifting, but you can certainly measure the volume or intensity of your workout by tracking reps, sets and rest periods.

If last week you managed performed 4 sets of 12 of an exercise, see if this week you can push that to 5 sets. If you did 5 sets of 20 last week, see if you can do 5 sets of 22 this time. If you did a plank for 30 seconds last week, see if you can make it 40 this week.

Seek to increase the volume. Likewise, monitor your rest periods. If you were giving yourself a minute off between sets last week, see if you can only rest for 50 seconds this week. Increased intensity is another measure of progression.

Seek to progress every week if you can.

Mistake #5 - You’re not programming with the changes in mind…

If in a normal week you head to the gym 3 times to do a big, heavy workout and then throw in a long walk on one of the other days, you’ll need to up the training frequency at home because the intensity just doesn’t match up if you replace like for like.

If you simply swap your three workouts in the gym for three bodyweight workouts at home, you’ll lose some serious progress. Instead, you’ll need to increase the frequency of your home workouts to compensate. The three gym workouts may need to be swapped for 5 home workouts and the walk can remain. If something is less taxing on the body (home workouts are typically easier than gym workouts) you’ll need to do more of them.

The walk should remain - you always need some outside space. Just make sure it’s within the rules!

Bonus Tip - Get creative!

You may not have weights or a kettlebell, but you can still add weight to your workouts. Fill a rucksack with water bottles, books or tins of food and wear it to do push ups, squats, lunges, the plank.

You don’t need to run far to get a good cardio workout - find a local park and do sprints or shuttle runs (just stay away from people).

Use your furniture to make workouts harder. Use a chair for rear foot elevated split squats, feet raised push ups and step ups. Use your stairs for calf raises - look around, there’ll be workout options you hadn’t considered before!