The Importance of Keeping Exercise Records

Sometimes I find it really interesting to sort through my exercise records from many years ago to see where I have come from.  Apart from being interesting, it’s also a great validation that all the hard work I have put in over the years has paid big dividends.

When you are exercising, no matter what your goal, it is important to keep a record of the exercise that you have done.  It allows you to monitor your progress on a short-, mid- and l0ng-term basis.  These relatively objective figures will also allow you to stay motivated and accountable.

Exercise records can take on a variety of formats.  The records that I find to be of most use in my own day-to-day training include:

1. Weight training records; including exercises, weight, repetitions, rest periods.
2. Cardio training records; including cardio format, duration, intensity level, distance, calories, resistance level, incline, maximum heart rate, power output.

Just in case you’re wondering, I do keep my own records religiously.  In fact, I have over seven years of training records stashed away!

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The Three Best Workout Accessories

Over my years of training, I have stumbled upon some of the most useful workout accessories that can have significant benefits to your results.  So, I figure, why not make a list of the best workout accessories?

Workout Accessory #1: Lifting Straps

Have you ever performed an exercise and are unable to hold onto the weight?  This is quite common on many back and trap exercises where you have to hold on to the weight.  Standing dumbbell lunges can be quite a nuisance to complete if your grip strength doesn’t allow you to hold the dumbbells for the entire set!

Enter lifting straps.  They are a simple, innovative and cost-effective tool to wrap around your wrist and the weight.  By utilising this accessory, you eliminate the focus on the forearms and are able to concentrate on the muscles being worked.

Because I love lifting straps so much, I made sure that we have them available in our online supplement store!

Workout Accessory #2: Dip Belt

A few years ago, I got to the point where I was able to lift my own body weight on pull-up exercises and also upright dips.  I placed a dumbbell in between my feet to add resistance.  However, as that dumbbell became heavier, it became more awkward to hold onto the dumbbell.

I eventually purchased a dip belt at a fitness expo for $40.  Apart from being a bargain (they are often $80+), it is an amazing innovation.  You simply unhook the chain, attach a weight plate and then hook it back up.  Ensure that it is comfortably around your lower back and go for your life.

Workout Accessory #3: iPod (or equivalent mp3 player)

Apple are getting a free plug here, but it’s well deserved with such a great product.  Of course, there are many other alternative mp3 players on the market also.

Personally, I prefer to use my mp3 player on cardio to really enhance the intensity of my cardio workouts.  I find that during a weights workout, it can distract me or get in the way.  Really, it comes down to personal preference.

If you’re looking for ways to enhance your workout intensity, be sure to check out an article that I wrote that discusses ways to enhance a HIIT cardio.

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Minimising the Strength & Size Differences in Muscles

No one is perfectly symmetrical.  You probably have a more dominant size which is utilised more often than the less dominant side.  Chances are that this dominant side will be stronger and better developed than the other, weaker side.

This is certainly the case with me.  I had been playing tennis since I was five years of age.  Being right-handed, the right arm got a really good workout.  It was considerably larger and stronger than my left arm.  Just take a look at some of the differences in tennis player’s arms.  One of the more prominent examples of an imbalance would be the current world number one, Rafael Nadal.

When it comes to weight training, an imbalance between muscles on either side of your body can be a significant injury risk.  For example, imagine that you are performing a bench press.  To minimise injury risk and maximise effectiveness, you need to ensure that the bar remains horizontal at all times.  This ensures that an equal load is placed on either side of your body.  But if you have a significantly weaker limb, this will be difficult to accomplish.  In fact, your weaker side may reach muscular failure while your stronger side could still perform another few repetitions.  This is where you can hurt yourself, because you will no longer be able to perform the exercise in a safe manner.  Your stronger side will attempt to take over, significantly increasing the risk of the weaker side that is no longer able to handle the weight being lifted.

So how do you minimise the strength and size differences between muscles on either side of your body?  Uni-lateral exercises are the key.

Uni-lateral exercises utilise each side individually, as opposed to bi-lateral whereby both sides are working together to perform a motion.  This means that one side cannot accommodate for a weakness in the other side.  Most dumbbell exercises are uni-lateral and many barbell exercises are bi-lateral.  Here are some uni-lateral exercises and their bi-lateral counterparts:

• Flat Dumbbell Press / Flat Barbell Press
• Standing Dumbbell Rows / Standing Barbell Rows
• Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press / Seated Barbell Shoulder Press

You get the idea.  By isolating one side at a time, you can minimise the difference between the strength and size of each side, because the stronger side cannot take over.  Once your weaker side fails the set is over.

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Your Body Adapts to Your Lifestyle

When you are considering achieving a particular goal, be it weight loss, muscle gain or enhancing your fitness, you need to understand that your body will adapt to the environment that you subject it to.

Here are a few examples:

1. You lounge around all day, snack on junk food and rarely exercise.  You will therefore be unfit and probably overweight.
2. You perform resistance training that is targeted toward muscle growth.  You also eat in a way that promotes muscle growth.  You will therefore gain muscle.
3. You watch what you eat and exercise regularly, in a way that supports weight loss.  You will therefore lose weight.

In other words, the body that you have now is a function of your current lifestyle.

This really is commonsensical.  Subject your body to a particular environment and it will adapt accordingly.  Considering this, there is one very common flaw in typical approaches to a particular health, fitness and/or weight goal:

After achieving a particular goal, it is assumed that it this goal is maintained with minimal effort

If you are conscientiously and effectively working toward a particular goal, then you will set up a new environment for your body to adapt to.  However, you need to be aware that when you achieve your goal, you will need to maintain an environment that supports this state of your body.

If your goal is to lose weight, then you need to ensure that you maintain a lifestyle that supports that lower body weight indefinitely.  If your goal is to build muscle, then you need to continue your resistance training and nutritional plan in order to maintain that muscle mass.  Alternatively if you want to enhance your fitness to a certain level, then the environment you subject your body to must support that level of fitness, otherwise you will lose those benefits quickly!

The point – develop a lifestyle from the get-go that you can live with indefinitely that will also support your goals!  There is no point in forcing yourself into the gym if you’re only going to give up in a matter of weeks because you hate the place!  The key is to focus on the long-term.

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Three Quick & Practical Exercise Tips

Looking over my blogs, I’ve written plenty on mindset and planning when it comes to weight loss, muscle gain and fitness improvement.  So right now, I really feel like writing up five quick and practical exercise tips that you can incorporate into your next workout.

My first problem is in deciding where to begin.  There are so many “tips” that I can think of when it comes to enhancing an exercise routine.  But the three I am going to write about are some of the more common area’s that could use improvement in a generalised exercise regime.

Exercise Tip #1: Don’t hold your feet down for an abdominal exercise

If you are performing abdominal work, don’t place your feet under something, or have someone standing on your toes.  What this does is shifts the overload from the abdominals to the hip flexors.

In order to target the rectus abdominal muscles (the 6-pack), you need to move your spine from a straight line, into a curved line.  Technically speaking, you want to go from a neutral spine into spinal flexion.  This is what the rectus abdominus is responsible for.  Sit-ups, where you stay in a neutral spine yet move from horizontal to vertical, is not moving your spine into a state of flexion.

Exercise Tip #2: On the bench press, lower the bar right down to the chest

Whilst this tip isn’t good for the ego (you can lift more by not bringing the bar down as far), it is highly effective for accomplishing a good stretch through the pec muscles.  You can therefore move from a great stretch, through to a full contraction, by executing an full range of motion on this exercise.

The basic premise of “generalised” weight training is to move the muscle from a stretch to a contraction.  Of course, there are more advanced and specific training methodologies whereby you may only obtain a fraction of a stretch on the eccentric phase.  However, especially for the beginner, I believe that it is imperative to practice good, standardised technique before getting too fancy with execution.

Exercise Tip #3: Keep those elbows relatively still on bicep curls

This is a very common mistake amongst beginners performing one of the most popular exercises – bicep curls (in it’s many variations).  By flaring your elbows out, or by moving your elbows forward, you take a lot of the load off the bicep and move it onto the shoulder.  Take a look in the mirror next time you perform this exercise to analyse your technique and see if you are hitting the biceps effectively.

The bicep muscles are very small relative to other major muscle groups within the human body.  So, don’t expect to be lifting massive amounts of weight on this exercise.  As soon as you reduce that upper arm movement, you will probably have to lower the weight due to the increased reliance on the bicep muscles.

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Goal Setting for Weight Loss, Muscle Gain or Fitness

I have written plenty of articles that have mentioned goal setting. In a blog earlier this week, “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail…at Weight Loss, Fitness or Muscle Gain!“, I discussed the idea that you need a plan in order to achieve a particular goal.  It is important to note that, if your plan has you heading toward a poorly defined goal, then you’re planning to head to an unknown destination!

The first step to achieving a weight loss, muscle gain or fitness goal is to identify exactly what it is you want to achieve.  Going back to my road map analogy from a couple of days ago, wouldn’t it be silly to drive toward a 1km long road without a street number?  Of course it is!  Fitness is exactly the same story – you need to know exactly where you are going.

Here are some examples of really poorly defined goals:

1. “I want to lose fat and gain muscle”
2. “I want to be able to run for longer distances”
3. “I want to tone up my stomach, bum and thighs”

I’m not saying that they are bad goals – they are just poorly defined goals.  So, what makes a well defined goal?

I want to discuss something that was introduced to me a couple of years ago at a fitness convention.  It’s called S.M.A.R.T. goal setting:

• S – Specific
• M – Measurable
• A – Attainable
• R – Realistic
• T – Timely

Specific goals have a clearly defined destination.  You know exactly what you want to achieve, without question.  To make the above goals specific, you could add:

1. I want to lose 4kg of fat and gain 2kg of muscle
2. I want to be able to run for 5km non-stop
3. I want to reduce my waistline by 5cm, my buttocks by 8cm and my thighs by 4cm

Measurable goals are quantitative in an objective fashion.  The three specific examples above are measurable because we can quantify exactly what it is that is to be achieved.  You can therefore assess whether or not you are progressing toward this goal.

A non-measurable goal is inferior because you do not know whether or not you are making progress!  For example, if you want to “look better in the mirror”, what happens when you’re in a grumpy mood?  The key is to not be subjective.

Attainable and realistic goals mean that it can be achieved.  Often, you will need the assistance of a professional to advise you whether or not a particular goal is achievable.  A perfect example is from many younger male clients who want to gain 10+kg of muscle within a 12 week period.  Unless you are genetically gifted (which some people are), this is highly improbable.

Ultimately, you do not want to be striving for something that is never going to be achieved.

Timely goals are vital.  If you stick with the above goal examples, namely:

1. I want to lose 4kg of fat and gain 2kg of muscle
2. I want to be able to run for 5km non-stop
3. I want to reduce my waistline by 5cm, my buttocks by 8cm and my thighs by 4cm

…when are you going to achieve them by?  There is nothing to keep you accountable!  If you don’t start next week, then what’s the problem? There is always the week after (which hardly ever comes by the way).

So, set yourself a time limit – but again you need to be realistic in setting this time!

Here are my S.M.A.R.T. goals:

1. I want to lose 4kg of fat and gain 2kg of muscle in 12 weeks.
   
2. I want to be able to run for 5km non-stop for my work’s outdoor activity date on August 25th.
   
3. I want to reduce my waistline by 5cm, my buttocks by 8cm and my thighs by 4cm for my wedding on March 6th.
   

Much better, don’t you think?  Now, you can go ahead and plan your way toward achieving your goals!

Goal setting is something that we focus on a great deal at Amino Z Personal Training.  For that reason, we offer highly comprehensive assessments that measure your body fat, girth measurements, lean mass, fitness, strength, flexibility and various other factors in an objective and measurable fashion.  Once those figures are obtained, goal setting is easy.  Better yet, it is easy to see the progress that is being made over a period of time when we perform a re-assessment!

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The Best Cardio Exercise for Weight Loss

You walk into the gym and there are a number of cardio machines available to use.  There is the treadmill, cross trainer, upright bike, recumbent bike, rower, stepper…and then a few more machines that you don’t even know the names of! Which is the best cardio exercise to undertake?

Well, unlike with resistance training, cardio exercise is a far more even playing field in regards to the effectiveness of various exercises in regards to weight loss.

Firstly, why is this so?

The goal of cardiovascular exercise is to elevate your heart rate to induce a response (whatever you are performing the cardio for).  Disregarding exceptional cases (medical concerns, injuries, super-specific training etc.), so long as you can get your heart rate up on a particular machine, then it’s going to be effective.

You may have read yesterday’s post entitled “Debunking the Fat Burning Zone Myth“.  If you proceeded to read my article “The Fat Burning Zone“, you would be well aware that the most effective way to lose weight is to get the intensity of the exercise up.

So now we are at the point where we no longer are considering “the best cardio exercise for weight loss”, but rather “how to increase the intensity of the cardio exercise for weight loss”.  Here is the key to increasing the intensity:

Pick a cardio format that you enjoy using!

You see, if you actually enjoy using the format (whether that be a treadmill, upright bike, cross trainer, outdoor running, outdoor bike riding etc.), then you are going to be able to push yourself that little bit harder to maximise your results.  Why force yourself to undertake a form of exercise that you loath?  You are going to be bored, you won’t be able to wait until your cardio is over…why in the world would you want to make your cardio more miserable than what it already is?

Oh and a really, really big benefit to this is that, if you enjoy your cardio, chances are that you will stick to it for longer!  By eliminating your dislike of a particular exercise from your regime, that’s one less thing working against you to achieve your weight loss goals.

At lower intensities, weight bearing cardio exercises (such as treadmill, walking, jogging, running, cross trainer) may be more effective in maximising the number of calories burnt during your workout.  However, when considering high intensity cardio workouts, a bike can more far more effective than a cross trainer, even though less muscles are being utilised.  It all comes down to what the best cardio exercises are for YOU.

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Debunking the Fat Burning Zone Myth

I was sifting through our website statistics today and I was really happy to see that an article I wrote entitled The Fat Burning Zone is one of the most popular pages on the entire website.  This article was published in Australian Ironman Magazine and Fighting Fat Magazine.  It discusses the fat burning zone myth; how it came about and why it is completely misguided.

I have discussed this fat burning zone myth with countless clients and other individuals who are seeking to lose weight.  It often comes as a surprise that this zone is a highly ineffective way to break down fat tissue.  This is completely understandable, considering the amount of misguided information that is floating around the industry.

The fat burning zone myth suggests that exercising at an intensity of between 55-65% of your maximum heart rate, you will stimulate maximal fat loss.  Exercising at an easier pace will reduce the fat loss and exercising at a harder pace will also reduce fat loss, but target carbohydrate breakdown instead.  This is not true.

What is true is that fat loss is going to be a function of the intensity of your workout.  The harder you exercise, the more calories you will expend and the more fat you will break down.  In fact, if you exercise at a high level of intensity, you will significantly increase the amount of fat burnt AFTER your workout!  Yes, you can actually turn your body into a fat burning machine.

If you are interested in delving into this topic in more detail, then I recommend that you read my article, The Fat Burning Zone.  We discuss exactly how this myth came about, why it is misunderstood and we also consider a handful of studies that have proven it to be incorrect.

Having said all this, I am by no means implying that low to medium intensity cardiovascular work is useless.  I am a firm believer that lower intensities have their place, particularly with:

• People with injuries and/or medical concerns
• Elderly people
• Participants with low levels of fitness
• People with limited exercise experience

Whilst a lower level of exercise intensity may not maximise fat loss, there are always many other considerations to take into account apart from just “results”.

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Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail…at Weight Loss, Fitness or Muscle Gain!

You may have heard that “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail” is relevant in a business sense (hell, every second business book quotes this phrase!), but nothing is more relevant when trying to achieve a health and fitness goal.

It should make sense that if you don’t have a plan, it is very easy to get lost.  Consider a road map analogy.  If you want to get from your house to a specific place of interest that you don’t know how to get to, you’re not just going to jump in your car and hope for the best.  You are however going to plan out your journey in one way or another, whether that be through a  road map, online maps, asking someone or whatever you choose.  If you fail to plan out your trip, you will get lost!  Weight loss, fitness improvement or muscle gain is no different!

Let’s now compare my roadmap analogy to a particular weight loss, muscle gain or fitness goal.

Have you set specific, realistic and timely goals (ie. the exact address of where you want to get to and by what time)?

Do you have the tools to get there (ie. do you have access to a car)?

Do you have a plan on how to achieve the goal (ie. have you planned out your trip to avoid wasted time, money and effort)?

Do you know why/how a particular approach will produce a specific result (ie. do you know that driving a car will actually get you to your destination)?

Do you have any idea on what you are actually doing (can you even drive a car)?

Articulated in this light, my driving analogy sounds ridiculous.  But here’s the reality of the situation – trying to achieve a particular weight loss, fitness or muscle gain result without planning out your journey is just as silly as my analogy!

Whilst exercise and healthy eating is great, you also need to have a clear plan to guide you toward your ultimate goals.  If you haven’t done so already, set aside a few minutes to develop your goals, educate yourself and develop an informed plan.

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4 Week Weight Training Update

Four weeks ago, following the conclusion of FILEX, I blogged on The Best Muscle Building Workout.  Whilst I didn’t provide specifics on the ultimate workout that would guarantee results for everyone without exception  (if I could, I would be a multi-millionaire!), I did note that I was trialling a brand new method of training.  The protocols are as follows:

2 week mesocycles, progressing from 3-5 reps (I changed this from 4-6), to 6-8, to 8-10 and finally to 10-12.  Rest periods are inversely related to total reps, decreasing from 180 seconds, to 120 seconds, to 90 seconds and finally to 60 seconds in the final two weeks.  All sets to failure.  Exercises change every 2 weeks also.  High intensity cardio is being performed twice a week.

I’m at the half way point this week and have just begun the 8-10 rep range cycle.  Here are some observations from this program so far:

• DOMS is far more prevalent than with a standard 4 week mesocycle of training (in any rep range).
• I am seeing significant progress (weights/reps) in the second week of each mesocycle.
• The first week of each new mesocycle is quite difficult as I feel quite weak with the new rep range/rest time parameters.

I guess, all of this is to be expected with such constant variations in exercises, rest times and reps to vailure.  Week 1 I am conditioned for a lower rep range, which makes it difficult for my muscles to perform effectively in a higher rep range.  Week 2, following a week of conditioning, would quite obviously result in significant increases in performances.

So far, no big surprises.  I have gained body mass, fat and muscle, however the exact ratio I am unsure of at this point.  I am also consuming more calories than previously.  What I will be looking to do is, upon completion of this 8 week macrocycle, take a week of rest and then repeat the exact same progression.  I will then be able to see how my strength has been affected by this training progression.

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