Welcome to our weekly blog filled with hints and tips to help you on your way to meeting your fitness goals. Are you up to the challenge?

Something slightly different this week - I wanted to do something that you could do and hopefully tell me about - a workout!

I can't tell you the weights you should use - they should be challenging whilst still under your safe control.

I will be doing another blog how what the A1/A2 system is and why it's my preferred training style for clients and myself.
 
Step 1 - Warm-Up
Every successful workout starts with a good warm up, so take the time to complete 2 minutes cardio, either a light jog or cycle will do, followed by 3 minutes dynamic stretching and 1 minute body weight exercises.
 
Step 2 – The Workout

Bonus Circuit
‘Skillmill’ Sprints for 10 seconds, 30 seconds rest and repeat 5 times!
 
If you need a demonstration of any of the exercises or for any additional guidance, just let me know!
 
Step 3 – Cool Down
The cool down process is important, so be sure to complete a thorough post-workout stretch, Static stretches mixed with foam rolling is good to do now!
 
WEEKLY DIET HINTS & TIPS
Q.      Are bread, carbs and sugar bad? 
A. No! Unless you have a gluten intolerance bread won’t make you put on weight or stop you losing as long as you are in a calorie deficit, I would recommend you do eat a mix of carbs you enjoy as they will help you to recover and will help with your exercise performance! Too many carbs/sugars will make you put on weight not because they are carbs/sugar but because of the calories!
 
Quote of the week - “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” - Og Mandino
 
For any more information just let me know, good luck, and please let me know how you get on!
 
Dan
Personal Trainer
 
Applied Fitness
Applied Fitness Personal Training – The Gym Group
07716686301 | https://www.applied-fitness.co.uk
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​Okay – so what we have here is a food label so first thing to look at is the amount of calories this food/drink has – which is outlined in blue – you can see that per serving is 118ml, which is an absolutely stupid amount, how you are meant to measure that precisely is insane so ignore than and look at the Per 100ml – this carton has 4 servings at 118ml so its roughly 500ml which is 5 x 100ml – easy to work it now!

So you just multiply the amount of calories per each 100ml so 68kcal x5 is 340 calories per bottle, which seems very high.
Next you look at the protein, which is outlined in orange the higher protein isn’t necessary better as the protein they use might be crap quality however, try and go for the most protein as you can, this means the food will keep you fuller for longer, will help with gains and a higher protein diets trumps every diet in the science tests for weight loss and health etc. so it’s generally a good thing to go by!

Next have a look at Fibre, which is outlined in the green this can sometimes be categorised under carbohydrates but where ever it is on the label look at it, the higher fibre the better for your digestive health (more research needs to be done, but this is what it seems like) to a limit, obviously you don’t want to eat so much fibre you don’t poo for a month!
A good way to see how much you need is – 14 grams of fibre per 1000 calories or 30 to 38 grams a day for men and 25 grams a day for women between 18 and 50 years old – personally I would go a bit more just because the days you get more, then great but the day you don’t hit your target you might still actually be getting enough.
Next is Fats and Carbs, the reason these are last are because the priority for you is completely different to the other people reading this, you choose which levels you want, are you Keto, high carb, low carb, high or low fat, high or low polyols, high or low sugar, high or low saturated, trans fats?

I don’t know – unless your my client, but most of you won’t be and most of you reading this are probably reading other and listen to other advice and have then probably made up your minds of which level are best for you, not only health wise but consistency wise. So read these and make up your decision.

If it doesn’t might your macros (Protein, fats and carbs) or even your calories I can almost bet there is a high/low protein, fats and carbs version and a lower calorie version somewhere so if you really want the food then go and find it somewhere!

Then salt you don’t really need to pay attention to for years now food salt levels haven’t been too bad because of the health scares of salt which are vastly exaggerated – if the food is highly salted then just drink more water and it will balance that out, unless you have a medical reason then it should go without saying, be careful with salt levels.













So just the quickly recap – in priority order:

1. Calories/Energy
2. Protein
3. Fibre
4. Carbs and Fats
5. Salt

 
I really hope this helps you and I hope that with this you can shop with better food choices – I will do a part 2 to this where we go through ingredients labels and how to understand what all the chemical sounding names are, because some of them are just the chemical names for vitamins/minerals.
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Thank you for reading!
Dan

The importance of a good warm-up was undervalued by me for over a year!

I used to do a warm-up set and then jump straight into everything – I now warm-up my whole body regardless of what I’m training, I prime the muscle I will use for that session and I stretch them and mobilise them and then I do a warm-up set or two, I will talk you through 2 different types of warm-up and I will upload a video to accompany this with some warm-up ideas for you to follow so you can maximize your time and results!

Before we get into the techniques I want to explain and educate on why this is important, without the why and with-out the understanding you can fully apply yourself to the warm-up, if you don’t actually know why you are doing something then it won’t last – this is a concept I teach to all my clients – why we do the exercises we do and why we do them the way we do!

Warm-ups can massively help with peak force output in a study of different type of warm-ups the technique I will show improved Drop jump height and impact time by 7.1%! This is a huge increase!

In a study of military personal just static stretching showed a massive difference in Patellofemoral injury (knee pain) reduction but not much else which is disappointing however when we do dynamic stretching the performance aspect gets a massive kick, another study of footballers produced great results for both a 10m sprint and 20m flying start sprint (running start),
If you came here thinking Warm-ups where to stop you getting injured that’s just not the case, or at least I could find at the time of writing this.

So why should you warm-up you aren’t a footballer and you aren’t military personal? Because the effects are the same for you, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have to run to shelter under gun fire or have a champion’s league final goal to score in the next 10 seconds – you come to the gym to perform, you want to get better, fitter, healthier and leaner! Why wouldn’t you want to maximize the time you spend in the gym when you miss days because your kids are ill, you miss days because work was so hectic or shit that you just wanted to go home and chill out with a glass of wine?

I completely understand you aren’t an elite level athlete but if you can maximise your limited time in the gym doing this very basic thing then that is worth it.
Back to the point – so the warm-up you build yourself must tick these boxes in individual sections – It must raise your heart rate – this can be done on a rower, treadmill, cross training, running, skipping and whatever you want – something you and can for 3-5 minutes non-stop at a decent intensity so you start to breathe heavily.

You must ‘activate’ I hate that term if your muscles weren’t activated you would be a gooey blog on the floor but it describes what we’re trying to do and Mobilise – so you do this by using bands to stretch, dynamic stretching into holds, light body weight exercises for example, lying leg raises, scapula pulls/sets, scapula press ups – this should stretch you, test your motor skills, make you feel unstable all these things, but this is where you test your agility etc. so when you come to do your actual exercises your body has everything stable, everything is ‘switched on’ and ready for action and at the same time free to move and get into new positions like a squat, lunge or overhead press etc.

Prime/Potentiate – this is where all that instability and motor skills become a solid foundation, this is where you use your newly found looseness and range of movement to squat deeper than you have before hold for a few seconds and then burst out into a squat jump, this is where you realise you’re a lot more flexible than you thought, so use it! Get into positions you haven’t hold them and then do them again with a bit of weight, hold them and then do them again!

This is how and where good movement patterns are made, this is how I make someone with a double hip and knee operation able to walk, squat and lunge again pain free and with relative ease. This is the basics of movement, the only difference is this isn’t their warm-up this is their session.

I used to get annoyed when I saw someone squat the same weight as I’m doing with absolutely perfection and make it look easy – I started to watch them, study how Olympians warm-up, study how people with great movement patterns go about things and every single one of them, whether they knew it or not, had a fucking good warm-up!

And it’s so easy to make one, so follow these instructions and watch the videos I will be making to go with this and you will be just dandy!

Enjoy your training!

Dan Grimes

Stop doing crunches, stop doing planks with your hips almost touching the floor, knees bent, and hips twisted, Stop doing 1000s of sit ups.

These aren’t working your core – Let’s from the very basic core exercise everyone takes for granted – Breathing! If you lay on the floor and you can't hold you abs as if is you where to take a punch and breathe by letting your rib cages expand then you don’t have a very good core, likewise if you can’t brace your abs whilst laying on your back with your knees bent up and sliding your foot out straight along the floor you don’t have a strong core.

You will have to relearn how-to breathe using all your together, this will make a huge difference to your training.
When training your abs and core it important to understand what you are doing and the means of abs and core – abs are just the 6 pack part you can see, your core is every muscle that your lower trunk uses, oblique muscles, abdominals, lower back muscles, everything!

It’s important to have a strong core that stays strong in all ranges of movement and positions, to achieve this you need train your core dynamically, things like Plank (done correctly are incredible) you can add sliders under your hands and whilst holding your core move your hands around the floor, put them under foot and again try and hold that strong core position whilst moving around.
Exercises like Aleknas, Pallof press’, Planks, Bear crawls, Med ball throws(taught correctly), Zercher carries - will work your core really well, efficiently and effectively, you are moving through different plans of movement, using you core in different ways and means the resistance comes from different angles and put the emphasis, which challenges your core stability, mobility and strength. Using your core in in this way creates a great strong core that will be strong enough to take a Mike Tyson punch from any angles.

Please start training your core with functionality and trying to get your whole core bulletproof rather than just a good set of abs.