Room For A Little One!

So it is about this time of year when we become swamped with B*&L S*%T about how to get a six pack in time for the summer. I thought I would do my bit to cut through a lot of the crap and offer my top 10 training tips for developing a strong and athletic midsection that you will be more than happy to show off this summer – no more muffin tops!

 You may be surprised by some of my advice.

The principles of periodisation based on Eastern European principles are the foundation of many athletic training programmes.  Surprisingly little is supported by research despite the fact that it is widely used and widely written about, despite the numerous presentations on this topic, and despite the fact that it apparently works based on practical observation (2).

Tradition dictates that to be successful in endurance based sports you need to complete high volumes of training. The traditional approach is to move from high volume/low intensity to low volume/high intensity work. Basic periodisation also moves from general to more specific work as the competition approaches (5). This is a popular method and is heavily featured in the classic book on periodisation by Tudor Bompa, Periodisation: The Theory and Methodology of Training. Volume, early on in the training cycle is better, but what if intensity and not volume is really the key for unlocking your athletic potential?

An Alternative Approach

Albert Einstein’s definition of stupidity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

In this article, I'll show you how you can apply the lessons I’ve learnt during more than a decade working with elite athletes and apply them to your fitness training. The ‘side-effects’ of this athletic approach to training (a fit and healthy, lean figure that doesn’t wiggle and jiggle when running up the stairs!) are in fact the precise training affects that the majority of my clients are looking for from me as their personal fitness coach.  It’s time to adopt a more ‘athletic’ approach to your workouts and make 2010 the year that you hit your fitness target.

Five Steps To Success

1.    Hard Work

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary! You need to understand that to achieve your ultimate goal you will need to invest some time and effort. There are no quick fixes for long lasting results.

 2.    Consistency of Effort

It's probably taken you a number of years of consistently eating poorly, and not exercising to get your body into the condition it is in at the moment, so what makes you think you can have a transformation after just one training session? Develop a good programme, and repeat it consistently over an extended period of time.

3.    SMART Goals

Don't just come into the gym with a fluffy goal of I want to loose weight. That is not a goal. A goal needs to be SMART (specific measurable, agreed, realistic timed). If you can tick all the boxes then you have a goal – if not you need to go back to the drawing board.

Alwyn Cosgrove recently wrote about some interesting research that has shown the powerful calorie burning benefit of resistance training. I asked him if I could post it up as a guest blog and he kindly agreed.

I was talking to Chris Frankel (a lecturer and PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico) recently about the massive difference in terms of results between a resistance training program and a cardio based program in terms of fat loss, despite calories burned supposedly being equal.

Chris pointed out that most of the ways to quantify caloric burn from weight training and other anaerobic activites are estimates and have significant amount of error built in. On the other hand, it is really straight forward to measure energy expenditure as calories during steady state exercise. The problem has come when we have tried to use that measurement of caloric burn during aerobic work and apply it to resistance training or circuit training. Quite simply – that method of figuring out the calories just doesn’t work.

I also read some recent work from the University of Southern Maine that used a more accurate method to estimate caloric burn from weight training than had been used previously.