“I’m already done,” I replied. Remember, Jewish families are known for shouting from room to room. My mom’s reply was less than encouraging.

“Fine, if you want to fail, then that’s up to you.”

Even after the mandatory Jewish mother guilt trip I was nonplussed. Through basketball finals, the trepidation of asking out girls (although I was hopeless at it), exams, assignments, and life’s general suckiness, I’ve rarely been one to tear my hair out. My sister on the other hand, was a completely different story. During her exams she suffered high blood pressure. One night we found her passed out. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and fainted. She spent a week in hospital on an IV drip, the stress of the situation having ravaged her body, causing an Internal Code Red.

In a world where kittens ride unicorns through rainbow fields, we would frolic stress free. Unfortunately, for the average person life is filled with experiences and encounters that leave us physically and emotionally drained. Let’s call these stressors – an agent, condition, or other stimulus that causes stress to an organism, shifting it out of homeostasis. These stressors are an important to our survival. Without them, our Neanderthal ancestors would have sat around, unstressed as a saber-toothed tiger pillaged their caves. Likewise, lifting weights applies a significant stressor to the body, causing it to adapt and grow.

However, 43% of all adults suffer adverse health affects from bad stress. These affects include, but are not limited to, headaches, metabolic disorders, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, skin conditions, asthma, arthritis, depression, and anxiety.¹

Research indicates that children who are born to stressed mothers are also more likely to be bullied at school. Becoming stressed releases a flood of neurohormones that can change the stress response system of a fetus, making it more receptive to stressors and more likely to emotionally or physically respond to acts of bullying.² Children who are stressed as a result of their parents fighting may develop an impaired parasympathetic nervous system, which is the system responsible for ‘feed and breed’ responses such as sexual arousal, salivation, tears, digestion, and disposal of food.³ Basically, stress sucks if it is left unchecked and allowed to ravage your body and nervous system.

But what if I told you there is a way to avoid all this, and instead, thrive under stressful situations while also ensuring that you keep continually making gains? It’s a well-known fact that stress leads to cardiovascular disease, resulting in death. Hell, I said it just before. But maybe stress itself isn’t the devilish monster we demonize it as. Instead, it may very well be the belief of stress as being dangerous that can raise our risk of a heart attack by up to 50%.⁴

Imagine this, your boss amicably leans on your desk, forcing you to quickly exit the Breaking Muscle website. “Tyler, remember, I need that report tomorrow,” he smugly smiles as he takes your apple and walks away. (Seriously, I have no idea why you still work there. The guy’s a prick.) The report? You completely forgot about it. Your pulse starts to race, your breathing quickens and a light condensation mists your forehead. That’s two weeks work you now have to cram into eighteen hours. Soft curses slip through your lips but then, in your darkest moment you stare stress in the face and slap it, hard, showing it whose boss. The stress fuels you, fires you forward, keeps you up most of the night until, finally, exhausted, you slam the report onto your bosses desk, defiantly munching on an apple right in front of his face.

You’re no longer scared of stress, it’s yours to mold to your will.

But, while stress has allowed you to complete an insurmountable task in an impossible timeframe, we all know that the stress may have just knocked a year off your lifespan. Your arteries have started to restrict, causing less blood to reach your heart. Too much of this and you’ll be filling out your last report.

However, the increased pumping of blood and influx of oxygen to our brains that occurs in times of great stress is preparing you for what’s to come. Research is now showing that stress only becomes unhealthy when we view the situation as a threat. If, before a particularly stressful situation, you are taught to view the typical stress responses – sweaty palms, dry mouth, increased heart rate and so forth – as beneficial, the same stress that could cause your heart to stop can actually open up your arteries, eliciting a similar reaction as when we experience joy or bravery.⁵

Learning to deal with stress places you on the precipice of Mount Doom, threatening to fall into the fires of Mordor. It’s a tightrope act that would make Nik Wallenda proud. When dealing with stress, there are a few tried and true strategies, and some new ones, that we can employ to make sure we get the best out of ourselves day in and day out:

1. Look on the bright side of life. Studies show that optimists tend to have a more positive reaction to stressful situations, which ties into the aforementioned example. While pessimists are busy demonizing cortisol, blaming it for an early death, optimists recognize it as the “get up and go hormone,” channelling its power for good.⁶
2. Be mindful of yourself, and your surroundings. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that practicing mindfulness training, and in particular working on your breathing patterns, can decrease stress and bring you back into the moment, instead of where you were, tumbling with your inner stress demons.⁷
3. Compartmentalize your life. Home is home, work is work, and the gym is the gym. Keep them separate. Learn to switch gears depending on where you are. Avoid bringing your work home, keep your mobile phone in your gym locker, and if you find you are stressing over macros at home, simplify it.
4. Auto-regulate your training. There’s no point in trying to smash a new deadlift record on four hours of sleep. Continue to rip the bar off the ground, but once your speed drops and start to struggle, then move on.

We are taught to ward off stresses and cortisol with iron crosses and glasses of chamomile tea, fearing a breakdown of our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. But it seems as if by doing this, we are holding ourselves back. Growing up, maybe the biggest difference between my sister and me was that all those basketball finals, girls, and exams taught me to look at stress as a catalyst for change and growth instead of pain and sickness. Maybe that’s the biggest difference.

References:

^{1. “The Effects of Stress on Your Body,” WebMD.com.}

^2. University of Warwick (2012, November 14). Babies born to stressed mothers more likely to be bullied at school. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 24, 2013.

^3. Society for Research in Child Development (2013, March 28). Marital conflict causes stress in children, may affect cognitive development. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 24, 2013.

^4. European Society of Cardiology (ESC) (2013, June 26). People’s perception of the effect of stress on their health is linked to risk of heart attacks. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 13, 2013.

^5. Top of FormUniversity of Rochester (2013, April 8). Reframing stress: Stage fright can be your friend. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 8, 2013.

^6. Concordia University (2013, July 23). Optimists better at regulating stress. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 8, 2013.

^7. University of Wisconsin-Madison (2013, August 28). Mindfulness training can help reduce teacher stress and burnout. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 8, 2013.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Turn Stress Into a Strength appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

For those of you who don’t know, this is the primary rationale behind nutritional systems such as Carb Back-Loading (CBL) and the Renegade Diet (RD). First you fast. Depending on your goals (fat loss, muscle gain, or maintenance) fasting can last from anywhere between twelve to fifteen hours. Then, you eat one or two meals consisting of approximately a cup of vegetables, accompanied by fats and proteins pre-workout. Post workout just eat until there’s nothing left in the fridge and your wife threatens a divorce if you step out of the house in the pouring rain to buy another grass-fed steak and a box of Cocoa Bombs from the supermarket. The largest difference between the two programs comes in the re-feed stage. Ferrugia recommends white rice, sweet potatoes, and white potatoes. Keifer suggests apple turnovers, Wendy’s fries, and donuts.

At their core, both of these two programs are the same. Both Ferrugia and Keifer believe that when we wake to the blaring of an alarm clock our cortisol levels rise, leading to an appropriate stress response. When we rise, we also get a surge of growth hormone, unless you eat the typical American breakfast of cereal or toast, which releases insulin into the bloodstream. This insulin effectively switches off our growth hormone production, so our body stops burning fat and starts storing it instead. Furthermore, our bodies are always under constant stress due to training and eating. This activity leads to an increase in IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor), which is a cancer-causing hormone. Fasting allows our body to rest and reduces IGF-1 whilst increasing growth hormone.

Renegade Diet

Created by Jason Ferrugia, the Renegade Diet is by far the most comprehensive one. Now, before all the PubMed warriors start their Google searches let me explain that Ferrugia acknowledges that his program is heavily based on broscience from decades of studying his digestive system and those of his clients.

The Renagade Diet advocates drinking a glass of warm lemon juice every night before dinner, abstaining from legumes, wheat, and gluten, fasting for twelve to sixteen hours, and then staying further away from carbohydrates than I do a Frey wedding (yep, not done with the Red Wedding just yet) until post workout the following day.

For me, the biggest take away was the focus on gut health. There is the acknowledgement that you will most likely be packing away an insane amount of food post workout, and therefore Ferrugia tries to ease this by implementing some of the aforementioned gut health strategies: glass of warm lemon juice pre-dinner, no legumes, no grains, and no wheat. As he mentions, if your gut health is not 100% then the food you are eating will not be properly absorbed into your bloodstream and distributed into your muscles, therefore holding back you and your results.

The Renegade Diet is a simple and easy to follow program that goes into great depth without too much confusing science behind it. As you read the program, you’ll find yourself nodding along and beginning to understand how Ferrugia can claim to fix everything with some caloric manipulation.

In the end, the Renegade Diet are for those who:

• Have plateaued
• Struggled with digestion
• Need to kick start fat loss
• Are bored of calorie counting
• Need to fix low testosterone levels
• Have high estrogen levels
• Suffer from adrenal fatigue or high cortisol levels.

Carb Back-Loading

Imagine a world where you can eat dessert, and I don’t mean a high protein, low carb, high fiber, no-bake, organic pancake that took you two hours in the supermarket to find the ingredients for and then another one hour to cook and half way through you nearly burnt your house down in a blind rage but then remembered that the fitness “athlete” who recommended the recipe on Facebook said it was really good so you persevered. I mean a double chocolate fudge ice cream cake topped with whipped cream.

This is the world Keifer of Dangerously Hardcore has created with Carb Back-Loading. Fast from dinner to 10:00 or 11:00am the next day, but drink a shake of fats and protein on waking to aid ketogenesis and prevent catabolism, then eat one or two meals pre training, consisting of mainly proteins and fats. Post training eat all the trashy carbs you can until you collapse into a carb coma so deep that Rip Van Winkle would be jealous.

CBL focuses more on the science. Keifer advocates that a calorie is not just a calorie and that by using Modulated Tissue Response (a term Keifer has trademarked), we can teach our bodies to select which tissues grow and which ones shrink (e.g. gain muscle whilst losing fat) by teaching it to grow in accordance to a stimulus – weights.

Another concept covered in CBL is GLUT transporters, glucose transporters that shuttle glucose to working muscles, particularly GLUT-4 and GLUT-12, which are present in skeletal muscle and fat cells. Normally, eating carbohydrates leads to increased activity of both – biceps get bigger but love handles do too – but by exercising without carbohydrates, our body is tricked into mimicking an insulin response, shuttling glucose into the working muscle, leading to growth without the fat.

My time Carb Back Loading was glorious. The only thing more wondrous I could imagine would be riding a unicorn over a sunset towards a field filled with bacon roses. Alas, I paid the price for my nights explaining to my wife why I had to eat six lamingtons, a bowl of Cocoa Bombs, two sweet potatoes, and four Skinny Cow ice cream cookies. My LDL cholesterol rose and so did my triglycerides.

Apparently they didn’t care too much for Keifer’s science.

Carb Back-Loading is for those who:

• Are tired of traditional clean foods.
• Want to experiment.
• Enjoy the science (CBL is a lot heavier on science that RD and goes into detail on a lot of different studies conducted).
• Need a psychological break from dieting.
• Are already in good health – due to the crap loading, I’d never recommend it to someone who is already suffering from medical problems.

The Final Word

Both Carb Back-Loading and the Renegade Diet are efficient and easy programs to cover. It makes eating easier and more convenient and both creators have a slew of anecdotal evidence to support their claims.

Whilst Carb Back-Loading was fun, I hit a psychological wall where I became bored of the junk I was eating and instead started to crave healthier, more organic foods. For that reason, for those you are looking to get started with a new dietary program, Ferrugia’s Renegade Diet is the way to go.

References:

1. Jason Ferrugia, Renegade Diet (2011), USA

2. John Keifer, Carb Back-Loading (2011), USA

Photos 1&2 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 by XcepticZP at en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The post A Comparison of Carb Back-Loading and the Renegade Diet appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Now, you want your partner next to you as you meticulously measure every ounce of food you eat, pursue the pump, and research the best supplements to get you jacked. Unfortunately, not everyone has their Instragram overflowing with Fitspo slogans or drops and cranks out a hundred push ups just to feel the burn so, how do you get your partner to train with you? Simply follow the following steps.

Step #1: Praise their efforts.

On any given week I’ll hit the gym five or six times, and I know that for people like us missing a gym workout is the equivalent of marrying King Joffery out of your own free will. However, even though I have been known to stop an English class and proceed to perform push ups with students on my back in pursuit of the ever elusive chest pump (it’s a well known fact that getting a pump in front of people stimulates upwards of 300% more muscle than if nobody was watching – how else could you explain CrossFit?), I don’t have the same expectations of my wife.

If she misses a session, the world will still continue to turn. The important thing is that she’s coming. The last thing I want to do is belittle her for missing a session here and there. All that would accomplish is creating a sense of guilt that would dissuade her from re-attending. When it comes to trying to motivate someone, the most important thing is to praise his or her effort, not successes.

Step #2: Have realistic expectations.

When you miss a lift you take to Facebook to tell everyone about it. You scold your weakness and lack of testicular fortitude, implying you are no longer worthy to train with your bro’s. That moment of failure becomes etched into your dreams, overtaking your every waking thought until the day comes that you can try again. Whilst it is all well and good for you to have this attitude, it’s imperative that you don’t start screaming, “Lightweight!” at your partner when he or she misses a lift.

When my wife first started training with me she was quickly discouraged. I expected too much too soon. The weights were too heavy, the metabolic conditioning work too intense, and the demands far too rigorous. Sure, I was used to collapsing in a lying, miserable, retching, crying wreck after leg day, but my wife wasn’t. She stopped training with me for a while. She was discouraged by the fact she couldn’t do what I expected of her.

Once I lightened the weights, peeled back the program, and started applauding her for her effort, not her accomplishments, she began to attend more regularly and take pride in her accomplishments. Praising effort discourages negative feelings when a partner misses a lift or a workout because he or she no longer feels as if they have failed. Instead, your partner feels glad to have given it a go. Of course, first you need to know what you’re doing.

Step #3: Educate yourself first.

There’s a guy at my gym, we’ll call him Broseph. Every time I see Broseph he’s wearing a new t-shirt boasting that he wants to “Shut Up and Squat” or has turned “Beast Mode: ON.” He fastens up his weight lifting belt, walks to the Smith machine, and squats a whopping 50kg. As I watch, my eyes start to bleed. He’s only squatting to quarter depth, his hips are barely moving, his knees start to cave inwards, and, worst of all, he begins instructing his girlfriend.

Gyms are populated with bros that have as much knowledge as Michael Sorrentino (Google him, you’ll regret it but do it anyway) and what’s worse, they ‘instruct’ their partners. To make things even worse, they reprimand their partners for not lifting properly or enough iron. Imagine, you’re already nervous about being in the gym, surrounded by the grunting gorillas and dolled up divas, and now the one person who is meant to be supporting you is screaming at you like you used the last of the protein powder.

Unfortunately this is more a reflection on Broseph. He’s read a few issues of Men’s Health and Googled “best butt workout” and assumes he’s the next Bret Contreras. What he doesn’t understand is proper glute activation, that squats might make his girlfriend’s legs bulky, or that she probably isn’t concerned with having the best quad sweep around. It took me three tries to realize I needed to learn the proper squat progressions (from bodyweight, to goblet, to box, to barbell) and hip hinge technique, before I could instruct my wife on how to squat and deadlift properly. Remember, it’s one thing to know how to lift weights, and another thing entirely to know how to instruct someone. Unfortunately, too many people don’t understand that just because you lift doesn’t mean you know what you are doing.

Step #4: Remind him or her it’s a lifestyle change.

The last, and arguably most important point, is to remind your partner it’s not just about lifting heavy iron, it’s about changing a lifestyle. Lifting weights doesn’t guarantee a change in body composition, a small waist, broader shoulders, or a tighter butt, if you don’t understand diet. Personally, I’ve never been one to count macros, but when I started adding things up for my wife, I noticed that if she snacked on so much as one delicious cupcake from the Cupcake Bakery, she’d blow her daily calorie limit and all her hard work in the gym would have been for naught.

Considering you lift I’m assuming you can cook and you’re already preparing meals. Now, it’s time to impart this wisdom onto your partner. Have them meal prep with you, tweaking low and high carb days according to your workout schedule. Make sure he or she understands that diet, sleep, and water are just as important as lifting weights. There needs to be an understanding that fitness is a lifestyle, not just a hobby you do sometimes when you get bored.

Go now, with this wisdom and convince your wife to pull on her lululemon yoga pants or your husband to lace up his New Balance sneakers. Make sure you praise your partners for their efforts, not for their accomplishments. Start them off slow, remembering that they’ve only just started – don’t expect them to jump for joy straight away when leg day comes around. Understand what you’re doing, and learn how to exercise and program properly. It’s one thing to exercise and another thing to understand why you are doing something. Above all though, make sure you have fun (both of you). You’re a couple and exercise only improves the bond you have together.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The 4 Steps to Get Your Partner to Love the Gym as Much as You appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

On the other hand, before I met my wife I had been overseas exactly once. When I was five, my family visited America for two years because of my dad’s work. Despite hanging on to the American accent nineteen years later, I never caught the travel bug. However, since being with my wife I’ve been to Thailand, Singapore, Morocco, Germany, France (where she banned me from speaking the language due to my awful pronunciation of words), Spain, the Philippines, and Kuala Lumpur – and all within a three-year period.

Needless to say, for a gym junkie like myself the thought of being away from my tubs of protein and barbells loaded with plates was, and still is, an almost paralyzing thought. The first trip we took, to Kuala Lumpur and the Philippines, my training continued but was fragmented and directionless. When we visited Europe on our honeymoon last year, I was unable to find a gym so I resorted to bodyweight exercises. But this year everything is different – I have a plan, a direction, and a purpose for my training.

In my time overseas I’ve come to realize one key truth – you will not get stronger. Unless your partner is a gym rat as well, and you are happy with spending your time in another country scouring the streets for somewhere that will allow you to tear some serious weight, it’s likely your hotel gym or room won’t have the necessary poundage to allow you to smash personal bests. Therefore, there are four things that you can do:

1. Take the time off and deload. If you are like most lifters, myself included, you wait for life to tell you to deload and you could probably do with a week or two off. Regardless of what people tell you, you won’t become catabolic and shrink to the size of a pre-pubescent boy (or girl). In fact, you’ll probably come back stronger and more determined post-holiday.
2. Start moving your body. Bodyweight workouts are great, yet vastly underrated. Whether you use Tabata-, volume-, or density-based workouts, most people underestimate the level of shredded that they can reach with their bodyweight alone.
3. You know that mobility work you’ve been telling yourself you’d do for the past year? Well, guess what? You don’t need any fancy gym equipment to open up your thoracic spine or fix your hips. Now’s the best time to do it.
4. Lower the weights and up the volume. Bodybuilding style training and using time under tension will allow you to use the 25lb weights in the hotel gym to stimulate some growth. Don’t believe me? Use 50-60% of your 8RM dumbbell bench press, employing a 2-3-2-1 tempo (implying a two second eccentric, a three second isometric hold, a two second concentric and a one second pause at the top position.) And your lower body? You may not be able to deadlift or squat as heavy as you’d like, so switch to single leg variations for added torment fun.

Designing a Workout

So you’ve decided to still exercise to help stave off the vacation excess that always seems to creep onto your thighs and arse (if you’re a female) or your gut (if you’re a guy). Below are four effective, and time efficient, ways to make sure your jeans don’t become skinny jeans upon your return to real life:

Designing a Workout: 1. Density Circuit

Select four compound exercises (that either target all the same muscle or a plethora of different ones), a rep scheme, and a time limit. Density circuits work great when you only have bodyweight to work with. Aim to have the most metabolically challenging and technical exercise as the first in the circuit.

For example:

• Bodyweight Squats x 25
• Push Ups x 20
• Single Leg Hip Thrusts x 15 (per leg)
• Pike Pushups x 10

Repeat for 10 minutes, resting as necessary.

Designing a Workout: 2. Super Sets

If you’ve stepped into the gym, you’ve used these before. Pair two exercises together, rest minimally between sets and repeat.

For example:

A1) DB Bench Press

A2) Pull Ups

B1) Incline Bench Press

B2) Seated Row

Designing a Workout: 3. Giant Sets

On my last trip to Singapore and Thailand I fell in love with giant sets, which are essentially super setting two or more exercises of the same muscle group. However, my version was slightly different. Considering I was pressed for time, yet still wanted to cram in more volume than a grandmother does food, I worked with descending sets.

For example:

A1) DB Bench Press – 4 x 10

A2) DB Incline Press – 3 x 10

A3) Cable Press – 2 x 15

A4) Push Ups – 1 x 20

Rest 30 seconds between exercises and repeat until all prescribed sets have been completed. What I found is that I was able to get a nifty little metabolic training effect whilst also getting that ever-precious pump.

Designing a Workout: 4. Tabata Rounds

I’ve heard rumours that Tabata is used in some political prisons to torture inmates. Select an exercise, preferably a bodyweight one, and perform 20 seconds of ball-busting, hyped up on three scoops of illegal DMAA fueled pre-workout, adrenalin surging reps. Rest for ten seconds and then repeat for 8 total rounds (4 minutes of total time).

Exercise is not something that is confined to four walls, grunting men, or even deafening thunderous thuds as plate-filled barbells smack against the floor and life, being what it is, has a nasty habit of throwing curveballs at you. Nobody wants to be that person who turns to his or her friend or loved one and says, “Sorry, I can’t visit X with you because I’ve got a leg day scheduled and, well, I can’t miss that – not even for an all expense paid trip to (insert dream destination here).” What truly defines someone who loves fitness, exercise, and by extension themselves, is the ability to adapt to different surrounds and circumstances and still get in the necessary work to grow and progress as a person.

Too many people take holidays knowing they will get fat, become overweight, and lose a level of their fitness, yet they do nothing to combat it. I’m here now, standing on my soapbox, telling you that whether you have a gym or not, there is always something you can do to stay active.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post 4 Killer Workouts for While You’re on Holiday or Vacation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Television and video games are the predominant form of “resting” for most regular families. Television would have to be the number one form of relaxation in Western society today, and not just for adults. Thanks to Internet streaming broadcasts, Netflix, pay-per-view programming, and an abundance of escapist video games, children are becoming more and more sedentary at the cost of physical exercise. From the age of sixteen, a teenager’s future health can already be predetermined and, if they are choosing low-activity outlets, such as video games or television, over playing sport, then they could be at an increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome when they reach adulthood. Metabolic syndrome is a combination of obesity, cholesterol issues, hypertension and an inability for the body to regulate glucose levels, leading to weight gain and type 2 diabetes.¹

From Boys to Men

For boys, spending more time sitting on the couch instead of bouncing a basketball could have ramifications on their reproductive ability. If young men persist in watching more than three hours of television per night, when they grow into adults it is likely their sperm will be 44% slower than their more active friends.² And once they hit middle age, men may need nearly double the amount of protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis than when they were younger.³ So, that time you spend relaxing may be slowly killing you from an early age.

From Babies to Adults

Common sense dictates that exercise, diet, and a healthy lifestyle are imperative ingredients for a pregnant woman to produce a happy, healthy, and rosy-cheeked baby. So the same goes for after that baby is born. During pregnancy, the fetus is a sponge, absorbing and growing with the mother. If the mother is sedentary and eating at will, it could lead to a high birth weight, which can be linked to future obesity in the child’s teenage years.⁴ During these tumultuous and confusing years, when children struggle with their weight and worry about their future health, they will also need to contend with poorer motor coordination and, subsequently, worse performance in sports.⁵

But there are solutions for preventing the youth of tomorrow from becoming overweight, brain dead zombies. Spend time with them, play with them, and, as much as they kick and scream, turn off the television, put down the game, and encourage them to go outside and play. Children of authoritative (controlling parents who are as warm as concrete on a hot day) and neglectful (working all the time and only cuddle their children via Skype chats) parents typically spend an additional thirty minutes a day being sedentary, and an additional ninety minutes on the weekends.⁶ However, children whose parents played with them or encouraged them to participate in sports are more active, happier, and better adjusted moving into their teenage years.

What You Can Do Right Now

As for us adults, the ones who work underneath fluorescent lights, sit in an ergonomically designed chair, and snack on Jane from Human Resources’ hidden candy stash when she isn’t looking, whilst dreading our calorie-controlled flavorless lunch, how do we fight back against the social norm that has become a sedentary, bloated, and overweight lifestyle? We stand up. Not figuratively or metaphorically. We literally stand up. Standing up and walking around for two minutes after every twenty minutes of sitting can increase your carbohydrate and fat metabolism, improve glucose sensitivity within fat cells, decrease inflammation, and regulate anti-oxidative pathways to help your genes grow big and strong.⁷ If you are sedentary, for what ever reason, your diet should be higher in fat and protein and lower in carbohydrates. Those lifting weights or running three to five times a week are the ones who need the carbohydrates to replenish muscle glycogen stores.

It’s estimated that sedentary people cost taxpayers over $150 billion dollars a year in extra medical procedures, consultations, sick day leave, and disability pensions.⁸ That’s $150 billion attributed to an ‘illness’ or ‘disease’ that is as avoidable as walking your dog down the street to get the paper instead of putting the dog in the car. (Fun fact: overweight people generally have overweight pets.⁹)

What I want to stress the most is that the choices you are making are killing you. Take away the statistics and figures, take away public preconceptions and ideas about your expanding waistline, and remove the skinny models from women’s magazines from your heads. Your “rest” time – that time you spend sitting on the couch, playing video games or even reading a book – is slowly killing you, damaging your children, and ruining your life. Think about that next time you say you need to relax.

References:

1. P. Wennberg, P. E. Gustafsson, D. W. Dunstan, M. Wennberg, A. Hammarstrom. Television Viewing and Low Leisure-Time Physical Activity in Adolescence Independently Predict the Metabolic Syndrome in Mid-Adulthood. Diabetes Care, 2013; DOI: 10.2337/dc12-1948

2. A. J. Gaskins, J. Mendiola, M. Afeiche, N. Jorgensen, S. H. Swan, J. E. Chavarro. Physical activity and television watching in relation to semen quality in young men. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2013; DOI:10.1136/bjsports-2012-091644

3. Meghann J. Robinson, Nicholas A. Burd, Leigh Breen, Tracy Rerecich, Yifan Yang, Amy J. Hector, Steven K. Baker, Stuart M. Phillips. Dose-dependent responses of myofibrillar protein synthesis with beef ingestion are enhanced with resistance exercise in middle-aged men. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 2012; : 120 DOI: 10.1139/apnm-2012-0092

4. Karen Schellong, Sandra Schulz, Thomas Harder, Andreas Plagemann. Birth Weight and Long-Term Overweight Risk: Systematic Review and a Meta-Analysis Including 643,902 Persons from 66 Studies and 26 Countries Globally. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (10): e47776 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0047776

5. Luís Lopes, Rute Santos, Beatriz Pereira, Vítor Pires Lopes. Associations between sedentary behavior and motor coordination in children. American Journal of Human Biology, 2012; DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.22310

6. David P. Schary, Bradley J. Cardinal & Paul D. Loprinzi. Parenting style associated with sedentary behaviour in preschool children. Early Child Development and Care, 2012; pages 1015-1026 DOI:10.1080/03004430.2012.678596

7. Celine Latouche, Jeremy B. M. Jowett, Andrew L. Carey, David A. Bertovic, Neville Owen, David W. Dunstan, and Bronwyn A. Kingwell. Effects of breaking up prolonged sitting on skeletal muscle gene expression. Journal of Applied Physiology, 2012.

8. The costs of unhealthy behaviours. Wellness council of America, 2007.

9. ^{Overweight Owners Lead Pets to Obesity}

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Not too long ago a good friend of mine was asked if he wanted kids. “Sure, why wouldn’t I want something that hates everything I hate and loves everything I love?” he replied. He then jeeringly added, “And anyway, I think it’s in mankind’s best interests if I reproduce.” He uses fluoride free toothpaste, alcohol-free mouthwash, organic coconut shampoos and natural goats milk soaps, eats only grass-fed, free range meats, drinks from a two liter BPA-free water bottle that could easily double as a whacking stick, and strength trains three to five times per week. Whilst some people may call my friend ‘excessive’ or claim he is in the ‘unrealistic’ one-percent, recent research shows that our lifestyle, diet, and exercise habits can actually shape and change our genes, and therefore our eventual offspring, for better or worse. If that is the case, then maybe my friend should breed for the sake of humanity.

Even though it is impossible to change our actual DNA – sadly, I’ll never have a mutant healing factor – it is possible to adjust what genes are turned on or off. For example, ‘turning on’ certain DNA strands can result in cancer and other diseases. Exercising helps to determine which genes are active and which are inactive and can alter our genomes, leading to better overall health, reduced risk of cancer and other nasty illnesses.^1,2 Consequently, every time you hit the pavement or bust out one more rep you are repairing damage done to your genes through environmental factors such as UV rays, oxidization (when free radicals in our bodies attack our DNA) leading to increased aging of our cells and physical appearance, chemical solvents, and improper cell replication.^3,4

But diet also plays a significant role in fortifying your DNA and can subsequently help to ensure you pass on strong genes. Fortifying your diet with fruits and vegetables can decrease DNA oxidization and inflammation in the body, thanks to the presence of carotenoids and vitamin C intake.⁵ Similarly, calorie restrictive diets in transgenic mice (mice who have been genetically altered in a lab to be more human-like) have shown the ability to strengthen the chromosomes, reducing the signs of ageing, diminishing the growth of cancerous cells, longer life, decreased signs of osteoporosis, and greater glucose uptake.⁶ Intermittent fasting and caloric restriction diets in humans seem to replicate the results found in mice by helping to reduce the stress on the nervous system, decrease DNA oxidization and cellular stressors, helping to keep your DNA fresh, young and clean.⁷

Socrates said, “What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” I’d like to supplement this with something I think is even more important. We’ve all heard how Hugh Jackman or Bar Refaeli won the genetic lottery – this imaginary luck of chance draw that predetermines whether or not you’ll be beautiful, successful, intelligent, well adjusted and perfect in every other way – but allow me to profess another hypothesis.

Exercising, eating properly, and supplementing correctly help to strengthen our DNA against terminal illnesses, degradation, and aging. Eventually, for those of us who don’t have kids yet, when it comes time to reproduce these will be the genes we pass on and imprint onto our children. People often look at the children of celebrities such as Beyonce and Jay-Z, Brad and Angelina, or Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin and wonder how they always seem to produce such adorable babies. One thing is for sure – it isn’t because of Tracey Anderson.

These people, and nobility throughout the ages (with the exception of Cersei and Jamie Lannister who produced the hell-spawn known as Joffrey), always have access to the best foods, freshest ingredients, most natural products, and best exercise regimes. Through their desire to achieve bootylicious status, they are inadvertently fortifying their genes and helping to create a race of super babies. Unfortunately we don’t all have the same time or resources as famous people. Some of us don’t even have the extra cash for free range beef instead of (shudder) corn fed cow, let alone the time or patience to purchase organic coconut shampoos. But there are some things we can do: We can stay hydrated, eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, regularly engage in cardio and resistance training, and avoid overeating just because your Italian mother-in-law tells you to “mangia, mangia.”

If you have already knocked out a few happy and healthy little tykes, congratulations, the above suggestions will help keep your DNA happy, free of terminal illnesses, healthy and fresh throughout the rest of your life. If, like me, you’re still young and still to start your clan keep with the exercise and healthy habits and your child just may win the genetic lottery – even if you didn’t.

References:

1. Barrès R, Yan J, Egan B et al. Acute Exercise Remodels Promoter Methylation in Human Skeletal Muscle. Cell Metabolism, Volume 15, Issue 3, 405-411, March 7 2012

2. Romain Barrès, Jie Yan, Brendan Egan, Jonas Thue Treebak, Morten Rasmussen, Tomas Fritz, Kenneth Caidahl, Anna Krook, Donal J. O’Gorman, Juleen R. Zierath. Acute Exercise Remodels Promoter Methylation in Human Skeletal Muscle. Cell Metabolism, 2012; 15 (3): 405 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2012.01.001

3. http://healthy-living.org/html/antioxidants_explained.html accessed on 4/2/13

4. Clancy, S. (2008) DNA damage & repair: mechanisms for maintaining DNA integrity. Nature Education 1(1)

5. Rikard Asgard (2008) Oxidative DNA damage and other risk factors, in relation to lifestyle in diabetes type 2 and metabolic syndrome patients. Karolinka Institutet, Stockholm.

6. Elsa Vera, Bruno Bernardes de Jesus, Miguel Foronda, Juana M. Flores, Maria A. Blasco. Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase Synergizes with Calorie Restriction to Increase Health Span and Extend Mouse Longevity.PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (1): e53760 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0053760

7. Martin B, et al, 2006, Caloric restriction and intermittent fasting: two potential diets for successful brain ageing. Ageing Res Rev. 2006 Aug; 5(3):332-53.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Strengthen Your DNA and Create Super Babies appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Soy is everywhere – from your soy milks and tofus to the more discreet soy lecithin used to prevent compounds from separating during the cooking process. Asian countries have used soy-based remedies and foods dating back 5000 years to when Emperor Shennong declared the soybean a sacred plant.¹ Henry Ford even found a use for soybeans. In 1935 he used soybean oil to paint his cars and top up his shock absorbers. He even created a soybean car created solely out of soy-based plastics in 1941.²

Soy is one of the most nutritious foods on the planet. Packing a whopping 22 grams of protein in a 180-gram serving, 26% of your RDI of calcium, 51% of your RDI of vitamin C, and 25% of your RDI of iron, it can easily become a dietary staple, especially for vegetarians.³ But there are some things you need to know that make the soybean of history very different from the soybean of today.

Genetic Modification

Alas the inevitable happened. Scientists, hell-bent on creating the zombie apocalypse, went and created a strain of genetically modified soybeans. In 1997, 8% of the available soy product available in the United States was genetically modified. As of 2010, 93% of all soybeans in U.S. circulation have been genetically modified.⁴

Pesticides

In Brazil, the second largest producer of soybeans, the soybean farmers almost single-handedly keep the pesticide companies in business. Every year, Brazilian soybean farmers spend approximately 3 billion U.S. dollars on pesticides, which accounts for 45% of total pesticide sales. During 2008, every 1kg of soybeans they produced were doused in 1.5kg of herbicides.⁵ When consuming meat, most people prefer grass-fed and free range due to the higher omega-3 content and better quality meat. When consuming beans, use the same discretion and always opt for organic and herbicide free.

Isoflavones and Phytoestrogens

Isoflavones are one of the most controversial chemical compounds on the market today due to their structure being very close to estrogen compounds. Isoflavones are phytoestrogens, plant based hormones that mimic the effects of estrogen within the human body.⁶ They naturally occur in foods, especially beans, and due to their role as phytoestrogens have been linked to decreased rates of breast cancer in women, namely within Asian countries where soy consumption is high.⁷ More specifically, genistein is a soy isoflavone that has been shown to target and fight off estrogenic and androgen signaling pathways that have become cancerous, helping to reduce the risk of cancer.⁸

However, if you are a male, consuming half a cup of soy has been linked to low sperm count and mobility due to phytoestrogens and high isoflavone intake.⁹ Then again, isoflavones have also shown, through observational studies, to decrease the risk of prostate cancer in males due to their ability to modulate and prevent carcinogenic pathways in the body, possibly leading to preventative measures.^{10, 11} For men, it seems as if you’ll need to decide what side swings the blue light saber and which one wields the red one.

But isoflavones and phytoestrogens don’t only possess a risk for male virility. They can also cause significant problems to pregnant women. Consuming processed soy during a pregnancy can lead to increased levels of amniotic fluid in male and female fetuses and potentially Hydramnios in the mother, causing issues regarding the sexual development of the baby – a condition that can lead to fetal defects, facial deformities, or central nervous system issues.¹²

Not to mention that a 1992 finding by the Swiss Health Services found that if a woman was consuming two cups of soy milk a day, it was the equivalent to one birth control pill due to soy’s estrogenic properties. And if you aren’t a pregnant woman, or a woman trying to get pregnant, then you need to watch your soy intake as the soybean isoflavones have been shown to damage thyroid function in women consuming inadequate levels of iodine.¹³

Discussing soy is similar to discussing religion at the dinner table. It is divisive, controversial, and can otherwise cause people to draw the battle lines and read the rules of engagement in preparation. Possibly the most important thing to remember is that most soy research is either (a) influenced by third party funders pushing an agenda or (b) observational. Even though the humble soybean has been around for over 5,000 years and found use as everything from a dietary staple to a shock absorber oil, the research done is still largely arbitrary and biased.

Nobody is telling you not to eat soy. For centuries, Asian cultures have thrived on the soybean and with its high content of fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, the soybean is a valuable addition to any Western diet. Keep in mind though that Western soy is processed, ground up, and genetically modified. Soon, we may even be consuming soybeans grown entirely in a lab and, just like you’re fussy with the meat you eat, you should employ the same vigilance and moderation when it comes to consuming soy.

References:

1. “History of Soybeans“. Soya – Information about Soy and Soya Products. Retrieved November 19, 2012.

2. Schwarcz, Joseph A, The Fly in the Ointment: 70 Fascinating Commentaries on the Science of Everyday Life (Toronto: ECW Press, 2004), p. 193.

3.https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2622/2 retrieved November 20, 2012.

4. National Agricultural Statistics Board annual report, June 30, 2010. Retrieved November 19th, 2012.

5. Daniel Meyer and Christel Cederberg,“Pesticide use and glyphosate-resistant weeds- a case study of Brazilian soybean production” Sik: Your Science Partners Rapport Nr 809, 2010 accessed 22/1/13.

6. Fatih Yildiz, Phytoestrogens in Functional Foods (Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2005). pp. 3–5, 210–211

7. David Heber, “Plant Foods and Phytochemicals in human health,” in Handbook of Nutrition and Food, 2nd ed. Carolyn D . Berdanier et al. (CRC Press), 176–181.

8. Sarkar FH and Li Y, “Soy Isoflavones and cancer prevention” Cancer Invest 21(2003): 744-57.

9. Jorge Chavarro et al. “Soy food and isoflavone intake in relation to semen quality parameters among men from an infertility clinic.” Human Reproduction 23 (2008): 2584–2590.

10. Frank Sacks et al. “Soy Protein, Isoflavones, and Cardiovascular Health.” Published online January 17, 2006.

11. Shigeo Horie, “Chemoprevention of prostate cancer: soy isoflavones and curcumin.” Korean J Urol 53(2012):665-72

12. John Jarrell et al. “Phytoestrogens in human pregnancy.” Obstet Gynecol Int. (2012), doi: 10.1155/2012/850313

13. M. Messina and G. Redmond, “Effects of soy protein and soybean isoflavones on thyroid function in healthy adults and hypothyroid patients: a review of the relevant literature.” Thyroid 3 (2006): 249-58.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Considering an average child’s day normally begins by guzzling down sugar-laced cereals peddled by brightly colored mascots or fat-soaked donuts with bright pink frosting, it’s no surprise that in Australia the number of children on ADHD medication has doubled between 2002 and 2010 – from 245,791 to 507,168.¹

Being a fitness professional, I would love to sit here and tell you that the inactive, sugar-fuelled diet of so many tweens is the sole reason for the rise in ADHD cases, but the jury is still out on that claim. However, that isn’t to say that your little tyke’s obsession with reaching Tenth Prestige rank in Call of Duty 4 whilst shovelling sour gummy worms, Cheetos, and super-sized slushies down their gullets isn’t doing them a significant amount of long term damage.

Whenever we do something we enjoy, whether it is running a marathon, hitting a new 1RM deadlift, or spending an afternoon on the couch watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air reruns and eating a tub of chocolate ice cream, our brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that regulates what we find pleasurable and sets us off on a quest to seek out these pleasurable activities, regardless of what they may be.

When your child grabs that donut off of the bench for breakfast, fills up their cereal bowl with a crackling cereal, or sneaks a jelly snake from the canteen before school starts, their brains are flooded with dopamine. Just like with any other drug, they love the feeling of their insulin levels rising, that rush of energy, the sweet, smooth texture of the gummy goodness hitting their tongues, and they associate that taste sensation with pleasure.

That would be all well and good – everyone deserves some pleasure after all – if it wasn’t shown that sugar is as addictive as cocaine. Åsa Mackenzie, associate professor of neuroscience at Uppsala University, conducted a study to test what sugar addicted mice would do when presented with cocaine or sugar. Surprisingly enough, the researchers found that the sugar-addicted mice, even when presented with cocaine, still preferred the sugar due to becoming hypersensitive to the substance, resulting in more sugar required via ingestion for dopamine levels to spike. Åsa Mackenzie concluded that, “Lower doses than normal are enough to increase the propensity to ingest the substance, and this is true of both sugar and cocaine.”²

It’s a harrowing comparison, sugar and cocaine. One is found in nearly everything a typical child or adult in Western society will consume on a daily basis. The other will have you locked up tighter than a bodybuilder’s glutes after leg day. And both wreak absolute havoc on a person’s dopamine’s levels. Dopamine levels that, when reduced through drugs or sugar intake, may cause substance abuse and disrupt dopamine signalling, resulting in motor hyperactivity and mimicking the symptoms of ADHD in teenagers.^3,4

Considering, for a moment, that ADHD is over-diagnosed. It is a scary thought that maybe some of those children popping Ritalin don’t actually need the little white pills, but rather a breakfast filled with more proteins and fats (that’s right, I said fats) than sugars and carbohydrates. Such a breakfast would provide a sustained energy release throughout the day, increase concentration, and prevent their bodies from becoming dulled to the release of dopamine neuro-transmitters.

Unfortunately, excessive sugar intake in a child’s diet causes more problems than just ADHD symptoms (as if that wasn’t enough). Within our brains resides a chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is responsible for creating new long-term memories, learning, and higher order thinking. Exercise has been shown to positively influence the growth of BDNFwhilst diets high in sugars reduce the growth of BDNF, making it hard for kids to learn new things.^5,6 So when your son comes home from school and says he didn’t do anything, maybe he really didn’t or maybe he did, but just can’t remember because of all that sugar he’s been eating.

Separating children from sugar would be nearly as impossible as separating me from my protein shakes and deadlifts. Even though we know why sugars are bad, children see sprinkles and their eyes light up. Sure, you could say no, but that doesn’t mean they won’t just buy it when you’re not looking, or take some off of a friend. Instead, try limiting your child’s sugar consumption when you are with him or her. Encourage your child to seek out natural sources of sugar, via fruit, and keep even that to an afternoon or after dinner treat.

It won’t be easy. They’ll kick, scream, bite, moan and groan but remember, dousing their brains with sugar can lead to drug abuse, ADHD symptoms, Alzheimer’s, and dementia (through impaired BDNF production). And that’s just not worth it.

References:

1. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/contention-surrounds-the-use-of-ritalin-for-children-with-adhd/story-e6frg6n6-1226486880346

2. Johan Alsiö, Karin Nordenankar, Emma Arvidsson, Carolina Birgner, Souha Mahmoudi, Briac Halbout, Casey Smith, Guillaume M. Fortin, Lars Olson, Laurent Descarries, Louis Éric Trudeau, Klas Kullander, Daniel Lévesque, Åsa Wallén-Mackenzie. Enhanced sucrose and cocaine self-administration and cue-induced drug seeking after loss of VGLUT2 in midbrain dopamine neurons in mice. Journal of Neuroscience, 2011

3. JAMA and Archives Journals (2007, August 8). ADHD Appears To Be Associated With Depressed Dopamine Activity In The Brain.ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 6, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2007/08/070806164505.htm

4. Jucaite A, Fernell E, Halldin C, Forssberg H, Farde L. Reduced midbrain dopamine transporter binding in male adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: association between striatal dopamine markers and motor hyperactivity. Department of Woman and Child Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

5. Gomez- Pinilla F, Zhuang Y, Feng J, Ying Z, Fan G. Exercise impacts brain-derived neurotrophic factor plasticity by engaging mechanisms of epigenetic regulation. Eur J Neurosci 2011 Feb;33(3):383-90.

6. Molteni R, Barnard RJ, Ying Z, Roberts CK, Gomez-Pinilla F. A high-fat, refined sugar diet reduces hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal plasticity, and learning. Neuroscience2002; 112(4):803-14.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Deadly Ways Excess Sugar is Stunting Your Child appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Lastly, we have the personal trainers. For every good personal trainer who periodizes a client’s program, stays up to date on exercise and nutritional research, and motivates clients to change their lives, there are countless other trainers who create their sessions as they walk into the gym, use out-dated information taught to them in year twelve health class, and still believe periodization was a class they fell asleep in during high school.

But it is important not to chastize these trainers too much. After all, even the best trainers once sporadically changed their training mindsets to align with whatever fitness fad was trending at the given time. In a fast paced, information driven world, it becomes difficult to slow down. Want a pizza? Jump online and order it in seconds. And what about that dress from Spain? No problem, thanks to the Internet it will be at your door in three weeks. The days of delayed gratification are slowly dying and some personal trainers are inadvertently cashing in on our need to have everything now. As you begin walking down the yellow brick road, dodging bro-zillas and divas, your trainer should be imploring you to take things slow.

Unfortunately, some trainers make a living by spouting outrageous promises that they will never be able to fulfill. During your first session, your trainer should be conducting a movement analysis to check for dysfunction and putting you through a basic program, not telling you that you can lose eight kilos in ten weeks and pulling out kettlebells and Prowlers. It takes time to build strength, gain muscle, and lose fat and you may not see any significant changes for the first four to six weeks, but it is your trainer’s job to ensure that you understand that health isn’t a sprint but rather a marathon.

So, maybe your trainer has politely sat you down and explained that. He or she has told you that, unfortunately, you won’t have a bikini ready body in three weeks, despite what that article you read in the glossy woman’s magazine said. Theoretically, your trainer may understand that looking like Miranda Kerr or Wolverine after two weeks of training is unrealistic, however once some trainers hit the gym floor everything changes.

With the popularity of metabolic conditioning, inexperienced trainers are easily seduced by the powers of overly complicated toys and, while these may be scintillating and help to create a sense of accomplishment within you, it often leaves you bereft in understanding how to perform the five core lifts that will actually get you stronger, sleeker, and sexier.

Everybody should know how to perform the five core lifts: bench press, squat, deadlift, overhead press, and pull-ups. During the first few weeks of your training, your sessions should focus on understanding the necessary movement mechanics of these five exercises. Toys such as battling ropes, sleds, plyometric boxes, and kettlebells all serve a valuable place in training, but not until you’ve mastered the basics and your trainer can explain why you’re doing it.

And that one question could unravel a trainer’s entire exercise philosophy.

During your training session, ask your trainer why you are doing specific exercises and how all the individual training sessions fit into a bigger picture, otherwise called periodization. Especially for beginners, periodizing your training is imperative yet most personal trainers won’t bother to plan out four weeks of training beforehand to ensure consistency and cohesion.

As you go through your training sessions, your trainer should also be writing down your weights, reps, sets, times, and everything else short of how you decided to style your hair that day. If your trainer is not logging your workouts, weights, and progress, then there’s no definable proof that you’ve progressed (or not) since you started your training, and your trainer will be able to consistently produce spur of the moment workouts under the banner of metabolic conditioning. It is your trainer’s job to make sure you are progressing. How can they do that if they can’t tell you what workout you did last week, last month, or even last year?

Lastly, people hire personal trainers for a myriad of reasons. Everything from requiring extra motivation, to feeling uncomfortable around the grunting gorillas that preside in some gyms, to being able to hit cruise control with their training and have the personal trainer do all the programming work. When most people attend a personal training session, they spend one cathartic hour being told to step here, pull that, push this and, as they do as they’re told, they talk. They talk about their day, their worries, their troublesome children, and their hopes and dreams. If you don’t believe me now, trust me, once you start training with someone, you’ll begin to confide in him or her things that would make your hairdresser blush.

But your trainer has to keep you on track. It’s no good for them to simply point you in the direction of a machine, because it’s also their job to make sure that one day you’ll become an autonomous exercising machine. You’ll understand that when you perform the bench press, you need to create tension on the bar and row it down towards you. You’ll know the importance of retracting your scapulae during a barbell back squat and you’ll know why crunches and sit-ups are ineffective exercises. But, if your trainer is more interested in what you did on the weekend than providing explanations and correcting form, you’ll never understand why you’re doing something and that my friends, is a recipe for failure.

Personal trainers are a valuable commodity and an essential tool for progression and even innovation – if the job is done correctly. Next time you see your trainer, check for the following to ensure you’re getting the most value for your money:

1. They perform (or have performed) a movement screening and they are working to correct imbalances in posture and movement.
2. They are patient, both in character and their methodologies.
3. They understand how to use cool stuff, like battling ropes, but first, they’re insisting on the basics.
4. They explain why you are doing an exercise, and they willingly explain it to you as you go.
5. They log your workouts, for your benefit and theirs.

Remember, getting the body you want and living a healthy life won’t happen overnight. It can be a long and slow process but it’s your trainer’s job to ensure you succeed.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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