5 Tips for Maximising Fitness Results
If you are reading this then there is a good chance that you want to improve your health and/or fitness level. Using these 5 tips below I believe you can transform your current training/nutrition habits to give you the best chance at achieving your desired outcomes. Reform habits, Transform behaviour, Perform in life.
1 - Educate yourself
For anyone pursuing health and fitness related goals you will no doubt come across a plethora of new fad diets or training systems that 'guarantee' you new shiny results in half the time. The sad news is that these things are often exactly that - fads. The good news is that I believe there is a way to guarantee results in quite possibly half the time (compared to most people drinking Herbalife and doing 12 booty workouts a week).
The human body is amazing, it is strong, resilient, resistant and incredibly smart. It will adapt to almost anything we throw at it and fairly quickly! In order for you to optimise your training and maximise your results you NEED to grasp an idea of how to best stimulate the body in order to get the right responses/adaptations. There are multiple ways to stimulate your body and cause it to adapt. The type and level of stimulation will vary from person to person. Your genetics, lifestyle, nutrition and training age will all impact what is needed to get your body to grow or change.
If you aren't lucky enough to be able to afford a personal trainer who can safely and efficiently guide you through this process then the best advice I can give you is to educate yourself. Dive into the basics of human anatomy & physiology. The body is a series of levels and pulleys, in order to efficiently stimulate specific muscles you need to understand how to manipulate these levers in different ways. Learn the fundamental benefits of compound movements (two or more joints moving at the same time) vs Isolation movements (one joint moving), hinging movement patterns vs squatting movement patterns or how to train your different energy systems. Understanding where your different muscle groups are and how to best improve your lifts will help you build strength and create more tension ultimately leading to faster results.
There are a few great books you can refer to such as 'Strength Training Anatomy' by Frederic Delavier and 'Becoming a Supple Leopard' by Dr. Kelly Starrett. Both informative and easy to put into practise. (There a few other great books that I will direct you to later in the article).
2. Train with an open mind
One of my favourite sayings is 'always keep a white belt mentality'. Not just because of my love for martial arts but because it stands for keeping an open mind and staying ready to learn new things. There is always someone who you can learn from and as another famous quote states ' knowledge is power'. With regard to health, fitness or performance training you need to understand that there are a series of different training modalities that compliment each other, improving mobility will improve strength and improving strength will improve mobility. Try not to get too stuck in one form of training, diversify and you will see the benefits.
Losing body fat or building muscle tend to be at the forefront of most health and fitness related goals. This is definitely not a bad thing as we are all aware of the detriments obesity/high levels of body fat can have on our health and staying leaner will decrease our risk of developing cardiovascular related diseases. However, in my opinion, unless you are an athlete like a bodybuilder with a very specific set of goals, optimising our bodies in all areas should be the aim. Whether you want to break through a PB lift, or improve your 5k run or drop some body fat, having a varied approach to your training is key. Being pain free, improving mobility, building strength, improving our cardiovascular endurance, practising good sleep hygiene, healthy gut function, improving focus and energy levels are all things we should strive for. Unsurprisingly it takes a range of training methods, lifestyle habits and nutrition strategies to achieve these things.
All of these different parts of our health and fitness tend to compliment each other when it comes to human optimisation. As previously eluded to, if you build strength it can improve mobility, if you move more it can improve sleep, if you improve your cardiovascular endurance you'll tend to have higher energy levels. Keep an open mind to optimise your training, lifestyle and nutrition and you'll see an array of benefits.
3. Optimise life outside the gym
Following on from 'training with an open mind', optimising your life outside of the hour you spend in the gym is crucial, there are another 23 hours you need to make the most of. Some of the most important areas to address, which also tend to be the most overlooked include; sleep, hydration, nutrition, practising mindfulness and your social life. All of these play a huge role in any health, fitness or performance related goal. Lets start with sleep. getting a sufficient amount of good quality sleep will have huge positive impacts on your training adaptations. Rest is where the magic happens, lets say you've been training hard, applying progressive overload week by week and stretching your work capacity, if we don't allow enough time to recover all of the stimulus, its wasted time.
Improving sleep hygiene by limiting time spent in bed other than when it is time to sleep, regulate your bedtime/morning wake time, limit your exposure to blue light (screens) before bed, create a quiet, cool and dark sleep environment. Be able to switch from your Sympathetic Nervous System to your Parasympathetic Nervous System or in other words, move away from your fight or flight, high stress, high intensity state to a more conscious, relaxed and down-regulated state. One powerful tool to use is practising mindfulness, do you give yourself time to switch off? Read a book, or have a bath!
4. Train with intent, not your ego
This one is aimed at you blokes in the free weights area who are grunting your way through your 12th set of bicep curls in the squat rack. Leave your ego in the changing rooms there is no use for it, there is use however for a little controlled aggression just make sure you are placing it in the right spot. Training with intent is CRUCIAL, there are a million quotes I could put down for this one 'you get out what you put in' or 'if you do what you've always done, you'll be what you've always been' but one nonnegotiable is that for you to make progress with your training you need to stretch your work capacity. This being said, screaming your way through a bench press at 200mph is not going to yield the response you want it to, if you are trying to build muscle, slow down your tempo, be disciplined with the lowering of the weights because believe me after your 4th/5th rep your muscles will be screaming and its at this point that you need to bring your intent and work ethic to the table.
When you embark on a new health, fitness or performance related journey applying yourself and immersing yourself in the long game is the way to success. Consistency and hard work will yield results.
5. You can't out-train a bad diet
You may of heard this phrase before and thats probably for a reason. The large proportion of failed body composition goals are a result of poor nutrition. Either under/over fuelling, insufficient nutrients like protein or fibre or a surplus of unwanted sugar or alcohol. Lets keep this simple, if you are serious about changing your body you need to be serious about what goes inside it. If you think there is room for 20-30 units of alcohol a week when trying to transform your body composition you are mislead, this being said its important to educate yourself on how to be efficient with your nutrition not overly restrictive. Grasping a basic understanding of energy balance and key nutrients you need in your diet in imperative, this way you can manipulate how much/when/what to consume on a daily basis, enough to meet the demand of your training but not a surplus of calories that aren't needed. The vast proportion of diet strategies you will read about online or see on tv will only yield short term fat loss results because they put you in a severe calorie deficit. We should aim to be in an appropriate deficit that isn't too extreme otherwise we risk under-fuelling our body and experiencing bounce back as soon as you start to eat normally again because you will likely quit because your body is tired of a crazy restrictive, deprived style eating pattern.
My best advice is to work out your energy demands/calorie demands and educate yourself on what/how much of key nutrients like protein, carbohydrates and fats that we NEED in our diet. Once you have these guidelines, I would then do an analysis of what your current nutrition habits are, how does it slot around your routine, how far off these targets are you currently? Then you need to create a sustainable system using 1% changes to get you closer to these targets from where you currently are. This can be a small as changing your breakfast or drinking 2-3 litres of water p/day. One of the best tips I could give you whether it is in regard to training or nutrition behaviour changes, is focus on your systems not just your desired outcome/goals - book recommendation on this = 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear.
Hopefully these tips will provide you some new perspectives if anything else. If you require any assistance or indeed have any questions relating to anything you have read here then please do get in contact. If you are looking for 1-1 support in achieving your goals then enquire today to see if you are the right fit for our coaching programme. Finally I will close off by saying that there is no one size fits all approach to training, nutrition or lifestyle to yield the best results, learn to self evaluate/educate and then create new systems on what will work for you.
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