"It’s easy to get fit, it’s just hard work." …I think of myself as more of an adviser than anything else, I mean you are the one doing most of the work and most of the sweating, my job is to get you doing the right exercises so that you can achieve and maintain the results you are after. If, like most of my clients and the majority of the population you have a sedentary job and weight loss and toning are what you are after this is what I prescribe…
Firstly and possibly the most important thing I try to install in my clients is core conditioning – the development of a strong, stable and functioning torso or to be precise the deep tissue muscle that wraps right around your midsection. A stable core provides the ‘foundation’ for all other movements and must be established prior to other activities such as weight training and aerobic exercises. It’s also crucial for maintaining good posture and preventing back pain as well as improving the aesthetics of the torso and helping you reach peak physical performance.
The second thing is a combination of weight training, aerobic exercise and sound eating habits, which is shown to be the most effective combination for fat loss and toning. When starting out a lot of my clients, especially the girls, tell me they don’t want to lift weights as they don’t want big muscles like big burly body builders, but this is something most people don’t have to worry about. Those body building guys train very hard, they also lift specifically for hypertrophy (muscle gain) and sometimes have a little extra help! What I’m talking about when lifting for weight loss is to lift in order to build lean muscle mass.
While aerobic exercise burns fat during exercise, anaerobic exercises, like weight training, sprints and boxing, utilises fat for hours afterwards. Weight training can also increase the metabolic rate a second way, it restores muscle tissue (that has been lost over the years from a sedentary modern lifestyle), and the more lean muscle mass you have the faster your resting metabolic rate will be. So you’ll continue burning fat while sitting on your butt at work or watching TV!
But exercise is only half the picture, if you really want to lose weight you need a proper diet as well, so you will find lots of useful diet and nutritional information in my monthly newsletters.
