Lose Fat and Build Muscle

When you do the math it just doesn’t seem possible to lose the fat and build muscle at the same time.

You need calories to build muscle, they supply energy to the muscle tissue.  If you take in more calories than required to build muscle you end up increasing body fat. To prevent an increase in body fat you must limit your calorie intake.

You need to make sure that you put your body into a catabolic state to break down the muscle and an anabolic state to build muscle.  In order to do this you should have a serving of lean protein before and after your workout.  Many find this difficult and use protein shakes to get the protein required to get your body to move into these states.  Protein shakes and bars are a great way to help your body get into these zones.  Of course you do require exercise also.  I would suggest a low carb protein shake or bar some shakes and bars have a high amount of sugars which are unnecessary.

Your work out should consist of at least;

2 heavy lift days doing the muscle groups on your upper body one day and muscle groups on your lower body on the other day.

2-3 days of lower weights and much higher reps on these days you cycle the workout so you are doing upper body then lower body, it could look like this chest press, squats, tricep kick backs, hamstrings you want to make sure you work out all the muscle groups on the days you do this burns a lot of calories.

At least 1 day of easy cardio.

Weight Loss

Your weight x13 so if you weigh 150×13=1950 calories per day

The amount of protein you should be eating to lose weight is take the weight of your lean muscle mass, you should be eating 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound.

5 to 6 small meals per day is optimal.

Workout Shoes

Workout shoes should be chosen according to the activity you are participating in.  Most people chose a shoe that can be utilized in a number of activities, these shoes are cross trainers.

When choosing the shoe I find that most clients need to try on quite a few different shoes to find the one that fits properly.  So for fit, the arch must be in the correct placement on your foot, if it feels uncomfortable at all when you walk, squat, jump or whatever, you need to find another pair.  When the arch is in an incorrect placement on your foot it can cause foot cramps, leg craps and can affect your posture.  When you finally find a shoe with the right arch placement make sure the shoe is tight. It should fit your foot exactly with no room to spare.  The reason for purchasing a tight fit is so you do not slide around in the shoe when you are doing your workout.  Sliding in your shoes can cause damage to your body, knees, back, etc. and will compromise your form.  For example, your shoes are a little loose and you are performing a forward lunge you then slide forward because you have a little room in the length, this type of motion can lead to knee and lower back injuries.

The shoes are very important please make sure you get the correct fit.  I have taken clients to the store personally and a large number of them try on the average of 20 to 30 pairs of shoes before finding the right fit.

Play safe.

Fitness – The Warm-Up

Why warm-up? The warm-up reduces the chance of injury while you are training.

It produces increased capacity in the areas of blood flow, oxygen pumping through your cardio vascular system, increases your ability to perform the movements, increases muscle temperature and thus muscle pliability and increases your metabolism.

Warm-ups vary depending on the clients level of fitness and age and can include; Static, Active Isolated and Dynamic Stretching, Cardio and possibly Myofascial release.

One of the methods that can be used for determining the cardio warm-up for a client is the zone method.  This method contains 3 zones which relate to the fitness level of your client.  When doing a warm up it is good to have them functioning at a heart rate in the lower end of their zone.

Example: Your client is a 75 year old who is somewhat fit, and works out consistently. This could be considered the high end of zone 1 and possibly the low end of zone 2 or 3.

Zone 1   220 – 75 Yrs x .65 = Heart rate 95

Zone 2   220 – 75 Yrs x .76 = Heart rate 110

Zone 3  220 – 75 Yrs  x .86 = Heart rate 125

It may be necessary to engage a person longer in the cardio portion of the warm-up to ensure their muscles are warm enough to participate in training. The trainer will be able to determine the length of this warm-up by observing their client and then monitoring their heart rate.

Fitness Instructors & Fitness Trainers

Fitness Trainers work one on one with the client or in small groups.  The focus on an individual or a small group which enables them to correct movement and form, they can focus on what each person is doing with greater ease.

Fitness Instructors work with large groups in a very general way their focus is on just providing a workout.  This is great in that a large number of people are working out getting fit and healthy. Is it safe?

Many times if a person gets injured strained, knees, back, shoulders, you never hear about it because this person is recuperating and more than likely their experience of getting fit and healthy has become painful.  They think they can not achieve their goals and in many instances will not go back to the gym.

Story

A friend of mine loved going to a water aerobics class.  You would think this would be safe.  It is not! They had a new instructor and I have no idea how long this instructor had been teaching.  She gave the class a move off the wall they should NEVER have been doing.  I heard from my friend the next day she was in serious pain, after going to get an MRI(I think that is what it was) she found out she had 3 cracked vertebrae all from performing this one move.  She contacted other people in the class and found others that had strained their back and hurt their shoulders.  All from this one move.  My friend cancelled her membership.  Got her vertebrae cemented and only works with me.

Note:  Some Fitness class instructors are very good and they can not keep an eye on everyone.  A good idea would be to start with a personal trainer to make sure you are doing the moves correctly or at least in a way you are not going to injure yourself.

Some fitness instructors have no clue and unfortunately going into the gym you have no idea which is which.

Food – Wreaking Havoc on your System

Story

The professional ballerina.  Now we all know ballerinas require certain body proportions, one of the biggest is they must be skinny.  Well this person I am referring to is an o type blood and decided that in order to keep her weight in check for this profession she was going to be a vegetarian.  While she did maintain the correct weight throughout her career, she was anemic throughout it and experienced much illness and bouts of depression.  Later in life as her eating plan reverted back to what it should of been for an O type blood.  The choice to become a vegetarian is haunting her even now.   Severely reduced immune system, spending a lot of time sick.  Because she is continuously ill she is unable to balance her system to achieve a healthy state of living.

So my thought to you; is that the choices you make now with regards to your diet can severely effect you further into adulthood.

Eating Plans and Poison

Most of you, I hope have heard of the “Blood Type Diet”.  If you have not please take a look. The general theme is that certain blood types should be eating certain foods, that if you are eating outside of your blood type you are poisoning your system.  I whole heartedly agree with this. Certain foods act like poison when combined with specific blood types.  This poisoning causes your immune system to fight what you are poisoning your body with, leaving your immune system compromised. This may manifest itself in such ways as increased aches and pain, headaches, joint issues and more.  In many instances it will cause you to have increased cravings for those foods you should not be ingesting creating an increasingly compromised immune system . If you are dealing with other illness, chronic conditions your immune system does not have the capacity to heal itself or fend off illness as well as it could.

So start with a blood type eating plan.  From there depending on your goals and other conditions , chronic or otherwise you will needs to make adjustments. It is possible that if you follow this type of eating plan those conditions may disappear.

Coaching on the client – Listening and Interpretting & NLP

Please when dealing with clients eliminate ALL distractions.  Turn off your cell phones, I mean off.  Vibrating cell phones are just as distracting as ringing ones.  Eliminate as much noise and background noise as you can.  Ask the client the questions you need to.  What are their goals?  How do they see themselves achieving those goals?  What do they feel is their time-frame? What do they feel could be obstacles on their path to success? Do they have the proper support team in place to succeed? What does that support team look like?  How is each person in the support team going to contribute to success?  Get them to define each step.  They know their situation, you do not nor can you really ask them to follow a plan outside of their current operating system.  Repeat all steps back to them making sure you are both on the same page,  come up with a decisive over all plan, then step it down to get into the details.  How does the client feel about the plan and are there any areas in the plan that could be issues.  You both should have a copy of the plan and so should all support members.  In regards to support members their roles should be specific.

Since the client has come up with their steps and support plan you are on your way to success as the client will only operate within the framework they live by.

It does not matter whether this is an individual or a company the same rules apply.  In a large company the client acts accordingly to procedures and policies it works the same way with an individual.  the individual has their own familial procedures and policies.

NLP-Neuro Linguistic Programming: Your Client & The Sale

Your client is someone who has entrusted you to help them achieve the results they desire. In order to get the sale (client) there are a few very important things you must do.  Each having to do with how you communicate with your potential client.  The first major point is how you listen.   Listening requires you to receive and interpret what the customer is actually asking you to do for them.  It is very different than hearing, it requires you to concentrate and interpret.  It is very rare that most people listen, they tend to be distracted, their brains are working over time (another project, all the chores they need to accomplish, etc.), the art of truly listening requires skill and focus.  Your attention should be on what they are saying with no distractions.  This is one of the basic principles In Neuro-linguistic programming you learn the art of listening, interpreting and watching them as they speak.  If you are not getting the results you desire, getting angry and frustrated with your client, misinterpreting their goals your communication skills need some work.

How you do this will be discussed in the next post.

That’s Healthy? Start with the Basics.

Define Healthy

The term healthy has many connotations in the area of food and between individuals.  Is it healthy in relationship to weight control, healthy when considering your internal organs and how your body functions.  Do you want to go pure meaning GMO free organic foods? or is your idea of pure eating store bought chemically enhanced processed food and because a diet plan says this is what you should eat, and it’s fine with you.

So what exactly is your clients and your definition of healthy eating. What is your definition of healthy?

Start with the basics.

Your Trainer

Hiring a trainer at a chain gym. Take a few months to asses the trainers.

1.  While you are working out on the equipment, watch the various trainers in action.

2.  Are they correcting form, this is posture (slouching), hip position, feet position, arms, knees etc.  You need not concern yourself with how this should look just that the trainer is correcting the clients body position.  There is ALWAYS something they can correct.

3.  Is the trainers attention solely on the client to the exclusion of all else.  Does this happen with every client they work with? Does it happen every time?

4.  Are they getting results?  Very tricky question because you need to make sure it is the trainer getting the results.

Story time

I know of a fitness instructor who worked at a gym and got amazing results from classes.  Well at that gym the trainers were having a contest on who could get the best results over a period of a few months.  She had old clients in the class this person was instructing that she had not trained in over a year. This trainer was spotted in the change room with her old clients taking measurements and posting them as her own.  Management found out about it and did nothing, they wanted more paying clients.  It’s a business you also need to think of it that way.

Most trainers at gyms make very little money, and yes you are charged quite a bit.  I would suggest looking online for a trainer, ask you friends, neighbors or even at your church if anyone knows a trainer.  This is usually where you will get your best results.