by Keith Tucker | Jun 19, 2018 | Exercise For Optimum Health, Weight Loss and Performance, Health and Fitness Fundamentals
Should I Have Muscle Soreness After Training
I have been training people for quite a long time, it’s best not to admit how long ;-). But one of the things people regularly ask me as they start training is, ‘should i have muscle soreness after my training sessions’?
Now obviously that depends on what you do. If you’re going for a walk then the answer is no, not really, unless you’re walking alot futher than you’d otherwise be use to.
When should I have muscle soreness after training
But if you’re introducing weight training and you’d like to see results from you’re weight training, wether you want to lose weight or tone up or gain muscle. the answer is yes.
After training you should be stiff and sore. Its called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). We’ll talk more about DOMS in a separate video.
DOMS should last between three and five days, so DOMS normally passes in three days, a particulary severe case is five days and its probably you lifted a little bit to heavy. If it continues for more than that, then definietly speak to your trainer and find out if you’ve pulled or strained something.
So yes, you should be stiff and sore after training.
Keith
by Keith Tucker | Jun 11, 2018 | Exercise For Optimum Health, Weight Loss and Performance
What Is The Least Amount Of Training I Can Get Away With
A question I regularly get asked is, ‘What is the least amount I can get away with in terms of exercise’? ‘How can I just do as little training as possible and still get some results?’ So I can maybe lose a little bit of fat, or so I can train my heart and lungs so that I’m a bit fitter and can climb stairs and not feel too out of breath?
The line that’s going around at the moment is that 30 minuites, three times a week is a good amount of time. But you can actually get away with 10 miniutes! So you can do 10 minutes of exercise three to fives times a week BUT it’s got to be intense!
How to achieve it 
You have to work really hard, pushing yourself as much as you can. Get on a spin bike or find a nice hill, or if you can run then run. You can even do a nice quick HIIT training routine. Do a warm up into it then go as hard as you can for 10 minutes, cool down and call it a day.
So 10 minutes is the least amount time you can spend training, as long as you are going as hard as you can without hurting yourself, three to five times a week.
That’s the least amount of time you can getaway with.
Keith
by Keith Tucker | May 23, 2018 | Exercise For Optimum Health, Weight Loss and Performance
So, what are the best training methods?
Well that depends on what you’re training for! Or what is that we are trying to achieve. If we pick up a magazine for running or cycling you’ll find endurance training programmes, or a body building magazine for strength training. There are plenty of magazines and newspapers that talk about weight loss, but there is also training for longevity or lifestyle.
We all choose to start training for many different reasons, what’s yours?
Is it about weight loss, muscle gain, do you want to be stronger? Do you simply want to have the energy you need to run around with your kids or grand kids?
There are so many different types of training methods out there, which one do you choose? Which one will get you the results that you want, in the time that you want?
There are many different types of training protcols available depending on what it is you want to achieve. From Weight Training, HIIT, Running, Swimming , Yoga and Pilates. They all give different results and vary in the amount time it takes to achieve your results. Lets take a look at what gives you fast and effective results.
Many people ask me, what is the best training protocol? Usually they are talking about weightloss, so lets look at that. When we are starting out and we are wanting to make the body lose a little bit more weight or tone up. HIIT is often the best way to go about dropping a bit of body fat, HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. Lots of magazines are talking about it, other trainers are talking about it.
HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training for weightloss
This type of training method burns a lot of calories in a short amount of time, so you get a big bang for your buck. The downside is, longterm it can be stressful for your body and could lead to injuries, so you want to mix it in with other types of training styles. But if you want fast results its HIIT training. So you work really hard then you rest and recover, work really hard then rest and recover. Make sure you warm up thoroughly and cool down well.
So if you want the biggest bang for your buck its HIIT training, High Intensity Interval Training. Its a hard strong training protocol that burns fat form your body and helps you tone up. That’s what we’re looking for, often when people ask me, what is the best training method?
Keith
by Keith Tucker | Mar 12, 2018 | Exercise For Optimum Health, Weight Loss and Performance
A great blog for you guys by our new guest blogger, Sharyl Thwaites.
A very honest look at what it takes to overcome our bad habits and get the results we are looking for. YOU CAN DO IT!
“It takes 21 days to kick a habit”
Powerful idea. I wondered if the same was true of adopting a habit…
Read this blog if you’re looking for inspiration on:
- Overcoming life’s lows with physical and mental wellbeing
- Turning health and fitness into a lifestyle
- Using results to stay motivated
I first realised how out of shape I was when I returned to the UK after my stint of travels. I’d spent some months in LA surviving on fast food and alcohol and could no longer fit into my jeans. People made comments about how ‘different’ I looked – and I knew they didn’t mean ‘healthy’ different.
No money
Not only was I struggling to fit into my jeans but I also didn’t have two coins to rub together. Getting a car to transport me to the first job I accepted just wasn’t affordable, so I decided to get a pushbike. It was the only way I’d get around for a while before I could re-surface financially.
The first week of cycling was punishing both mentally and physically – my whole body ached. I dreaded that journey every day for weeks.
But as time went on, I noticed my muscles were changing – the ride in was getting easier and my clothes weren’t so snug.
A simple pleasure
Eventually I did get a car, but I decided I’d still bike to work come rain or shine. It became my simple pleasure. My colleagues thought I was crazy on those cold, sodden days, but it made me happy and was a great way to start my day. I was feeling healthy in body and mind.
Along with my cycle to work, I experimented with home HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts. The results were amazing.
Those results inspired me to revisit my diet. I don’t deny myself the opportunity to indulge now and again but it’s nice that it feels like a treat when I do, rather than it feeling part and parcel of my daily life.
It’s a natural high!
Not only did eating healthily and exercise change my body shape for the better, it changed my whole life in a really positive way.
- My sleep pattern has become regular
- I don’t feel lethargic
- My moods are mostly positive and happy
I vary my workouts from week to week, so I never find myself getting bored with the same routine. This includes some spin, HIIT classes, and some resistance work.
Yoga is also great for stretching and relieving tension in my muscles and mind.
For me, working out and eating a healthy diet has become a part of my everyday life and without it I just don’t feel like me. With fitness and clean eating, I feel happier than I’ve ever felt.
Sharyl’s results after HIIT work outs and healthy eating.
No shame
We all get those days when we don’t want to work out and we want to eat bad foods.
I’ve realised that is absolutely okay! It’s great to take a day off and enjoy the relaxation and naughty foods. But I’ve also realised that too many days like that make me feel tired, unmotivated and unhappy.
Mind over matter
Sometimes my mind gets the better of me and I eat those 10 biscuits, but the majority of the time I have learned to gain control of the cravings and urges. Instead of eating those 10 biscuits, I have a bowl of fruit and yogurt and if that isn’t appealing… well, I wasn’t really that hungry, was I?
I choose this lifestyle to not only feel good about myself, but also because I believe keeping my body healthy is the key to a long, healthy and happy life.
Sharyl
by Keith Tucker | Nov 14, 2017 | Exercise For Optimum Health, Weight Loss and Performance
Benefits of that 15 Minute workout
Benefits of that 15 Minute workout – No one can deny that the days spent running, biking or doing any number of slow, cardio-based exercise sessions, are long gone. We simply don’t have the time, and have come to realise that these long, drawn out workout sessions don’t give us the best return on our time investment. Short, intense workouts are manageable and even enjoyable.
Here are the top 3 reasons that 15-minute workouts are absolutely worth your time…
#1. It Burns Fat
Tabata and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) exercise sessions are techniques which, in short bursts of activity, can create a heart-pounding workout in 15 minutes or less. The key to making these workouts as effective as possible, is to crank up the intensity to the max! Not only do you burn more calories during a HIIT workout, but that intense exertion kicks your body’s repair cycle into hyper drive! That means you burn more fat and calories in the 24 hours after a HIIT workout, than you do after, say, a steady-pace run.
#2. It Makes You Happy
We all know that exercise releases endorphins, which makes us feel great after an awesome workout. Don’t fret if you only have 15 minutes to exercise. Studies have shown that an intense 15-minute burst of exercise is enough to get those endorphins flowing.
#3. You can do it anywhere
You can do HIIT or Tabata training anywhere! You can adapt it to whatever time and space constraints you have. Avs loves HIIT training in our living room whilst the kids play around her.
I hope that I’ve convinced you of the value of an intense, 15 minute workout. In our busy lifestyles it’s so crucial to our health and fitness that we make time to exercise – even if it’s just 15 minutes.
Here’s one to try! Let us know how you get on.
by Keith Tucker | Apr 15, 2017 | Exercise For Optimum Health, Weight Loss and Performance, Health and Fitness Fundamentals, Metabolic Typing Process and Therapies, Metabolic Typing: Nutrition For Healthy Weight Loss and Chronic Conditions
What Is Metabolic Typing?
Metabolic Typing (MT) is a diet and ecological lifestyle programme. But don’t let that long title put you off! The MT process allows metabolic typing advisors to develop effective, bespoke nutritional, supplementary and therapeutic approaches for a broad range of chronic conditions and degenerative illnesses such as:
- Weight gain/loss and obesity
- Blood sugar and blood pressure problems
- Metabolic syndrome, Diabetes type 1 and 2, coronary heart disease
- Arthritis
- Allergies
- Osteoporosis
- Digestive disorders
- Chronic fatigue
- Depression
And the list goes on…
Research consistently shows that people have highly individualised requirements for food due to infinitely variable hereditary influences. Metabolic typing has the capacity to address your unique biochemical imbalances with a high degree of specificity and precision. It is these biochemical imbalances that cause weight gain, unwanted symptoms and chronic health conditions.
How does metabolic typing do this?
Firstly, we as metabolic typing advisors, recognise that everyone is an individual. We don’t work with your symptoms, we work with you! We understand that there is something causing your symptom. An underlying metabolic or biochemical imbalance.
Targeting a treatment just for the relief of symptoms is known as an allopathic approach. This is how our medical system approaches problems and many nutritionally qualified people do the same, by treating the symptom rather than the underlying imbalance.
Let’s look at an easy example – Taking a tablet for a headache.
There is a reason for the headache. A biochemical imbalance causing a symptom. If you are a regular sufferer, it is important to identify the underlying cause and make changes to your lifestyle rather than continuing to keep taking the tablets.
Allopathic approaches are great for symptom relief, but the underlying cause of the problem IS still there and WILL persist.
Another example would be going on a low calorie diet to lose weight. This will work for a while, but on returning to normal eating you will see the weight rapidly pile back on. Studies show that within 3 years you’ll have an extra stone on top of what you had to start with!
Your excess weight is simply a symptom of imbalanced biochemistry, not just too many calories! You do not need to starve yourself to lose weight, you need to know what aspects of your life are throwing your biochemistry out of balance, and what foods you need to eat to restore balance.
An imbalance in your biochemistry is an imbalance in 1 or more Fundamental Homeostatic Controls (FHC’s). These systems balance and control the different systems of your body. Metabolic typing recognizes 11 FHC’s. An imbalance in an FHC decreases the functionality of the system that it controls within your body. This imbalance leads to your body trying to communicate with you that something is not right. The body communicates this decrease in functionality through symptoms, from the simple headache to skin conditions, digestive disorders to cancer…. Sound complicated?
Maybe a little, but let’s look at each of the FHC’s and what they do, and I promise it will all become a little clearer!
1. Autonomic Nervous system – This part of the nervous system is controlled unconsciously and is responsible for turning on and off the digestive system and the organs of your body. It is the master regulator of your body’s organs and glands.
2. Carbo-Oxidative system – This is the conversion of carbohydrates to energy through Glycolysis, Krebs (citric acid) cycle and beta-oxidation.Carbo-Oxidative system – This is the conversion of carbohydrates to energy through Glycolysis, Krebs (citric acid) cycle and beta-oxidation.
3. Lipo-oxidative system – This system controls fatty acid/sterol balance, cell membrane permeability, aerobic (with oxygen)/anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolic processes.
4. Acid and alkaline balance (pH) – The body tries to maintain a pH or acid alkaline balance of 7.46, which is slightly alkaline. There are 7 causal factors which can result in pH imbalance. These imbalances are due to imbalances the FHC’s and can be caused by dietary, structural, mental emotional or environmental factors.
5. Electrolyte balance – This is the balance of fluids and electrically charged ions (sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, calcium, phosphate, sulfate and bicarbonate) throughout your body. We are looking for electrolyte excess vs. electrolyte deficiency.
6. Steroidal hormone balance – This is the balance between or the ratios of steroidal hormones, such as cortisol, estrogen, testosterone and progesterone.
7. Endocrine system – In this instance we are looking at the Pituitary vs. Adrenal vs. Thyroid vs. Gonadal glands and their influence on body shape and distribution of fat/excess weight as well as the highs and lows that certain foods give you.
8. Prostaglandin balance – Prostaglandins control the body’s responses to inflammation, neurotransmission, hormones, immune efficiency, circulation, cholesterol production, fluid-balance and blood platelet aggregation.
9. Neurotransmitter balance – Excitatory vs. inhibitory factors released from the brain that effect autonomic nervous system function and therefore effect body function.
10. ABO Blood type – This is the restriction of food types that contain certain ‘lectins’ that have been shown to have adverse reactions in people with specific blood types, ie. type O vs. Type A vs. Type B vs. Type AB
11. Constitutional elements – Vata, Pitta, Kapha, from Ayurvedic, this is the constitutional qualities of food and how they interact with the constitutional qualities of the body
An imbalance in any one of the FHC’s can lead to any symptom or chronic degenerative disease. Imbalances in FHC’s can be caused by many different factors. The list of factors is exhaustive and therefore too long to list here, however they can be categorised as follows:
- Dietary
- Structural
- Spiritual, psychological (Mind Body)
- Environmental
Following a Metabolic Typing Ecological Lifestyle programme, is like unpeeling an onion! It’s a step by step process that uncovers and corrects imbalance in your FHC and therefore correcting the underlying cause of your symptoms.
Join one of our programmes today and reap the benefits of eating right for your type and unravelling the underlying cause of your symptoms or weight gain.
I look forward to speaking to you soon!
Keith Tucker
