Regular exercise won’t save you from the dangers of sitting
You’ve probably heard the phrase “sitting is the new smoking”. A strong and attention capturing statement indeed and one that implies a familiar activity has deleterious effects on our long-term health. Perhaps conjuring thoughts in the reader of diseases associated with smoking such as cancer and heart disease. One may also infer that sitting is addictive, that the comfortable looking armchair is luring us seductively to an early grave. I want to find out if there is any merit to this attention-grabbing headline and if so, what we can do to protect ourselves from the ravages of…sitting? What are …
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Physically Fit for Life Part 2: Resistance Training
In the last post, I covered the benefits of performing regular moderate intensity activity, specifically walking. As discussed in that post, walking is a form of exercise that helps to improve the first 7 factors on our list highlighting some of the most important benefits that can be attained through exercise. In this post I am going to address another type of exercise, one that can stimulate positive adaptations in the remaining 9 factors for being Physically Fit for Life, namely: Muscle tissue mass Strength, across your entire muscular system Bone mass density and the strength and integrity of your joints, …
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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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In Conversation with Blair Wilson: Making a success of HIT
Mentored by co-author of Body By Science John Little, Blair Wilson, owner of MedX Precision Fitness, probably couldn’t have had a better introduction to HIT. We spoke to Blair to find out what it takes to succeed in the niche world of High Intensity Training. When Blair was 16 years old, he had to have shoulder surgery due to accumulated strain from rugby, hockey, water-skiing and other athletic endeavours he was involved with. It was a case of “over use” rather than a momentous injury; and in retrospect it was a lucky situation that led Blair to start working …
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MMF better than RP: Strength and Body Composition Results (part 3)
The first two posts relating to this piece of research (The effects of low volume resistance training with and without advanced techniques in trained participants. Jürgen Giessing, James Fisher, James Steele, Frank Rothe, Kristin Raubold, Björn Eichmann) looked at the reasons we consider this research paper to be of value, the exercise protocols used and the differences in protocol between the three groups (ssRM, ssMMF and ssRP). In this post, we will look at how the researchers gathered the data and the actual results of the study in detail and we will take a look at the conclusions that can …
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Understanding Exercise and Choosing Your Alpha Exercise and Beta Activities
Why do you exercise? When you decided that you wanted to commence an exercise program, what went through your mind? I bet it was one of the reasons listed below. Typically, there are four categories of motivators or values for wanting to commence exercise. Do let us know if you can think of others! It should also be pointed out that all the motivators above are legitimate to one degree or another. Of course an individual may have a number of different motivators from two or more of the above categories, all converging to drive that person to start a new exercise regime. …
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What is Momentary Muscular Failure, Why We Seek It Out… and How To Get There
Achieving Momentary Muscular Failure (MMF) has long been a key tenet of High Intensity Training (HIT): the goal, the pinnacle, the crowning achievement for each exercise performed in a routine. What is MMF and why does it occur? Let’s simplify things by looking at MMF specifically within the context of dynamic exercise consisting of concentric (lifting) and eccentric (lowering) muscle actions. In this context, momentary muscular failure refers to the moment in an exercise set, when the force output of the targeted musculature has been reduced to a level equal to the force of the chosen load, due to …
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Becoming a Personal Trainer: Decisions, Decisions
You love exercise and you want a career helping others to get the most out of their body. You have decided that becoming a Personal Trainer is the way that you are going to do this. Where do you go from this decision? What do you need to enter the rewarding and lucrative personal training marketplace? The most important decision: What type of exercise are you going to offer? First and foremost, you will need to decide what type of fitness activity you want to specialize in. We believe that high intensity training is the safest, most effective and …
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A High Intensity Workout with James Steele
In the workout that follows, you will see James performing a High Intensity Workout. It is worthy of note that this was the first time that James trained on this equipment, therefore the loads for the exercises were kept somewhat conservative, hence the length of the sets. This is particularly true of the leg press because James was also recovering from a sacroiliac joint injury at the time of this workout. With that said, here follows a detailed breakdown of James’ workout. The first exercise James performs is a Lower Back movement. The primary targeted muscles are those of the …
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Sean’s High Intensity Workout Explained
In the HIT workout that follows you will see Sean performing exercises from his A Routine, the workout is performed on the HITGYM AIO by David Health Solutions. And so Sean begins starting the routine with a Lower Back movement. The primary targeted muscles are those of the lumbar and thoracic spine. Note Sean takes his time in starting the movement, this is important as we are aiming to take 4 seconds or more for the weight to come off the stack. It is especially important with regards to the lower back (but also with all other exercises) to keep …
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