February - The burn is coming!
This month we’re moving away from balance and cardio endurance and heading towards hypertrophy. (Hyper - what? Hypertrophy put simply is training designed to build muscle).
Hypertrophy is a funny subject as often before you’ve finished explaining you’ll hear people anxiously say ‘I don’t want to get bigger!!’, when actually this will all completely depend on your diet. Although I’d like for us to use this month to add a small amount of muscle size and tone, in reality it’s very hard to overdo it, you’re not going to wake up looking like The Rock or a Rugby Prop.
In fact a lot of fitness models will use muscle building workouts when in strict dieting phase, as this is the best way for them to retain muscle, so if after getting your diet back into to gear in Jan, this could be a great month to push that little bit harder on the diet front and really make an improvement in your muscle tone.
The fun bit of muscle building is that we’ll be chasing the burn; expect a little soreness, sorry!
Also, which is very rare for my training, we’ll be splitting the workout between body parts. The most common split will be;
Day 1 - Chest and Back
Day 2 - Legs and Abs
Day 3 - Shoulders and Arms
Then throw in some cardio. The great thing with this split is you naturally have two harder days, and then shoulders and arms day is tough on those muscles, but easier mentally, plus the legs can get more recovery time.
Some tips to make the most out of this month.
Have a protein shake and a piece of fruit after your workout. This will help send the protein to the muscles quickly and begin the recovery process, which is where muscles are built!
If aiming to drop fat this month, consider fasting / carb cycling. Essentially try not to have much carbohydrate before your session, then tuck in later in the day after your weights. This will help better use the carbohydrate for muscle recovery.
Make sure you’ve got enough kit. I’d recommend ideally a light set of dumbbells, a medium set plus the same with kettlebells. Resistance bands also helpful this month. Here’s some idea for weights, but really down to the person, I definitely have some ladies out lifting some men!
1 x pair DB (Ladies 2-4kg, Men 3-5kg)
1 x pair DB (Ladies 6-10kg, Men 8-12kg)
1 x KB (Ladies and Men 8kg)1 x KB (Ladies 10-12kg, Men 12-20kg)
(I actually don’t have the heavier set of dumbbells as tend to switch to kettlebells, but having choices is helpful).
Two places to buy;
https://www.fitness-superstore.co.uk/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAx9mABhD0ARIsAEfpavT-Dt4V277nD35yDYaB__3vob-odAU4Pu6DH5XOLnPy0najwD8Q0hQaAnteEALw_wcB
(also has store in Wandsworth)
Keep a training log. It will really help this month as weights are important, and it’s great when suddenly you realise you’re doing 15 reps with something you struggle doing 8 with a few weeks earlier.
Watch your overtraining. Always important, but especially this month as you may have more soreness, longer warm ups will be important.
Watch your overgrazing! This was actually an autocorrect and thought it was brilliant. Trying to stick to meals and reducing snacks is always a good route to a lean body.
If doing cardio the same day, ideally do your weights first. When we do cardio we create a lot of lactic acid, this means we lose the ability for the muscles to repeatedly contract as strongly, meaning you can often burn out quicker. However generally cardio normally is fine straight after or a little later in the day. If doing sprints then you’d ideally do those before your weights.
I can’t wait for some great training this month, and hope you’re looking forward to it too!
