Hey team, I hope you are all going well as we draw into the last month before Christmas. Aspire has been buzzing with energy and it’s been great to see so many people training hard!
If you are training in a gym, health facility or ever using the outdoors for health and fitness then there are a few guidelines that will increase your rate of success by a large amount. As I always mention, this is just my view and every situation is different, but there are many common things that a great number of people share and for the best part, planning for success in 5 steps will apply to most people who train in any facet of fitness.
- 1) Deciding what you actually want
The first most thing you need to decide before doing anything is what are you wanting to achieve? This can be a general idea to start with and the most common ones in relation to health and fitness are; weight loss, improving cardio fitness, improving mobility, increasing muscle mass and/or strength or a mix of a few and so on. As they say “if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time” and this couldn’t be more true. Find a general direction or goal to aim at so you can at least fire in the general direction! From this point we can start to get specific and narrow things down.
- 2) Goal setting and getting specific
After you have decided what you want to achieve, it’s time to get the sights dialed in so you can hit your target more accurately, but don’t forget to be realistic as well (this is also the perfect time for you to consult with a personal trainer).
If you are after weight loss, then set yourself a time period and how much weight you would like to lose. In my experience anything from half a kg to 1kg a week is pretty good and healthy depending on the person of course. I have had clients lose up to 3kgs in a week, but I recommend them being under the supervision of a trainer or nutritionist/ dietician in these cases of rapid weight loss as I can be unhealthy to lose it that fast.
If you are looking to gain strength, then test your 3-5 rep max in a few main exercises and give yourself a time period and set a realistic weight you want to increase that weight by. If you can increase your strength by 4% a week then you are doing extremely well! Always go up in small amounts as big jumps in weight lifted can cause injury as your muscles, tendons and ligaments need time to strengthen safely.
If you are wanting to improve your cardio fitness then jump on your machine of choice, go for a measured run, go for a measured bike or time your swim and see what you are capable of doing in a certain time or distance then set a new time or distance covered that you would like to achieve in a month or so.
For muscle gain, it is easy! Get your body compositions measured and retest at a later date after hypertrophy training. Every form of exercise or goal is measurable, even mobility. So test to see where you are at in relation to your goals to establish a baseline (which our baseline assessment covers in a general way) and train specifically for that goal and get retested to see if you are making progress and on track to reaching your specified goals.
- 3) Planning and training for your specific goals
After you have set your measurable goals, you then need to train towards your goals. This is where many people lose their way and where a health professional is most valuable. You will need to sit down and plan out how you will be training specifically to your goals. There is no point spending most of your time doing resistance training if you are training specifically for cardio and vice versa. But in cases of weight loss or general health, then a mix of weights and cardio is ideal. You can see why goal setting is so important as it will determine how you will be training.
Weight loss is an easy one. I generally like to get people doing a mix of weights and cardio after. The reason for cardio after is because when we exercise fresh, we burn less body fat as our body mainly uses muscle glycogen as our main source of energy and to to use enough glycogen to utilize body fat more effectively, we need to work out for more than half an hour. Doing weights in this time is for more mentally stimulating for most people than doing a whole hour of cardio, plus resistance training will also improve your bone density, joint health and promote mobility if done properly. But if you prefer doing straight cardio, then this is fine. In reality as long as you are working hard at any form of exercise, you will encourage weight loss.
If you are after muscle gain, then resistance training will be your staple diet and this is one I see too many people getting wrong. If you are training for muscle gain/ hypertrophy then egos must be left at the door. It is about moving the muscle as inefficient as possible (making the lightest weight as hard as possible) and every exercise should be full range of motion to stretch and contract the muscles as much as possible, you should be moving with a slowly more controlled tempo especially on the eccentric phase (releasing the weight or lengthening the muscle). You should be using an optimal weight rather than going heavier and losing your ability to contract and control the working muscles. Rep ranges will generally be 8-15 and sometimes more.
The opposite is applied when you are training for strength. It is about moving as efficiently as possible with a heavier weight. This is usually done with a little bit more speed on the concentric phase (lifting the weight/ contracting the muscle) and rep ranges are much lower and can range from 1-6. As a rule of thumb I generally don’t encourage training with 1 rep maxes as it can cause injury and is hard on your nervous system. Periodization for strength training will be quite important too.
Cardio health is even easier. Whether you are a runner, cyclist, rower or non specific, then if you want to improve cardio fitness, you have to do cardio! Whether you increase the resistance, incline, duration or just go faster, you will improve.
So I have covered just a couple of modes of training, but one thing I want to stress is the importance of nutrition. You have to eat to your goals and actually has more of an impact than exercise. If you eat too much or eat the wrong foods, then you won’t lose weight. If you don’t eat enough then you will struggle to gain muscle or grow stronger and if you eat the wrong foods, you will increase your bodyfat more than muscle. This is actually the hardest part and as I have mentioned before, if you are struggling with this part then trainer can help you with basic stuff, but Emma from Focus on Food in the sports med department can give you full nutrition plans and much much more.
- 4) Consistency and elbow grease
Now you have decided what your goals are, specified a quantifiable measure of improvement and set a plan of attack, you can get to work. When implementing any long term plan, consistency will give you the best results. They key is to make training a part of your weekly schedule and make it a habit. Someone who trains 3 days a week consistently with make far better progress than someone who trains 5 times one week then 1 time the next. This also equally applies with nutrition, so make sure that when you have established what your nutrition will have to be to suit your goals and training, you must eat consistently too. I always say that if you are eating on point 5-6 days a week then you are doing pretty well. Try to be consistent with all aspects of daily activities like staying hydrated, getting enough sleep each night and so on, so you can identify how different things will affect results when you change one thing at a time.
When you have established consistency in your training and daily habits then it’s time to crank up the heat. When you are training, always train with intent. Push yourself hard and aim to get a little bit better each week. It is quite common to see people finishing their set looking as fresh as they did when they started. If you are truly serious about reaching your goals then think of every rep, every minute running or cycling or every lap in the pool as 1 step closer to your goal and the harder you can push with each rep, minute or lap the the bigger the step towards that goal.
- 5) Making changes or asking for help when it isn’t working
Sometimes we can put in lots of time goal setting, planning and training hard, but unfortunately it doesn’t always work the way we expected. This is why it is a good idea to measure body compositions and/or performance so we have that baseline to compare to (which we cover the basics of in the baseline assessment at Club Aspire Health and Sports). They say “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result each time” and this couldn’t be more true. If you get retested and nothing is changing after 2-3 weeks then something has to change and that is a fact. So you will have to identify exactly what you can do to get things moving and if you are struggling to figure out what to do, then I strongly recommend seeing a professional who can help you. It will save you so much time and frustration. Looking from my perspective, it is quite heart breaking when I see people struggling and getting frustrated. For untrained people, there are so many variables to consider and it takes years to understand what works for you. But for trainers like myself or nutritionist/ dietician we do it for a profession and we can identify things far faster and sort out the issues.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help if you are unsure as it will actually save you money in the long run.
So to cover everything in a nutshell, planning for success will greatly improve your results as it narrows down what you need to do and guide you with laser like focus rather than just walking in without a plan of attack and hoping something happens. Its like comparing a person lost in the forest with a blindfold on trying to find a way out to a person without a blindfold and giving them a compass. A small time planning will save hours and hours of your time and yield far greater rewards. Be specific, train and eat with consistency and intent, try to have some fun along the way and do what works for you until you have reached your goals. If results aren’t happening then make changes that do get results or simply invest in a health professional to figure all the hard stuff out for you.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks to the people for the positive feedback.
Cheers, Craig
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