Epsom Personal Training presents to you, reality;

Reality is harsh. But it is reality.

Having a body that people admire, look at with envy and lust, having the physical prowess to perform physical feats that leave people agape is not a “4 week body blast” or “flat abs in five weeks” type of deal.  It’s a wake up and eat like a champ and train like a champ 24/7 deal.  Anything less is not going to get it done.

If you want to have a lean and athletic body with body fat levels that show off your true shape then you had better be ready to change everything you thought you knew about healthy eating, about how much you think you eat and how important it is to you.

Do you have the work ethic to monitor how much protein you consume on a daily basis and how many calories you take in. Do you have the power to pass on that glass of wine, that muffin or chocolate bar – those of you that do are the leaders. The front runners that leave others wondering why they “can’t” look like that or lift that much weight. I am humbled by the people that I work with that show me something special, those people that know how to “turn it on” when they want something bad enough.

And just was is “it”? It is the ability to focus the mind to a task, consistently. The ability to just accept that sometimes, shit has to be done to get you where you want to be. There are no short cuts. I’ll repeat that for those that skimmed over it; There are no short cuts.

Transforming a human body to be able to perform with excellence is a lifestyle.

Transforming a human body from a soft, weak and poorly serviced vehicle into a lean and muscular functional one is a endurance event. A year minimum.

Perhaps you’ll use a personal trainer, perhaps you’ll join a gym or a martial arts class, whichever path you take you need to know and accept the reality. You will have to spend time and effort consistently to look amazing, hell to even look good takes time and hardship. A lot.

Can you turn up for a workout and accept that at times you have to push to the limits of what you thought possible, at times you’ll want to give up. Can you accept that you will need to demand more from yourself, give more and sweat for every pound and every inch of success? I tell you this so as not to be a huckster, you need to know that if you want to truly make a change from your current being, then this is reality. Not an infomercial.  Life hurts. Change hurts. I tell you now though,  it is worth every ounce of water lost,  every gram of protein counted and every Friday night not spent in the pub or curry house, just to be able. Able to live an independent and confident life in a meat suit I am proud of. I am strong in body and in turn, in mind. Everything else comes second.

And it’s not just women – people as a whole are getting more “soggy”.

Learn  to control your hunger for synthetic foods, cut the crap out and refuse to eat foods that are just sugar packaged as health foods.

Treat such as chocolate, crisps, alcohol, desserts and the like are just that – TREATS! NOT DAILY FOOD.

I eat lots and lots of food, real food.

Combine that with getting your body fired up and burning calories and functioning as a useful unit and you will be leaner and healthier than ever.

CALL ME TODAY AND I GUARANTEE YOU WILL LOSE FAT,  BE STRONGER AND HAPPIER WITH YOUR LOOKS AND ABILITY.

CALL AND HAVE PERSONAL TRAINING IN EPSOM WITH ME,  DO IT NOW, AFTERALL, TOMORROW NEVER COMES but it does bring more fat.

07742 952 208

Small changes are the key to long term body change.

Many people looking to lose fat and change the shape of their bodies expect it to happen relatively fast- relative to how long it took toget fat in the first place.

Getting fat is a slow and sneaky process, rarely does one wakeup and suddenly think “oh crap I was slim yesterday and today I’m fat”. It is a process that adds fat to the body slowly and deceptively over a period of many months, in some cases, years. It is never one bad meal of gluttony that makes you fat, it is a cumulative effect of you overeating, daily.

The same dedication should be put into a restricted calorie lifestyle. Months and months of consistent and genuine effort need to be put in.

If you spent five years getting fat, expect to be in it for the long term if you want to lose that fat. Six to twelve months is reasonable; not weeks.

Small steps are the key- if you try and reduce calories AND change food choices for health foods AND join a gym- that’s a butt load of new habits to take on and a butt load to try and kick.  Start small, calorie intake is more important than healthy foods to start with. Once you can comfortably eat less calories than you do now then perhaps think about healthier food choices.

If you want to change the shape of your body that you are hiding under the excess body fat then call 07742 952 208 today and book in for a free consultation and tour of the private Epsom Personal Training facility.

A recent long term study of fat children established that even with an exercise program,  our younger and tubbier generation lost only grams of weight over a period many years.

This possibly goes to show how confused (or stupid and negligent) parents of fat children are.

The confusion is understandable – the media has absolutely no idea how to lose body fat.

OR it could mean that the exercise they had the children perform was rejokeulous as a form of exercise – jogging is not exercise by the way, it is an activity but make no mistake it is simply not challenging enough to demand a positive adaptation from the system.

For an activity to become an exercise it must meet certain criteria;

Specificity to a predetermined goal

Progressive

Bespoke, not one size fits all

Challenging to your body, not just your mind

If you can’t say this of your current routine then it is not an exercise routine – it is simply activity.

Set a goal and go for it – don’t just spin your wheels and waste your precious time.

Everyone at Epsom Personal Training has a goal even if they know it or not – do you?

Epsom Personal Training aka Hams Fitness can only offer advice on first hand experiences. So far from I have seen in my years personal training people here in Epsom I can tell you that traditional diets that are popularised in the media are bunk, phewy, totally ridiculous and yield bugger all fat loss in the long run.

It may sound like I am angry, perhaps overly so about this. I am.

I train people how to get the most from their precious time in the gym all the while fighting the myths that are rife in the industry and for the most part it is in vain due to peoples diet being so very, wildly, no, amusingly, rejokeulous! (yes I made up that word:)

If fat loss is your goal, that that means you are fat. I am not being obnoxious or untactful here, purley stating the facts.

Excessive fat is unhealthy. What you are currently trying clearly isn’t working. So when I tell you to forget about salads and low fat diets, perhaps you should listen.

Losing body fat is not about eating “healthily”, it is about controlling your hunger so that you eat less. Once you have that under control, then and only then should you consider the health aspects of your nutrient intake.

Where did it all go skewiff? Food is a compulsory part of life, like breathing. It is not a luxury item so stop eating luxury foods and feeling each meal has to be fancy and exciting. The best diets are the spartan ones. Choose food stuffs that are bland and boring but full of the most abundant macronutrients (fat, protein and carbs), not sugary man made taste bud explosions like chocolate, cakes and the latest “be good to yourself” or “healthy choice” meals.

Does anyone else remember when the week had one treat meal? The Sunday roast! It now seems that it is the other way round and people treat themselves everyday and restrict food choices only once per week – if that!

I’ll repeat briefly what I did in my fat loss demonstration a few months ago;

Ate an english breakfast nearly everyday (bacon, eggs, sausages, liver and toast with butter) – this kept me full throughout the whole morning with no hunger pangs at all.

This ensured I took in enough protein to maintain lean body tissues so my metabolism didn’t reduce, enough fat to keep my stomach from emptying too fast which in turn stops hunger signals.

Lunch would consist of fruit and a pint of full fat milk which saw me through to dinner, which if I was hungry was a simple and small meal of fish and vegetables – no fancy sauces.

My point here is that my diet was simple and easy to stick to. I never bought any sweets in the supermarket. If they are not there then you can’t eat them.

This may seem harsh to some, I apologise,  I am not being nasty but if another fat person touts health foods and scoffs at me for what I eat I may just explode!

You can lose your fatty parts but first of all you need to lose all those media adverts from your mind and then look to a simple approach.

I have faith in you even if you are lacking it – you can do this and you deserve to enjoy the fullness of a lean and fucntional body.

If you want to discuss this further then feel free to call or pop in to the Epsom Personal Training facility that Hams Fitness operates from.

07742 952 208

If you exercise as described you can burn up to 1lb of body fat per week, provided you trained 7 days per week (7 days at 500 calories burned per one hour each day is equal to 3500 calories per week – there are 3500 calories of energy stored in one pound of fatty tissue).

Exercise to burn calories requires a significant amount of time exercising and discipline, every day.

If however, you should want to take a holiday and halt training temporarily, you would instantly be reducing the amount of energy you utilise in a day and thus fall back to gaining excess body fat, fast. A very common viscous circle that sees thousands of people turn away, disappointed, from exercise.

This happens because the style of exercise performed in method two fails to create the production of lean tissue (remember that is metabolically active and energy consuming) and as a result, the hours of exercise in the gym has not increased your metabolism.

It is also highly likely that it has actually reduced your metabolism by wasting of lean muscle tissue; To exercise in a manner that allows one hour of continuous exercise, the actual muscular effort (as percentage of what it can do maximally) must be of a low intensity (that is not to say that it won’t feel hard) and thus the body will atrophy any tissue it does not see as essential.

The same is true of flexibility and mobility. If you only ever jog or ride a bike then you will lose mobility through adaptive shortening. I marvel at the number of joggers I see when walking my dog that look stiff and old in their pigeon stepped jogging style. The range of motion used is so small relative to what the joints are capable of that they “forget” how to use their bodies properly, they lose function in the way old people do.

Worthy of mention at this stage are the detrimental, chronic effects that daily, low intensity and impacting force producing exercise will have. Your joints will eventually give up. See the medical figures for knee and other joint injuries. Let’s not forget about how hard the heart will have to work every day in Method Two – the heart is a muscle and muscles will weaken through over work. Just something to think about. Especially when Method Two promoters of the seventies and eighties have died from heart failure, in their fifties.

Both methods have their place. Method two is great for short time help in reducing excess body fat so long as Method One is also incorporated and becomes the primary tool. The use of lower intensity and longer duration work can also aid in the recuperation of other body parts and muscles due to the increased blood it can promote, not to mention the psychological benefits that periods of lower effort work can have.

Method One;

Method Two;

Looking at the information provided, what Method would you rather chose? Either way you go, I will help you now you have an informed decision.

1)      Through increasing lean body mass and reduced nutrient intake (I will call this, Method One).

2)      Through increased calorific burning from exercise (And this, Method Two).

Method One focuses on building lean tissue such as muscle (in the right places), sinew and bone density, which are metabolically active tissues. Metabolically active means that they require energy throughout the day to function. The more lean tissue you have, the more calories you burn.

Lean tissue as listed above is of great importance to every human. The denser your bones, the less likely they are to break. The stronger your sinew, the less likely a sprain or tendon tear. The stronger your muscles, the more mobile and functional you are. It should also be noted that muscular tissue is the most metabolically active, easiest and fastest to manipulate so that is the focus of exercise – muscles.

If you are currently carrying an excessive amount of fatty tissue on your body then you will also need to reduce the number of unhelpful nutrients you consume over the course of the week. Any surplus nutrients will be excreted where possible and then stored as fat where excretion is impossible – thus making you fat. Too much food = getting fat. Your food choices can make energy consumption easy to manipulate. Whole natural foods such as; fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, nuts and whole grains should be the foundation of your nutritional intake. Treats like chocolate and sugary foods should be a treat to be consumed rarely and in small quantities, gluttony is not attractive or healthy.

Building lean tissue can be done in a very short time with resistance training. Moving relatively heavy objects in a manner that stimulates lean tissue increases in the right places. For example; a large number of women would rather not build arms, like many men, so the focus of lean tissue growth should be on the rear side of the body where the lean tissue will be evenly distributed giving the trainee a toned bum, legs and back, which by the way, happen to be the most functional areas to add active tissue.

Building lean muscle tissue in the right places will dramatically alter your physical appearance; a more upright posture, a tighter bum, broader shoulders and a flatter midsection are just a few examples.

The type of regime this entails requires very little time spent in the gym each week (thirty minutes, twice per week) and a little discipline in the kitchen.

It should also be noted here that if you were to take a break from exercise for a period of a few weeks for a holiday then you will not suddenly put the weight back on as so often happens with regular exercise programmes (see Method Two). Lean tissue will not be lost for many months. Unless you are totally bedridden.

Method 2 and it’s downfalls will be covered in another post from me, Epsom’s Personal Trainer…

Deadlift (bw/half bw)  x 15

Dip (bw / half) x 15

Row 200m (L10/L5)

DB Push Press (half bw / quarter bw)

3 rounds through as fast as you can in safe technique. Fastest times wins…obviously.

Cycle 1km (L5/L10)

Vertical Jump x10  (Hands to touch the floor each rep and feet to leave to floor)

Bag/Pad Strikes x50

Perform as many rounds as you can within 15 minutes and improve as the week progresses:)

Hang Power Snatch x20 (30kg/10kg)

Sit ups x20

Hang Power Clean and Press anyhow x 20 (40kg/20kg)

Squats x20

Three rounds through as fast as possible…..times will be smashed!