Hot Body Training

The horrors that I see on the floor of the weights room never cease to amaze me. You’d think that with information so readily available on the internet, people would try to find out a little more about what they are supposed to be doing in the gym, instead of just copying the other patrons or doing what their ‘expert’ friend told them to do.

Here are just some of the common things I see people getting wrong in the gym.

No Stretching
This one normally applies just to the guys. You would think that there is an inverse relationship between the muscle size and flexibility, because it always seems to be the big guys with horrible flexibility, especially around the shoulder joint.

I guess stretching just isn’t really sexy enough and I’ll admit; I hate doing it too. The long term injury prevention cannot be ignored though as well as improved posture.

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Before I even stepped foot in a gym, my first exercise love was cycling. In Cape Town, where I live, there is an annual cycling event call the Argus Cycle Tour. It’s the pinnacle of the local cycling calendar and covers 109km of gruelling terrain around the Cape Peninsula. The event attracts over 35 000 cyclists from around the globe and is the biggest timed cycling event in the world. The likes of Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain and cycling commentator Phil Liggett have all fallen for the charm of the Argus Cycle Tour.

Over the years my interest in cycling waned as I became more interested in weightlifting and through my college years the demands to be a competitive cyclist started to interfere with the my demand for socialising. Racing at 6am on a Sunday is not a good idea with a hangover, trust me! In the past couple of years though, my interest has been rekindled and whilst I’m nowhere near the cyclist I once was, I still like to put in a good showing. I also realised that my knowledge on nutrition and training for weightlifting far surpassed my knowledge for endurance events. Back in the day, I just used to eat a lot of pasta and taper my training to a minimum in the final week, but I knew there had to be a better plan than that.

So just what should you eat and how should you train in the run up to an endurance event?

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There has been much criticism over high protein diets, especially amongst traditional dietitians. The commonly held belief is that a high protein diet places excessive strain on the liver and kidneys and could lead to failure. High protein diets have also been linked to kidney stones and osteoporosis.

We also know that weightlifters and bodybuilders recommend a high protein diet to build muscle quickly and many sports nutritionists rubbish the claims that high protein diets are unhealthy or could cause any damage to your kidneys. High protein diets are also said to help with fat loss during dieting.

Red meat. Friend or foe?

So who is right? Read on to find out the answer…

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The whole concept of acid balance hasn’t received much attention from Nutritionalists and Dietitians and I think this is a huge oversight. What is it? Well, if you remember back to your high school science class, acids and bases (alkaline) were measured on the pH (Potential Hydrogen) scale. The scale ranges from 0-14, 0 being extremely acid, 7 being the neutral point and 14 being extremely alkaline. Ok? Class dismissed.

These foods will fix your acid balance.

Our bodies need to maintain a slightly alkaline environment of 7.36 to 7.44 on the pH scale, because every cell in our bodies functions optimally within this pH range. When we consume food, all the micronutrients present themselves to the kidneys as either an acid forming compound or an alkaline forming compound. The sum total of all that we eat can then be calculated as either a net acid or a net alkaline load to the body.

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It would be wonderful if we could all eat 5-6 regular, well balanced and nutritious meals a day, but the reality is that life often gets in the way of this. Who has the time to cook 5-6 meals a day? Nothing beats a wholesome meal, but often we need on-the-go nutrition. The problem is that if you’re on-the-go, all that’s really available to you is fast food. If you’re a fitness enthusiast you’re probably thinking the solution is simple - protein shakes and meals replacements will fit the bill here. Whilst this is probably better than Macky Dee’s the problem with meal replacements is that they’re not really that nutritious, despite what the label may say. This is about to change though. We’re going to turn these shakes into super shakes.

The basic idea here is to take a fairly non-nutritive protein shake and blend in healthy foods to make it a complete meals, with fibre and lots of vitamins and minerals too.
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There seems to be a lot of confusion about when we should be stretching and what type of stretching to do.

The benefits of stretching cannot be ignored. A lack of flexibility seems to play a role in the development of chronic injuries such as patella-femoral syndrome (knee pain), low back pain and shoulder pain. In fact, a lot of ailments and minor niggles that people complain of often seem to alleviate once a rigorous static stretching regimen is implemented. Performance can also be inhibited by inflexibility. A sprinter with overly tight hamstrings, for example, may not be able to achieve enough hip flexion thereby shortening stride length.

Rigorous stretching programme in progress

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I’m sure most of you know, but for those of you who might have missed this piece of information, it bears repeating. You can’t spot reduce! That means that you can’t target fat loss by exercising a certain area. For example, a man with a big belly won’t get a six pack by doing endless situps and ladies, you won’t reduce the girth of your thighs by spending half an hour on the adductor machine.

It seems that our stubborn fat storage areas always seem to be the last to disappear. As frustrating as this is, you will generally tend to lose the weight everywhere else first, before you start to lose weight on your real problem areas. For men, this normally means a big belly, whilst ladies are usually cursed with the bums, thighs and hips fat stores. The usual advice given is that you can’t really do much about it, but what if there was something you could do to target those stubborn areas?
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There are so many sites out there promising the best nutrition and training advice, but very few who actually deliver on that promise. Wadding through all that information can become daunting, especially when everybody seems to disagree. With that in mind, I have compiled a list of 7 reliable resources that I regularly use myself. Here they are.

NutritionData
NutritionData is the best online resource for finding the complete nutritional profile of virtually any food you can think of. Not only will they give you all the standard macro and micronutrient breakdowns, they also give you other unique data such as the Completeness Score, Fullness Factor, Amino Acid Score, Glycemic Load and Inflammation Factor. It also breaks down the macronutrients, that’s your carbs, protein and fats, into staggering detail.

NutritionData - just peachy

This site comes highly recommended and has many other tools to complement the nutritional stats and even includes a handy firefox plugin. How cool is that?

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It is a common misconception that light weights performed for a high number of repetitions will tone the body or add definition to muscles without adding a lot of bulky muscle. For this reason, most ladies you see who have been brave enough to enter the weights room will work out with the pink Barbie dumbbells for endless repetitions either in the belief that they are going to tone their muscles or because they are afraid of bulking up and looking like Chyna from WWF.

The type of toned look most women aspire to.

What that high rep training does is increase your muscular endurance, which makes sense if you think about it. You’re teaching your muscles to work for long periods of time. High rep training won’t tone your muscles and has very limited capacity to make you stronger or make your muscles grow.

I’ve also heard guys talk about high reps bringing on more definitions to a muscle group and bringing out their ‘cuts’ or striations. Well, I’m here to tell you that this notion is complete nonsense.

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I’m sure that most of you are familiar with the notion that lactic acid is responsible for the muscle burning sensation you get when you work your muscles hard. You know those guys in the gym shouting ‘feel the burn baby, just one more rep’ at the top of their lungs? That’s the burning I’m talking about. Anyway, I’m here to bust this lactic acid myth. It’s not lactic acid that is responsible for the burn, it’s a process called acidosis.

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