The Five Pillars of Good Health

March 22, 2013 By Graeme Marsh

When we talk about ‘fitness’ or ‘health’ definitions are often blurred. Inwardly the fitness industry tends to focus heavily on body composition, size, and strength, while outwardly our health service and medical industry have real concerns over obesity, diabetes, and the rapidly increasing elderly population.

There is still a major disparity between the two camps, though in reality the two are closely linked. The fitness industry by its nature seems to attract those who are younger and have less interest in the long-term health aspects of exercise and fitness. Through the rise in media surrounding how we look, rather than how we feel, it has become far more trendy to post pictures of six-pack transformations and large muscular physiques than case studies of improved health, daily function, or disease reduction.

Nevertheless, the two need not be mutually exclusive, although it is questionable that we should sacrifice the latter in search of the former. If our clients are truly in search of ‘feeling’ better, we need to take a wider look at their health and know that if they can get those aspects in line, they will not only feel they look better, but also feel better about how they look.

1) Emotional Health:

The increase in depression, eating disorders, stress-related illness, and dependence on medication is frightening. Our ability to change our habits and improve our health is built on a foundation of being able to emotionally cope with change, and the realisation of the need to do so. Obesity lives at one end of the eating spectrum, while obsessive eating behaviours and eating disorders occupy the other. Both are unhealthy but are all too easily formed. For many who feel a lack of control in other aspects of their life, eating habits can quickly become the anchor to which they attach a need for control. Of course, eating is not the only vice chosen. Alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling, violence, and promiscuity all form conduits by which people try to find some escape from their unhappiness. For those wanting to make changes to their life, addressing emotional health is the place to begin. Recognising this and then taking steps to improve it is a necessary start to living a life free of unhealthy emotional attachments and destructive habits.

Tip: Many factors affect our emotional health and the reality is that we will all have to deal with difficult and unpleasant situations in our life. Adopting healthy habits and hobbies that bring us pleasure, be that owning a pet or taking up a sport, improve our ability to deal with these situations and minimise their impact on our overall health. Find something you’ve always wanted to try or experience and go do it. Searching out new and exciting experiences is always rewarding. Support this with a diet high in unprocessed foods and vegetables, healthy sleep patterns, and minimising substance/stimulant use that tend to have a depressive effect.

2) Joint Health:

While working out is often associated with building bigger muscles and improving muscular strength, it is far less trendy or sexy to talk about joint health. However, when our joints start to break down or are injured, the effects are debilitating. This is why we place such a large focus on flexibility when working with our personal training clients. While the benefits of resistance training are plentiful and well-established, it does carry the potential to increase wear and tear on the joints of the body. Of course, this may not manifest itself to some way down the training journey but, when it does, it will be much harder than muscle damage to recover from. Our joint structures turn over far slower than our muscles and once damaged will be hard to repair. Couple this with the effects of age, poor nutrition, and a sedentary lifestyle and the importance of attention to joint health is obvious.

Tip: Bodybuilder Reg Park (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s idol) recognised many decades ago that there was value in taking lay-offs from heavy resistance training loads. While this may be a bitter pill to swallow for those competing in strength sports, it shouldn’t be so hard to swallow for those for whom long-term health is a consideration. Breaks from high volumes of resistance training, coupled with a healthy respect for flexibility and nutrition should provide a recipe that makes weight training a lifelong pursuit. Similarly, so many people ignore the signs of poor joint health and continue to load joints through a fear of ‘letting go’ of their strength training schedule. Stretch tight areas, improve range of movement, and allow rest and recovery when joints start to tell you that they need a break. Activities like yoga, pilates, and tai chi can be a fantastic balance for heavy resistance training.

3) Digestive Health:

The digestive system is a powerful window into our health. Modern research is identifying the role of the various elements of gut health and are even starting to show links between digestive flora and obesity, plus we all know the effects that stress, anxiety, or excitement can have on our stomachs. Our digestion can also suffer when confronted with foods that provide a greater challenge than it was originally designed for. Diets high in wheat, gluten, refined/processed foods, all increase the burden on the gut to effectively break down and absorb nutrients, which can affect everything from our mental health (95% of our serotonin is found in the gut) to simply cramping our social life when suffering from bloating and stomach ache. It isn’t just our diet either that can cause digestive problems. Prescription medication often has detrimental impacts on gut health, ranging from the damage caused by NSAIDS to our stomach lining to the effect of antibiotic use on digestive flora.

Tip: If you suffer from poor gut health, an elimination diet can be a useful way to determine what causes you problems. Taking out key troublemakers such as high wheat foods can often have an immediate impact on improving digestion. Often including foods like pears, nectarines, and prunes can help smooth digestive transit along with a good intake of water. Try to avoid using over the counter medication where possible, in particular known gut irritants like Ibuprofen.

4) Metabolic Health:

With so many of our clients attending regular health screenings and operating in high stress environments it would be foolhardy to be ignorant of metabolic markers of health. From aerobic capacity through to blood lipid levels, these tests can provide insights into the possible risk of long-term health problems. It is a shame that these medicals give little attention to measures of inflammation and blood triglycerides, which to me would seem more pertinent as the paradigm surrounding heart disease risk gradually starts to shift. Aside from that debate, blood pressure, waist circumference, and resting blood glucose provide an excellent insight into our clients health and we have consistently seen these drop markedly in our clients with a bit of attention to diet, a reduction in alcohol intake (note total abstinence not required), and the addition of some cardiovascular exercise, which our clients enjoy both the physical and psychological benefits of despite its vilification in recent times by countless fitness experts and personal trainers.

Tip: Metabolic markers of health can often be considerably improved with simple and easily sustained changes to diet, lifestyle, and exercise habits. Reducing alcohol on several days of the week, lowering sugar and starch intake, taking some exercise over the weekend, and managing stress all combine to have a powerful effect on improving health.

5) Dental Health:

The last part of this little post is to look at dental health and the emerging data linking heart disease and dental health. I won’t get into all the hubbub surrounding fillings and heavy metal poisoning etc; it’s way beyond the scope of this post and I’m way under qualified to comment on it. However, one thing is for sure and that’s that we only get one set of adult teeth so we had better look after them. Many habits that affect our health negatively can also impact on our dental health causing tooth decay, gum disease, discolouration, acid erosion, and bad breath. All equally bad news, but a very quick and easy way to get a window into someone’s overall health is to look inside their mouth. Stress, anxiety, and stimulants can cause teeth grinding (the official name is Bruxism) which also accelerates the wear and tear on our mouth. In a 2010 study, those participants with the worst oral hygiene routine were 70% more likely to develop heart disease compared to those who cleaned their teeth twice a day. Whether it is causative or simply correlation remains in debate, in a similar way to how we should be viewing cholesterol in reality. However, gum disease (gingivitis) is an inflammatory condition and modern health research is showing us that for many years inflammation has been the elephant in the room when it comes to heart disease.

Tip: Brush your teeth twice daily, preferably with a electric toothbrush and careful attention to teeth, tongue, and gums. Get teeth professionally cleaned by a hygienist twice a year, and avoid habits that damage teeth, such as smoking and fizzy drinks.

So, there you have it. Five pillars of health that when combined give an insight into our overall fitness outside of the now more mainstream measures of BMI, Body Composition, or muscularity. What’s more is that very few of these require much effort to monitor or measure, with the exception of some aspects of our metabolic health that can be easily tested with home kits or via private medicals. Address, and in turn improve in, all the above areas and it is highly likely that you’ll see an accompanying improvement in how you look, feel, move, and function as our body remodels itself to the demands placed on it.

Often health improvement is less of a consideration or motivation for many taking up exercise, but for those clients we see at our City of London studios it will often be a high priority as they notice their decreased ability to cope with the stresses of the modern workplace and lifestyle surrounding it. As with much of our work, simple changes can have profound effects. Tackling the ‘big rocks’ within our clients lives, and strengthening them through intelligently applied resistance and cardiovascular training provides a platform for them to continue to enjoy their work, families, and leisure time.

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness Tagged With: City of London, fitness, flexibility, Graeme Marsh, Health, Liverpool Street, London, Nutrition, Obesity, Personal Trainer, Personal Training, strength training, tips, Weight Loss

Seven Top Tips For Training In-Season

February 25, 2013 By Graeme Marsh

find rugby now east london Foundry Director Graeme Marsh was recently asked to put together his top tips for training in-season by the excellent rugby resource website FindRugbyNow. For the original article, please go to and please find a copy of this article syndicated below.

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I was recently asked by a new member at our East London training centre, Foundry:east, to take a look at his current training programme, which he had downloaded from the internet.

I was curious as it was the very definition of high volume with over 30 sets of work per workout, but ever the diplomat I asked, “How are you getting on with this?”. He replied, “Man, it is wiping me out. I can’t do anything after it and I’m knackered before the game even starts”.

It wasn’t that it was necessarily a bad training programme. In fact, if he had been a 22-year-old bodybuilder on anabolic steroids looking to add serious mass, then he probably would have seen some good progress on it.

What it did, however, was illustrate perfectly how you need to adjust training programmes during the season to reflect the demands that field training, games, and life in general can have on the body.

Too many amateur players try to sustain a regime that would be draining in the off-season, let alone during it. So, with that in mind here are a few tips for anyone looking to develop their strength and power during the season and how to avoid making some of the most common mistakes.

Do less to get more: It is unrealistic to expect to be able to sustain a high-volume programme during the competitive season. Game and practice time will make recovery from long, high volume training sessions near on impossible for all but the most hormonally blessed players. The actual amount of work needed to develop strength and power is lower than many think, but the intensity is key.
Put your effort where it brings the best returns: To develop or maintain strength concentrate on the intensity of your lifts. The bulk of your time should be spent on movements that target the high-threshold motor units (key for strength and speed) and recruit the most muscle. To do this incorporate a mixture of plyometric movements (jumps, bounds etc), olympic style movements (clean pulls, Snatch pulls etc) with high-intensity loads in the big lifts (below 6 reps per set) as the mainstay of your training. Game and training time should keep pre-season fitness, but if not, keep CV work low in volume and energy system specific.
Let your recovery dictate your training: If you had a hard game, took a lot of hits and played a full 80 minutes then you may need longer recovery before hitting the weights. Similarly if you only had a run out for the last 15 minutes then you may be able to hit the gym monday morning feeling fresh. Be flexible in your week to week planning and adjust what you do to match your ability from week to week. If you feel tired and beat up, take a sauna and then stretch, you’ll feel the benefit and come back fitter and stronger. Too many guys are emotionally attached to their training and determined to keep lifting like a full-time bodybuilder through the competitive season.
Listen to your body and watch for signs of overtraining: Too much work with inadequate recovery will eventually lead to overtraining, which can take a long time to fully recover from. If you start to see weights going down from week to week, every weight (even the empty bar) starts to feel heavy, if sleep is poor and you wake up feeling heavy and tired after a full 8 hours, and you feel performance during the games suffering then you need to check that your training isn’t contributing to this. Don’t be afraid to build recovery weeks in to your training, so few people actually do this for fear of suddenly getting weaker or smaller, where the opposite is more likely to happen as the body gets time to rest and adapt.
Keep things simple: The aim of your gym session is not to try to spend a load of time and effort on pointless ‘sport-specific’ exercises that are currently popular in the fitness media. Wobbling about on Bosu balls or doing the latest ‘functional’ craze is merely a waste of time that could be spent actually getting stronger or stretching and recovering from the weekend’s game. Stick to the fundamental movements of deadlifting, squats, presses, pulls, and rows and you won’t go far wrong.
Put recovery methods in your training: Stretching is practically impossible to do too much of, but it is the most neglected aspect of most people’s training. A lack of adequate flexibility will lead to increased risk of injury, muscle imbalances, and a lack of any real progress in training. Being big and strong is pointless if your hips are so tight that your speed is impacted negatively and your lower back exposed to increased injury risk. The current trend is to only stretch after having done the rest of your training, but this means that stretching is generally done poorly, with minimal focus and therefore negligible results. Ideally dedicate separate time to stretching work as it can be done anywhere, but if time is an issue (which for most it is) we tend to do it first.
Work with a trainer who knows their stuff: If you can then invest in some time with a professional coach who understands how to design training programmes for you that will address the above points. It isn’t rocket science, in fact it is largely common sense. Having a good coach will give you accountability, external feedback, guidance on correct technique, and someone who can monitor your training performance allowing you to concentrate on simply training hard and recovering effectively. Our team at Foundry:east specialise in working with active busy professionals on this, you can find out more at www.foundryfit.co.uk.

Remember, life isn’t linear and neither is training. Too many factors can conspire to mean that it won’t work out like the magazines, articles, and textbooks say it will.

Many factors can impact on finding the right routine that works best for you. These include: age, nutrition, sleep, stress, work, relationships, hormonal status, training age, playing position, level of competition, etc. All of these factors can all have an influence and should be considered when designing a training plan.

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness, Sport

Part 3 – Obesity Crisis – Is exercise part of the problem or part of the answer?

October 17, 2012 By Graeme Marsh

Much has been written by various experts, journalists, and researchers about the role of exercise in treating obesity and for weight loss in general. Some of it is close to the reality, while increasingly more and more of it is spurious, unfounded, non-evidenced, magic fairy dust rubbish created all too often to sell products, pills, supplements, or training methodologies.

In several articles exercise has even become the pariah of weight loss with some outlandish claims being made about all sorts of negative effects, again without any kind of substantive evidence to back these up. Read these sensationalist headlines with great care and scepticism. However, it isn’t just the Daily Mail behind this, even eminent science writer and author of Diet Delusion Gary Taubes has been quick to dismiss exercise for its effect on food consumption, asserting that exercise simply makes people eat more. An idea that is far less straightforward as it turns out when the evidence is reviewed. Taubes isn’t the only one; John Cloud’s provocative piece in Time magazine rubbished the benefits of exercise (mainly due to his own inability to resist eating a doughnut afterwards), and Emma John (Observer) and Sophie Morris (Independent) have both written pieces with a similar message.

Researching exercise*, its effect on weight loss and applying that research to the general population is a serious challenge. Studies that rely on self-reported data are immediately vulnerable to the sad truth that people tend to grossly overestimate their activity levels, while similarly underestimating their food intake.

Monitoring food intake, energy balance, NEPA (Non-Exercise Physical Activity), and other lifestyle factors makes getting truly meaningful research very difficult. This skews results horribly and may well be a reason that the role of exercise in weight loss has been so understated over recent years. Lab studies have shown a bit more promise but leave us with another problem when it comes to prescription, in that without supervision most people simply will not stick to such rigorous routines and protocols.

It was only a few years ago that the UK fitness industry jumped on the ‘Tabata Training’ bandwagon in an attempt to market a new form of training as being the magic bullet for, well just about everything including weight loss. Of course, Izumi Tabata never even measured body composition in his study, it was a study aimed at improving aerobic fitness using a 4-minute anaerobic training format that involved cycling to exhaustion for 8 x 20 second bouts. This didn’t stop all kinds of ‘Tabata fat-loss’ classes cropping up everywhere replete with misleading and incorrect information that tapped into that human desire to want to achieve more for less. As we will see, while it may be a more time efficient way for trained people to improve fitness, high-intensity interval training is of little use to the obese person. I’d venture that many of those who advocate these protocols have little or no experience of working with the obese population.

Contrary to the journalistic despair at the sheer pointlessness of it all, exercise can in fact positively affect risk factors for health irrespective of weight loss: blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, triglycerides, cholesterol, bone density, mood, anxiety, depression, stress reduction, self esteem, recovery from injury and illness, occupational performance, shorter labour times and improved pregnancy measures, fasting glucose levels, and reduction of chronic pain, have all been shown to be positively affected by the introduction of exercise. A sentiment further echoed by the Cochrane Collaboration report on Exercise for Overweight and Obesity (http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD003817/exercise-for-overweight-or-obesity) that concluded that:

The results of this review support the use of exercise as a weight loss intervention, particularly when combined with dietary change. Exercise is associated with improved cardiovascular disease risk factors even if no weight is lost.

As we have already discovered in Parts 1 and 2, this subject is far more complex than the media and many of the pundits on the topic would like you to think, and I am about to illustrate that.

Exercise seems to have wildly different responses in different people. Unfortunately this information is often lost by people reporting (at worst) based on the abstract of a study rather than the entire study or (at best) a reporting of the mean data and not the individual results.

Luckily (and you might have just seen this coming) someone spotted this and decided to look a bit closer at the data and what actually happens. Here is a link to the complete study, the full text of which I have sitting in front of me (courtesy of the author himself, Prof. John Blundell). It is well worth a read:

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15189/1/15189.pdf

Now, firstly this is a fascinating study with an excellent and very accessible discussion section that I encourage you to read in full yourself. In this study they took a group of 35 overweight men and women and got them doing 5 sessions a week of supervised exercise (in this case various formats of ‘cardio’ ranging from steppers to rowing and treadmills). Sessions were measured individually to produce an expenditure of 500kcal per session. According to energy expenditure vs intake calculations measured at week 0, it was anticipated that a weight loss of around 3.5kg could be expected over the 12 weeks.

Guess what, after 12 weeks the mean weight loss was 3.7kg (+/- 3.6kg) so about as expected. However, when the results were looked at on an individual level things got a lot more interesting. At one end of the spectrum subjects lost as much as 14.7kg of weight, while at the other end several subjects managed to gain weight (albeit very small amounts). Overall though, just about everyone (with the exception of four individuals) lost weight, some more and some less so than others…however, even those who gained weight tended to lose fat and mostly gain lean mass as the below chart from the paper shows, only three subjects in the entire study gained body fat.

The study’s authors go on to discuss some interesting theories and findings. One finding in particular was that those Non-compensators (those who tended not to increase energy intake in response to energy expenditure) tended to be heavier and fatter at the outset compared to the compensators (those who lost less weight than expected and tended to increase energy intake). One theory being that when exercise threatens lean mass (as it does in those only carrying a few extra pounds…) it drives the need to increase energy intake more than in those with an abundance of excess calories in body fat.

While this notion is an appealing explanation I am not sure it is only the mechanism behind this, although it does make intuitive sense. We do also know that in some people there is a tendency to ‘reward’ exercise by being less active throughout the rest of the day, which can reduce potential weight loss results. This reward mentality does seem prevalent and is a strong driver for the argument that psychology is a prime factor in obesity. Studies looking at eating behaviour, such as those by Jane Ogden at Surrey University have shown how certain environments and situations can influence eating, often unrelated to our actual hunger. Simply eating in front of the television has been demonstrated to increase overeating irrespective of actual reported hunger levels.

What this study does confirm is that in some people doing exercise and losing weight can serve to increase hunger, while in others this response is far less pronounced and in some non-existent. However, this does not mean that exercise makes you fat or even makes you eat more, far from it in fact. Firstly, even in the group who were compensators in this study, most of them still lost weight. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, these subjects were allowed to eat as they pleased during the 12 weeks. Had their food intake been as strictly controlled and supervised as their exercise routine then I am very confident that the results would have been different (not to mention further proof that exercise does in fact work for weight loss when eating is controlled). Perhaps if this had been taken a step further and the study participants had been counseled on behaviours to avoid overeating, such as not eating in front of the television, then the results may have been even more pronounced. What if their sleep habits had been studied alongside the exercise? Would we have seen further improvements by attempting to improve this given the very clear relationship between poor sleep habits and weight gain?

What the studies are clear on, is that exercise is a key factor in the maintenance of any weight lost and that the addition of it to any dietary regime seems to be an overwhelmingly positive addition given its effects on mood, sleep, confidence, depression, fitness, health risk factors, bone density, metabolic rate, and stimulation of lean muscle mass.

What is capable versus what is optimal?

When it comes to working with the obese population and looking at exercise strategies it is really a case of what people will actually do versus what might be ideal. Given that the biggest benefits to the health of the population come from getting the sedentary folks moving and not from getting the already fit ones even fitter, we should be targeting the obese, in particular those who are totally sedentary, with far different strategies to what we advise an established trainee.

If our target is to address the public health aspect of obesity then a reduction of the continual emphasis on exercise as solely a weight loss tool would be wise and instead more efforts to promote the overall health benefits would be a better option. It seems to me that there are many who are relatively apathetic about their actual weight, but are concerned about their overall mental and physical health and approaches exclusively aimed at weight loss will alienate these rather than include them. Health related goals are also far more tangible and should not be viewed as a by-product of weight loss, but rather the other way around.

In terms of actual protocols, it seems conclusive that a combination of aerobic exercise, resistance training, and diet seems to have the widest reach in terms of overall health benefits and weight loss. Frequency of actual exercise is a key factor in predicting positive outcomes and has a strong inverse relationship with exercise intensity.

If advising someone to exercise who is unsupervised and currently sedentary then simple and achievable is the way forward, there is little need for complex interval training routines or resistance training formats. The less the participant perceives their own ability to complete the routine the greater the chance that they will give up and return to their former weight. In contrast as someone begins to exercise and experiences benefits their capabilities will increase and their perceptions will alter, then the training can be progressed accordingly.

It is all too often forgotten that the sedentary obese person will rarely have the joint and muscle integrity to withstand intense training at the outset anyway and any over-zealous routine could well be injurious, potentially setting the person back further than when they began. Despite this, many shredded fitness professionals (you know the types with their topless pics as avatars and disparaging attitudes towards anyone overweight) like to criticise simple approaches and continue to advise routines online that are inappropriate and show a poor level of both empathy and understanding. Expertise in bodybuilding does not constitute expertise at training obese people.

Although interactions at a biochemical level are complex, exercise has clearly been demonstrated to have a positive effect on those seeking to lose weight. Some types of exercise seem more effective than others, swimming for example has been shown to raise appetite and hunger substantially compared to running.

This effect though may be small in those who fail to give attention to other aspects of their lifestyle, while in others it may be more pronounced, albeit still below what people may be expecting for the time invested. Individual responses to exercise seem widely variable, and while it may cause some to eat more this view simply isn’t born out in the evidence as Professor John Blundell elegantly states in a meta-analysis on the topic:

Only 19% of interventionist studies report an increase in energy intake after exercise; 65% show no change and 16% show a decrease in appetite. Of the correlational studies, approximately half show no relationship between energy expenditure and intake. These data indicate a rather loose coupling between energy expenditure and intake. A common sense view is that exercise is futile as a form of weight control because the energy deficit drives a compensatory increase in food intake. However, evidence shows that this is not generally true.

As part of any nationwide intervention to address the obesity epidemic, exercise is a valuable and, in my opinion, an indispensable aid. By encouraging more sport and play in our young children we can help set a platform by which a healthful way of life becomes normal, without it always being connected to the images of ‘health’ in the media that tend to be only driven by the next skinny model or celebrity diet.

In adults, exercise can bring people together within communities and with the right prescription it can offer everyone a platform to succeed in improving their health and experiencing a better quality of life. It can have a massive effect on improving disease markers and can help with weight loss, although weight loss is not a pre-requisite for the health benefits. The actual what and when of the exercise aspect are very simple, it is getting people to do it and keep doing it that remains the complex part of the equation.

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness, Health Tagged With: City of London, fat loss, fitness industry, Graeme Marsh, London, Obesity, Personal Trainer, Personal Training, Weight Loss

HIIT me baby one more time

September 26, 2012 By Dave Thomas

There probably isn’t a personal training company or studio in London that hasn’t already written about interval training and cardiovascular training for fat loss. That drum has already been soundly beaten, although there is all too often a bit too much spurious information out there disguised as science that is distorting exercise prescription.

In this blog post Foundry Director Graeme Marsh looks at a recent study on interval training for fat loss in men and gives us his views on the topic.

So, it’s over to Graeme…

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Here is an interesting little study from the Dean of research into High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), Stephen Boutcher and his colleagues from the University of New South Wales. Boutcher has produced some fairly convincing evidence over recent years that has shown the overall superiority of HIIT over the more conventional methods of ‘cardio for fat loss’ and its led to a vilification of steady state exercise within the industry. His latest paper, published in the Journal of Obesity this summer is unsurprisingly no different.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3375095/

The training protocol was a repeat of that used in previous studies consisting of 8 seconds of sprinting on a cycle with 12 seconds recovery. Repeated for 60 intervals. This was done 3 times a week over a period of 12 weeks, so a fairly achievable schedule for most people. This study used a group of exclusively male subjects, but a previous study by the same author using females had found similar results over a 15 week period. These studies have focused on the exercise aspect of fat loss more than nutrition with no actual nutritional intervention used, although one of the proposed benefits of HIIT over conventional steady state work seems to be a reduction in post-exercise appetite, an effect I would certainly support anecdotally.

Now, we could look at this a bit more in depth, but I know it is mid-week and you are probably thinking “Get to the point already” so here is a summary of the key points:

Over 12 weeks subjects lost a total of 2kg of fat training 3 x week for 20 minutes per session (not including a 5 minute warm up and cool down). 8 second sprints were performed at 80-90% of maximum heart rate with a 12 second recovery bout in between.

Reductions in body fat came from both fat under the skin and that around organs, showing a positive impact on cardiovascular disease risk factors. There was also a significant reduction in waist circumference.

There was an increase in fat free mass over the course of the study and improvements in aerobic fitness alongside the reductions in fat mass.

These results were achieved without any changes to dietary habits.

Overall the numbers involved were still relatively small for a 12 week commitment to changing body composition so it would be interesting to see these protocols combined with a nutritional intervention also to see if the effect can be enhanced. While the exact reasons behind the effectiveness of HIIT as a method are still unclear it would seem that the intensity of the exercise is key, stimulating the release of hormones that stimulate fat loss and also helping to retain fat free mass. Shorter, more intense exercise like this also seems to have a suppressive effect on appetite rather than the stimulating effect so often seen with longer bouts. It would be particularly interesting to see the individual results in this study, similar to those reported recently by Blundell and colleagues in Leeds, who have demonstrated that exercise responses can be highly varied from person to person.

So, what do these studies mean in practice when moving from lab results to the ‘real world’?

Here is where we stand on HIIT training methods and the much maligned steady-state cardio that still remains popular today.

Interval training is psychologically tougher. It requires a high level of motivation, despite the shorter duration, the intensity must be high for it to be effective.

The leaner you are, the less effective this method seems to be for losing fat. This to me suggests that lean people may well already be adapted to this style of training. However, it’s benefits for stimulating muscle mass retention during dieting should not be ignored.

Long duration cardio such as jogging or cycling for 40-60 minutes offers poor return for fat loss and may also stimulate appetite (although this seems to vary a lot between individuals). It is best used either for those who require it for specific endurance sports or used as recovery and/or recreation.

Instead of simply ‘burning calories’ HIIT seems to work more through stimulating hormonal changes in the body that favour increased fat oxidation.

Overall HIIT offers a more efficient solution to improving body composition, CV risk factors, and aerobic fitness than conventional steady state methods.

Anecdotally, we have found that adherence to these protocols outside of supervised training sessions is probably the biggest limitation to the use of HIIT. As with the many resistance training protocols championed on the internet for their fat loss benefits, these are only effective when performed at an intensity level high enough to stimulate change.

As an aside, steady-state exercise is often criticised for inducing high levels of stress hormones but this needs to be better qualified as it would seem that increased catecholamine release is one of the reasons behind the effectiveness of HIIT. Boutcher states in this paper that “it is feasible that the significant levels of catecholamines generated during acute HIIE [27] could elevate postexercise fat oxidation. The significant catecholamine response to HIIE is in contrast to moderate, steady-state aerobic exercise that results in small increases in epinephrine and norepinephrine [28]. Also the high levels of catecholamines produced by HIIE may underlie its ability to reduce visceral fat, as catecholamines have been shown to drive lipolysis and are mainly responsible for fat release from visceral fat stores “

It would be my opinion that if reducing stress hormone release in a client is a primary concern (in such cases that exercise tolerance is negatively affected by an inability to react to physical stressors) that neither HIIT or long duration CV exercise would be appropriate.

Instead a focus on relaxation and restoration methods combined with recreational activity, such as walking, cycling, swimming, etc would seem more apt. While it is true that duration of exercise can influence stress hormone release (certainly I wouldn’t advise marathon running as an activity unless planning to run a marathon) it is also true that intensity of exercise will have a pronounced effect. Individual factors such as age, emotional state, lifestyle stresses, sleep habits, and nutritional status, will all have an impact on this. This detail is often left out of the many criticisms circulated on methods of CV training.

As with any training or indeed nutritional approach, it is simply a case of selecting the right tool for the right job. HIIT has rightly gained popularity for its effectiveness in reducing fat mass over relatively short-term studies. However, there is no reason why modes of exercise such as walking and cycling should be actively discouraged, as has become popular for many to do. Well motivated subjects or those performing supervised sessions may well get good results with HIIT, while poorly conditioned and more ‘reluctant’ exercisers may find the levels of intensity a demotivating factor. Any exercise or nutritional intervention is only effective if compliance is high so individualisation of programming should be the key determinant in selecting what method to use.

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness Tagged With: City of London, fat loss, fitness, Graeme Marsh, Liverpool Street, London, Weight Loss

Jakob’s ladder. A hard-gainer’s guide to muscle gain

July 19, 2012 By Graeme Marsh

Throughout a decade of working as a personal trainer I’ve been fortunate enough to see some of my clients make some drastic changes in their lives and in turn their appearance. Jakob is one such story.

Not everyone comes to start training looking for a total life change, some just want a bit more motivation or information on how to train a bit better, but Jakob had reached a stage in life where things had to change. Of course, many transformations that appear on the internet happen over comparatively short periods of time, it makes them seem remarkable and emotive and often alludes to some sort of secret formula or system behind the scenes although there rarely (if ever) is. The disappointing truth is that the age old principles of hard work, dedication, persistence, commitment, and desire all win over any particular training system or supplement (more on that later). So, this isn’t so much a transformation rather than a journey, and one that has been incredibly hard to summarise. Plenty is left out even though I’ve tried to be as candid and honest as possible.

Jakob is a true “hard-gaining ectomorph”, a definition that gets used rather casually these days to describe almost anyone untrained and not grossly overweight. The fact is that true hard-gainers simply cannot gain muscle like Casey Viator in the infamous Colorado experiment. If they could, the term ‘hard-gainer’ wouldn’t be very apt. Our very own Sarah Lindsay recently worked with a similar hard gaining ectomorph in Mens’ Health journalist Ed Reeves. Ed faced many of the same challenges as Jakob: food became a chore, gaining mass was a lot harder than losing weight, and intense training sessions could leave his previously untrained body struggling to recover.

Pictures don’t tell half the story

Before and after photos don’t tell you a whole lot. Sure you get to see two points in time side by side, but so much valuable information is missing. Age, training age, training experience, hormonal/anabolic status, work and life stress, training frequency, sleep, nutrition, and many other variables mean that in the ‘real world’ it is a lot more complex than how many sets or reps you did or what programme/diet you followed. In Jakob’s case we had to compete with a job where he often got up for work at 4.30 a.m and spent most of the day on his feet walking; basically hours of long slow duration cardio, the weapon of choice for the body-builder looking to lean out. His job meant that eating alone became a serious challenge, not to mention the effect it was having on sleep and recovery.

Nutrition

Typical of a true ectomorph Jakob was relatively lean when he started, coming in at 17% bodyfat, within the ‘normal’ range for a male. However, he had the kind of diet that makes a trainer visibly wince when they look at the food diary, full of sugary drinks and snack food. He also had two habits synonymous with not gaining muscle from before the days of research studies guiding training habits: smoking and soda consumption. If we were to succeed, both of these had to go. Over time our biggest challenge remained getting enough food, 4000Kcal a day was our target but it proved tough and on occasion impossible. It started to become a chore and required the need for liquid nutrition to bump up the calorie quota. Protein shakes can be a great supplement, but I am sure that they tend to cause bloating and body fat gain when used in large amounts.

By trying to clean up the diet (clearing out the high amounts of processed food and sugar) we made it harder. Protein and fat are a lot harder to over eat than simple sugars; they also tend to require more digestive effort and deeper pockets. However, there was no way Jakob was getting into shape on Cola, cigarettes, and chocolate bars so they had to go. This took considerable effort as the addictive nature of nicotine, sugar, and caffeine, make it tough work to swap out for broccoli, quinoa, and chicken. However, two years later taking it one step at a time, we have got rid of the cigarettes and sodas and made a big old dent in the chocolate consumption. We found a very effective approach was to blend periods of high calorie eating with a ‘recovery’ week where he could relax about getting enough food and concentrate on just living.

As far as supplements go, it has been a case of keeping it simple enough to stick to. Essential fats, zinc, magnesium, BCAA’s and cycling of various herbals aimed at improving sleep and anabolism. Nothing complex. Nothing illicit.

Training

Training variables are often given pride of place in discussions on training effectiveness. However, not a lot has really changed in this world since Doug Hepburn first pressed 500lbs. Age old principles of progressive overload and good recovery are as valid now as they were then, although less attention tends to be given to recovery with many of the lower volume approaches being marginalised. Australian Ian King, responsible for innovating and refining many modern training methods, has stated that he believes the influence of anabolic steroids to have been a major contributor in how modern training programmes are created. These training programmes are often high in volume and can challenge the recovery ability of those not set-up for body-building. The ‘average’ man now is battling many catabolic stresses and needs to ensure that training doesn’t simply become another of those; training volume seems to be the key factor in this equation.

Over the two years we experimented with several approaches, but the fact is that so many other variables confounded things that we still can’t be sure what programming approach produced the absolute best outcome, if any did. My gut instinct is that keeping total work sets relatively low, times under tension high, and using (sparingly) techniques such as 21′s, 1 1/4 reps, and giant sets, was most effective. Going to failure was essential but not on a week in, week out basis.

And, just to fly in the face of the latest trend in functional training, we much preferred the use of bodypart split training with a healthy spattering of isolation work concentrating (after having established decent base levels of strength in all major movements) on areas that would favour the ectomorph build, trying to add width at the shoulders and thickness to the back. It was a lot of fun. Too many of these training methods have been rejected by the modern influences on the personal training industry. They simply aren’t cool enough. As an aside from this, we found that focusing on a particular area to develop was a better motivator than simply concentrating on weight gain, which often wasn’t reflective of the changes in size and shape.

Attitude

It is the relationships we build with our clients that really make this job fun to do and this one has been one of the best. Jakob’s single-minded determination was inspiring although paired with a steely resolution to bend rather than break to my suggested advice. I have learnt over the years that personal training courses pay little real attention to the actual art of coaching and understanding peoples desire and motivation for change, yet as a coach probably no other skill is more necessary than the ability to change someone’s behaviours. Jakob has become a different person to train, capable now of pushing himself hard to failure and beyond. Our first sessions nearly broke him, the bench on Bishopsgate outside Liverpool Street becoming the post-session refuge; but over time he has developed the confidence and ability to train independently with great success. As a coach, it was about Jakob knowing that I wanted him to succeed as much as he did, perhaps sometimes even more. As the client Jakob bought commitment, respect, and enthusiasm that often lifted me and inspired me to keep trying my best to help him stay positive and focused without being overly narcissistic or obsessive. He was adamant that he still wanted a fun life, drinks with friends, and a training regime that worked with his job.

Despite a few bumps in the road, I think we got there…..

I’ve been training with Foundry Fit’s Graeme Marsh for almost 2 years. I arrived as an underweight, chain smoking, coke drinking fitness-novice on the cusp of a midlife crisis. Initially every training session was pure agony. I had no strength. My body was shaking. At times it felt like torture. But, Graeme, your endless positive energy and utter commitment to my physical and emotional well-being saw me through. My health, lifestyle and confidence have improved no end. You were with me all the way. And for that I’m eternally grateful. Still drinking coke though.

Jakob Hartmann

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness, Strength training, Transformations Tagged With: bodybuilding, City of London, fitness, Graeme Marsh, Liverpool Street, London, muscle building, Personal Trainer, Personal Training, strength training, Transformations

Rugby Fitness

June 21, 2012 By Dave Thomas

presents:

“Pre-Season with the Professionals”

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

As one of the leading personal training, sports conditioning and rehabilitation facilities in London we have decided to launch a brand new rugby experience enabling everyone to learn from and train with professional rugby players and coaches at an affordable price.

Find out how fit, strong and fast you are with top end fitness testing.
Discover top training tips to increase your speed, strength and power with technical weightlifting and powerlifting sessions.
Learn and try professional conditioning exercises utilising sleds, yolks, farmers walks, chains and equipment you won’t find in ordinary gyms.
Meet, learn from, and play with legends of the game.
Experience the challenges and hear the stories from The School of Hard Knocks coaches and participants of the Sky Sports television programme.
Improve your performance and skill set with the unique training tool Cage Rugby.
Learn proven injury prevention and recovery techniques to protect yourself and extend your playing career.
Hear the very latest nutritional advice for performance.

Our first “Pre-season with the Professionals” rugby training day will take place on Saturday 18th August at the new sports performance facility Foundry:east; an elite new training gym, 3G astro pitch and with over 150,000m2 of outdoor space in East London. Attendees of any gender and ability will be trained and treated as professional rugby players under the watchful eyes of our experts, who have performed at the highest level of their respective fields.

Former British and Irish Lions, England rugby player and Strength Conditioning Coach Andy Titterrell
Head Coach of England 7s, Ben Ryan
Head coach of Sky Sports School of Hard Knocks Programme Chris Chudleigh
England Elite Ladies Player and Physical Preparation Coach Fiona Pocock
Former Performance Nutritionist for Newcastle Falcons, current Performance Nutritionist for West Ham FC Academy and writer for FindRugbyNow Chris Curtis Chris Curtis
British Powerlifting Champion Evelyn Stevenson
Other well known coaches and players from elite rugby, sport and physical preparation tbc.

COSTS:

*A charitable donation from all tickets will go to The School of Hard Knocks Charity.

*Early bird expires 20th July

Standard ticket – ~~£95 per ticket (inc VAT)~~ Early bird standard – £85 per ticket (inc VAT)
Team bookings of 4 or more – ~~£85 per ticket (inc VAT)~~ Early bird group booking of 4 or more – £75 per ticket (inc VAT)

For more information about the event on 18 August 2012 and to book one of the limited places please go to http://rugbyfit.eventbrite.co.uk or contact Dave Thomas at dave@foundryfit.com

a brand new fitness experience enabling everyday people to train alongside professional athletes and top industry experts

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness, Performance, Rugby, Sport Tagged With: andy titterrell, chris chudleigh, fiona pocock, fitness, powerlifting, rugby, school of hard knocks, strength training, weightlifting

The Art of Fat Loss

June 15, 2012 By Dave Thomas

5% bodyfat drop in 2 months

Two months ago we had a rather noisy knock 0n The Foundry door by a chap with a giant smile and warm introductions. An artist from Israel, it turns out Arik had some fantastic canvases for sale.

It may surprise you to know but myself and Helen Thomas actually have a little art collection (for the purposes of our home insurance it’s a very large art collection with at least 2 original Picassos) so to cut a long story short we ended up buying a really impressive ‘Tour de France” inspired image from Arik.

Having never really set foot in a gym before, it turned out Arik was also interested in health and fitness and was very keen to lose some weight; so after an hour of chatting with triple Olympian Sarah Lindsay about her recent Men’s Health Transformation Arik signed himself up for twice a week Personal Training with Sarah.

Despite his own omission that he has not wholly adhered to his nutritional plan, the results have been extremely impressive with a 5% drop in body fat.

If you want to find out more about training with Sarah please contact us at info@foundryfit.com.

Filed Under: Blog, Fitness, Transformations Tagged With: City of London, fat loss, fitness, Liverpool Street, London, Personal Trainer, Personal Training, sarah lindsay, Transformations, Weight Loss