Fact or Fiction?

"Weight Training will bulk me up."

To this day, it remains one of the most commonly held myths about exercise that somehow refuses to go away. While this can be explained to some extent by lack of knowledge and awareness, it still seems that women (and even men) are too easily influenced by images they see in the media and an underlying desire to avoid becoming ‘hard’ – both mentally and physically.

While it is certainly true that weight training (or resistance training) will tone and strengthen the muscle being exercised, this should not be mistaken for creating the sort of masculine form you would see at your local bodybuilding competition. Hypertrophy of a muscle (or increase in size) is one of the most challenging things to do inside of a gym. It requires almost daily training and more often than not, supplements and added protein intake to achieve a noticeable difference in size and shape. And that’s before you consider testosterone.

Women are not biologically designed to be overly muscular. Yes, we certainly come in different shapes and sizes and some of us are more prone to building muscle than others. However, when you consider the massive advantages to including resistance training into your weekly schedule then anyone would be hard pressed to find an argument against it.

Top Reasons to Weight Train:

1. Weight Loss: Hands up, be honest...how many of us would like to lose weight? Whether it is two pounds or considerably more, weight training is one of the best methods of increasing your metabolic rate and thus your ability to burn fat more effectively.
2. Increased Tone: As exercised areas become more toned, you will notice a difference in the overall shape of your body (again, not to be confused with ‘bulk’) and furthermore, those ‘saggy bits’ will be lifted.
3. Improved Posture: An increasingly prevalent problem for those who work in sedentary occupations, are lower back and neck complaints. Lifting weights will strengthen those areas prone to weakness and in some cases, prevent/alleviate some of the pain that is symptomatic of these conditions.
4. Variety: Boredom is one of the top excuses for discontinuing any exercise program – let’s face it, there are only so many hours most of us can spend running on a treadmill or staring at the TV while resolutely pedalling away on a stationary bike. Including just two days of weight training in your week is enough to add a little spice to your routine as well as create a visible change in your shape.

So with all this in mind, how do you go about starting up a weight training program?

Hire a Personal Trainer: A good trainer will fully assess your needs, identify strengths and weaknesses, cater for any injuries and appropriately plan your training so that you continue to improve and be challenged by the program into the foreseeable future.
Join a gym: Most good gyms will provide you with a written program based on your goals and current fitness.
Participate in a class: Most gyms will offer a variety of classes on their timetable; or you could try a smaller studio if you don’t fancy paying ongoing membership fees.
Train at home: The four basic exercises you need, can all be done without any equipment and only small amount of floor space: Squats, lunges, press-ups and dips. Start with 2 to 3 sets of 15 repetitions, twice a week.

Whatever method you decide to follow, it is important to take into account your current level of fitness and any injuries or medical issues you may have. Beyond that - lift, push and simply enjoy the benefits that a truly toned and defined form can bring.

The Child Within

Health and fitness grows more expensive and more complicated by the day. Consider the following: an elliptical cross trainer complete with computer and body fat calculator, a personal trainer that costs a day’s wage; ‘Stripping with Carmen Electra’ – Celebrity fitness DVD. All are symptoms of a fitness industry that seeks to earn as much money as it can while churning out the latest fad or gimmick into an already saturated marketplace.

Surely as an intelligent population, we can devise a method of generating enough daily activity to: satisfy the healthcare system, rely on an emotion other than guilt to act as our prime exercise motivator and if we’re lucky, even inject a little fun into our day.

Play: Verb 1 engage in games or other activities for enjoyment rather than for a serious or practical purpose (Oxford English Dictionary Online)

As a child, it is easy to remember play as something that happened naturally given space, friends and in certain situations, adult permission. Personally, I can remember regarding my adult relations with something approaching pity as they chose to sit and drink coffee and eat cake at the same time us kids were out playing ‘Tag’ or ‘Donkey’.

Now that I am one of those coffee sipping adults, as well as an exercise professional with numerous complaints from clients suffering from an inactive lifestyle, I am lead to the conclusion that ‘Play’ is something we could definitely learn from.

It is perhaps unreasonable to expect that we will all drop our newspapers, spring from the couch and skip to the neighbours with a request of ‘Kiss chasey’ or ‘Hopscotch’. However given the right approach and some modifications, there is no reason that as mature adults we cannot find some sort of ‘game time’ in our busy schedules that doesn’t involve abdominal crunchers and talking pedometers.

Here is a list of the Games I have compiled to fit the lifestyle of an average corporate executive but be warned; overuse may result in addiction. Proceed carefully.

• Hula: the latest group exercise craze in the UK and great for trimming those waistlines.
• Rollerblading: just make sure you choose an even surface and wear protection!
• Tobogganing: season specific, but a helluva good time.
• Indoor bowling: for those less than perfect days outside – but be wary of the snack bar
• Dance Classes: a style to suit every personality and sometimes, a great place for meeting that special someone.
• Skipping: high intensity workout where ten minutes can burn between 70 – 110 calories.
• Rock Climbing: more cost and organisation required, but certainly worth the effort if you can deal with the heights.
• Any team sport: a ball, some mates and some open space; the perfect recipe for whatever fun you can dream up

Good Old Fashioned Common Sense

In case you had not opened a newspaper or browsed the internet recently; obesity is now a worldwide epidemic. Government health agencies are worried and fitness facilities around the globe are reaping the benefits. Yet despite more research and knowledge on how the body works than ever before, people are just not getting it. We are simply fatter than we realise and have no idea what to do about it.

In a time which is already being dubbed the ‘Information Age’, during which an excess of diets, tips and advice are being hurled at you while you eat your organic free-range eggs; we can become somewhat overwhelmed. So the question then becomes: how do we separate out fact from fiction and expertise from opinion?

While I admit that the following could definitely be misconstrued as only adding to the confusion, in my defence I find it necessary to say that my aim is to simplify the nonsense and bring people back to everyday, logical choices. Choices are what allow us to expand our awareness and make changes based on what we feel is right, as opposed to what we’re told is right.

1. Habits, habits, habits!
Willpower will only get you through the first one or two steps toward any major goal. To create any long-term change with consistency and purpose requires a complete and fundamental shift in your daily routine.

Think about your current day-to-day existence, how much is done automatically out of habit? Getting out of bed, eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, going to work, eating lunch at your desk, driving home via the same route... How long have you been doing this? How much effort does it require?

For any potential change to work, it has to become part of your life. Whether you are starting a new exercise regime or changing the way you eat; start with small achievable tasks and build them into your day. Every week or so, introduce new changes/outcomes and gradually the new exercise or eating pattern will emerge without the emotional struggle.

2. Sensible nutrition
Get real people. Does an egg and grapefruit diet really make sense?
This area of health has simply become too complex for words. With an overabundance of ‘experts’ and get thin quick schemes, no wonder we’re feeling a little lost. However it doesn’t take much to get back on track; all you have to do is apply some logic to the problem.

First up; fresh, organic, seasonal fruit and vegetables are best. No matter what you hear or what dietary shake might be in your pantry right now, you cannot look beyond this basic staple. I’ve tried the meal replacements drinks and supplements and on a purely personal level, I prefer to chew my food. Add to that the fantastic flavours you can get from going organic and there is no argument. The seasonal part is often overlooked but the body is biologically programmed to eat fruit and vegetables in season; while Spanish strawberries in December might be tempting, it just does not work.

Next issue: labels. Okay, I don’t expect that you take a calculator, add up the numbers and start calorie counting. Nor do I expect the average consumer to learn what every preservative number corresponds do. This one’s easy. If the ingredients list looks like it belongs on a separate print-out in order to fit everything in, then it probably isn’t that healthy. E numbers, anything you can’t spell or pronounce; these are not likely to be natural food sources required by the body. End of story.

Aside from that the two classic rules of thumb apply: everything in moderation and consume less than you expend.

3. Time management
Yes, we all work long hours and come home to paperwork, children and household chores. Excuses anyone?
Skipping meals and eating on the run are two sure-fire ways to hinder your weight loss progress. When you skip a meal, the body’s natural metabolic rate slows down. Make this a habit and the body responds by hanging onto energy stores and slowing down even further.

Combine a regular eating routine with time to enjoy your food; the flavours, colours, texture and you’re flying. Taking time over your meals to fully enjoy the experience and chew properly, helps the body absorb and digest food more fully; the extra-sensory approach allows your brain to process the meal and as a result, you should feel more satisfied and fuller for longer.

When it comes to exercise, time management is vital. Too many people use exercise as an added feature to their day rather than a regular essential – exercise is as important as getting dressed in the morning. In planning exercise; as a start, think of all the ways you can include activity as incidental to your normal day: walking to walk, taking the stairs etc. After that, look at the ways in which you can improve your fitness by beginning a sport, joining a gym, getting a new program. Bear in mind that the body adapts quickly so you want to increase the intensity every 3-4 weeks and as always, make it a regular habit so it becomes part of your life.
A quick tip: one of the best ways to lose weight is via higher intensity, resistance training. More muscle means increased metabolism, simple as that.

4. Listen to your body
If you remember nothing else from this article, remember this; if it doesn’t feel right, just don’t do it.

The body is an amazing self-healer if we allow it to be. In Western culture there is a tendency to over analyse and thus disconnect from our natural state of awareness. To bring ourselves back into ‘being’, we need to practice feeling what our body is feeding back to us.

In concrete terms and from a weight-loss or fitness standpoint, this means giving the body a chance to tell you what it needs. That is; eating when you are actually hungry, noticing what foods your body is craving, stopping before you are full. Conscious eating creates expanded awareness and positive associations with food. This certainly makes a nice change from the guilt that comes with fad dieting and food exclusion.

This also applies to exercise. Work with your body’s natural rhythms rather than against them. If you are definitely not at your peak in the morning, then choose a different time of day to exercise. Choose an activity that leaves you feeling invigorated and excited. Differentiate between sluggishness and real fatigue/illness: too often people use lethargy as an excuse not to exercise. In reality, this is the best time to get active as it will improve your productivity when you return to work.

5. Passion!
I put this last but really, it needs to be the glue that holds your entire weight loss program together: If you enjoy what you do, you’ll go out and do it.

Short and Weak

Now, for a short piece on a subject nearest and dearest to my heart in the general arena of all things Health and Fitness: 'Posture'....or if I were to be totally accurate: 'Man's Total and Complete Abuse of Posture Since the Invention of the Chair'.

Six hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year; a conservative estimate on the time an average office worker spends seated at their desk year in, year out. Add on commuting time, television and meals, and those hours spent in a sedentary state become considerably higher.
Now combine those yearly figures with the common postural position adopted by such office workers: slouching, shoulders raised, eyes strained, jaw tensed, and what we have ladies and gentleman is a prime candidate for any number of ongoing complaints: backache, headache, migraines, herniated discs; and that is only the short-term problems. Over time this becomes sciatica, degenerative disc disease, bone spurs; to name only a few.

These conditions are becoming increasingly prevalent within Western cultures. Along with obesity, general back pain is putting a never before seen strain on National healthcare schemes around the globe and is second only to the common cold for the causing the most days absent from work.
To give a spedific idea of how our sedentary lifestyle is contributing to these problems, let us take a look at one likely sequence of events leading to one of the more common conditions; Sciatica.

Through prolonged sitting;
1. The abdominal and buttock muscles weaken and the lumbar spine muscles shorten.
2. The body’s natural movement patterns are thrown out of balance leading to faulty modes of walking, standing and everyday activities.
3. The shortened muscles along the spine begin to pull on surrounding tissues leading to trigger points (extremely tender spots of tightened muscle fibers) around the lower back and pelvis
4. The sciatic nerve (which starts at nerve roots in the lumbar spine) becomes compressed by these shortened muscles – it only takes one point of compression to cause sciatica-like symptoms
5. Pain then radiates down through buttocks and down into upper (and sometimes) lower leg resulting in numbness and weakness

To further complicate things, as a result of this initial chain of events our body alters its posture to minimise the pain and protect itself; muscles that are weaker become weaker, muscles that are shortened become shorter. It is a self-perpetuating cycle.

Now, when you consider that these occurrences are a natural consequence of a posture that a large majority of us adopt every single day, it is no wonder that the statistics point to at least eighty percent of people dealing with some degree of lower back pain at some point in their lives.

I could go on and describe in detail all the other potentials results of a life spent seated, however I find this unnecessary. Most of us only need think about our last headache or our colleague's recent hernia to find out how far-reaching this problem has become. And while I do love this topic, I find it a touch more helpful to actually find solutions rather than continue to spout forth my wealth of knowledge on the topic.

So what to do? Realising that a more exciting 'You Tube' clip is only a click away, below are five short and sweet things that you can do immediately, to lessen the likelihood of causing yourself undue pain and strain;

1. Get moving: if you are one of the millions of sedentary office workers out there, get up at least every hour and walk around; grab a cup of tea, go to the toilet. Also include a minimum of three days activity that increases the heart rate and gets the whole body working: eg. walking/running, cycling, swimming.

2. Stretch: the main areas you will need to concentrate on can vary, but a good place to start is: neck, chest/shoulders, lumbar spine, hip flexors (the ones that allow you to lift your knee toward your chest), hamstrings and ankles/calves

3. Strengthen: again this can vary but if you are spending a lot of time sitting down then it is likely that the following areas will need strengthening: upper back, abdominals (avoid sit-ups and crunches as these can actually aggravate many conditions), buttocks/gluteals.

4. Breathe Deeply: promotes any number of great health benefits but in short it can; circulate more oxygen, get vital nutrients to major organs of the body and even alter negative emotional states – eg. decrease stress and promote relaxation.

5. Eat Well: more studies are showing that the nature of the foods we eat are the cause of internal mechanisms that seek to further weaken and inflame the muscles of the abdominal cavity.

Of course, if you are already suffering from some degree of pain then the key is not to do anything that increases the pain. The usual deal applies here: consult a medical professional, find a practitioner that suits your needs and most importantly, change SOMETHING about your current lifestyle that currently contributes to your current state. Too often I hear people complain of back pain and expect a therapist to discover a cure all remedy. What they do not realise is that no matter what is ‘fixed’ on the treatment table, will only rear up again as soon as you walk out the door and into your old contributing patterns. Change the pattern and you break the cycle.

This is your conscience speaking...

Last month myself and a colleague began to compile a catalogue of womens thoughts on pregnancy and postnatal experiences. As I sat down and read through the responses I was quite simply amazed at how often a single emotion cropped up among the individuals questioned.

Guilt.

Now we're talking. Here's a feeling we can relate to. Here's a feeling that resonates with us all.

Eating too much; exercise (or lack thereof); not breastfeeding; being a 'bad' mother; working; not working; not having enough sex; wanting to 'have it all'; drinking wine before midday; going on holiday; going out with the girls; sleeping in; being lazy; preferring 'sex and the city' to a night with your fella.....shall I go on?

In training men and women over the years I have noticed this feeling come up more and more. Maybe I have just become more aware of it. Perhaps. Maybe I just attract feelings of guilt. Quite possibly. However it's also not such a stretch to realise that with more information being flung at us from the internet, newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, blogs...that we are subject to a greater level of potentially damaging 'expert opinion' telling us how to and how not to run our lives. Hey, I'm doing it right now.

What I find curious though is how very prevalent it is, even in those I would never have expected. Here's an example of how a typical hour of guilt might've gone for myself just a short while ago:

9am: Oh no, slept in, should've got up earlier; don't have time for a workout now; why did I have to sleep in; just didn't go to bed early enough last night; was reading when I should've been finishing off my work prep for today; bet the chocolate right before bed didn't help either; now I'm wasting time when I should be getting up, procrastinating again; really have to stop pressing the snooze button on my mobile; wanted to meditate before I went to work as well, no time for that either; what's wrong with me?; why can't I get it together?....

Okay, had to stop myself there with about 90 seconds worth. A full hour would've read like a Harry Potter novel without the magic (and the excitement...and Dumbledore). Think I made my point though and in the scheme of things, I would consider myself a reasonably optimistic and positive person.

So, what to do?

Well the first thing that helps is, to realise how truly immobilising guilt is. Intellectually I have known this for awhile but it was not until recently that I felt it. I was cycling to the gym on a Sunday and thinking about how little exercise I had done in the preceding week. My thoughts were literally beating down all my positive, little, happy cells on the way to an energising workout by focussing on things that I didn't do that I now couldn't do anything about. "What's the point? I didn't do anything all week so one session's hardly going to make a difference. Just imagine where I could be right now if I'd done what I'd planned to do. It's the same every single week, same excuses, same lines. May as well turn back for all the good it's going to do..."

And then WHAM! Going to break out the cliches and say that this was when the lightning bolt struck and I just stopped. All that chatter, stopped. I fully felt and understood how absolutely ridiculous and immobilising that chain of thought was and it was no more. I went to the gym and had a fantastic, energising and fun workout. I then went home and enjoyed my lunch knowing that I was going to do it all again tomorrow.

Okay so once the hard bit is done, the second step to getting rid of this whole guilt thing: awareness. Once you've realised how complete unnecessary and useless this emotion is, all you need to do is become aware each and every time it begins to surface. Do this enough and you'll stop it before it has a chance to become any part of your emotional range.

Finally, change it into something else. If we're going to get rid of an emotion why not replace it with something altogether more pleasant and tasty. Personally I like 'gratitude' but it really doesn't matter what you choose as long as the emotion serves you by moving your forward. Other possibilities might be Joy, happiness, pleasure, contentment. Whatever resonates with you the most to bring about the strongest positive associations.