If your trainer still believes the only way to a healthier heart or better endurance is through long slow distance cardio work, perhaps ask them to look into the comparisons between traditional long slow distance work and different forms of interval training. If they use the term “Core” in reference to balance work or TVA as opposed to core exercises like squats, lifts, pulls and pushes then you may well be suspect.

Sure, some sports require long duration events but most do not and the vast majority of us that workout do so for health and looks and exercise protocols such as Crossfit and H.I.T. have at least shown us that short workouts of the correct intensity will produce both health and fitness beyond the levels of traditional cardio routines that consume more of our time than most can now days afford to sacrifice.

If you are told that you must eat breakfast to lose fat as it “stokes” the metabolism it may be time to look else where for a trainer. Naturally there is variation in the methods you can and will abide over the long haul but there certainly other “easier” options available to you.

Your health, weight, body fat levels and strength really needn’t take up hours of dedication each week and provided your Personal Trainer is on top of their reading they can help you achieve 99% of fat loss and general fitness goals within a very short period of actual training time.

I have been helping people lose body fat, gain strength and be better with thirty minutes per session with between 1 and 3 sessions per week for years now and if you live or work near to Epsom then I suggest that you give me a call. You deserve to know just how to go about looking better naked and being healthier without spending more than 90 minutes per week in the gym.

Richard “Peg Leg” Ham Williams

Epsom Personal Trainer

07742 952 208

The body learns skills in a specific manner. The order in which muscles and fibres are recruited, the speed at which they contract and much more.

I see many sports coaches trying to mimic a sports specific movement in the weight room with barbells, dumbbells, bands, balls and a host of other equipment which are more likely to hurt the performance of any athlete than they are to help due to the nature of motor learning.

Example;

A sprinter running with weighted shoes or bands around his waist or a parachute are skills that are very similar to sprinting but not quite the same, yes the muscles will experience a minute level of overload but at the cost of a second motor skill very close to that of the sports specific skill of sprinting being learned. The nervous system now has two motor skills to decipher in competition and that “noise” will only serve to slow the runner down.

The single best use of any strength coaches time is and should be to all, obvious. To coach strength and the ability to express it. Secondly should come the consideration of muscle building which ultimately dictates the power and strength displays of an athlete and allows a certain amount of injury prevention from impacts.

The use of stability exercises is another field of bamboozle that has been gaining momentum over the past decade to the point it is hard to find a gym without balls, boards and a host of other injuries waiting to happen. Not only that but they are touted as working the core harder. The core is some mythical set of muscles that can only be worked with new and fancy equipment or so we are led to believe. The core muscles are those that are at the core of our bodies, the centre and we can work them with a bag of shopping. Amazing.

Our abs, backs, sides and several other muscles deeper inside, beneath the ones we see on a daily basis are our “core”.

Now just ask yourself; do those very same muscles not get worked when you sprint/jump/lift/push/pull/climb/squat etc?

And do they not get worked as hard and in most cases a damn sight harder than they would whilst you struggle to stop yourself falling off something squishy?

To get stronger we must expose our muscles to high levels of tension through either an external load (barbells/dumbbells etc) or our own body weight and progressively increase that load as we get stronger to continue challenging the tensile and metabolic properties of the muscle structure.

Next time you are on a balance board or ball have a feel of your abs or lower back and see how much they are working…now go and pick up something heavy in one hand and walk with it….yes the same muscles are working but this time they are working harder.

Job done, no fancy equipment or pseudo science sales pitch, just plain old common sense hard work.

Activating your core is almost an entire industry on its own and it’s a con and a big one at that. Yes you can activate your core on a wobbly surface but to a far lesser degree than you would on a stable surface that you are less likely to fall off.

Beware the Personal Trainer or coach that tries to sell an exercise gimmick as anything other than fun.

Here in Epsom we know the difference between strength training and exercise for fun, I believe you should too.

The first person to successfully do this will then get FREE Personal Training with me in Epsom for the rest of January.

Now that’s a Christmas present!

Anyone wishing to join in must be weighed by me on my scales for accuracy…..

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9 day six pack eh!

So just how long should we wait until we see our dream bodies manifest in the mirror before us? As always, it depends. I know, I say that a lot but it is worth heeding.

Excellence in any endeavour appears to take 10 years according to Malcolm Gladwell (author of “The Tipping Point”);

“Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time – around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount – about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.”

And although this is a reference to musicians it certainly spills over to any arena that requires skill practice, which is to say pretty much everything we do from running to computer programming.

The book “The Talent Code” insists that 10,000 hours of practice, no matter what the field are needed to achieve the levels of excellence we see displayed in sport as a daily occurrence on our televisions! That’s one hell of a lot of gym time.

Excellence after years of dedication

But what does this have to do with reaching the body we want, the fat loss, and the tone we so diligently chase? Everything and nothing.

I think it is fair to say that most people that workout are not there to master a skill and perform at world level but they still want to look like many of the athletes that put in those 10,000 hours.

Now that's an athletic physique

How quickly you can reach a sexy low body fat percentage and attain the firm bum and thighs of a competitive athlete is a combination of how fat and out of shape you have let your self become over the years and how hard you are willing to work.

A nice rule of thumb is for every centimetre of excess fat you can pinch near your belly button, aim for nothing less than a month to get rid of it. Most people need about 4-6 months of consistent dieting to achieve something resembling their end goals and sometimes a lot more. Obviously the less disciplined a diet the longer it will take (the further you move away from meat, fish, vegetables, dairy and fruit as a base diet, the harder it is to reach low body fat levels).

As far as the shapely and sexy muscle tone of an athlete, well that can happen over a similar period of time depending again on your activity levels over the past 6-12 months.  If the most strenuous exercise you have done of late is walking to work and up and down a few stairs, or God forbid jogging then we have to assume a base level of strength as nil. Your starting point is that of a recovering car crash victim. I don’t say this lightly but in most cases the body will have discontinued the maintenance of strength in ranges motion you don’t use so you must first relearn how to squat down to ground level, stand up and work in positions you have neglected for years. Then and only then, when full flexibility and base strength has been recovered can we begin to work on your future, advanced self.

When mobility returns to base, you can progress

If you have been an active individual and used your body through its full range of motion on a regular basis through a sport, yoga, pilates or something similar then you probably have mobility sorted and a focus on strength can be made which will see you transform your shape within 2-3 months give or take. Make no mistake, strength training and its sporting equivalents are what make a muscle “toned”. Sprinting, jumping, throwing, punching, kicking and any explosive bodily movement have the same, albeit, smaller effect as resistance training; a request of the muscles to produce high levels of force. This is the secret to a firm and capable body. Ladies have no fear, you will not get bulky from high force training, promise.

So if you are looking for world class excellence then you should have started as a child and spent a minimum of 10 years or 10,000 hours practising BUT if you just happen to want to look as good a world class athlete then relax, you can make damn good headway in somewhere between 3 and 12 months depending on your starting point. Phew!

Three to twelve months to undo perhaps decades of bad lifestyle choices, thats an amazing return on investment in anybodies books.

This shows it can be achieved (I am not sure of the time scale of this change but WOW) Jennifer Nicole Lee

I run a small Personal Training business from a private training facility in Epsom and am looking for a handful more clients as the New Year settles in. Give me a call if you want to make that change. 07742 952 208

Your Personal Trainer,

Richard ‘Peg Leg’ Ham Williams

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Travesty!Not when you break down the numbers.

Weight loss is a nice indicator for statisticians and population studies but really means very little to the health of an individual. Here in Epsom we have a huge variety of people walk through the doors and two people of the same age, height and weight can have very different level of function, health and body fat.

Body fat and lean mass are the more important indicators of healthful progress toward a vital and capable physique. The above picture gives you an idea of how two bodies can be of the same weight but very different compositions.

If for example you start your new lifestyle at 80kg with a body fat of 30% (24kg of fat and 56kg of lean tissue) and after 6 months of intelligent and consistent power and resistance exercise and dietary changes you find your self now weighing 75kg you may, if you are weight obsessed, be upset at the paltry 5kg loss, many are. BUT if you delve a little deeper and look into the real numbers of the amount of body fat and lean tissue then you will see something totally different;

You realise that you know have a body fat of 15% (11.25 kg of fat and 63.75kg of lean tissue) which means you actually lost 12.75kg/28lbs of fat and increased healthy lean tissue such as muscle, bone, sinew and organ by 7.75kg!

That kind of change in body composition is a startling difference in the way you look with very little actual weight lost. Body composition is of far more significance in the way you look than weight itself.

Thanks leighpeele.com

Now lets look at the traditional methods which rely solely on weight loss on the scale;

The same person comes in weighing in at 80kg with a body fat of 30% and spends the next six months on a calorie restricted diet and aims to lose 1kg per week of weight irrespective of where that weight comes off so goes the traditional cardio route with a few token resistance training moves thrown in.

Some weeks the scale goes down and other weeks it even goes up! Overall the loss sits at around 15kg which, to the casual observer of the scale, seems like a much better result! You and I know different now.

Due to the nature of traditional dieting and exercise’s obsession with the scale, when we break down the numbers it becomes clear there is a drastic loss of metabolic lean tissue and a very different capability and shape. We find that the 15 kg lost comprises of mostly fat (9kg) but also rather unfortunately 6kg of lean tissue which may be in the form of muscle,bone density or organ tissue! This is a tragic situation for anyone over the age of 25 to be in due to Sarcopenia (the age related wasting of muscle, a leading cause in falls and injury).

So with 9kg of fat lost and 6kg of unspecified lean tissue wasted away you are left with 23% body fat compared to our smart trainees 15%. We know which will look stronger, sexier and healthier on the beach and I can guarantee you that the one who focused on body composition rather than weight will feel better!

You choose (thanks leighpeele.com)

Now you understand that weight is of less importance than composition you should search for ways to maximise or maintain as much lean tissue as possible whilst removing excessive body fat and to do this you need to either a)read this blog b)find a source of information that you can depend upon to get you to your goals c)Come to Epsom and have me as your Personal Trainer.

Body re-composition is as much art as it is science in finding how to apply sound principles into your daily routine on a long term basis. Good luck and smart training.

Richard ‘Peg Leg’ Ham Williams

Epsom Personal Trainer

We have a handful of Personal Trainers here in Epsom and we all follow varying protocols to reach our goals. The following is a brief look at who is in the competition and their thoughts on diet and training;

Balboa

Roberto “Balboa” Barcellona

http://www.rbpersonaltraining.com/

Age – 30

Height – 5`11

Weight – 74kg

Balboa is all about the aggressive training mindset, psyching himself and willing to put his heart and soul on the line to get a lift. A warrior.

Rob believes the diet should be natural, whole and supplement free. With the right balance of healthy foods he feels he can attain the level of strength and conditioning he needs through lifting hard and heavy as specifically to your goals as you can.

As the lightest competitor he is out to win the power to weight ration title and is proud of how lean he stays year round. A contender for the deadlift title too!

Triceps Daly

James “Triceps” Daly

http://jdpersonaltraining.co.uk/

Age – 27

Height – 5`10

Weight – 78kg

James is a seasoned Celebrity Personal Trainer and has a reputation of having grossly strong triceps which he hopes will see him walk away with the bench press win.

He follows a Paleo’esque diet with some foods that traditionally fall outside of the Paleo lifestlye (think sweet potato). Feeling that performance and results can be influenced by carbohydrate manipulation through nutrient timing and I have to agree.

Not a stranger to supplements he has a regime that includes whey protein and glutamine to help recovery and keep his protein intake high whilst a busy work day keeps him unable to take in enough from whole foods.

Training is planned and intense with around three days per week dedicated to lifts of the competition and includes assistance lifts like pullups and pushdowns.

“Mother Nature with a hint of Sports Science”

Big Dave Saunders

http://www.salusfitness.co.uk/

Age – 28?

Height – 6`4

Weight – 117kg

Dave, an ex Rugby player,  is the largest of the competitors this time round but is coming back from major shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum so his focus has recently been on bringing body fat levels down and focusing on squatting power, which he has! Dave will likely walk the squat with an easy win.

Paleo is the diet he prefers with a carbohydrate re-feed once every five days and so far, it has worked well for him. Supplements do play a role in his methods but only to the extent where they iron out individual nutrient deficiencies; he see’s no place for stimulants that “stress the adrenals”.

His training is intense as is the volume of work he packs into his sessions. “Weak shoulders don’t allow for a big bench”, he works on the weak links to strengthen the unit. His caters to genetic differences with his clients.

Peg Leg waxed for a photo shoot, mwaha!

Richard “Peg Leg” Ham Williams

http://www.peglegpt.com/

Age – 31

Height – 6`1

Weight – 94kg

I believe that we all have a different response to exercise and that must be accounted for in training. Our genetics determine just how we should train for optimal gains;  low reps may work wonders for some and awfully for another which is where Science comes into the training arena.

My diet is mostly based around nutrient timing and using that to manipulate results and on the day performance. I don’t believe carbohydrates are the enemy but they are the easiest to manipulate in the diet for drug like effects.

I have no need for supplements most of the time but see the need when life gets too busy for whole foods to be prepared. They have a place but are overly relied upon. There is no substitute for a good diet.

My training is very brief and bespoke to individual genetic make up with sessions that rarely last past thirty minutes, my aim is to stimulate whilst keeping recovery abilities high.

I aim to win the Deadlift!

We have other competitors on the day competing in individual lifts and not the total three lifts;

Chris B – Bench

Chris F – Bench

Garteh – May well jump in on all three lifts

For information on any of the above trainers feel free to check out their respective sites or call them for a chat.

Red sky at night Shepherds delight, chavs are trouble, fats are bad. Woah wait a minute, not everything that we believe to be true is always so, yes, chavs are trouble. No fats are not bad.

In the 1950′s a prominent AMA (America Medical Association) Cancer surgeon went public advising “One could modify and old slogan; A pack a day keeps lung cancer away” in reference to smoking (Ironically he died in a fire caused by smoking in bed). So just how much do you really know about the right way to a healthier body…

At some point in the 1970′s it became common knowledge that fats caused a host of ailments but just who started that idea?And why?

The answer to that question lies somewhere between politics, money, big Pharma and waste products of the food industry. A subject I dare not broach in a single post, or perhaps ever!

Did you know that The Journal of The American Medical Association published a long term study in 1966 showing that a diet high in Animal products did result in higher cholesterol  levels than their counterparts who consumed a grain, margarine, corn oil, cereals, chicken and fish based diet.

Obviously I hear you mutter! Hold the press, the group that ate meat three times a day and had higher cholesterol in fact had no deaths due to heart disease where as the cereals and grains group had eight deaths from heart disease despite their lower cholesterol levels.

So low cholesterol keeps you heart safe…so you had been led to believe. Half of heart disease victims have high cholesterol and half don’t. Low or high cholesterol doesn’t seem to make a difference. Lets put this cholesterol myth to bed please, it should have died out before it even took off with all the studies against it.

One of the founders of the American Heart Association had no belief in the “Fat Hypothesis” saying that it didn’t follow the history of the disease. It doesn’t.

Do you know what you think you know?

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right?

As usual, it depends on your goals. If your goal is simply weight loss with no consideration for health or body composition, then it may well be the most important meal. If your goal is more health focused and you desire not only to lose weight but to lose body fat and retain lean tissue such as bone, organ and muscle then skipping breakfast and consuming the bulk of your calories later in the day has been shown repeatedly to be more effective.

Do you know what you think you know?

Building muscle takes hours and endless sets?

Want to add lean tissue to increase your metabolism; common knowledge says that you need to spend hours in the gym each week lifting large volumes of weights repetitively when in reality the science just doesnt back that media misconception.

In fact, the biggest meta analysis I could find showed little to no difference between one properly performed set of an exercise than three sets of an exercise. So much for common knowledge.

It has been shown that effort is always the more important factor in exercise, no amount of easy sets will add up to one exhausting effort, ever. Really.

So I ask you to reconsider what you think you know about health, exercise and diet. If what you thought you knew actually worked then how come you are still carrying around that stubborn layer of body fat or just can’t quite get your bench press numbers up to where you know they could be?

Sometimes you just need to let go of previous ideas and beliefs in order to move forward.

As a Personal Trainer I spend a lot of time with my head in the books reading and finding out the truth and if the latest claim from the media is true so you, my clients and readers get the most accurate information I can pull together for you.

I am based in Epsom, Surrey and run a small Personal Training service from a private facility, if you would like a Personal Trainer and live in or around the Epsom area then give me a call and we can see you well on the way to your goals.

Call today, six months time could see a transformed body for you.

Richard ‘Peg Leg’ Ham Williams

07742 952 208

PegLeg@PegLegPT.com