Competing & teaching ... How does it balance?

I'm going to touch on the subject of working & competing, or, more specifically, Bodybuilding & teaching group exercise. 

Something that you never really see touched on in the myriad subjects that float across the cyber multiverse but that I know affects many of us

You see the craziness of group ex as a career is a subject all of its own. The learning of choreo, attending workshops, prepping classes, up skilling & then sometimes the sheer number of classes needed to be taught to earn a living & pay for the aforementioned training (plus music, insurance & poi licence) 

Then you have to deal with exhaustion, frustration, sometimes sickness & injury,  covering classes at the last minute then having ppl moan it's not "their" normal instructor. That's just a few of the tribulations 

Then you have the extremes of bodybuilding. The balance of training hard but not overtraining. Having enough rest to allow the muscles to grow but not so much you don't grow. No or little cardio off season & LISS cardio during prep. Diet off season, diet on season, the constant struggle of eating enough & being constantly hungry.

OH THE CONTRADICTION!

Then you have the complete nut jobs that do both

Yep... Group ex body builders. Talk about make a tough job tougher 

I know, I've done it. It was hard but not impossible. Everything has to be planned & calculated. Even down to the question of " can I cover that class, is it too much cardio?. If I teach that pump class am I overtraining that body part?"

Do I up my calories because I had to do cover etc etc 

So yes it makes it more complex & there is more to consider & factor in.

All I can say is there really is no room for compromise. You have to make the decision early on which is going to take more of a back seat. Group ex or bodybuilding. In this regard you really can't have your cake & eat it.

For me I chose to look the best I could on that stage. I still have to pay bills but the compromises were all made in favour of bodybuilding. I said no to excess cardio classes. I got classes covered if I felt I needed to & took 2 weeks off before my comp both times. 

You can do both but there will always be a priority & foremost in your mind will always be the knowledge that neither of your passions compliment each other but you have to balance it in a way you can be happy. 

So there you have it.. Two crazy passions 

But then you could also add in a third like say personal training:coaching  right? 😉

What it means to rebound

Today's blog is probably somewhat pertinent considering the biggest bodybuilding event in the uk will be taking place this weekend

Rebound diet

What? 

Rebound diet

We all hear about the build up to comps, the countdown of weeks days hours & minutes till show time! 

We all hear about the massive pig outs people are going to have afterward & the post comp stash of goodies ( I have one & it's enormous!) 

We all hear about the athletes who can't wait to bulk again but what does it really mean when the post comp meal is consumed & life returns to some semblance of normality?

Well if you think it means getting back on the 3000 plus calories & eating cake till you're sick, think again! 

It means reversing out 

Huh? 

Reversing out. 

Reverse dieting

Gradually building back up to your calorie ceiling & re-revving the metabolic engine. 

You see when a body builder diets, it's a slow gradual burning of fat. But as the body enters the starving state all sorts of things happen. The body wants to survive, it knows it's starving. For all it knows this phase can continue indefinitely. So it starts putting safety features in place. 

It slows down the metabolism in a desperate attempt to preserve body fat & calories.

If we were to resume our normal pre contest diet straight after competing your poor sluggish system is going to go into overload. At the very least you're going to put on bodyfat. At worst you can cause some serious systemic problems

So what do we do ? 

Reverse the process. A slow gradual build up of calories to rev the metabolism. Avoid pigging out on crap. This will only cause digestive inflammation & possible intolerances. Eat nutrient dense foods. By all means have a treat now & then but respect the brutal journey your poor body has gone through & give it some gentle love & care in the recovery process 

Have a diet in place & happy off season everyone x 

Homemade bounty bar

This my friends is a piece of heaven 

Bounty bars have been my favourite since I was a small child & they're dead easy to make 

If you want to make them vegan just swap normal dark choc & condensed milk for vegan alternatives 

Here's what you need 

Dedicated coconut 

Condensed milk 

Dark chocolate 

Amounts are really dependant on how big a bar you wish to make but for arguments sake I will make them bounty size 

So 2 cups of coconut will make around 6-8 bars, then add just enough condensed milk to make it mouldable. Put each moulded bar on a greased baking tray & refrigerate until set ... About an hour is generally good

Melt chocolate & cover the bars

Voila! 

Awesomeness 

Vegan protein fudge

Ok so here's the recipe it isn't quick & easy but it's well worth it 

PRIOR WARNING! 

This is fudge ... I will give healthier alternatives but ultimately it's a sweet so it has a metric shit tonne of sugar in it! 

250g of soft butter 

397g of vegan condensed milk ( recipe below) or ordinary if you're not vegan! 

175g of thick coconut milk 

800g granulated (yes 800g!!!) sugar or truvia or xylitol if you want a healthier alternative 

2 teaspoons of vanilla 

2 scoops genetic supplements vegan caramel protein 

Method 

This is great fun!

Put a jug of iced water to side if stove for testing the readiness of your fudge

Place all ingredients in a heavy saucepan & cook for 15- 20 mins on a rolling boil

To test readiness plop a drop of fudge into iced water if it turned solid but squishy your fudge is ready 

Remove from heat & add vanilla 

Whisk the mixture with an electric hand whisk for 5 mins until thick like peanut butter then add the protein

Place into a large greased tin & place into fridge to chill for no longer than 2 hrs but long enough to set.

Voila!! Awesome protein fudge 😊

Vegan condensed milk 

3 cups thick coconut milk

1 cup sugar/stevia/xylitol or 1/2 cup honey

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Cook the milk & sugar over a medium heat until just steaming. Lower the heat & cook for around 2 hrs or until the mixture has thickened

When it has reduced by half add the vanilla & let it cool completely use straight away or store in a sterilised jar 😊

BMI

The subject of today's ranty blog was somewhat chosen for me

BMI ... Somebody posted a question on my fb page what is the difference between BMI & body composition

While those of us who know may scoff & laugh, it is, actually, a very valid question.

Dr's all use the body mass index as a guide or a measure for obesity general population all the time. Surely we should know what it means? 

The fitness industry tends to use body fat measurements as a guide 

So why the difference? 

Well it would probably help if I gave you some info on both 

BMI was first devised in 1832 by a Belgian mathematician/statistician named Adolphe quetelet. 

What he was looking for was a way to define the "normal" man. His thesis was intended to describe the standard proportions if the human build. 

The equation was largely ignored by the medical community until in 1972,a chap by the name of Ancel Keys published "indices Of relative weight & obesity" it was a landmark study of over 7400 men in 5 countries.

Keys considered quetelets equation to be the best indicator of body fat percentage & renamed it the body mass index.

Because it was simple & cheap to do compared to trawling through complicated historical data or studies or measuring skin folds, it began to catch on in the medical community. 

However like Quetelet, Keys never intended the BMI to be used for individual diagnosis. It was only ever meant as a population marker. 

It doesn't take into account gender, age, ethnicity, frame size or muscle mass ratio. 

So how about body fat. What's so special about that ?

Well it's exactly what it says on the box. 

Measuring the amount of body fat a person has in relation to the rest of their physical makeup 

There are around 6 formulas one can use to calculate bodyfat if which the 3 Jackson pollock skinfold methods are probably most popular 

The others are parrillo, durnin/wormersley & just the good old fashioned tape measure 

The problem with these are that the person taking the measurements has to be very consistent & accurate. 

The measurement site has to be exactly the same each time & so does the pressure in the calipers. 

The advantage of this method is that it's cheap, relatively quick & if the practitioner is skilled, reasonably accurate ( enough for the general population anyway) 

There are other ways of taking BF measurements. But these involve quite large & expensive machinery 

Bio electrical impedance ( home machines are now available but notoriously inaccurate ) 

Hydrostatic weighing

Dual X-ray absorbtiometry

Air displacement plethysmography

The last 3 are very accurate but it's also hard to find somewhere that will do it 

And they can be very expensive. 

But do we really need to be that accurate?. Well for the general population no. Not all of us are physique competitors & athletes. All we need is a rough guide as to whether or not we are fat. Or rather our body fat percentage 

This is more helpful in the indication of both health & obesity but doesn't tell the whole story. For this good old fashioned medical check ups & blood tests are still necessary

However in the search for reliable methods of assessing general obesity I have another idea.

2 really useful tools, ones I swear by, we all have access to & are dead easy to use 

The mirror and plain common bloody sense 😀

Have we lost the full up feeling?

So here it is random blog post No 15

Here we are, it’s August and I’ve had a very heavy fewweeks. August is a tough month for me, with many instructors going on holiday, its left for those of us who are too poor to go away, to cover them.

Any gym/fitness instructor or coach will understand this annual headache.

As many of you know, I don’t just teach, I have my own training schedule and increases in classes can make me feel incredibly drained, so enter stage left food and sleep and copious amounts of it.

I’m already hitting a big Kcal ceiling but this week I’m doing that and then some, to cover the excess. It’s hard. I really do eat very clean (apart from the occasional jelly baby attack) 3000 cals of clean food is a lot, especially if you lose four hours a day training/teaching

Take that with 8 hrs sleep and then 4 hrs between meals for optimal nutrient uptake and I’m looking at 3 meals of1000 cals  or 4 meals of 750 if I want to reduce it to 3 hrs …..oooff!

Add on top of that the fact that I absolutely detest feeling full & I'm in a little bit of trouble

BUT, this lead me to thinking. I’ve always hated that “stuffed” feeling. I mean genuinely hated it. I would rather have a meal and feel comfortable, then eat an hr later, than stuff myself stupid. Have we as an “animal” lost the ability to ascertain when we are satiated?

It’s a genuine curiosity of mine. With modern foods being carbohydrate dense and containing very little else by way of nutrients, have we lost our ability to self regulate?

My opinion is yes

I’ve already addressed the issue of sugar in a previous blog. It’s in everything, it’s a fast carb and stored as fat in most people because they’re already replete in glycogen. The body, being the efficient machine that it is, stores the excess as fat for a “rainy day” and its soooooo addictive.

It also brought to mind a conversation I had with someone a few years back. They were laughing at the fact that I could never finish an Indian takeaway. My response was that I hated feeling overly full.

The reply that came back has always kind of stuck with me and probably highlights one of the problems with the modern relationship with food.

“You have to practice, overeating takes dedication”

Now I know he was joking but there is an element of truth to this statement. How many of you eat more than you want because there is food left? The old adage of not wasting food really is a very British thing. The war ended quite a few years back. We’re not rationed and guess what? leftovers can go in the fridge for later as a snack instead of a packet of crisps or a snickers bar.

Then there is the sheer cheapness of shitty food. I mean£1 microwave meals? No way are they going to contain anything good for you. Sausage rolls? Fuck me you’d be hard pressed to find anything good about those little bastards.

The government constantly go on about the increasing obesity of our nation but the price of fresh fruit vegetables and meat continues to skyrocket.

Here’s a suggestion … remove VAT from fresh produce and bang it on the crap.

Its very, very hard to overeat on fresh produce. 3000 cals is pretty much 1 ½ big mac meals. In clean terms in a very, very simplistic way, it’s around 1400g of chicken in meat or 10 kilos of broccoli in vegetables. Can you imagine eating 10 kilos of broccoli?

What would be really cool is if a genuine study could be carried out on two populations with the same general lifestyle. One could eat the modern diet as per normal & the other could eat fresh produce, or clean food as is generally becoming known as.

I really do think the results would speak for themselves.

It really is true what they say, not all calories are made equal and if we stick to nutrient dense, fresh foods, maybe one day, we will learn to become “full” again

So next time you reach for the Pringles have a think … would it be this easy to eat a kilo of broccoli?

Has body building turned into a beauty pageant

Hello peeps

Well here's another blog & I am going to touch on a subject that is probably very taboo. It will certainly upset a lot of people. This is no reason to avoid the subject though.

I would however stress that I am NOT having a go at body building as a sport & have the utmost respect for those that compete and go through what I can only describe as torturous dieting and training cycles. I have many friends who compete and have nothing but respect & admiration.

The subject of this blog is not about fact as such but more about impressions.

The thing is Bodybuilding is becoming more mainstream. Its no longer a niche sport. A lot more people are becoming interested. Up until about 8 months ago I had very little knowledge of the sport and in all honesty, very little respect. I stress, this has changed but I want to come at you from a pure lay mans point of view.

So lets start at the beginning

As you fitpros are all aware, the BodyPower expo was on this weekend. I, like many of my colleagues, decided to attend. Its the first time I have and boy was it not, what I expected!

Now don't get me wrong there was a lot of great stuff there but bloody hell did it show the baser side of our industry too. Many sports were represented but the most prominent was bodybuilding.

So now I'm going to come at you from a layman's point of view. Amongst other things there was a Body building show on at BodyPower & I was very much looking forward to seeing the girls & boys who were tweeting about their training & diets, getting up & showing their stuff.

It was a complete shock, not what I was expecting at all!

The standard of condition was so varied it was hard to tell what I was watching. I had no idea if I was watching body fitness, bikini or just a beauty pageant.

Some of the guys & girls had worked their asses off! literally but some of them looked like they had just sauntered off the street.

My heart bled for some of them. The fake boobs, hair & dodgy orange tans were not disguising the lack of conditioning and in some cases, we weren't looking at lean, we were looking at emaciated. How could any self respecting coach let a girl or guy get into that sort of state, where is the love, or is it really just all about the £'s?

I know many will disagree but I urge you to look at it from joe publics point of view not an insider. Think about what impression it would have given them of what body building is about. Girls walking around with their tits and asses hanging out. Heavy makeup & tans. Guys barging through the crowd with their "entourage" just reinforcing the age old cliches that are still associated with the sport. They won't see whether the competition is a nationally recognised show or not. They won't see that there are truly good comps out there. They will only see whats in front of them.

If 40,000 people saw what I saw, then thats 40,000 people walking away with totally the wrong impression about Body building.

For those of you that saw my little mini rants on twitter yesterday, It was this that I was getting at. I felt awful for the sport and really it reinforced in many, the wrong impression

I know the difference, I know that body building is not like that. Joe public doesn't and its body buildings responsibility to clean it up. Be proud enough of your sport that, rather than getting defensive, make a change!.

I apologise in advance for any offence caused to the Body Building community