The Foundry featured on Sky Sports School of Hard Knocks

November 11, 2011 By

The Foundry Personal Training Team with rugby legend Scott Quinnell

Sport means a lot to us at The Foundry.  That might not sound too profound given our business, but bear with me.

Our trainers all have inspirational stories about how they got into sport, how it changed their lives, how they used it to overcome hurdles and open up new doors.

Sarah Lindsay spent over a year out of her sport with a serious back injury being told she may never skate again. The motivation to compete was what kept her going despite all the pain and boredom of months of rehab.

Becoming an expert Skiing instructor gave Graeme Marsh the dream opportunity he’d always craved to travel extensively throughout Europe at the world’s best resorts.

Fiona Pocock famously ruptured her knee in the last Rugby World Cup Semi Final.  Her struggle to overcome a career threatening injury with incredible committment and a positive attitute has even attracted the attention of Dame Kelly Holmes and her legacy trust to help mentor, support and train other young athletes.

A younger Rich Thompson excelled at long-distance endurance events like cross country running and went on to be a triathlon competitor while living in Hong Kong.  After starting to lift weights and put on some muscle, he decided he had had enough of being the tall skinny guy and went from 70kg to 85kg in the first year and a half of lifting weights.  He’s never looked back and is now a competitive powerlifter!

Rugby quite literally changed my life.  I had a fairly rotten time as a kid at a military school which led to plenty of discipline problems.  Through fortuitous circumstances I was shipped off to a rugby school in Yorkshire where I discovered not only that I loved the game but also that I was half decent. The rugby coach gave me an ultimatum along the lines of “If you want to play rugby you’ll have to sort your life out”. 22 years later not only do I still play and love rugby more than anything outside of, you know, family and stuff, but it’s now a large part of my career.

School of Hard Knocks RugbyWhich leads nicely onto a community rugby project that I believe strongly in.  School of Hard Knocks is a TV documentary broadcast by Sky Sports fronted by international rugby stars Will Greenwood and Scott Quinnell, and the coaches Chris Chudleigh and Ken Cowen from Rugby Performance

The overriding aim of School of Hard Knocks is to help unemployed people take significant steps towards employment that is both sustainable and realistic using rugby as a vehicle for change.

A key element of the programme is to introduce young men to the game of rugby union, promoting a healthy, sociable and active lifestyle. To address this, in addition to the employment section of the programme, School of Hard Knocks also addresses:

  • Nutrition

    School of Hard Knocks Rugby

    Evelyn Stevenson demonstrating squat technique

  • Health
  • Injury management
  • Physical fitness

And that’s where London’s premier personal training team comes in.  Due to our reputation and experience in sports conditioning The Foundry was asked to coach barbell techniques and put the team through a rugby specific strongman workout, all under the eyes of the Sky camera crew.

Jack Cannon:
“Thanks to The Foundry I’m hurting in places I did not even know were there. Great day yesterday thank you”
Michael Finnegan:
“Epic day today. Weightlifting training and getting beasted by The Foundry and Scott Quinnell.  Quality coaching all round.”

The feedback was excellent and the lads and our coaches had a great time together training; although there are bound to be some very sore bodies this week.  There were some surprises which will make for great television and plenty of funny moments.

Strongman Training

It was a real pleasure to work with some very determined young men

The series, based in Tottenham this year, will be airing early 2012.  It looks set to be a great programme so make sure you tune in to see how the lads get on with the incredible opportunities being given to them and to watch The Foundry Superstars in action.

You can catch earlier series from our friends over at RugbyDump: http://www.rugbydump.com/categories/sohk

The Foundry wishes all this year’s particapants the best of luck with the series and I really hope you grab the opportunities with both hands.

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Should your grandma be worried about cholesterol?

November 10, 2011 By

Cholesterol and heart disease is becoming somewhat of an obsession for me. With a big talk coming up in the next week at a major investment bank I know questions on the topic will be popular, particularly given the evidence and opinions I present.  I can often hear the intakes of breath and see eyebrows raising when I suggest why you shouldn’t be so worried about saturated fat or indeed your cholesterol being ‘slightly elevated’ and why you should be concerned if your doctor suggests a statin as a solution.

So, I was interested to hear that my grandmother was worries after her GP had recently expressed concern to see her cholesterol elevated. While I don’t have time for a diatribe on the whole diet/heart hypothesis and the complexity of the evidence surrounding heart disease, it is worth just exploring why the doctor would be worried.

I can understand why the public at large still believes cholesterol to be nothing more than an indicator of impending death.  It is drummed into us both directly and indirectly by products that line the shelves claiming to lower it (despite a stunning lack of evidence to show that consuming these products will actually have any impact on your life expectancy).  These products are often aimed at women, who seem more concerned about this issue despite the fact that there is very little reason for most women to be worried about their cholesterol level (heart disease is after all only one cause of death and doesn’t become the leading cause of death in women until after 85 years old).

Very few people realise that far from being a dangerous risk to health, such as cigarette smoke or air pollution that have both been shown to increase a woman’s risk of death, cholesterol is essential for a healthy life.  Without it we couldn’t manufacture vitamin D or bile acids, and it is critical for a range of functions; from nerve transmission to cell structure and formation. It is so important that if we don’t eat enough of it our body manufactures it to compensate. It’s worth mentioning that it is also an essential component of breast milk, which would seem strange if it were such a noxious disease-forming substance. Nature is rarely so errant.

Unfortunately, or indeed perhaps fortunately, it really isn’t as simple as a raised cholesterol level indicating impending doom. Firstly, we have to realise that heart disease (which is after all what all the fuss is about when it comes to cholesterol) should not be considered in the same context for men and women. Death rates are wildly skewed with women in the UK suffering a third of the amount of deaths from heart disease as men. It gets even more confusing when you consider that in study after study results have actually shown higher cholesterol to be linked to living longer in women and that a higher level may actually be healthier than a lower one. So, hold back on the Benecol and the Flora Pro-Active ladies, you may just find that eating butter isn’t so bad after all.

A study from the Lancet is one of many to conclude that older women with a lower cholesterol level may be at a greater risk of death. They found that those with a level of 4.0mmol had a death rate five times that of those with the highest levels of 7.0mmol.  Although this study was on a relatively small population group it’s not the only one that has failed to show that there is any real evidence for older women to worry about their cholesterol levels. The Framingham Heart study, which is the longest running study to look at heart disease, concluded that low cholesterol significantly increased risk of death in people over the age of 50 from all causes, while studies from Italy and Austria both concurred, finding that high cholesterol was actually associated with greater longevity and less cardiac events in older women. Disturbingly the Austrian study found lower cholesterol to be linked with increased death rates from cancer, liver disease, depression, and mental illness.

In fact, there is a surprising amount of evidence that runs contrary to what most of us believe, which is that even the most modest of increases in cholesterol levels is harmful and that we should all seek to obtain lower levels in order to improve our health. Despite this fact, cholesterol still remains the arch villain of heart health perhaps due in no small part to the ability of the pharmaceutical companies to produce drugs that are able to modify this apparent ‘risk factor’ so effectively (again with little efficacy in older women without existing heart disease).

So, at the tender age of 87, what does my grandmother have to fear about having an elevated cholesterol level? From the evidence it would seem not much and more to the point, how much harm can you do by telling someone that they should be worried about their health when in fact they may have no reason to be concerned at all? While we would all do well to reduce our risk of ill health, we cannot afford to look at these issues in such simplistic fashion. Risk factors are many and varied and the data is complex and often confusing. So, many people trust their doctors to be guided on what is and what isn’t ‘healthy’.

With cholesterol-lowering statin sales in the tens of billions of pounds per year worldwide and doctors bombarded by the PR from drug companies, it is perhaps no wonder that so much of this evidence goes unnoticed by the general population. Lets hope our health professionals speak from the evidence in the literature and not just from the propaganda that the statin manufacturers circulate.

If you are interested to know more about this topic you can find the links of the aforementioned studies below and an entertaining and thorough dissection of this topic in the books The Great Cholesterol Con By Dr Malcolm Kendrick and Trick and Treat by Barry Groves.

  • Tikhonoff V et al, “Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in older people,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2005; 53:2159-2164.
  • Forette et al Cholesterol as a Risk Factor for Mortality in Elderly Women. The Lancet Volume 333, Issue 8643, 22 April 1989, Pages 868-870
  • Ulmer H, Kelleher C, Diem G et al. Why Eve is not Adam: Prospective follow-up in 149,650 women and men of cholesterol and other risk factors related to cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Journal of Women’s Health. 2004; 13(1):41-53.
  • Albert CM, Chae CU, Grodstein F et al. Prospective study of sudden cardiac death among women in the United States. Circulation. 2003; 107:2096-2101.
Filed Under: Blog, Health, What Grinds Graeme's Gears Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why politicians can save us from obesity, drugs, alcohol, smoking, crime and the energy crisis

October 10, 2011 By

Today’s insight into popular exercise literature and culture comes courtesy of that bastion of health, wellbeing, and physical par excellence that is the House of Lords. Tory Peer Lord Macoll of Dulwich was able to single-handedly provide us with a solution for the growing obesity in our country. His insight? Simply for us all to eat less.

The path to weight loss enlightenment??

There you have it, although heaven knows how they will fill the remaining years of a dietetic degree now that has been revealed. Not content with enlightening us all as to the real reason so many people are overweight, he went on to say that politicians are in fact misleading you all by stressing that exercise is the solution.

I am sure Lord Macoll means well, indeed he has served a long and very distinguished career so this is in no way an ad hominem pop at him. I do though take a few issues with this rather facile and trite mantra, which is perhaps a little disappointing coming from someone who must understand the complex issues behind the challenge of tackling obesity. We must get to grips with why people get overweight rather than just how if we are to find a solution to this problem. Simply telling people to eat less will not work and in this short post I’ll try to explain why.

Tobacco adverts before the health warnings

Let’s take smoking as an example, which has been absolutely and positively linked to causing lung cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer also states it can cause cancers of the pancreas, liver, kidney, bladder; in fact stick a pin in an anatomy chart and there is a good chance smoking can be linked to developing cancer there. If you smoke you’re also twice as likely to have a heart attack.

Cigarettes are widely recognised as being bad for your health. They have for years carried many explicit and evocative health warnings on their packaging to that effect and have been the target of multiple media campaigns to target both adult and child smokers. Tobacco companies have been banned from advertising or sponsoring sports and been liable to increasingly higher rates of taxation. Even social media is being used to try and combat smoking as a socially undesirable risk to health.

Yet, despite all this, around 1 in 5 adults in the UK smoke, which is only marginally less than the amount of adults who are obese (gender differences for smoking are now virtually non-existent while 2% more women are obese according to BMI). Despite all the evidence, death, illness, and proven risks that smoking carries, the advice to ‘smoke less’ or ‘stop smoking’ still goes unheeded by the same amount of people who are currently obese.

nutrition fat loss london

Supersized for the 2012 Olympics

Perhaps the futility of these strategies combined with a fear of a ‘nanny state’ is why we have so far not seen levies on junk food or health warnings on crisp packets? It may help explain in part why the world’s biggest* McDonald’s will be opening on the site of the London 2012 Olympic games as well? Commercial interests of major food retailers will make legislating against less healthy food very difficult, a topic often written about by the excellent Felicity Lawrence.

The fact is that many overweight and obese people are very aware that they eat too much, but the reasons why they do this are far more complicated and, in truth, are still not really clear. They are also aware that the food they eat is not conducive to reducing bodyweight. It is hardly news that pizza, chips, and sugary drinks make you fat after all. Eloquent writers such as Gary Taubes will argue that calories are almost an irrelevance and that the over-consumption of fattening carbohydrates is the issue, while the dieticians will continue to promulgate the calories in/calories out theory, which they cling to despite it clearly being far too simplistic to explain why obesity is rising or how to fix it. It is likely that this debate will continue to clog up numerous blogs and websites for many moons to come. What is clear is that simply telling people to eat less is about as effective for treating obesity as telling an alcoholic they should drink less.

I don’t have a lot of room to comment on the exercise aspect, which is where Taubes got it wrong in my mind and where Macoll follows suit, dismissing exercise as an almost pointless endeavour despite astonishing amounts of data to the contrary. It is though both proven and pertinent to say that those who combine exercise with a weight loss nutritional strategy achieve the following:

  • Greater success in maintaining weight lost**
  • Better retention of muscle mass and increased amounts of fat lost
  • Improvements in many markers of disease risk whether or not any weight was actually lost

These reasons alone are powerful arguments for the inclusion of some form of exercise as part of any intervention aimed at reducing obesity.

So, there you have it. Next time you are at a dinner party debating the complex reasons behind the London riots and how they could have been prevented, take a similar approach and you will be able to succinctly end any debate with the advice that people should simply riot less. Alternatively you could try advising an alcoholic that they should drink less or a gambler that they should bet less. Good luck with that.

Of course, the debate in the House of Lords went on to point out that we also eat too much saturated fat (another nutritional pariah still vilified despite the considerable weight of evidence against the flimsy data presented many decades previous), too much salt (despite the Cochrane Collaborations conclusions that reducing salt intake wasn’t worth the effort), and too much sugar (the elephant in the room perhaps?). You may well also contend that it really isn’t the role of politicians to try and tell us how to eat. Indeed many of them could take a look at their own health before advising others. Instead the advice on nutrition and health should come from an independent body free from lobbying by food suppliers or political interests, and garnered from a group of people who have an understanding of the complexity of the issue and the evidence around it.

 

* Overtaking the McDonalds in Orlando, Florida. It seems we have finally out-supersized America.

** Many fitness and nutrition writers continue to declare exercise (in particular the use of aerobic or ‘cardio’ work) redundant for obesity, choosing to cherry pick evidence that supports their product, certification, or personal training beliefs. The evidence however tells a different and entirely more complex story. As with nutrition, the responses to exercise are individually widely variable. Many authors blithely disregard the many health benefits, which seem consistent irrespective of actual weight loss, and look at only mean results for weight loss where the individual variations are lost in data. Despite this the Cochrane Collaboration certainly support the inclusion of exercise as part of any weight loss/health improvement strategy. http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003817.html

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The Truth About Calorie Deficits

September 27, 2011 By

An article popped up on BBC Health this week that caught our eye at The Foundry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14882832

It seems that those in the world of dietetics are finally realising that some of their advice may not be all it is cracked up to be. This is interesting given the amount of criticism ‘nutritionists’ have come in for over recent years for recommending such ‘radical’ approaches as reducing carbohydrate intake for weight loss or the suggestion that dietary fat may not actually be responsible for heart disease. The fact is that little in this article is of news to those of us who have been working on transforming body composition for many years now.

personal training city of london fat weight loss nutrition liverpool street

Is it really as simple as that?

For a long time now those in the seats of nutritional policy power have reinforced that to lose weight you simply have to create a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day and bingo, weight falls off, in a rather conveniently measurable 3500 calories (or the amount of energy in a pound of fat) a week.

Well of course, the real world tells us that it isn’t quite that simple and it seems that the British Dietetic Association may be starting to agree. Amusingly the article quotes Helen Bond from the BDA who says that “we recommend it, it’s what we are taught. But I don’t know what the scientific evidence for it is”. Well, score one for nutritionists vs. dieticians there. I can’t help but think that Ms Bond will cringe when she sees that quote in print, although I applaud her candid response. It seems that experience and instinct can precede scientific guidance after all. However, I cannot help but wonder how many more ‘established scientific guidelines’ currently trumpeted are as thinly supported by any actual evidence?

personal training city of london liverpool street weight loss

Do I need to include the chocolate brownie? I know I shouldn't have but it was my boss's birthday...

The fact is that studying diets is in itself is very difficult and any research needs to be carefully considered before applying it to the entire population. Drop out rates tend to be extremely high, in fact often 50% or more, skewing results to show the diet in question to be far more favourable than is actually the case. However, these drop out rates should tell us something; that many people lack the ability to stick the course at a diet, for a multitude of reasons. Diet studies tend to also rely on a hefty amount of self-reporting and subject adherence, another major problem. Housing and feeding large cohorts for a meaningful period of time is simply not achievable and any study that is reliant on self-reported data needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt (which is another topic where advice and evidence aren’t always congruent). Participants clearly over-estimate their activity levels and underestimate (or simply lie) about their food intake.

Of course, similar problems have been encountered when studying the effects of exercise on weight loss. Food intake is rarely controlled, drop out rates are high and, even when they aren’t, the ability of subjects to complete or maintain a meaningful intervention often makes for dismal reading. This has lead to many drawing erroneous and misleading conclusions that aren’t actually supported by the research, such as “exercise will make you fat” or other similar headline grabbing, but incorrect, statements.

Professor John Blundell (a brilliant but seemingly unknown researcher to those fitness experts who would write these assertions) has clearly demonstrated that, as with nutrition, the response to and effectiveness of exercise is highly individual. For an in depth and highly comprehensive review of the science of this area I’d highly recommend this paper: http://www.portalsaudebrasil.com/artigospsb/obes051.pdf. Those who tritely state that exercise doesn’t work for weight loss as it makes you eat more food would do well to read this and prepare to reconsider your viewpoint. For those of you who like to write these sort of statements without actually reading any kind of evidence I will quote directly and even bold the good bit for you:

“Physical activity has the potential to modulate appetite control by improving the sensitivity of the physiological satiety signalling system, by adjusting macronutrient preferences or food choices and by altering the hedonic response to food. There is evidence for all these actions. Concerning the impact of physical activity on energy balance, there exists a belief that physical activity drives up hunger and increases food intake, thereby rendering it futile as a method of weight control. There is, however, no evidence for such an immediate or automatic effect. Short (1–2 d)-term and medium (7–16 d)-term studies demonstrate that men and women can tolerate substantial negative energy balances of  ≤ 4 MJ energy cost/d when performing physical activity programmes.”

The article continues to discuss a new computer model of predicting weight loss from a Dr Kevin Hall, who for a PhD gives a rather loose summary of the paper saying “we tested it on about 100 people and it gave a good fit. It was pretty accurate”. Well I don’t know about you but with such precise and specific evidence like that I’m convinced. Or maybe not, as the author infers from this that weight loss will be identical in the short-term regardless of whether you cut dietary fat or carbohydrates.

So, we are right back to square one it seems and it is just about the calories?

Well, not exactly, as the preponderance of evidence would certainly not suggest that weight loss is the same on a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet, in particular if you are insulin resistant. In fact several studies have found significant differences in weight loss when considered in relation to insulin resistance and carbohydrate/fat intake. This is an aside to altering protein levels, which has also been shown to have significant impact on body composition change, with higher protein levels proving more effective for weight loss. Of course, as we have established everyone reacts differently to diets, but my advice remains the same for the obese individual:

1. Begin to reduce carbohydrate intake, in particular refined and processed carbs such as pasta, bread, juice etc.

2. Begin to raise protein intake, eating some with each meal.

3. Start to exercise at a level that is sustainable, enjoyable, and achievable. This allows for progression, which can be highly motivating.

4. Increase daily non-exercise activity (believe it or not, many will reduce this when they start exercising, thereby nullifying many of the beneficial effects).

For now though, take solace as in the words of beardy counsellor Robin Williams: “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault”. The powers that be have been lying to you.

Instead of focusing solely on managing your caloric intake you would do well to first work on managing your expectations of weight loss to avoid disappointment and despondency when things don’t happen quite as easily as many established ‘guidelines’ would have you believe. Hardened devotion to calories in vs. calories out seems the path to neurosis, obsessive behaviour patterns, and unrealistic expectations of weight loss and in turn a failure to maintain a successful diet approach.

As I have often said, the best diet is the one that you will actually keep to. While you are at it, most of you can stop worrying about your salt and your cholesterol too, but that really is another story.

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Why training with one of London’s best personal trainer teams is so different.

September 19, 2011 By

At The Foundry, our entire business is set up providing you with the best training and tuition available. We are renowned within and outside the industry as having some of the most outstanding trainers and rehab specialists in London.  However training with one of our experts does not mean you do not benefit from the expertise and experience of our other trainer specialists.The Foundry City of London personal training

Today, we have one such example….

This morning, Dave was just about to head into his “Learn how to power clean” training session with one of his clients, when he suddenly stumbled upon the best training method possible….

Why get a strength conditioning coach to teach power cleans when you have the English Weightlifting Champion and British Powerlifting Champion on hand to teach the client for you??

So the latest addition to our team, Evelyn Stevenson, took up the reins and delivered an outstanding technical lifting session using her first hand knowledge.

personal training city of london the foundryDave holds his hands up and admits that Evelyn is more of an expert in weightlifting technique. And that is what makes us different. We believe it’s important for every trainer to defer to the expertise of a more experienced trainer to ensure our clients get the best training possible.

Whilst all our personal trainers are equally comfortable helping clients with fat loss, muscle gain or sports performance, our individual specialists also all offer something different to our clients: Dave Thomas specialises in strength conditioning for sport, Graeme Marsh has worked for many years (sorry Graeme!) with stressed out City executives, Evelyn Stevenson is the current England Weightlifting and British Powerlifting Champion and Sarah Lindsay has first hand experience of performing at the highest level on the Olympic stage.

And don’t forget our rehab team. Got a niggle before your training session? See Nell Mead, our rehab director, one of the best pain and rehab specialist anywhere in London, for a pre-training examination before you get in the power rack.

Our integrated approach means we can combine years of experience of working in the City, with the military and with the skills of those who have represented Britain on a national and Olympic level for the benefit of our clients.

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Book now to train with Evelyn Stevenson; Elite Mentor at The Foundry’s Heavy Weekend

July 10, 2011 By

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USN and The Pure Package Sponsor The Foundry’s Heavy Weekend

June 21, 2011 By

Bootcamp

The Foundry is delighted to announce that USN, one of the leading global supplements companies, is the official supplements sponsor of our Heavy Weekend in Oxfordshire on Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 August 2011.  They will be supporting the concept of offering elite sports conditioning to the general population by providing free protein shakes and bars for all participants.

Also, The Pure Package, the London based gourmet diet food delivery company, as used by celebrities and athletes such as Hugh Jackman, Zinzan Brooke, Denise Van Outen. Lily Cole and Linford Christie, are our official “Pit Stop” Sponsor.  They have kindly offered to provide free healthy snacks for all our attendees.

We have sponsorship spots still available for a lunch sponsor and transport sponsor for this weekend so please contact us at dave@foundryfit.com if you would like to get involved or know more.

Finally, we will be announcing our exciting national media partners shortly so watch this space!!

To find out more about The Foundry’s Heavy Weekend, please see our recent blog post, contact Dave at dave@foundryfit.com or book online at http://foundryheavyweekend.eventbrite.com

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