Castle Personal Training
Castle Personal Training is a Corstorphine, Edinburgh based company who specialise in weightloss/toning and Pre and Post Natal exercise.
5 questions you wanted to ask….and did.
Hi guys,
Hope you’re all keeping well, eating right and training hard.
As you all know I am always keen to get questions from readers. Usually I just respond via email or Facebook message but there have been a couple that I thought I’d post here as they seem to crop up a lot.
Dave from London asked “What are your thoughts on (orange) juice from concentrate? I’m on a budget and it’s much cheaper.”
Good question as a lot of people, including trainers, get this wrong. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON not to drink fruit juice from concentrate, as long as it’s 100% from concentrate and doesn’t have loads of stuff added to it. The concentration process preserves all the nutrients in juice and just removes the water, which gets added again later on, so the nutritional content is the same as it is for 100% fresh fruit juice.
Here’s an excellent article by my friend Karen McCarthy for Livestrong that explains it in more detail.
I have said it before; When you’re trying to lose weight please get your vitamins from vegetables instead of fruit juice, because fruit juice is mainly sugar, but there’s nothing at all wrong with concentrate.
There is nothing wrong with most of the cheaper options you have available to you in the shops. Have a read here and see where else you can safe some money.
Eileen from Dublin asked; “I am 4 months pregnant, when should I stop training?”
Now this is obviously a very personal situation and depends completely on the individual’s health. Having said that; If you’re healthy and fit as a fiddle you can pretty much exercise until you give birth.
What’s important is the type of exercises you’re doing. High-impact stuff, plyo metrics, running and jumping etc. is out for a while.
Squats and deadlifts are awesome but you HAVE TO make sure your breathing is right when you’re pregnant. No holding your breath, Valsalva, or any of that nonsense. Monitoring your heart-rate is also a good idea the further you get into your pregnancy. For the last Tri-mester you really want to focus on your pelvic floor and core but there is no reason why you can’t keep up your training.
Debbie, from Ft Lauderdale, asked; “I am trying to get a 6 pack but hate cardio, do I need to do cardio?”
In short; “No”. You don’t need to run, cycle, row or spend time on the X-trainer to get ripped. What you need is to keep your diet tidy and do your share of exercise. You can just lift heavy weights and get your 6-pack. I do always recommend doing resistance cardio; Kettlebell swings, corebag throws and all that sort of good stuff. After all you need to have a healthy heart as well as a fit body and resistance cardio, combined with the right diet, is the fastest way to get ripped. Here are a couple of sessions to help you get cracking.
Denise, city unknown, asked; “What is the best way to lose fat?”
Now here’s something Personal Trainers don’t often like to admit as the answers has little to do with them; EAT RIGHT! There are articles out there claiming squats, lunges, plyo-metrics, Kettlebell training, HIIT training etc. are the best ways to lose fat fast but they are all incorrect.
The key to losing fat is to get your diet right; eat clean foods, don’t eat too much of it. Drink plenty of water and get enough sleep. Those 3 factors are all more important than the question of which exercises you should do. A lot of Personal Trainers claim it’s 80% diet and 20% exercise and then go on about how lunges are the single best exercise to do for fat-loss. It is complete hokum and just something they say so they can keep taking your money.
Don’t get me wrong; you have to train hard to tone up and get that physique you want! But the exercises you should do really are determined by the bodyshape you have and the bodyshape you want.
Here is a previous piece I wrote which goes into more detail.
Aarav, from Dehli, asked “What is the best way to build my endurance?”
Good question. This is not rocket science but a lot of people like to pretend it is.
Just build it up. Do a little bit more, go for a little bit longer every session you do.
Say we’re using the rowing machine;
Day 1; Row 1K at 4min/k pace
Day 2; Row 1.2K at 4min/k pace
Day 3; Row 1.4K at 4min/k pace
Etc.
Just keep smashing out the distance at the same pace until you reach a plateau. Then when you need to smash through your plateau you can add some interval sprint sessions. You’ll build your endurance up in no time.
Obviously, as all marathon runners will know, you can’t just keep going longer and longer so at some stage you have to schedule your longer runs and then do shorter ones on other days so your schedule might look something like this;
Day 1; Row 5k at 4min/k pace
Day 2; Row 8k at 4.5min/k pace
Day 3 Row 15k+ at 5.5min/k pace
As an aside; the times next to the pace are random and are just to indicate that your pace for your short row should be higher than the one for your long row.
That’s it for now, I hope you get something out of this, remember to just write me an email if you have any more questions you’d like an answer to..I respond to all, non-spammy, ones 🙂
Take care,
Peter
Castle Personal Training 