Resolutions one month on

2014 a new year a new you, January has been and gone, how are those resolutions looking one month later? Are you sticking to your word and starting to see the gains, or are you feeling the strain and starting to slip? In this blog we will look at some resolutions made at Breadsall Priory and simple ways to keep to those resolutions.

Now some resolutions made by members were pretty simple, increase their training by one day, some enjoy classes and looked to try two new classes and stick to them, this is fantastic thinking, find something you enjoy, if your training is fun and you enjoy it you are much more likely to stick to it and look forward to it. It has to challenge you to change you, but it has to please you for you to come back for more. 2014 has seen an increase in classes giving more variation to an already great class time table, there is Legs, bums and tums (LBT), total body burn (TBB), early morning HIIT (high intensity interval training), with more new classes to come including METAFIT and our Technique clinics.  Another good method is to find likeminded members who enjoy their training, we are seeing great fitness groups forming, all which are very welcoming, we have strong groups for Pump Fx and Kettlercise, a rough tough bunch of Bootcampers and highly functional trainers in our circuits and TBB classes. Stick to those resolutions by joining a group.

Another method to stick to the resolutions is to take part in gym challenges. We have a year long 550 kettle bell challenge! A six week super hero team challenge which has 100 members taking part in the first week alone! Then later in the year we will see our first ever online challenge that you can do anywhere and post your achievements on our ever growing Facebook page!

Finally a great way to stick to and celebrate those resolutions is to treat yourself! Every month that goes by treat yourself to something you enjoy, new clothes, cinema trips, gigs or games. If you have that reward and incentive at the end you will be much more likely to keep with it.

So how is your new year going and what resolutions are you sticking to? We’d love to know.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Breadsall-Priory-Leisure-Club-a-Marriott-Hotel-Country-Club/126910624084898?ref=hl

WHY ARE MY HAMSTRINGS ALWAYS TIGHT?

Many people speak of tight hamstrings after running. The description has become a bit of a throw-away line when talking about one of the most common aches and pains we feel from the rigours of our training.

Many people in fact fail to maintain a neutral pelvic position as they move. This is most likely due to a lack of core strength, and Hip flexor tightness. The pelvis tilting anteriorly (forward) increases the distance between hamstring origin and insertion, lengthening the hamstring muscles and increasing tension.

It’s quite possible that your hamstrings aren't tight because they’re chronically short, it’s far more likely that the feeling of tightness is there because the hamstrings are being held in a lengthened position due to poor Pelvic position and Core weakness.

Before you spend ages performing static stretches for your hamstrings, be smart and work on building Core Strength and achieving and maintaining proper pelvic position as you move. Taking part in our technique clinic classes, pilates and yoga classes are a great way to asses posture, muscular imbalances and range of movement. 
The below link provides a video in relation to hamstring tightness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iW3C4q4QmWk

550 Kettlercise Challenge

During 2014 Kettlercise instructors Karl and Simon are participating in a team challenge. Once a month during a kettlercise class the class will be split into 2 teams. Starting at the same time each team (1 with Karl leading and 1 with Simon leading) will perform 10 different kettlebell exercises starting with 100 reps and reducing by 10 every time the exercise changes. For example 100 Squat to Press, 90 rotational Lunges, 80 Cleans etc. until we are down to 10. The first team to all finish all exercises and reps (550) wins. There will be a leader board over the year to see which team will prevail during 2014. This is a simple but great idea to boost class participation and get a buzz around the club with your members. Also it adds a friendly competitive edge for your members to push themselves and achieve better results. No matter what we say we all have a little competitive edge inside us all and a fun simple idea such as above might just bring it out and push us on to that next level of fitness.

Attitudes Towards Training

The world of fitness is varied and there are good points, bad points and plain confusing points. This week I want to address attitudes towards training, recently I have heard some very confusing statements by people in regards to their training, such as, ‘how do I lose weight with the least effort?’ ‘I don’t want to train like that because I will get really sweaty’ ‘I don’t do those lifts they are too difficult’ ‘I am not very good at that so i never train it’ and so on…

A large percentage of people who go to the gym will do the same thing day in and day out, the same thing for months and years, with little motivation, little energy, no thought to adding new elements, people today seem to do what they think they know and little else, hardly pushing themselves, never working up a sweat, no increase in weight, intensity, pace or recovery, just same old different day.

Firstly the simplest way I can put it is ‘if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you!’ training should challenge your abilities, you should work, sweat, push hard, dig deep and have to power your way through. Recently I did circuit based training on my weaknesses, I chose for things I am not great on and put them into a chain focusing on my technique, strength and endurance.  You won’t lose weight sticking to the same pace, you won’t get fitter doing the same few exercises with huge amounts of rest, you won’t get bigger lifting the same weight for the same reps, you will simply plateau.

There are so many types of training, so many variations and so much to master, there are a multitude of lifts, fitness and endurance training methods, lifting techniques, skill and agility building, flexibility and all round conditioning methods, so try them, bring back some excitement to your training and if you’re not sure where to start then find a trainer, we have a personal training team here at Breadsall Priory, we all have various backgrounds and experiences with fitness and our individual training methods vary and complement one another, we offer one to one training, group classes, inductions, personal programs and not to mention we are always happy to answer your health and fitness questions, our training team also work on the reception so don’t be scared to have a quick chat about your training or what new training we are doing, fitness is our career, our passion and we love the opportunity to talk about fitness and jump at the opportunity to train. So let’s reignite some passion and bring back that get up and go, in short, let’s get back in the gym and let’s smash it!

My Weakness Workout

30 wall balls
20 double unders
10 pull ups
5 muscle ups

For 5 rounds.



Karl O'Sullivan

It Is The Season!

Christmas is coming up soon! Which means a few things, adverts, presents, stock piling of the kitchen and of course, the Christmas parties, which means drink, lots of drink. Now I have no intention and urging you to be on the wagon this Christmas, after all it is the season to drink and be merry, but I will outline a few drinking facts and maybe that will encourage more reserved drinking or a rethink of your regular training. On a typical British night out it is not seen as unbelievable to consume anything in the way of, a bottle of champagne or brandy, ten bottles of beer, eight doubled up spirits or bomb upon bomb of the Jager.

The drink	Alcohol	Workout
Champagne	11%	3 hours dancing
A bottle of brandy	40%	4 hours cycling
10 bottles of larger	5.1%	1.5 hours playing squash
8 gin & tonics (doubles)	37.5%	2 hours football
6 Jagerbombs	35%	1 hour of rowing

So in short if you have parties lined up this merry season, then gear your training towards that high intensity calorie burn and remember, drink responsibly and be merry!
 

 

Metafit

The Metafit™ bodyweight training system is an effective and simple tool for to maximise results. To burn fat you need to change the resting metabolism, work big muscle groups with high intensity intervals and get quick results for your clients and Metafit does all three Created by a former Royal Marine Commando and a national gymnast Metafit™ combines traditional bodyweight exercises with the latest interval and Tabata techniques to set the metabolism on fire! No expensive kit required for this workout just hard work and dedication. Corey one of our trainings will soon be getting qualified to deliver this unique style of teaching and delivering it here at Breadsall Priory Leisure club. The training is in December so get along to one of Corey sessions over the festive period and try it out for yourself. Keep an eye out for Corey’s blog to see how the training went and what to expect when we launch our new class. Metafit will seriously change your body!

One Move, Full Workout

The latest question asked to me was one regarding a time efficient workout, many people are pressed for time and can’t really spend an hour or two in the gym, so I was asked for a super quick and worthwhile routine and to be honest I thought immediately there is a single move that is a great workout in itself, the front squat shoulder press, also known in Crossfit circles as a ‘thruster’.

This exercise incorporates a front squat with a shoulder press, you can use a barbell or a pair of dumbells . Take the weight up to the level of your shoulder, keep your chest lifted and your back straight, sink into a squat, aiming for hip crease to drop below knee crease, keep the heels flat on the floor, keeping your back straight drive up through your heels keeping your core strong as you reach a full standing position press the weight directly over your head, then drop the weight back down to upper chest level and quickly and smoothly repeat the squat and press movement.

This exercise incorporates so many muscles that it gives a great workout, incorporating strength, stamina and focusing on the development of lean functional muscle. Also by taking the weight at the front of the body (anterior) and as opposed to on the shoulders carry the weight on the back (posterior) it promotes better alignment of the spine and puts a greater emphasis on the abdominals, giving a great abdominal workout throughout the lift and press.

This move can be put very easily into a great interval workout, 300 meter row 20 Thrusters, hit 8 intervals with strong technique, go for time and hit the showers. Quick, functional and efficient, time in the gym minimal, benefits maximum!

-Karl O’Sullivan, Personal Trainer and Group Fitness Instructor.

Stretch and Recover

If you suffer from chronic lower back pain it is proven that exercise can help. Training your core muscles will build up strength to help prevent lower back pain and support you in all movements. At Breadsall Priory Leisure club we offer many classes that can help you to improve your core stability such as: Yoga, Pilates, Body Sculpt and Yogalates. There's more to Pilates than developing "strong abs" or "core strength". Pilates is an exercise system that focuses on stretching and strengthening the whole body to improve balance, muscle-strength, flexibility and posture. It was created by German-born Joseph Pilates in the early 1900s and incorporates elements of yoga, martial arts and Western forms of exercise. Initially adopted by professional dancers in the US as an effective form of recovery after injury, Pilates has steadily grown in popularity around the world, and includes celebrity fans such as Madonna and Jennifer Aniston.

Swimming at Breadsall Priory

Come along to Breadsall Priory and make the most out of all our facilities including our swimming pool. Swimming is a brilliant way to exercise and because water is about 800 times denser than air you can work hard and burn more calories than out of water. Because swimming uses so many different muscles your heart and lungs must work hard to supply them with oxygen. Swimming can support up to 90% of the body’s weight in water meaning those of you that might have any disabilities or illness such as arthritis can take part in a comfortable environment.

Swimming is a brilliant all round body workout and particularly good for your core strength, the constant kicking in the water will give your legs a brilliant workout and will vastly improve your cardiovascular fitness.  It is a fantastic way to get that toned beach body that many people desire, it will improve your strength and it is statistically proven that people experience less tension, anger and depression after a good swim. I have personally used the pool for the last year at Breadsall Priory and the results I have seen from it have been very encouraging.

Corey Hodgkinson

Method, Load and Intensity

Two of the most common things we hear on the gym floor are ‘I want to lose weight and tone up’ and ‘I want to build muscle and tone up’ first of all toning is a myth, the principle is incorrect, the toning of muscle is an illusion, we can increase and decrease muscle mass and we can increase and decrease body fat percentage, toning is what we see when we increase muscle mass and decrease body fat percentage.
So how do we hit these goals, I use the same method, compound moves, also known as multi joint movements, such as squats, dead lifts, bench press and rows. The reason these exercises are so great is because they use large muscles we require a huge calorie burn to fuel the movements which means great for fat loss. Also sticking with compound moves from a muscle building point is good because lifting heavy through compound moves increases testosterone and HGH (Human Growth Hormone) release, which results in increased gains in muscle mass.
So if you’re looking to slim down or bulk up its time to focus on those compound moves, for either gain the method is the same (compound lifts) what we change is load and intensity, if you’re looking to get ‘toned’ and drop body fat perform your compounds moves in a circuit, focus on challenging but achievable weights, with a high intensity and little rest. If the building of muscle is your goal then stick to a move hypotrophy based training using a heavy weight with between 12-15 reps, lifting heavy, increasing load and strength, taking adequate rest to ensure maximum lifting capability and remembering never to sacrifice technique for weight.

For the first week or two practice compound moves focusing on technique and range of movement then start to use appropriate weights. Happy lifting!

a few compound moves are: squats, dead lift, pull up, press up, bench press, bent over row, squat snatch.

Exercise isn’t just about how you look

Exercise not only makes you feel better about yourself, I exercise regularly and it makes me feel great afterwards. It helps out in everyday life, the fitter you are just from increasing your heart rate from day to day activities such as running for the bus and going up and down the stairs without running out of breath has a huge effect on your life. Airports can be daunting places if you don’t have much upper body strength, lifting your suitcase off the platform can be too much for those who don’t use their upper body enough. This is why it is important you get the balance between cardiovascular training and muscular strength training, looking good will therefore become a bonus.

Our bodies are designed to work quite vigorously and without regular movement nothing works properly. Think back before people had office jobs and microwaves were invented, people had to chase down their own dinner, dig for their own vegetables and climb tress for their fruit this has all changed now and for this reason it is essential you keep your body active.

There are many health benefits from regular exercise, osteoporosis is prevented, you will have much more energy, sleep better, depression is at a lower risk and it also slows the onset of dementia.

Keep active and let’s enjoy exercise, here at Breadsall Priory we have a huge range of classes available including

: Yoga

: Circuits

: Boot camp

: Hydro

: Legs Bums and Tums

: Stretch and relax                         

and many more!

Along with a well equipped gymnasium with fully qualified gym instructors and personal trainers on hand to offer you help and guidance.

Corey Hodgkinson

Tyre Flipping, Method To The Madness

At Breadsall Priory we love to keep up to date and different training methods, old and new and we love getting outdoors with our training. We have recently acquired Tractor tyres, heavy duty for that king of total body exercises, the tyre flip! A few people have questioned what exactly it is we are doing and why, not to mention what the benefits are, so let’s quickly discuss.

The tyre flip is basically using the same lifting technique as a dead lift, you stand toes to the tyre, bend the knees, send the hips back and take hold of the bottom of the tyre with an under hand grip (as opposed to the standard over hand grip in a barbell dead lift) then keeping a strong and neutral spine you drive up through the heels and stand tall, that’s you your dead lift, but with the tyre you keep lifting greater engaging your arms and as soon as the tyre is standing upright you push it down powerfully to the floor and then repeat. So the tyre flip engages just about every muscle in the body and recruits more muscle activation of the core, biceps and triceps than your standard dead lift.
Our trainers also use different adaptation to make the exercise more fun, Karl said ‘I like to perform the tyre flip and then jump into the center of the tractor tyre and back out, turn around and keep repeating, it gives a really good lower abdominal workout and pushes your agility and staying power’
whilst instructing in the Saturday morning bootcamp Corey explained how ‘the tyre flip is really good because it’s tough, you never have to worry about equipment getting damaged and because we have more than one tractor tyre I like to get people racing, because it’s so different to what they usually do they really focus and don’t think about how hard they’re working and when you bring in that element of competition people really dig deep and push hard’

The outdoor training is something to look forward to and will be available for those attending Bootcamp sessions or looking for one to one personal training.

Perfect Pull Ups

Perfect Pull Ups By Karl O’Sullivan

If you look at any fitness website, magazine or quick tip, the pull up and chin up are always at the top of the list of best gym exercises. It’s a staple to any programme, amongst the best body weight exercises and easily adapted for all levels. A lot of people however avoid taking to the pull up bar believing that pull ups are too difficult or just unachievable for them, yet there are simple ways to build the strength needed to perform those perfect pulls. A controlled pull up uses so many muscles and if you can achieve 2 to 3 reps then that’s great, work in sets of 2 to 3 reps and your body will quickly adapt to the challenge and your rep range will increase to 6, then 8 and not long after you’ll be performing sets of 10. If you struggle with that single rep don’t despair, the perfect pull up is still attainable, simply start by building the foundation strength need by focusing on the eccentric movement (the lowering phase of the exercise). Have a trainer lift your body for the upwards portion of the movement and then unassisted lower your body as slowly as you can and repeat this process, keeping the movement at all times smooth and controlled, limiting any swinging to a minimum.
Even if you don’t have a trainer you can simply jump up grasp the bar and then slowly lower yourself, jumping up each time to achieve the lifting phase of the movement.
You’ll be surprised at how quickly your body will adapt and how quickly your strength will develop.

Training within the fitness industry has gone through many changes, one in particular is the focus on functional and sports specific training, pull ups fall into this category building fully functional and transferable strength, after all being able to curl a heavy weight is rather pointless if you can’t lift and control your own body weight. Once you become comfortable with pull ups and chin ups you can start exploring all the variations, increasing weight by use of a weight belt or weighted jacket, overhand grip, under hand grip, side to side pulls and L shape pulls.

So come into the gym and spend some time at the bar!

Personal Training with Celia - Josh Hopkinson

Today we worked on Celias stamina to work towards her weight loss goals.

The Training Style I got Celia doing today was quite high intensity cross training which is used by the royal air force when training for fitness tests.

I toned down the royal air forces work-out for Celia.

The basis of this training is starting with a particular number of reps on 3-4 different exercises then working your way down to just one rep.

The exercises Celia completed today are as follows:

• Swiss ball crunches
• Frontal/Lat Raise with resistance band
• Narrow Row Squats (suspension training)
• Studio Shuttle Runs

Once I had taken Celia through all the exercises to ensure she understood how to perform each with good technique, we began.

Starting with 10 crunches moving quickly into 10 Frontal/lat raises then into 10 narrow row squats and finished the set with 10 quick shuttle runs of our studio.

Stage 10 complete!

We then repeated this but now doing 9 reps on each exercise, bare in mind that throughout this whole work out there are no rest periods so Celias heart rate remained with in 60-80% of her max heart rate through out the whole session. Once stage 9 was complete we then began stage 8 (8reps on each). We repeated this until we got down to 1 rep on each exercise! Demanding stuff.

Celia’s work rate through out this whole work out was fantastic which just shows how much she wants the results. With our personal training expertise and Celia’s hard work she is on her way to achieving her desired results.

Great work Celia!!

Well done.

Josh Hopkinson.

My First Personal Training Session

My name is Celia Ingall I am soon to be 50 and a mother of 4 with 2 grandsons and 2 dogs. I work part time at Edmundson Electrical on Ascot Drive. With this been my second marriage its is also our 10th wedding anniversary this year.

So its the incentive I need to get fit, about 2 years ago I hurt my back (a slipped disc) so when I became mobile again I joined the gym and have slowly recovered, I managed to lose a stone but hit a wall last year when I found it hard to keep motivated and with winter approaching I found the weight creeping up again.

 

So this year theres a lot of changes happening!

 

I am currently quitting smoking, its hard work and I am struggling with eating more food to compensate, I have never ate so much fruit!

 

1st Session

 

Today was my first session with Simon, where I was weighed, measured BMI taken and body fat % noted. We then hit the gym! I had to do some fitness test. A 5 km cycle followed by a 1000m row where my time were recorded. I then had to do full sit ups and full press ups without stopping.

 

I will do do this all again at a later date where I will be able to see the improvements.

 

I must say it soon showed up how unfit I am and I am looking forward to achieving my goals...

 

Celia