The bell just sounded and we are off with the second instalment of my blog…  How far am I going to run today? Well I’m aiming to cover the art of exercise selection or at least appropriate selection for sports by the time I run out of breath…

If we look back at my 3 key points I left you with:

•  What it is you want to achieve/improve
• How you intend to measure improvements
• How much time can you give to this

I would like to start by focusing on the first of the points, what is it we are trying to improve? If you haven’t already started writing your plan down, you may want to start now… Just a thought…

I shall start with a simple example… Lets say you’re a prop (if you don’t play rugby, that’s one of the two really fat guys) and you want to improve your strength when lifting a jumper in a lineout. I don’t want to get overly technical here, I want this blog to appeal to regular people as much as for trainers, we can debate the more technical items at another time.

So I’d say start by thinking about what the move you’re looking to improve in the following way:

• What does it look like?
• Does that vary?
• What does it feel like?
• How is it loaded?

A few examples of lineout lifting

Let’s start with the first question, what does it look like? Well it looks like a step (or steps) into a squat to a press with the weight moving from chest height to above head in a shoulder pressing type motion. So that’s going to be my exercise, a step into a squat where as I rise from the crouched position, I shoulder press.

Now does that vary? What I mean by that is if you’re lifting someone, are your feet always going to be in the same position? The chances are no. So why not vary the foot positions of the exercise so that you ensure that you are strong no matter where you are? So vary the exercise with different feet positions and take a wide, narrow, normal, right foot forward, left foot forward stance.

What does it feel like? Is it fast or slow? Heavy or light? The fact is you get what you train for and so if you train slow, you’ll be slow. In this case the move is explosive and heavy so your exercise needs to replicate that otherwise you’re going shoot yourself in the foot. This said, I wouldn’t hurtle out of the blocks straight into explosive and heavy lifting tomorrow, you should build up to this, especially in terms of weight.

Finally how is it loaded? Or more importantly, what in terms of weighted object would replicate the lifting of a grown man the best? Is it a barbell or a medicine ball or a dumbbell etc? I’m going to say for the sake of argument 2 dumbells, you could probably find a better loading vehicle but not everyone will have access to 50kg powerbags!

If everything has gone to plan, we should now have an exercise to improve our lineout lifting, either that or we now have a very confused reader! I’m hoping you have followed this… If not, don’t worry, I will post a video for this tomorrow and talk about how we add some meat to the bones of our workout and also a few other exercises for you to have a look at. Then I’ll do the same for golf, football and anything else you want me to look at…

Si Tate

I’ll tell you straight away that this is going to be an incomplete read, I’ll be finishing this post as the week goes on… What can I say? Time is tight and I’m pretty lousy when it comes to writing long articles so I prefer to do it in a set of sprints, rather than a long slow jog.

In this ‘interval blog’ I’d like to help those of you trying to incorporate some sports specific exercises into your gym training. I often have people asking me about the best exercises for sports such as rugby, football or golf (this incidentally is not a sport but I’m going to address it anyway) and so instead of answering you all individually, I thought I’d do it right here and save myself the masses of copying and pasting…

Ok so first up, before you lift a weight, squat jump or shake a corestick you need to have a clear idea of:

• What it is you want to achieve/improve
• How you intend to measure improvements
• How much time can you give to this

If you have these, the rest is simple or at least a lot more simple! If you don’t have this information, you are going to struggle to:

• Select appropriate exercises
• Determine success/failure
• Plan the training schedule

So let’s say you play football and you’re a winger and you’re looking to run faster, first up you need to determine what exactly this means. Are we talking about acceleration? Or do you mean top speed? Is this in a straight line or multiple directions?

Once you know this, the next part becomes simple enough… How do you measure that? If you’re looking to improve acceleration over a short distance across multiple directions for example, set up a series of cones across short distances in a number of directions. This will enable you to test the attributes that you are looking to improve and therefore in a month you will be able to re-test and to see whether or not your training has worked.

The final part is then to workout how much time you can dedicate to training towards your goal and get it in the diary… oh and be realistic… Don’t bullsh*t yourself!

Here ends my writing for today, I have a client in 5, but I leave you with the age old adage “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail” and I’ll be back tomorrow with Part 2…

Si Tate

The reason in my opinion calorie controlled diets don’t work.

On the whole calorie restriction will make you lose weight, if the deficit you create is sufficient enough.
For example if a womans BMR (Basel metabolic rate) is 1450 calories a day, and she restricts her calorie
intake to 1100. Creating a deficit of 350 calories a day. This deficit is probably significant enough for this
person to lose weight. This is how capris controlled diets work.

Now what most people do not realise is that as your weight decreases, so does your BMR. So let me give
you this example, the same woman has now been calorie restricted for a few months and all is going
well, but as with most people who have dieted over time weight loss starts to slow and eventually stop,
and in worst case scenario starts to put it on. So now this woman’s BMR which was 1450 calories starts
to come down, so let’s say her new BMR after 6 months is 1150 calories, but she is still restricting at
1100 calories a day, creating a calorie deficit of 50 calories. This deficit is not sufficient enough to keep
up with weight loss, but if she went down to 850 calories a day, this would probably induce weight loss
again, or if she just wanted to keep the weight off she had lost, she would need to eat around 1100
calories a day forever. Effectively on a diet for the rest of her life!!

Is it realistic to eat 850 calories a day? In my opinion NO, as in 100g of fillet steak their is approximately
190kcal,and also in my opinion life is about having fun, living etc not virtually starving yourself thin!

A lot of modern research suggests that calorie restricted diets are nonsense, and that eating better
quality, less refined foods, and might I add more food not less, is the way forward.

Click to see Dans profile

The elite level of personal trainer for FASTER, are thorough and get great results quickly.

In this video you get to see the FASTER guys working a client who plays professional football, through all of the assessments, solutions and then take away techniques he will need in order to carry on playing at a high level.

Notice the intent to keep the movements true to the players needs and then the solutions get applied as close to the movement the client asks for, as possible. The range of techniques move from Functional Therapy, Fascial Manipulation, Tool assisted massage and Functional Performance training, all used to help the client become better at movement. For a footballer, that means better performance and more injury free games, to a regular every day client, it means efficient, quality movement that burn more calories and allows you to train harder…