Physically Fit for Life
In the last article posted to this blog, I discussed the current widespread attraction to extremes in the realms of physical fitness and appearance and the potential damage that this can do. If you haven’t read that article you can check it out: Attraction to the Extremes of Physical Fitness. I want to spend this post developing an idea alluded to in the previous post, that of a more sane approach: the goal of being physically fit for life. Lets start out working backwards by defining the results we require of exercise, results that will match our aim of being …
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Attraction to the Extremes of Physical Fitness and Appearance and How it May be Harming You
Before we delve in to the main topic of this article I am itching to tell you, as an aside, how to be a world-class athlete, let me get that off my chest then I guarantee we’ll get back to the bigger picture. How to be a World Beating Athlete Perhaps You’d Like To: Run 100m faster than Usain Bolt or Florence Griffith-Joyner? Run a marathon in less time than Dennis Kimetto or Paula Radcliffe? Out-punch Mike Tyson or Ann Wolfe? Develop superior conditioning to Conor McGregor or Holly Holm? Build an Olympian body to outclass Arnold Schwarzenegger …
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Performance Pins for Drop Sets
What are Performance Pins? What are drop sets? A drop set refers to the technique where an exercise is performed with a given load as per usual. However instead of finishing the exercise when the targeted musculature has reached MMF in the initial set, the weight is reduced by approximately 10-25% as quickly as possible and the trainee continues to perform the exercise with this reduced load. The person exercising will usually be able to achieve an additional 1-4 repetitions with the lighter load. Are drop sets useful? When would you use them? There are three circumstances that …
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12 Reasons Fitness Businesses Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeeds
Whether you are already a fitness instructor, a personal trainer, gym owner or are just now considering starting a fitness business, you will need to have a clear route to success. Having had just released our newest course, the Master Personal Trainer (MPT) course, which is packed with Business and Marketing content, it feels like the perfect time to write about the 12 common reasons why fitness business fail and provide tips that will help you navigate a safe and successful path to business growth. Let’s get started… 1. There is no need for the service you offer in the market Before you set …
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The AIO Reviewed
As a distributor of the HITGYM AIO, we get asked a lot of questions about the machine and how appropriate and suitable it is specifically for performing high intensity training. I have been working with the AIO for over two years now and I think it’s high time I shared with you a deep and thorough review. Despite our obvious affiliation with David Health Solutions, I did my best to disconnect myself from the business interest and offer my honest, unbiased opinion of the exercise equipment. The basics The HITGYM AIO is manufactured by David Health Solutions and is …
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Metabolism, in the mind’s eye
In my experience, most high-intensity training (HIT) practitioners don’t focus on metabolism. It’s hard to blame them. Discussion of force, velocity, muscle tension, and momentary muscle failure have real-world applications that clients can knowingly experience. Metabolism is practically invisible and lacks easily accessible realtime metrics that we can share with our clients. However, we would be remise if we didn’t share the truly amazing adaptations that occur within seconds of finishing a HIT session. The energy systems Before we jump into the adaptations that occur from HIT, a basic understanding of metabolism is necessary. Most people are familiar with the …
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Equilibrium
Having recently immersed myself in the methods of high intensity training, a very common trend which has made itself apparent over the last short while is the mammoth disconnect which exists between what the public generally believes about exercise, and what is actually testable, verifiable, and true. Unsurprisingly, this disconnect extends beyond what the public generally considers to be a ‘normal’ exercise routine, and actually flirts with what many consider to be the outer edges of fitness. If we think about exercise in terms of concentric circles, what most people will generally place in the middle – as being the …
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High Intensity Training: Can you do it without a Personal Trainer?
High intensity training is an evidence-based approach to resistance exercise, an approach that is particularly attractive as it produces excellent results with relatively little time investment required. Not only does it stimulate hypertrophy of muscle tissue, it also concurrently improves strength, flexibility, bone density, metabolism and cardiovascular health. All of these improvements can be achieved and most likely optimized with just one or two, 10-25 minute workouts a week. This is obviously a hugely attractive proposition, so attractive that some think that it must be sales pitch or exaggeration that so little exercise can provide the full gamut of exercise …
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Pre-Exhaustion Technique and REX Conference 2015
In the exercise world, there is often fierce debate over protocol, application and technique. At its most productive this debate can spur on experimentation, enabling us to refine the application of exercise protocol. Sometimes we need to question elements of the protocol that have been ingrained in HIT since its inception or since the time of its initial popularity in the 70s and 80s: the original Nautilus era. In this post I want to discuss a research paper that does just that, one that I have been meaning to write about for a while. Researchers James Fisher, Luke Carlson, James …
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Hypertrophy Training: One Set vs Four Sets
A question of efficacy Which has the potential to stimulate the better hypertrophic response: one set of an exercise or multiple sets? This is a classic question that has been stimulating both debate and research in the field of exercise science since at least the 1960’s. For any activity in which we endeavor to succeed it is good to have a firm grasp of what works, what doesn’t work, and what works most effectively. Since man and woman first lifted heavy objects and realized that they could improve not only their strength but also their muscular size the question arose: …
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