LEG WORKOUTS

Legs are composed of over half our total body musculature. With our largest muscle groups located in our legs it also makes it a highly effective calorie burning workout if we focus on them. So if you’re short on time, and want the most calorie burn, don’t spend time on your abs or biceps, hit the legs!

Leg workouts are for both guys and girls. Not to generalise or anything, but how often do you see guys focusing on their chest and biceps and neglecting their legs. Girls appreciate a nice butt, get squatting! Neglecting muscle groups also leads to injury, balance should always be priority. 

The muscle groups of the legs include your quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves. Exercise lists for legs are endless, variety is always best to keep your muscles challenged. Some leg exercises to incorporate in your next session: steps ups, deadlifts, calf raises, squats (front and back), single leg squats, hamstring curls, lunges and thigh abductor/adductor exercises.

Some tips:

- Play around with your tempo for more variety. E.g. if performing a calf raise, lift up quick, then hold at the top for two seconds, and then slowly make your way down over 5 seconds.

- Squat deeply but don’t compromise on form. If doing back squats, check your knees are not tracking in front of your toes and keep your chest up. It is a myth you shouldn’t go past your knee line, the lower the better, but keep it safe with correct technique.

- Choose different weight selections. E.g., try lunges with a bar, or lunges with one or two dumbbells on one or both sides. All this keeps your body guessing, your body won’t change unless you change up your workouts.

- Do plyometric exercises. Lunge jumps, squat jumps and box jumps help improve speed, endurance and explosive power.

Your Trainer Liz

PAIN, PLEASURE AND YOUR HABITS

As a trainer I see many people who tell me they want to lose weight, but then when it comes to the action part, they don’t follow through. Why do we want something, yet keep giving up and detouring off track at the slightest hurdle. Is it that the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of change?

This is where instant gratification comes to mind. The chocolate bar is offered to us, the pleasure of those few moments of eating the bar drives us to eat it. But if we say no, delay gratification, endure a little pain now, we will get greater gratification later. I’m not just talking chocolate here, this can be applied with many areas in life. Maybe with study, you don’t want to miss one night of your favourite tv show for study, and longer term, the payoff of getting into the books outweighs the tv show doesn’t it? Are all our decisions in life based on the desire to move towards pleasure and move from pain? But are we stuck in the instant?

Imagine how great you could be if you stopped going through your life avoiding the short term pleasures? The quote comes to mind, ‘the pain of discipline outweighs the pain of regret’. How accurate this is. Discipline, the ability to put in the hard work after the motivation has passed. The more and more you do what you don’t want to, suffer that short term pain, the easier it will become. It does become a habit; you do strengthen your neurological pathways the more you do something. This applies to good and bad habits. Repeat something enough and the pathway becomes so strong almost an addiction for some, but the good news is that you can change these pathways. How bad do you want to? Are you willing to endure this pain now for greater pleasure? 

We all have secondary gains for doing the things we do and often it is on a subconscious level. For example: The person who has everything wrong with them and has to see specialist after specialist is actually lonely and on a subconscious level enjoys the contact of other people. The smoker smokes because they are bored deep down, it may also calm and relax them. Or maybe the smoking represents a fun time in their life, and on a cellular level it is locked in causing a strong association subconsciously with each cigarette taking them back to that happy place. The wife with the bad knees may not be able to do much lifting and house work and depends on her husband to do things for her. Deep down the problem represents her insecurity and need for someone to take care of her. These secondary gains are an avoidance mechanism for a deeper pain. If you can recognise your secondary gain, you can then find ways to introduce new elements in your life that will give you the feeling that you are actually wanting and on a healthier level. But before you cover it up with a new habit, reflect on what is happening so that you can really release your old emotions. Until you feel them, they will continue to leak out in destructive ways. 

So how long does it take to break a habit? Three weeks is what is commonly said. I have no idea where that theory came from. I loved this story someone told said about habits when asked how long it takes to break a habit. It goes something like this… ‘Say you drive to work each day, the same way for the past ten years and it takes you 45 minutes. Then one day you start your journey to work and there is a detour sign. You follow the signs and find yourself at work in 20 minutes. The next time you go to work, which way do you go? Your old way, the way that you have gone for ten years? Or do you break your habit instantly and go the new 20 minute route?’ Interesting isn’t it. 

Your TrainerLiz

What Do You Want Before NYE??

NYE, it’s 71 days away or ten weeks away.

It’s not too late to set a goal or get working towards one you that you may have set before.

Write your goal down. It can be around any area of life, maybe health but maybe it’s do with social or relationship aspects. Whatever it is, Be SPECIFIC.

We don’t want ‘to lose weight’. Be specific. What is that weight. Is it a body fat percentage, is it a size clothing? Make is measurable.

Now that you have the goal in mind. Write down what that goal feels like to you. What will it mean to you to achieve it. Write down as much as possible. The more you can feel and visualise it, the higher change that you will make it happen.  You may even use pictures. For example, pictures of your ideal weight, pictures of the holiday you are saving for, be creative. I want you to feel and see your goal as if it was real.

Using a weight loss goal, some ideas: ‘I will feel happy, confident and energetic. I will enjoy being able to put on any of my clothes and know they fit well. I will want to go out and be around other people. I will feel light, less bloated, clear minded. I will love to eat fresh healthy foods. I will fit into my favourite dress again. I will look hot on NYE’

Try writing down what it will feel like if you don’t have this goal. Try associate pain with the lack of goal. For example, ‘When I eat badly, I feel yuck and I feel unmotivated. My skin looks dull. I have nothing to wear. I wake up feeling lethargic. I feel unfit, and get into a sweat walking up stairs.’

Next, break down your goal into smaller components.

Continueing with weight loss as the goal. Break it down to weekly targets.

Week 1, I will weigh x amount.

Week 1, I will have done exercise 30 minutes for 6 of 7 days.

Week 1, I will make diet changes: 1, cut down your daily sugar in coffee by ½. 2, replace coke with water. 3, bring lunch to work. 4, drink a glass of wine with dinner on the weekend rather than every night.

Keep track of your process, at the end of week 1, record how you went. What did you achieve, what can you do better? Adjust your steps if needed. If you didn’t exercise on 6 days, do not feel guilty and give up after 1 week. Try again next week or be more realistic, maybe change it to 5 times per week. Write down how great it feels  when you are closer to your goal. The more pleasure you can associate with the goal the more your body and mind will want it.

Be proud of yourself and avoid negative talk. Each day you are getting stronger, if you make a mistake, it’s simply learning what perhaps didn’t work. Have you goals visually around the house, you need to see it. If you wait for a bus every day, write it on a small paper and take it out every morning for a quick read. Read  your goals before you go to bed and reflect. Congratulate yourself on making the small steps. Look forward to waking up tomorrow and achieving more.

Set up a good support system. It is important to surround yourself with like mind people. Tell people what your goal is. If everyone knows you’ll be more determined to make it happen. If you are slipping away, your support network can keep you on track. Get your friend and partner to make a similar goal with you. It helps to be able to talk and relate your experiences with others going through similar events.

In summary,

1. Write a specific goal on paper

2. Write down what it would feel like to have achieved the goal. Create lots of pleasure with the goal. Feel and visualise it.

3. Write down what it feels like not to break your commitment towards this. Create lots of pain. Feel and visualise it.

4. Break the goal down to daily or weekly targets. Keep track, monitor and adjust when needed.

5. Surround yourself with supportive people.

6. Be proud and look forward to being a better you on NYE.

Live your dreams. Whatever the mind can dream, it can achieve. Good luck!

Your Trainer Liz

Top 10 Reasons Why You Can’t Lose Weight

1.       You train once a week at a gym or with a personal trainer. You work in an office job, sit on your butt all day and then go home to sit on your butt. On the weekend you may go for a walk. A walk isn’t going to get any weight off. Nor is one session per week.

2.       You’ve got an injury. You have a sore neck, shoulder, whatever it is. You think that’s a reason not to exercise. You have legs don’t you? Stop using an injury as an excuse, work around it.

3.       You’re tired. You are tired, I am tired, everyone is tired, suck it up and get on with it. Dig deep within and learn to push yourself.

4.       When you do exercise, you’re working out aimlessly. Reading a magazine while sitting on a bike, holding on the handles on a treadmill while eyes glued to the tv, punching the pads while checking out the guys in the room next door. You have no focus. Give your workout 100% of your attention. Have a plan and go hard.  If not, save the gym membership and go wonder around the park.

5.       You do yoga or pilates. They have lots of benefits but you are not going to lose weight.

6.       You don’t like to exercise. We all don’t like something. That’s life. Some people don’t like cleaning the house, some people don’t like having a shower, and some people don’t like going to work. You have to do things you don’t like sometimes. Again, just get on with it and do it.

7.       You’re stressed. You have one family drama after the other, this week it’s your over bearing mum, next week your dad is sick, next month your almost breaking up with your boyfriend. Deal with it, stop complaining and get in some exercise.

8.       You train and then go to the coffee shop for a muffin, or banana bread, or a chocolate milkshake. You’ve just consumed more calories than you burned. See the problem?

9.       You buy yourself a juice from a popular juice bar. Again, full of calories, you are drinking a meals worth of calories in the drink and probably more. Fruit is calories. Fruit juice is even more calories.

10.   You order a caesar salad. The dressing is fat, the bacon bits are fat, and the croutons are fat. You are not being healthy. You may as well order a big mac.

11.   Bonus reason. Your busy, you have long work hours. Worst excuse! You’re busy but you still have time to watch TV and you still have time to check facebook? Get up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later. Problem solved.

Your Trainer Liz

Our Deepest Fear - Inspiring Quote

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You’re playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

- This inspiring quote by Marianne Williamson

Your Fitness Trainer Sydney

Wise Mind Accepts

I was just sitting on the lounge, and remembered something powerful once told to me a few years back, ‘wise mind accepts’. I was feeling tired, drained and unmotivated. Why well mostly due to my thoughts. I was thinking about reputations and how some people don’t say sorry. ‘Actions speak louder than words’, while actions are something I take most notice of, sometimes it would be nice to hear the words too. Why do some people not say sorry? To say something good comes out of every bad situation, whether true or not makes no different.  A genuine sorry, can be felt, can be heard and you can see it.  I once thought reputation was everything. But I have learnt of recent that while reputation can be tarnished, character will outshine. If someone wants to make up lies to protect themselves, bully, be unethical, let it be. If people have chosen to believe lies, let it be. I can’t change others, I can change myself. It all starts with the man in the mirror.

Note to self, wise mind accepts.

Why wise mind accepts? Some things are thoughts, some are fact. I assume what you think. I know sorry would important to me, but that’s just my value.

Time to reenergize myself, mind over body!

Your Fitness Trainer Sydney