10 Tips for Better Bodies

1. Keep eating simple. Avoid processed foods and stick to lean cuts of meat and vegetables, as close to their natural state as possible. When consuming carbohydrates, go for low GI, complex ones that are packed with nutrients and dietary fibre like sweet potato, asparagus, oatmeal and nuts. They digest slowly to provide sustained energy.

2. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Dehydration reduces training intensity so keep your water intake up during the day. Urine colour is the easiest way to check hydration levels, the more yellow it is, the more dehydrated you are.

3. When trying to achieve better muscle tone, better cardio ability, getting into shape or just wanting to pursue an active lifestyle, opt for short intense workouts, make sure you’re getting enough deep sleep and never skip meals.

4. Make your exercise routine easy to understand. Simplicity is often best. Over-complication leads to missing sets, reps and even, at times, full exercise choices!

5. Know the difference between pain and soreness. Soreness is good, it’s telling you that you’re putting your body through something it’s not used to. Pain on the other hand is a warning sign that something isn’t right!

6. Don’t be in a rush to complete sets. Time under tension (TUT) and rest intervals are every bit as important as the weight you’re lifting. Each different goal, whether it be fat loss or amassing size require certain TUT and rest, if you’re not sure, ask one of the trainers.

7. Eat enough! Unless your goal is weight loss (in difference to fat loss) you need to eat enough to keep your metabolism high. Food is fuel and exercise burns that fuel efficiently. Low metabolism leads to your bodily functions slowing down and only working at half-mast. Envisage only half filling your car with petrol and expecting it to run on full throttle!

8. It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. “Lose 5 lbs in your first week, you can even have your pizza and chocolate” All you have to do is eat that cardboard tasting, pre-packaged meal or count your points on allotted foods and watch the weight fall off. You don’t have to even think about it. Too bad these gimmicks have a worldwide failure rate of about 97% long term. Don’t believe me????? How many people do you know that did it for a few weeks, stopped doing it and kept the weight/fat off? The low-calorie approach takes weight off quickly over a short space of time but it leads to loss of muscle mass, slower metabolism which stalls further weight loss and then what? BOOM, you lose motivation when the scales don’t move and you end up pigging out, and gaining back what you lost and more!

9. The more muscle you have, the more efficient you will be at burning fat. Lift weights that are heavy enough to challenge you, weights that will give you muscle soreness, not the cute pink ones that you can do 100 reps with without feeling anything!

10. And finally, one for the ladies… YOU WILL NOT LOOK LIKE ARNIE IF YOU LIFT WEIGHTS! The common misconception for years from girls was that they would end up looking like an Eastern European bodybuilder if they picked up a dumbbell. We don’t have the testosterone and HGH levels in our bodies naturally to look this way. You will get lean, toned, defined bodies by lifting weights, not by running on a treadmill!!