Strength over hypertrophy

A few of you who know me have already been on and made some comments (please leave future comments on the blog so I can start some discussions on what I'm doing. I'm hoping to learn from feedback on this!)

The main question or comment everyone is making is - Why call the blog Strength, health and fitness when I'm following a pretty bog standard hypertrophy package?

Well... There are a few reasons for this, I'll list three:
1) Having been I'll, I lost a lot of weight. I always prefer strength training and particularly functional performance training rather then isolation and hypertrophy. However I'm not happy with the size my body is, I've never been big but dropping from 88kg to 76kg in just over two weeks is not only a shock to the body but also the brain. I really want to put this weight back on as quick as I can (naturally). In addition I am trying to keep to the compound exercises as much as possible and am always starting with the shoulder girdle before the chest exercises (you can see the performance effect on weight lifted in the shoulder compared to the chest).

2) If you look any sports specific training, there is an overall hypertrophy phase at the beginning of a seasonal cycle. Even though I'm not competing in anything anymore, this phase works great for me right now as it will ultimately let me solve and adjust imbalances which will help me spend more time to come working on my three key goals (SHF). Hopefully as this hypertrophy phase is designed to do in a sports programme, so it should help keep me injury free and able to strength train for a longer period later in the programme.

3) I just need a bit of variety. Both my main sources of info on weightlifting (Polliquin and Platz) state regularly that variety is an essential part of progress, particularly when hitting a slump in performance improvements or coming back off an injury or illness. In fact I pretty much followed Platz to the letter in his guideline of recovery form over training. I took a whole week off exercise and diet, had faith in my metabolism and tried to put a bit of body fat on to give me some substance to heal and rest with. My ideal training programme will eventually always cycle round to hypertrophy as my one of my principles in Strength training is to get as strong as the body will allow, then manipulate the body to allow further increase in strength.

Agree or disagree with this, post a comment.

World Class Fitness in 100 words

I got this off Paul Conner, he's a senior kettlebell instructor and did my course. He's also one of the PT's I learned a lot of and I hold his advice in high regard:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

WORLD CLASS FITNESS IN 100 WORDS

Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, Clean& Jerk, and snatch.



Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds.



Bike, run, swim, row, etc, HARD and FAST.



Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow.



Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.



Regularly learn and play new sports.



Let me know if you agree or disagree with any of this

Strength, Health and Fitness

From Monday 6th of June through to Saturday 25th of June I fell quite seriously ill. I had flue like symptoms and developed quite a serious chest infection. I found it very hard to eat anything consistently and lost a huge amount of weight. This blog is not only going to follow Studio121 but my own process back to fitness. I'm going to include a complete breakdown of how I'm training, complete training programmes for myself, and complete dietary analysis including my daily food diary. I'm also going to be completely honest about my supplementing and even take it as far as documenting my resting habits. I'm hoping that this will be interesting to anyone interested in fitness. The articles I include will be on my own views of what Strength, Health and Fitness are as characteristics and how to achieve them.

I'm going to start with documenting what I've been doing over the last week and my starting statistics:

27/7/09
Height 183cm 6ft 3/4 inch
Weight 76kg
BMI 22.6
Body fat % 10.5
Bp 136/71
Heart Rate 65bpm

Chest 97cm 38 1/4 inch
Waist 81cm 31 3/4 inch
Hips 84.5cm 33 1/4 inch
Arms 31cm 12 1/4 inch
Legs 47cm 18 1/2 inch

Studio 121

(above, upstairs training area, downstairs matts and outside entrance)

Studio 121 is a two story training area, downstairs we have a small office area where we do our fitness assessments, one 'Powerjog' treadmill, a Concept 2 rower, squat rack, bench, medicine balls, Swiss balls, cables, skipping ropes, kettlebells, a 1-10 kg dumbbells rack, chin up bar, punch bag, boxing gloves and pads, thai pads and a large matted area for fitness classes and personal training (since I prefer to use more active fitness techniques with my clients we spend a lot of time on these mats).

Upstairs we have a Johnsons bike, treadmill and cross trainer, more cables, V3 resistance gym, 1-30kg dumbbell rack, Ez bar, light bar, Olympic bar and plates, steps, heavy duty bench, more Swiss balls, more kettlebells, and a small matted area.

We are not a gym, we are a personal training company, all we do is one on one training and a selection of fitness classes, we also sell a range of fitness supplements and equipment for home fitness both in store and online.

If you live near Nantwich, Cheshire, (UK) and are interested in fitness our details are below

Studio121 Personal Training
Tel 01270610214
info@studio121.co.uk
www.studio121.co.uk
olimellpt@studio121.co.uk

How I Became A PT

(Above, me with my beloved kettlebells performing a windmill deadlift)

In 2005 I graduated from MMU Cheshire with a degree in drama with creative writing. In 2009 I graduated with an MA in writing from MMU. Whilst at university I was particularly keen at Teakwondo and basketball eventually coaching the team and living in a house full of team mates. All the other basketball players studied sports science and I was simply bored one day and started reading an article from one of my housemates class on sports psychology (I recall it focused on violence in sports) and from that moment on I started stealing and reading as much of my housemates textbooks as possible. I had grown up playing basketball and was fit and healthy to an amateur point of view, I also knew that I really enjoyed coaching basketball, it soon became apparent that I wanted a career in fitness.

I took GYC Level two fitness instructors course and got a job working for LA Fitness as a fitness instructor even though I knew I wanted to be a PT deep down. I spent eight months studying for my PT qualification and in that time learnt all I could off the PT's there. This would be my best piece of advice to anyone wanting to become a personal trainer from scratch. You can't just know the inns and outs of your sporting hobbies, get a qualification and succeed as a mobile PT. You need to spend time working in a gym, teaching circuits at 06.30 AM, cleaning treadmills and stealing every bit of knowledge there is to steal of the PT's that have been there for years. Hell I used to pretend to clean right next to them when they were taking clients and actually take down notes!


In January 09 I left LA Fitness and started working as a Personal Trainer with Richard Adams at Studio 121. Six months on I'm operating at a full time level and have never looked back.