Pull your weight

This post is all about pull ups. The pull up is an old exercise that everyone has seen or done at some part in their life. Suprisingly though it is still rated as one of the best exercises for training your bicep and / or back muscles.

In this post I have listed 5 ways to boost your pull up reps max from beginner level to a more advanced routine.

 

1. If you find it hard to do a few pull ups then try doing negative reps. Using a bench or by jumping up so that your chin is over the bar lower yourself slowly back down. Make the reps last for at least 15 seconds to get the benifit out of it. The almost stayic hold as you slowly lower youself will aid strength gains and soon you'll be able to do more reps.

2. This tip comes from fitness coach 'Pavel Tsatsouline' that he calls "greasing the groove". Simply position a bar somewhere you will pass often during your workout, or at home and do a set up pull ups to failure every time you pass it. Soon youll be able to last longer than ever before.

3. Lowering the rest time between sets can help to increase your rep number maximums for pull ups. By lowering the rest times to around 30 seconds between sets you give the muscle less time to recover and so this increases the amount of resistance you can take before you give up. This way when you come do do your first set next time around your body will have adapted to recover faster and so you will be able to do more reps.

4. Add a weight. By holding a dumbell between your feet, or hanging a weight from your belt as you do pull ups increases the amount of weight you are used to pulling. Over time your muscles will become used to the extra load, so when you remove this you will feel lighter and so will be able to do more reps.

5. This tip is from Men's Fitness magazine. The say that once you are getting good amounts of reps in, (15-20) then you should start to perform a one set max every morning and afternoon for a month. By the end of the month your repititions will have dramatically increased and you'll feel stronger.

The chile that burns fat!

If you're looking to shift a few extra pounds, adding metabolism boosting foods such as the chilli pepper to your diet can have a serious impact. The high levels of capsaicin found in chillies will seriously rev up your metabolic rate, causing your body to burn more calories. Recent research found that eating 1 tablespoon of chopped red or green chilli peppers, which contains roughly 30mg of capsaicin, could temporarily boost your metabolism by over 20%. This is also supported by research for the 'Journal of The Medical Association of Thailand' in which participants experienced increases in their metabolic rates after consuming just 5 grams of chilli pepper.

Quick tips:

1. For maximum metabolic benifit make sure to eat the white 'ribs' in the centre of the chilli pepper as these contain the highest levels of capsaicin. But they're also the hottest part.

2. Make sure sure drink plently of water afterwards as this will also rev up your body's fat burning ability.
3. Fresh peppers are better than pesto's and dips so get down to the super market and get the good stuff!

The military workout

This work out is designed to incorporate alot of strength and fitness exercises into one training session and get you the body of the boys on the front line. It combines cardio, core and weights trainning to give a grea full body workout in one sesison.

1. Tredmill: Firstly you have to get on the tredmill and cover 1.5km in under 10minutes, to be honest it should be done a lot faster but the 10 minutes is the maximum time limit that you must complete this in.

2. The Plank: This core exercise is all about stability and mental focus. It involves little movement but is a great way to build your core strength. Simply hold this position for 2 minutes to complete this exercise. (If you are really struggling then do 2 x 1 minutes)

3. Military Press: This exercise woirks the core, shoulders, triceps and upper back and is a great way to build your upper body strength. Using the bar bell and perferably a squatt rack to give you somewhere to put the bar up high. Then stand with your feet shoulder width appart press the bar overhead keeping your back straight. Do 3-4 sets of 10 reps ofa suitable weight.

4. Press ups: This exercise is an old favourite. Simply find an open space and do 3 sets to failure of your own body weight taking only 40 secconds between each set.

5. Exercise bike: Quickly over to the next cardio station and again you are aiming to cover 3km in under 10 minutes. This again is a long time but make sure you complete this well before the time limit.

6. Russian twists: This abs exercise targets the bas and obleak's working on overall core strength. Get into a sit up position and raise your feet of the floor and keep your knee's bent. Now raise your bofdy off the floor keeping your legs where they are. From here simply twist your body to each side touching the floor on each side as you twist. Do this continuously for 2 minutes.

7. Walking lunges: This legs exercise is targeted to build up your leg strength and get you moving. Take a pair of dumbbells and find an open area and then follow these instructions. Lunges forward with one leg. Now instead of returning to your origninal position you will keep your body low and take another step forward with the other leg. Keep this up for 20 reps and then stop. You want to do 3-4 sets with only 1 minute rests maximum in between sets.

Performance boosting interview with Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is one of the former American Olympic champions and in a short interview with Men's Fitness magazine he outlined a few ways in which we can all improve our workout performance and get that winning mentality.

1. Attitude Adjustment:
Johnson claims thta alot o your training comes down to attitude, how badly do you want it? You have to want to be the best in order to get gold. He believes that th big problem for UK athletes is that they have an overwhelming sense of complacency and a worrying habit of rewrding mediocrity. Many athletes need support, in both their training and nutritional push, but he claims that it can seriously affect your results if you allow these personal failings to be accepted. Help should only be given to those who deserve it.
He gives the example of Phillips Idowu, who won silver in the triple jump at the Bejing Olympics, but wasn't fully satisfied. That is the mentality we all need to achieve the best from our training.

2. Quality Control:
Johnson claims that we all need to discover our strengths and weaknesses and then work out a way to become a rounded athlete, not just focus on one or two things we are good at. he claims that many modern athletes are quick to blame their coaches or team mates for a poor performance when really there is no one to blame but yourself. You have to fully commit yourself to the task ahead or else your bound to fall short.

3. Percentage gains:
"Ulitmately it's all about vhasing those exta percentages that makes an athlete worldclass" cliams Johnson. We all require improvements in every component of our body, be it mental, physical, strength, nutrition, there is always somthing we can tweak to make better.
"Ask yourself in the mirror, DO YOU WANT TO BE GOOD, OR DO YOU WANT TYO BE THE BEST!"

Johnson also outlined a few tips to help you achieve that winning performance:
Make time - aim for consistency and regular intense training befor eyou try to move up.
Achievable aims - make your goals realistic or else you'll only end up annoyed or put off training all together.
Fuel your progress - its all about nutrition, it the toughest part to get right, but when you do your goals will fall into place.
Be sport specific - train for your sport, adapt your training programme to suit what you would need to perform at the top in your sport.

Why do I crave junk?

We've all experienced weird food cravings at some point in our lifetime and usually on a saturady night we'll get the urge to dive for an unhealthy option. This post should explain why and hopefully help prevent unhealthy cravings in the future.

Food cravings mean that the body has its signals mixed up. When we are exhausted or blue, we have low blood sugar and/or low serotonin, and the body signals the brain that it needs a pick-me-up. This signal causes a sugar craving or carbohydrate craving.
Serotonin is our basic feel-good hormone. If serotonin is low, we feel sad or depressed. And hormonal imbalance or weak digestion can lead to low serotonin. Unfortunately, sugars and simple carbohydrates release a short burst of serotonin — we feel good for a moment, but soon return to our low-serotonin state — then crave more sugar and simple carbohydrates. It’s an uphill battle from here.
If you eat a low-fat diet in the hope of losing weight, you unintentionally make the problem worse. Insulin is responsible for maintaining stable blood sugar levels by telling the body’s cells when to absorb glucose from the bloodstream. But many healthy diets tell us to avoid gluscose and carbs. However if you suddenly make the jump form normal to carb avoiding diets then your in serious trouble!  Your body cannot cope with the suden drop in carbs and stimulates your brain to crave them . In a few days time you will give in and eat too much carbs at once, leading ultimately to weight gain!At the same time, your cells cannot absorb the glucose they need, so they signal your brain that you need more carbohydrates or sugars. The result is persistent food cravings.

Another cause of food cravings is adrenal imbalance. If you are under a great deal of stress, or suffer from sleep deprivation, you are probably exhausted much of the time. This situation causes your body to call upon your adrenal glands for more stress hormones to act as a pick-me-up, but over time, your adrenals become less able to respond appropriately. You may resort to sugar or carbohydrate snacks or coffee during the day and carbohydrates or alcohol at night, all of which exacerbate the problem.

To try and prevent this there are a few tips we can give.

1. SLEEP! Its vital that you get enough sleep to prevent this adrenal imbalance that leads to cravings. About 8-9 hours should be great.

2. Don't completely ditch carbs! As I've already said a sudden drop can lead to extar consumption in order to compensate for the lack of carbs and so you end up eating more and gaining weight! Instead try to gradually reduce the carbs until you see your weight dropping and then keep it there.

3. Keep your timing accurate. This means that you stick to the same nightly routine. if your usually in bed by 11 on a week day then keep it up over the weekend. Studies have shown that even oine hour of extra alertness can lead to cravings due to a drop in your brains glucose levels and it craves carbs to give it a sudden energy boost!

The 5% solution

This post is based on Charles Poliquin's strategy for shattering the plateau feeling that many men get when they train.
When you are building muscle there are lots of ways to structure your exercises to get good results, but soon your body can adapt to the programme that it is worked at and eventually you end up plateauing. This easy startegy will help you up your stength almost every time you train and hopefully help prevent yor muscle growth stalling.

HOW IT WORKS:
You increase your load by around 5% each time you train for two workouts in a row while reducing the target reps by one for each rep increase. Then after the third workout, your reduce the weight by 5% bt go back to the starting number of reps. For example;

This simple plan allows you to gradually increase your power without allowing your body to 'acclimatise' or get used to a certain routine as it is constantly changing and should help to prevent you stalling in yuor progress.

However once you exceed your body weight the 5% increase may be too much to take on and so i suggest lowering to % or doing everything twice before moving on. E.g work out 1 twice, then work out 2 twice and so on so you have extra time to build up the required strength and yet you wont stop increasing your overall strength.

Stay of the Sidelines

This post will outline how to avoid some of the most common football injuries and give you specific exercises that should help to lessen your risk of injury for the rest of the season.

On average professional footballers suffer tow injuries a season that can lead to them being out of action for a few days to many months. A teams injurt list can truly mean the difference between success and failure for the entire season so hopefully after reading these tips you'll be able to help your team succeed.

1. THIGH INJURIES:
Thigh injuries account for around 23% of all injuries. most of them are caused by strenght imbalances between the quads and hamstrings, leading to joints being pulled out of alignment causing excess muscle straign.
Tips: for most men the hamstrings are the weaker muscle group so try doing more lunges, and hamstring curls to build them up.

2. KNEE INJURIES:
These account for 18% and are usually caused by late / high tackles or when the studds get caught in the turf but the leg keeps turning, leading to a pressure build up.
Tips: Best ways to strenghten the knee joint is to perform free weight exercises such as squatts and lunges. These force the knee stabilising muscles and tendons to grow and help to abosorb excess stress in the joint.

3. ANKLE INJURIES:
These account for 14% of all football injuries, and are typically down to weak ligaments and poor flexability in the ankle.
Tips: Strengthening the ligaments around the ankle can improve its stability. Imporvign your flexibility can give your ankles a greater range of motion to help cope with late tackles. Try doing bosu squatts and again lunges to improve on both areas.

4. GROIN INJURIES:
These also account for 14% of all football injuries. Poor core strength and imbalances in the muscles attaching to the pelvis are to blame for this major sporting injury.
Tips: Try strengthening your inner thigh muscles such as side lunges to help reduce your chance of injury. Also try building up your overall core strength to assits the pelvis.

5. ACHILLES TEDON INJURIES:
These lower leg injuries make up 11% of football injuries and are down to a weak ahillies tendon and poor calf strength.
Tips: Calf presses or other calf exercise can help this. If you've never had this injury before then box jumps, with their explosive power can help reduce the risk of injury.

Special thanks to: Mens Fitness Magazine and Liverpool FC's fitness coach Darren Burgess