One of the ways to see what is current in mainstream fitness is to look on the sport/fitness isle at Tesco.

It appears that functional training is getting there, as they now sell two sizes of kettlebell! 5kg & 7.5kg.

The 2 pood has been tamed officially this week! Now I just need to balance out my reps left to right! 12 right – 5 left.

Norwich Personal Training recommends suspension system training.

TRX, Blast Straps, Elite Rings, The Freedom Trainer are all slightly different versions of the same basic idea. Like lots of other pieces of training kit you can try to do too much with them, but if you stick to their strong points they can be fantastic!

Men’s Health voted the TRX as their best total body workout tool, the Elite Rings were recently featured on the biggest loser tv show and in the now famous 300 movie workout. Added to that, most of the worlds top strength and conditioning coaches and personal trainers are using some kind of suspension system.

So why all the hype?

Well, for starters, most of the systems are very portable, so you can take them anywhere.

Secondly you can use them where ever there is a suitable place to suspend them – doorways, trees, football goals, chin bars, beams, the top of a squat/power rack and they actually make good use of a smith machine! (that’s another blog)

Thirdly they are great for all ranges of fitness levels, from the absolute beginner to the elite athlete – they use your body weight in a very adjustable and unique way, enabling the trainer to challenge the individual at just the right level.

Lastly, some traditional exercises such as the press up, the bridge, the leg curl, split squats, chins can be made better or tougher by making the stabilizers work harder. Lets also not forget very tough exercises such as muscle ups which you really need rings to perform!

TRX Press Up

If  it looks like something you’d like to try, get in touch and give it a go!

Brilliant fun and adds a new dimension to your workouts : )

Off to London on the 17th to train up on Kettlebells with Tommy and BJ from Optimal Life Fitness. Really looking forward to it. 2 days of solid work I’ve heard – not sure how my body will react to that! Sore hams and glutes I assume!

Turkish Get Up

Found a couple of great bits of kit that are keeping people on their bikes and riding even after suffering with painful perineal problems.

These two saddles are from different lines of thinking, but both seem to be getting the job done i.e. no pain from the owners in previously painful areas!

If you’ve been thinking that your cycling days are over lately, spend five minutes taking a look at these websites!

www.rido-cyclesaddles.com

www.bycycleinc.com

Happy Cycling!

Norwich Personal Training loves box squats for real results!

Box squats are one of those funny types of training that have been modified from the original purpose. Power lifters such as the guys at westside barbell and others popularized the box squat for sitting back and using the glutes (backside) and hamstrings more than the traditional quadracep (front thigh) dominant technique.
With my clients I use various techniques in the squat depending what is suitable but I nearly always use a box for a different reason. Watching Mike Boyle in action gave me another one of those ah ha moments that he dishes out often! The box enables you to keep the quality of the movement high on every repetition by measuring the depth of the squat. This makes sure that if you ask someone to do six repetitions, they will actually do six repetitions, not six half repetitions! If you tap the top of the box not actually sitting down, you know you can come back up again. So we don’t de-load, or bang into the box stressing the spine with a heavy load on our backs.
This has proved to be very effective over the last few years really improving the quality of the squatting with everyone I work with. The great thing is with this, you don’t need expensive plyometric boxes or anything fancy. As you can see from the photo danny is using step block risers and an airex pad, this is kit you’ll find in most good gyms – or something similar.
So there you go, get to it, measure your squats on every rep and you’ll reap the rewards of consistent depth.

Norwich personal training is working on the hamstrings again!

This exercise is a real favourite for several reasons.

1 – Leg curl machines don’t give you hip extension! That means the hamstrings could gradually build a dominance over the glutes in your backside. This would not be good. The order should always be bum, hams, then adductor magnus for good function.

2 – Instead of sitting in a chair, which most of us do too much of already, when performing a body pod or stability ball leg curl we have to work hard to stabilize and control hip tilt. You have to focus on your bum and abs with these exercises – make sure you don’t let the low back arch into what we call an anterior tilt.

3 – I really like the body pod variation because it has more sideways/lateral stability than the ball – this is important because when you’re learning, like Vicki in the photo above, it means you can focus more on your low back shape and hip tilt – very important!

Sam below however is doing a great job on the stability ball, but remember it is very tough to consistently get this right.

Be careful with both of these exercises if you’ve not tried them before. They can be tougher than they look and cramp is a real possibility!
Be ready with a good hamstring stretch from the posts below if this happens.

Firstly I’ve got to give the credit to Alwyn Cosgrove via Mike Boyle for this one. He originally intended for this to be done on a stability ball for stretches such as the hamstring version above.

I’ve been using the bosu with people for the opossite of its design!

It has more stability than the ball for this type of thing. It works great for a squat stretch too as above.

The idea is you get to promote extension/concave back shape while you stretch which is very desirable.

It’s a two in one release to computer posture with the hamstring stretch! Just add in a good hip flexor stretch with an airex pad or a pillow/cushion and a good chest stretch on the doorway to make your bad posture fighting even better!

Use a machine like the DAP here or a doorway at home.

This has to be my favourite hamstring stretch. I like it for many reasons – firstly you can relax which is important for any stretch, secondly you are always very aware of your back shape (you have the constant feedback of the floor) and thirdly it is easy to control your hip/knee/foot alignment.

If anyone has thought of a better way of doing this, please let me know!