Personal Training in Liverpool Street

Quick Post: How to Stay Focussed in the Gym

Maintaining your workout focus can be one of the toughest things about getting results.

Training is a marathon, not a sprint, and consistency governs most of your progress. During a year of training, you’ll do hundreds – if not thousands – of repetitions of the same movements, and spend many hours of the gym.

With that being the case, no one can really blame you if your gym focus slips a little. You could chug a load of pre-workout to get yourself in the zone, or you could just use these tips to maintain your focus and develop a more effective training style.

workout focus
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3 Weird Ways Fitness is Marketed to Men

Sales is an inevitable part of life, but what grinds my gears is marketing that preys on insecurities and lazy stereotypes to get men to pay up. If someone has a financial incentive to make you conform to their standards of behaviour, then it’s very unlikely they have your best interests at heart.

This is especially true when these tactics involve trying to dictate how an entire group of people should behave. These tactics are on display in fitness clothing brands, nutrition products, membership adverts, and social media. In most of these cases someone stands to profit from pushing lazy archetypes upon you to make you want to be more like their brand.

In my opinion, there is far more awareness and discussion around how this sort of pressure is directed at women. It’s time for men to catch up.

By Simone Pellegrini on Unsplash

Knowing some of the archetypes that men are cast as – and how ridiculous they are – will hopefully reduce the pressure you feel to train, spend, and behave a certain way just because you’ve been told that’s what it means to be a man.

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A Guide to the Best Core Training Exercises

Or ab exercises, or trunk exercises…whatever you want to call it.

In the previous post, I discussed how it’s important to know what you’re looking for when you seek out a new core exercises for your training programme. Approaches to core training can vary, and I divided them as follows:

  • Core training – an emphasis on positioning and control, taking into account the effect that a huge array of muscles have on the lower back and hip area.
  • Trunk training – a focus on movement skill and force production, possibly for sporting performance.
  • Ab training – the practice of directly training the muscles that sit on top of the stomach, with the aim of growing the abdominal muscles or getting a more defined stomach.

The terms used are fairly arbitrary, but the distinction can be quite important if you visit a six-pack specialist in the hope of resolving your back pain or strengthening your deadlift. Unfortunately, many of these training aims have been grouped under a much broader, hyper-marketed idea of what core training is.

I’ve tried to group these core training exercises into categories so you can jump straight to the ones you’re most interested in, but there will be some crossover between certain exercises.

pallof core exercise
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Your Guide to Understanding Core Training

Core training is one of the most frequent topics that new clients mention during consultations. Unfortunately, when you dig a little deeper into people’s motivations for training their core, the answers you get can be quite wide-ranging.

“My back feels weak.”

“I think a stronger core will make me better at my sport.”

“I have bad posture.”

“I want a flatter stomach/six-pack.”

“I get back pain.”

These are very different goals that require very different approaches, but by grouping them all under the umbrella of core training, it’s easy to get the wrong impression about what core training actually entails.

This also means that well-meaning trainers (or not so well-meaning marketing departments) can have you chasing your own tail by performing their version of core training – which is not necessarily the type of training that suits your goals best.

Unfortunately, this misunderstanding of core training types can lead to your results being lost in translation. Crunches probably won’t fix a bad back, learning to brace properly on heavy squats isn’t going to give you a six-pack, and juggling knives on a swiss ball won’t improve your tennis serve.

In order to avoid disappointment and get better results, it’s important to know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and how to go about it.

Core Training Types

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Quick Post: How to Deload to Improve Strength

If you’re training to build strength, sooner or later you will need to deload. The aim of a training deload is to reduce the amount of training stress whilst preserving enough of a training stimulus that you still get results.

The combination of relatively heavy loads, big ranges of motion, and consistency will take its toll over time. This can manifest in tiredness, decreased strength performance, or in an overuse injury. However, if you deload too much then you can end up bored, and may even lose progress. Here are some pointers on making the most of your training deload.

Deload
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Quick Post: Can I Train Core Strength By Squatting Heavy?

Several studies have looked at the activation of core muscles (around the abdomen and lower back) during heavy lifts like squats and deadlifts, in comparison to isolated core exercises like bridges and supermans. The findings usually suggest that core muscles reach higher levels of activation during the heavy lifts than they do during core-specific exercises. This has led many to conclude that there is a secret weapon for improving core strength or getting a six-pack: just lift heavy.

Back squat core strength

Unfortunately, there are a subset of coaches for whom just lifting heavy answers everything. Want more muscle? Just lift heavy. Want to get faster? Just lift heavy. Want a six-pack? Just lift heavy.

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3 Ways to Boost Your Pullup Progress

Training to get your first pullup is a fantastic goal. It requires all-round strength and a mastery of your bodyweight. It also has real world applications, should you ever find yourself in a Cliffhanger-style situation.

However, getting that first pullup can be a frustrating journey too. Many people struggle to overcome the major hurdles that come with gaining the strength – and skill – to perform a brand new movement.

Through my time of helping people get their first pullup, I see the same mistakes being made time and again. Luckily, they have simple fixes.

Want more help with your pullups? I have specific online programmes for pullups and deadlifts. These are made with all experience levels in mind! Fill in the contact form at the bottom of the blog if you’d like to know more.

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Is Perfectionism Harming Your Fitness Journey?

Note: I am not a mental health professional. In writing today’s post, I have borrowed very heavily from GoodTherapy’s page on perfectionism. You should check this page out if you’d like to learn more. My sole aim is to discuss how perfectionism can be counter-productive to a person’s fitness journey, or harmful to their wellbeing. This blog should not be mistaken for mental health advice.

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What Is Perfectionism?

Perfectionism is broadly defined as the need to be, or appear to be, perfect. It is a personality trait that can be linked to conditions such as anxiety, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and orthorexia nervosa. There are many forms of perfectionism.

Perfectionism may not seem inherently bad. Many successful people display perfectionistic traits, and the pursuit of perfection is socially acceptable – even glorified – in many fields. However, perfectionism becomes problematic when you:

  • Are fixated on the end result of a task only;
  • Are unable to complete a task unless the end result will be perfect;
  • Take an excessively long time to finish something that others can do relatively quickly, because of the desire to make it perfect;
  • Use perfectionism as a way to protect against shame, judgement and fear of failure.
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Quick Post: Why You Should Be Wary of Body Transformation Photos

No, not those transformations.

On any given social media platform, it’s hard to avoid coming across someone’s body transformation photos. The most prominent examples will often show people having lost considerable amounts of weight, or gained muscle, between the before and after photos. You can’t even get on a train at certain stations without seeing huge banners showing people’s before and after photos!

These images can elicit multiple feelings – envy, inadequacy, or the pressure to buy a certain product. The images might also tempt you to undertake a transformation of your own. These feelings are normal – it’s what the images are designed to do, after all. However, here are some things to think about before you let these feelings sway you.

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Quick Post: The Best Gym Kit For Strength Training

I’ve previously made some recommendations about the gym kit I’d recommend for strength training, and I thought I would consolidate it into one place. There are a lot of gym gadgets out there, some of which are useful and some of which are little more than gimmicks. The kit I’ve recommended won’t just help you lift more; it will make your strength training sessions more effective. They also make great gifts for that special gym-goer in your life.

Note: I’m not affiliated with any of the brands featured.

Weightlifting Shoes

These shoes have a built-in wedge at the heel, giving a slight elevation that allows you to get your knees further over your toes. This is great for squatting and Olympic lifting variations where you need to keep your torso upright whilst sitting low. They’re also more stable than the average shoe, as the heel is pretty solid.

There are some mobility-fanatics out there who will say that everyone should be able to squat ass-to-grass whilst being barefoot. This simply isn’t realistic for everybody and shouldn’t put you off buying weightlifting shoes – but you should probably work on your ankle mobility too.

Ankle Mobility
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