The Fitness Journal

You don’t need access to a lot of high tech cardio equipment, like treadmills or rowing machines to develop your cardio-vascular fitness. Here are some of my favourite ways to build up your aerobic and anaerobic fitness outside the gym. As usual I recommend interval style training.

- skipping
- training on the heavy bag
- bodyweight circuits etc.
- actually get outside and go for a run or cycle

There are a lot of other options, so pick a couple of your favourites and go and train.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

One of the problems with most traditional training programs for health and fitness is that they only focus on one or two  elements of fitness e.g. the aerobic conditioning in traditional long slow distance jogging or swimming. I think a well developed program should incorporate a wide variety of exercises, training styles and types of training. This way you are more likely to gain the wide variety of benefits that come from training. Ideally you should incorporate strength, energy system training including intervals, flexibility, co-ordination, agility and balance training in your program. All of these elements don’t need to be incorporated in every training session but over a 1-2 week period all of these elements should be trained based upon your own strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, you don’t need to have separate sessions for each element e.g. a yoga or martial arts class will cover a number of elements depending on the class.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

Recent research has looked at the action of allicin, the sulphur based compound in garlic on Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) and muscle recovery. More specifically the study looked at blood lactate, muscle breakdown markers, perceived muscle soreness and antioxidant levels after a downhill treadmill run.  The group that took the allicin supplement had significantly lower levels of the muscle damage markers, significantly lower perceived muscle soreness and much higher antioxidant levels than the placebo group.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

Trying to fit all your training into the weekend i.e being a weekend warrior is becoming more common. Although I admire the idea of trying to get more training in, there are a couple of potential problems with this approach. Many people push themselves too hard trying to compensate for missing their workouts during the week. This can result in injury and causing so much muscle soreness that training looses is appeal. Further, weekend only training limits the fitness and health benefits that you can gain from your training in comparison to more regular training.

It is far better to do several short workouts during the week than to hammer yourself on the weekend.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne

One of the things that I have noticed training at my local gym, is that the level of supervision is very different to most modern gyms in Australia. In Australia we, the staff, were expected to be proactive and be on the lookout for training technique that is potentially dangerous. It doesn’t seem to be the same in the gyms I have visited here. This may not be Japan wide situation but the differences in litigation here may be a contributing factor. Another factor may be that, at the gym I train at, there is only a small free weights section and I am unsure if the staff know enough about picking up technique flaws in free weight training. Another possible factor could be cultural differences.

The differences are quite striking and some of the technique demonstrated here makes me cringe. It would certainly be discussed and corrected if it happened in Australia.

Remember to sign up for my newsletter and download your free Exercise Guide.
If you are interested in me working with you to achieve your health and fitness goals, go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Train Smart, Love Life.
Wayne