Hi and welcome to another week,
Happy Father’s Day to all the R1 Dads – I hope you had an amazing day filled with steaks and gains! My family have certainly looked after me – in my fridge right now is at least my body weights worth of peanut butter based, chocolately treats!
With the new Beach Bodies program underway AND a whole heap of new Round 1’ers in the gym over the last couple of weeks, I wanted to give this week’s blog over to ‘my tips for starting on the right foot’. I feel like there have been 7000 of these hints and tips posted in the blog over the past 5 (yep, 5) years but it always feels like there is something more to add. So here goes with ‘5 tips for getting started on a new program’! (Doesn’t that sound like a great marketing line).
Number 1. Don’t forget that eating good food is going to be more than half the battle.
When you first start, you can make progress even if you DON’T change a thing about your diet. You can keep eating fast food, filling your glass with soft drink and eating chocolate after dinner every night. And because you are now exercising (or in the case of beach bodies people, exercising ‘more’), you will make progress when it comes to your fitness, strength and you’re your body composition. But that doesn’t mean optimal nutrition can’t both speed up the process AND set the stage for solid long-term progress. When better to start a new health (ier) eating plan than when you are starting a new exercise plan. And for the guys out there who are thinking to themselves that ‘but I want to bulk up first, I will lose the weight later’ those fat cells you gain will need to be lost at some point in the future. ‘Later’ is going to come and if you are not careful it is going to SUCK!
Number 2. You have to do your conditioning work. (And yes, it is going to be horrible).
When you start you will improve your general conditioning just by turning up and ‘surviving’ the sessions. But whilst ‘survival’ is better than the alternative, it is worth asking the question ‘Is this making me better for the long-term?’
Now, I will tell you that if you are doing cardio, there needs to be a level of intensity in order for you to benefit. But (and there is always one of them) if you want to improve your conditioning and your ‘adaptation’ then spending 20-minutes on a spin-bike or tread-mill post session will really help. It will really, really help. These relatively low intensity cardio workouts will increase your work capacity and when the high intensity stuff comes around (calorie assault bike efforts anyone?) you will be better positioned to attack them rather than endure them.
Number 3. You have to spend some time looking after yourself.
When you get started, there are no road-blocks. But if you play, you WILL pay – and eventually your body is going to start hurting and impacting on your ability to train. Stretching with the power bands, rolling on the rollers, laying on the massage balls – none of these things are cool (I know, I dislike doing it as well) but if you spend the time (and we are talking 5-8 minutes or so here) you will benefit.
Number 4. Sore is sort but Injured is Injured (and you need to know the difference).
If your muscles are sore from training, fine. If you have a knee or shoulder (or wrist, or ankle, or whatever) INJURY though, well, that is something different. If you are ‘just’ sore, moving (and therefore training) can often help you feel better. But if you are injured, loading up on the injury (doing overhead press with an injured shoulder) is probably not a great plan. How do you know if you are sore or injured? If you have a back-ground in sports, I can probably just say ‘You will know’. If you are new to all this ‘exercise stuff’, well, it can be a little trickier but injuries are ‘usually’ isolated to one body part (unlikely that BOTH shoulders would be injured but very likely that they BOTH would be sore!) but if a few days have passed and you are not feeling any better, get yourself off to the physio and ask for some advice. Injuries (rarely) ‘fix themselves’ and the more pro-active you are in seeking assistance the less chance of any long-term ramifications.
5. Follow the program. Stick to the program.
If you are just getting started, stick to the plan. Whilst your goal might be a 6-pack for summer, doing countless situps is not the path towards it – goblet squats, boxing and assault bikes COUPLED with some ab work (just like we program in our boxing sessions) is a far better bet. And whilst I understand that bicep curls are very functional (if the aim is to have big biceps) a more balanced, long-term approach that focuses on compound movements (again, just like we program in Boxing, Body Work and Beach Bodies) will be more effective.
Stick to the program. If you have time and want to do some extras, awesome – chat to the trainers about what will be effective. We really are there to help and can probably help you get the most out of your time in the gym…
So there you go. Five things to help you make gains when you are getting started in your training. Or when you are starting a new program. Or whatever the trendier name I came up with at the start of the blog was!
Good luck everyone – and Happy Fathers day.
See you in the gym,
Michael.
p.s. I am not sure whether I will manage a blog next week. I am heading to Melbourne to watch the Bulldogs play in the first week of the finals series – or, as I like to call it, my date with disappointment. Depending on time available in Melbourne and whether or not I can get enough elbow room to type on the flight home will determine whether there is a blog or no blog!
The first week of the Beach Bodies#2 (BB#2) is over and week 2 has been published. For everyone new to the program, we are still in the ‘feeling out’ phase and it is going to take a couple of weeks to get into the swing of it. Don’t stress – everything will all seem a lot ‘simpler’ in a couple of weeks time.
For anyone still wondering whether or not to get involved, the structure of the program will be similar but different to BB#1 – each day will consist of 2x programming streams. Stream 1 will be for those people just getting started and will (for example) include a linear progression similar to the one that we followed for nine-weeks in the current program. Stream 2 will be more focussed on the supportive exercises etc that we are all doing now in the ‘back end’ of BB#1.
Other elements of the program – classes, conditioning, stretching and pre-hab – will be largely unchanged.
How will you know when to move from the linear progression to the supportive work? Well – you’ll ‘know’! As those people who did BB#1 can no doubt attest, after nine weeks of progressions they were pretty much ‘ready’ to jump across to the supportive work because ALL of their progressions had pretty much plateaued. If your linear progressions are still going UP – well, stay on the linear path until your progressions stop and then jump across…
Costs will be pretty straight-forward:
– $99 for new participants.
– $49 for anyone continuing on the training pathway who participated in BB#1.
As with BB#1, these prices include monthly Body Scans for participants – if you have participated in BB#1, the price you will pay is less than 50% of just getting the four (4) body scans done!
Registration link is below:
https://tms.ezfacility.com/OnlineRegistrations/Register.aspx?CompanyID=1214&GroupID=1369966
As noted last week, we have received a large % of our order but are still waiting on the ‘SMALL’ bag mitts to arrive. Speaking to our suppliers, these should be here the week of September 22nd (or thereabouts).
Also arriving at that time will be a new delivery of bright red bag mitts – aka ‘Share Gloves’ – aka ‘Hire Gloves’. Again, it is best to have your own, but if you don’t, it is just $2 to hire some gloves for the day. If you do need to borrow some off us, no stress, but please remember for reasons of hygiene you MUST wear a pair of inner gloves or hand-wraps underneath them.
I will keep talking about this until they arrive – and they will be available for sale ‘soon’. When they arrive, there will be a choice between a couple of different slogans and (hopefully) one of them strikes a particular chord with you. We have gone with a limited choice of colors to start with (grey or charcoal for boys, pink or charcoal for girls).
There will also be a range of crops (3/4 pants) available for the girls.
As noted last week, when they go up the t’s and singlets will be $35, the crops will be $65.
The baseline for the upcoming October Challenge has been laid down. The challenge will feature:
1/. Two new challenge circuits – each one must be completed in each of the 4-weeks of the challenge.
2/. Escalating food restrictions. A new ‘exclusion’ will be added every week to challenge everyone to think about their food and prepare meals ahead of time.
This is in addition to the ‘usual’ class requirements etc. More details during the week – I am hoping to get the videos up for the challenge circuits this week!
Upsets galore (tanking galore???) and FOUR tipsters – Ben, Wendy, someone I can’t identify AND, most importantly, Paul O’Connor – stood tall and picked 7 winners.
This means that Paul O’Connor has won the 2015 Tipping Contest and – as is traditional – will receive a $100 voucher to be spent at Round 1. Awesome work mate – well deserved.
Obvious chaos in Dream Team with mass resting of players by Fremantle, North Melbourne (and others). But through it all, Justin – atop the ladder at the end of the ‘regular season’ – held strong to defeat Ash who came hard with a late season run.
Congrats to Juddy on taking out the contest – well done to everyone for a hard fought year.
Tour the WWE Performance Centre in Orlando. Tyre, power racks, landmines…look familiar!
http://www.wwe.com/videos/wwe-performance-center-tour-part-two-superstars-get-pumped-26183193
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