August: The three keys to fat loss, an easy solution for better energy and a tough anywhere workout.

Hello!

So plenty to get through this month so I’ll keep the intro short. Things are very good here, player managing my football team this year, enjoying a variety of training and also hope to be working with a couple of very well known fitness brands soon.

Part 1: Fat Loss Made Simple

Step 1: Sleep

Before you even think about increasing your training, look at your sleep. If your regularly getting less than 7 hours, and less than 7 / 8 if very active, your body will be craving more simple carbohydrate, struggling to recover and have more inflammation. If you can put some attention here (no blue light eg. Phone, laptop, at least an hour before bed, cool down and darken your room, no high fat meals close to bedtime, less alcohol), then you’ll find everything gets easier. If the body is less stressed it will give up fat much easier.

Step 2: Move every day

Do some light cardio, hard cardio or sprints or lift weights every day. We have to create an energy deficit, and we need to do things that help us become, and look more athletic. Light cardio is incredibly helpful for burning calories and recovery, but it’s not enough. Don’t forget the weights build the shape, prevent injuries and improve your metabolism, without them it’s going to be tough to look athletic.

Step 3: Remove the junk.

A little junk fine, but there has to be the question of what would you like most? To look great with a treat here and there, or to make poor nutrition more of a priority? It’s absolutely fine to have time off to relax, and it’s also fine to prioritise other things over health and fitness, however unfortunately we can’t have it all. There’s a lot of articles about having our cake and eating it but unfortunately they’re often just telling us what we want to hear. A book I’ve been reading by a elite football dietician had a pre season meal plan, to which my girlfriend asked where the desserts were…it took us a while to realise that there was no dessert! That’s obviously one end of the scale, and I’m much more about having a small treat, but to think we can have wine, crisps and chocolate often and look athletic is a bit of a fantasy. This may sound harsh but let’s be honest here, if it’s important for you to drop body fat, we need to remove most junk food and drink from our diet.

When I say junk this is alcohol, processed foods, crisps, cakes, chocolates and the likes of. Juices are OK if used to fuel / refuel around hard training.

Part 2: Should I keep pushing on?

A simple way to measure training load

For those that train a lot, there are times when training stress can go from being a good thing, to an added stress it takes a little longer to recover from.

It’s a difficult balance as there are phases (key word, phases), where we want to really stress the body to build tolerance and endurance, for a super compensation effect. However sometimes we need to consider how hard we’re pushing ourselves and do we need a little time out, or at least a recovery period (this may just be a rest day, or a few lighter days. Overtraining syndrome is quite rare and beyond the scope of this conversation (where recovery is needed over weeks and months).

So how do we know it might be time to think about lightening our load? Key indicators could be very sore muscles, irritability, struggle to fall / stay asleep, niggling injuries and general fatigue.

To combat this, here’s a very simple questionnaire to do in the morning, a snapshot tracking your mental and physical condition, and giving you an overall score. 25 being ideal, and 5 being worst case scenario. Today I’m at an 11 (2 for more tired, 1 for Insomnia, 1 for very sore, 3 for normal stress, 4 for good mood).

So then how do we use this? Track your score daily then think about it in terms of litres of petrol in a car. You’re the car, choose any one you want! (I feel like more of a 20 year old Fiat today!).

So for example say today I have 11 litres of fuel, with 25 litres being the full tank. Visually that already shows us something (photo 3).

That’s definitely enough for me to get around and to do my day to day activities, such as work, food shopping, maybe yoga or a stretch routine, some walking. However with only 11 litres I probably wouldn’t drive it to Birmingham. Now I probably could, but I’m not sure I’d get back, which is exactly what happens when we keep pushing for too long without adequate recovery, our chances of getting back to peak energy and wellness greatly reduce.

In that situation we need to change our mindset from I ‘should’ be doing that gym session today, to I ‘need’ to help my body today. Then we prioritise the good stuff, from sleep to healthy food, stretching to anything that helps our mood improve and for us to take some stress away from the body.

A very simple tactic that could improve your mood and training results, as we improve from training not by pushing our bodies, but by pushing them then recovering.

A final thought, remember that without good training you actually may suffer similar effects to too much training (lethargy, low mood, muscle soreness), so train often, train hard sometimes and focus on recovery when you need to.

Part 3: A 15 min Fat burner

I’ll film this later in the week and put onto Instagram (@wpstrengthconditioning), however it goes a little something like this.

Warm Up: 3 minutes skipping rope or mobility

12 Min EMOM

Minute 1: 10 Squat to Press, 10 Tricep Extension then rest remaining seconds

Minute 2: 10 Squats, 10 Push Ups then rest remaining seconds

Minute 3: 10 Split Squats each side, 10 V ups then rest remaining seconds

Repeat for four rounds.

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Will