Before the question of “Why exercise?” can be answered, it is important to first define exercise. The definition of exercise has come to include a wide variety of activities, and when asked what exercise is, some might reply with walking, gardening, dancing, video games, sex and a list of other activities too long to mention.

“Exercise is a process whereby the body performs work of a demanding nature, in accordance with muscle and joint function,” says Taylor Beech, president of Vitality Fitness Studio a boutique fitness studio catering to one on one personal training in Guelph. “It is best performed in a distraction-free, temperature-controlled environment and within the constraints of safety and should be done by meaningfully loading the muscular structures to inroad their strength in a minimum amount of time.”

Beech says, however, that people often attempt to claim that all of their recreational endeavors are exercise. But if the activity does not meet specific criteria that allows for enough of a stimulus to excite the body to produce profound architectural changes, then you are left with activity and recreation, not exercise. However, that is not to suggest that recreation and activity are without benefit.

“These things are absolutely essential to us and we should be able to enjoy recreational activity for the rest of our days on Earth. But the enjoyment of many, if not all, of these recreational activities might not be possible if we are not participating in the normal and required maintenance for the human body, which we call exercise,” he says.

SNAP Newspaper of Guelph spoke with Beech about the definition of exercise and how it can benefit the human body.

What are the differences between exercise and recreation?

When restrictions are put on the term ‘exercise,’ the most common reaction is that people will complain that engaging in any physical activity, regardless of its classification, will cause them to burn calories. While most any activity can lead to the result of calorie wasting, or burning off calories that have been consumed, it can also be sarcopenic, which means muscle wasting.

Some have estimated that a person who runs an entire marathon will expend some 2,500 calories. While this might seem like a lot, realize there are 3,500 calories stored in just one pound of fat.

The person who engages in activity, whether considered exercise or recreation, and is not logging the calories consumed and expended to establish a calorie deficit will not have much luck losing any fat.

Why is it important to build muscle?

This gets back to the original question of why exercise. The simple answer is to preserve and increase the amount of lean tissue that you have.

Those who are much past the age of 25 have begun losing muscle on an annual basis. Those who are much past the age of 40 are losing the amount of muscle they have at a much more rapid rate.

While it is important for people of any age to engage in some level of exercise on a regular basis, it becomes far more critical to maintain an exercise routine as one ages.  Not doing so can lead to a loss of muscle, which will increase your body fat and impact your ability to participate in the recreational activities that you enjoy.  This is one of the reasons why a personal trainer is so important.  They know thousands of different ways to engage you in a style of fitness that works for you and that you enjoy.

What are the best ways to burn fat?

Another common aim of exercise is to lose fat. However, fat loss can only occur if a calorie deficit is established. To do this, determine how many calories are needed to sustain your current body mass, then monitor your caloric intake to ensure that you are consistently leaving yourself with a slight calorie deficit.  You might only need to reduce your calorie intake by between 250 to 500 calories per day from your typical intake. However, be sure that you have a proper balance among proteins, carbohydrates and fats.

The other component of fat loss is an increase in physical activity. Unfortunately, recreational activity is a very inefficient means of achieving this. Diet and exercise combined is the primary strategy for losing fat preserving lean tissue. As we age, it is critical to make sure that our weight loss efforts are discriminate, which means making the distinction between losing weight – a very generic term and a concept that could, in fact, be detrimental to your health – and instead striving to lose fat and preserve lean muscle mass.

What are the benefits of exercise, and how will it help maintain lean tissue?

Exercise, as we’ve come to define it here, will promote skeletal muscle gain — those major muscle groups under voluntary control — while preventing its loss. Skeletal muscle is of great importance to the body. Developing this type of muscle will improve strength, joint stability and protection; increase levels of HDL or ‘good’ cholesterol; and improve bone density and vascular and metabolic efficiency.

Engaging in a regular exercise routine will also help you increase stamina and mobility and contribute to your overall functional ability, which will allow you to engage in most any type of physical activity — from golf to gardening — with less risk of injury and for longer periods  of time.

After just sitting down with a prospective new client we started going through my recommended package and price presentation when she immediately said how inexpensive she thought the training was compared to what she had received from other attempts in the past.  I immediately regretted not raising my rates.  

I couldn’t help but ask though why she felt that the training cost a lot less than she had expected.  She said that she had tried a diet centre that gave her weekly Vitamin B12 shots and a low calorie diet.  All she received were these very low calorie diets (approx 800 calories) and an appointment to get a B12 shot each week.  While she did say that she lost the weight, the weight did come back… as expected.

This “doctor supervised and monitored starvation diet” has a placebo effect because of the clinical setting and high costs.  Even though the plan revolves around getting weekly Vitamin B12 injections, to date no conclusive, rigorous studies have demonstrated vitamin B12 reduces fat or improves weight loss. 

Excess Vitamin B12 has been shown however, to cause nerve damage and I have personally trained a client that had developed nerve damage from too much Vitamin B12.  It was about 2 years before she could feel her feet again.

More side effects of too much Vitamin B12 is that it can aggravate gout, raise your blood sugar, cause liver damage, induce digestion problems and irritate your skin!  All this in an attempt to avoid exercise!

The typical costs for this treatment is:

Initial Consultation: $315.65

8 weeks of of the diet: $1123.50

4 weeks of of the diet: $599.20

2 weeks of of the diet: $310.30

1 weeks of of the diet: $160.50

Maintenance Fees

One year service: $749

Three months service: $246

Two months service: $171

Advantages

To me this seems awfully expensive for what appears to be nothing more than a super strict diet and some vitamins. Why not just try the Jelly Bean diet?  1 jelly bean for breakfast, 1 jelly bean for lunch and a sensible dinner.  I guarantee you’ll lose weight with that one too.

Even though I do not personally believe in this approach I actually really respect the guy who started this business and applaud is business acumen.  There are a lot more people who would rather pay to NOT work out, then to break a sweat.  Promoting an exercise free weight loss plan is a much easier sell then telling someone that they will have to diet AND lift weights AND do cardio but the end result is much better.

Not only will you get the h body you want but you;ll have done so while maintaining or increasing your lean tissue and thereby increasing your body’s resting metabolic rate.  You will burn more calories sitting there watching TV then you would have otherwise.  This means you do not have to work nearly as hard to maintain your weight or lose more body fat.  

Body fat reduction is just one of the benefits of doing things the right way.  Improved cardiovascular function and increased energy all day, a healthy mindset with increased endorphin productions, reduced stress and the list goes on and on and most likely the people reading this already know this.  So why do people continue to go the injection route?  

Because it’s easy and people are lazy!  

This is true because inactivity breeds inactivity and a poor diet will make anyone feel lethargic.  What people need to do is start on a proper diet for about 3-4 days, then get a light workout in and build momentum and a feeling of accomplishment and motivation.  In the very beginning it will come from will power and if you can’t muster that for 1 week, well then, that’s where a trainer comes into play.  

A trainer will give you all the diet info and tips you need, daily accountability to follow the plan and hopefully make the workout not only effective but fun too for far less cost than a needle prick.

“I want to lose weight and tone my arms.”

Trainers always hear their clients asked for toned arms.  But what does toned really mean?  Toned defined is “The normal state of elastic tension or partial contraction in resting muscles.” I’m sure this is not what she meant.

She wants her arms to feel hard, not squishy, and you want to have some level of definition.  Usually not the striated, veiny look but defined enough to allow light to play into it and shadows appear to separate the muscles.  Say from your biceps to triceps or biceps to shoulders.

This all boils down to two things.

Getting your body fat low enough to showcase the muscle and to actually work to build muscle, which is often a scary notion for some women.

There should be no fear of getting arms as big as a guy who has been working out for years, you will however achieve arms that are denser and harder long before you start to stretch our your favourite T-shirt.

In fact, your arm will start to get smaller as you lose fat far faster than you can build muscle tissue.

You will first start to notice your muscles becoming harder, more dense, and not starting to grow bulky.  Women lack the testosterone and daily caloric intake necessary to build massive arms so there really is no real chance she’ll wake up with an arm that is bigger than she wants provided that the proper diet and necessary cardio work is in place to lean down and get rid of the excess fat.

I personally belong to the camp that believes you should focus on muscle hypertrophy first and then work on getting rid of the excess fat but there are other ways you can go about it.

If your goal is to lose body fat while maintaining or growing some muscle, which means making your muscles stronger and harder, you could try a style of training known as Tabata.

This style was first developed by Dr. Joseph Tabata the coach of the Japanese Olympic speed skating team.  He trained his athletes using a protocol of 20 seconds of maximum work followed by a short 10 second rest for sets of 8.  He used a stationary bike during his research and found his athletes were getting leaner while adding lean tissue.

I have adapted this research and use it for all areas of training where it works.  This is difficult to do with exercise that doesn’t offer a lot of control and has a rising risk of injury when speed is a variable.  You’ll also want to get yourself a special timer like the one you see me use on my TV show Beech Body to keep track of sets.

Since we are talking about arms today I’d recommend trying a Tabata Protocol for all the exercises I mention.  Start with Heavy Band Curls, grab a quick drink and then within 30 seconds you can start Triceps Rope Extensions.  When those 8 sets are done, flip back to biceps and work through some Preacher Cable Curls, back to Triceps for some Bench Dips, finish off with some V-Bar Lat Pull downs and Close Grip Pushups.

That’s a great arm blasting workout in under 30 minutes that will get your arms toned in record time if you are eating clean for fat loss.

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Could you take just a moment and answer our quick survey please. It is your answers that will help fulfill one of our core values of Continuos Progression. The other 4 would be: Personal Duty & Responsibility, Integrity and Reliability, Over Deliver and Provide Leadership, Mentorship and Coaching.

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“I have been working out for years and I can’t seem to get my 6 pack.” Is a statement we trainers hear often.  Doesn’t seem to matter if you’re 15 or 80 everybody wants a strong core for one reason or another.

Most people want the 6 pack for the look of it and while there are 100 different exercises to do for the abs nothing will out work a bad diet.  First and foremost you need to get your body fat down low enough to see your ab muscles.  Chances are, you have the 6 pack look you desire underneath the fat.  The good news is that it’s already there you just can’t see it.

Focus on a fat loss diet and increase your cardio output to work towards this.  This is the obvious answer to many of us but I will say that there are exercises that can work to get the 6 pack out better than others.  There are other muscles that make up the core like the internal and external obliques, transverse abdominis and not often considered the Multifudus, erector spinae and pelvic floor muscles but in this answer we’ll just focus on the “6 pack” on top. The 6 pack is actually only 1 muscle, the rectus abdominis, which looks like 6 or even 8 in some cases, because of tendons that run over top of it. 

Now most would say that to make a muscle bigger you need to add a challenging heavier weight, train to failure somewhere between 6-12 reps and get proper nutrition with adequate rest. But these same people train there abs with very high reps, every other day and do not often work until momentary muscle failure.  If you want to induce hypertrophy, which is muscle growth of the abs thereby making them not only stronger but bigger so that they protrude out through the tendons, try training them like you would the other muscles in your body. 

Use exercises like heavy band sit-ups, Russian twists with cables and hanging or weighted leg lifts.  Turn the intensity dial up so that you are achieving failure within the 8-12 rep range and work with 12 to 15 sets. Make sure to rest and train them again when they are no longer sore, which may take several days. On a side tangent if you want to develop your core in more of a functional way, meaning in a way that mimics movements closer to life or your specific sport, you should be trying to incorporate movements for the core that work while in an upright position.

The one place you need your abs or core to be strong is while standing and often in a position of imbalance but most people train their abs while lying down, the very position that you do not need them to be strong. Functional core movements might include a wood chopper, windmill or cable rotations. For video tutorials on most of these exercises check here.

Shake diets sounds good when you first hear about them because it’s so easy and that does count for something but to be perfectly honest, I’m not a fan.  A diet like this is designed to make the supplement company a lot of money and sell you over priced products. 

Often times the shakes are priced at about 7 to 10 times of other protein or meal replacements.  You’re probably also sold a bunch of supportive supplements you don’t need. If you are on a nutrition plan that you can not sustain for life I don’t like it. 

This “diet” is a starvation diet and you’d do just as well to try the jelly bean diet.  The jelly bean diet is simple, you have 1 jelly bean for breakfast, 1 jelly bean for lunch and a sensible dinner.  I’m kidding don’t try that diet either.  Eating that way will slow your metabolism, which is your body’s ability to digest food. 

Your goal should be to speed up your metabolism and take control of your appetite and metabolism with a proper plan of lean proteins, complex and fibrous carbs and healthy fats.  Couple this with some good old fashioned will power for 1 week and you’ll find you’ll need less will power the next.

You may see a short term weight increase, which scares most to start starving again but remember that weight is comprised fat, muscle, water and food, which turns to glycogen, which attracts more water.  Pay attention to how your body adjusts, how you feel, and what your energy is like? Give it one week and you’ll start to see the scale move in your favor and you’ll feel great and perform well in your exercises.

Listen, if you try to work out in a calorie deprived state it’s hell.  You need to eat for performance so that your workouts actually feel good. They can feel good you know? If you try a predominantly liquid diet you also lose the thermogenic effect of digesting these foods.  This means the amount of calories that are actually burned in the process of digestion and you end up messing around with your body’s hormones, some of which like Leptin may be reduced and lead to increased appetite. 

Make’s sense right?

You go on a low calorie diet for any length of time, cravings go up and up and one day you blow it, you eat a ton and blame yourself for screwing up on your diet.  Perhaps fall into depression and give up or get back on the same roller coaster the next day.  Of course now in this state your body does not burn through food, it stores it as fat because your system does not know when the next opportunity to eat a sustainable amount of food will come again.  You ride along for as long as you can and maybe reach your goal weight.  Great, now what?  You celebrate and go back to the same pattern that had you try such an extreme diet in the first place but this time you’re walking around in a damaged body. 

Your hormone levels and digestive system do not work like a lean person with muscle so you find that your body actually gets back to it’s old weight pretty quick and it becomes even more difficult to lose the weight again and again. Dieting this way is highly catabolic and results in you losing muscle.  Muscle is what burns your body’s fat. 

You end up losing weight short term but losing fat and keeping your muscle long term should be your goal.  The more muscle you have the better your ability to burn fat will be.

To hold on to youth, to get the body you want, we need to have a concern for muscle and work to maintain it, if not add to it.  It’s the only way to live a life where you get to eat what you want in moderation and stay lean and strong with ease.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones usually wake up every weekday morning the same way.

Reluctantly rolling over to turn off the alarm clock, it was always a struggle to get out of bed.  But this morning it was a little different, they had an appointment in their living room.

They walk downstairs and pour themselves their usual coffee, but this morning the coffee has an extra benefit of giving them energy and helping to mobilize fat from storage to be used as energy for the upcoming workout.

Their trainer, Brooke Wilson, knocks quietly on the door as instructed and is excited to work Mr. and Mrs. Jones through the thoughtful and exciting program that was developed for them. 

In just a couple of minutes Brooke is pulling Mr. and Mrs. Jones off the couch and gets them moving into some Hindu pushups.  A Hindu Pushup is an easy movement that is great for working out the muscles from lying in bed all night and stretches the back and hamstrings, while starting the heart and blood pumping.  A proper warm up is always important but even more so first thing out of bed.

After the Hindu pushups comes the frog squats.  A more focused leg movement still utilizing a stretch into every rep Brooke is careful to ease into the workout to prevent injury and increase compliance.  A workout that is too hard de-motivates and does not yield long term consistency, which is a critical success point.  Brooke sees her first bead of sweat an knows it’s time to step it up a notch.  She turns on a play list put together specifically for Mr. and Mrs. Jones and their tastes and proceeds to get them really moving with some Mummy’s.  A fun cardio exercise somewhere between a Jumping Jack and a dance move.

Brooke takes Mr. and Mrs. Jones through a workout that flows from one exercise to the next targeting all the areas they want, building lean tissue, burning off unwanted fat and motivated them to have a great day at work with clean eating all day long.

As the session nears its end, in what always seems like 20 minutes even though it was an hour, Brooke cools the two urban warriors off with some fabulous yoga styles movements that focus on breathing and stretching.  Brooke then applies a stretching technique called PNF to help facilitate a deeper, higher quality of stretch then what can be produced on your own.

“Ahhhhhh” A satisfied Mr. Jones lets out.  “Time to shower and get on with our day.”  Brooke is packed up and off to her next appointment in minutes and Mr. and Mrs. Jones are literally buzzing with energy.

“It’s a self imposed coach or drill sergeant.” as Mr. Jones puts it.  “When you know you are not doing the right things on your own you need to enlist the help of a professional.  Brooke takes us by the hand, in some cases literally, and gets us to do what we know we need to do.  Perhaps one day we will have built up the motivation and willpower to do all this on our own, but until then Brooke and In Home Personal Trainers are staying busy with us.”

“I also like that it gives us a curfew.”  Says Mrs. Jones a self reported night owl.  “When I know I have Brooke in the morning it gets me to bed on time otherwise I stay up too late watching TV and just wasting time.”

In Home Personal Trainers not only gives you an iron clad reason for getting out of bed, we give you the motivation you need to follow the nutrition plan we provide all day long.  Plus, we offer online accountability and coaching so if you need a questioned answered or a little pick me up we are anxiously waiting on the other line just for you.

“Without someone there motivating you and getting your day off on the right foot it can be difficult to gain the momentum we need to make some positive physical changes.” Says Taylor Beech, owner and founder of InHomePersonalTrainers.com

With 15 years of personal training and management experience Taylor knows what it takes to run a service oriented business that delivers fitness results.

“The training is the easy part.  The programs, equipment, nutrition plans and accountability system is where the service and results are and all are guaranteed to work.  Properly organizing sessions, finding and keeping quality personal trainers and provided service 24/7 to all of our clients is what separates In Home Personal Trainers.

In Home Personal Trainers will give you the missing element you’ve been experience in achieving your goals and in most cases that’s accountability.  Our survey of over 100 active clients showed that over 80% of them said that the accountability is one of the most important reasons they see a trainer.

Getting really clear on what you want, creating a vision for it and following through on it daily is what will actually get your body to start to change.  Once that happens all the fantastic associated benefits of improved health and fitness start to emerge.

“People want to improve their health and fitness for many reasons but at the end of the day it is the increased positive emotions that come along with it that we all strive for.”  Says Taylor.

Staying motivated with fitness is something that you need to take responsibility for, it doesn’t just happen.  I read somewhere that motivation is like a shower and it needs to be applied daily.  Here’s a picture that made me laugh the first time I saw it.

The people that this comedian are talking about who are in exceptionally good shape got there because they somehow gained the ability to set a goal and stay motivated long enough to achieve it.

Living a fitness lifestyle is not something to be started with an end in mind.  It is a state of mind of continuously progressing and setting goals.  This way of life definitely transfers into other areas of your life where you can start to willfully design desired outcomes.

To stay motivated long enough the first thing that I’d recommend we do is to set your 1 year goals.  This goal should be clearly defined and not just “To lose 50 pounds.”  Write out what you look like, what you would be doing, who is there and why you want this so badly.  Get a clear vision of what you want.

Something that will inspire you to get up an hour earlier than you need to in order to get your cardio session in, to say “no thanks” when a friend asks you out for drinks or a piece of cake (you might have to say it a few times), the will to work through those last impossible reps that really make all the difference. 

This vision has to be something that moves you and not someone else.  If you’re goal is to look good in a suit to walk into a meeting room beaming with confidence, focusing on how good you’ll look in a tight shirt at a night club is not going to do it.  Take your time here to come up with a vision of what you and your life will look like when you have achieved your goal.

After this vision is created with a lot of detail we can then set your 4 month targets that let us know you are on pace to reach your goal.  Base line measurements need to be done to illustrate that the needle is moving forward.  Verifiably results are extremely motivating and will definitely keep you going forward. 

Make sure to complete a cardiovascular test, take before pictures, anthropometric measurements (which are body measurements), and a variety of strength and mobility tests to set challenging, yet realistic goals.  

We’d then need to break down that even further into what needs to be done on a daily basis.  Designing a weight and cardio training program that progresses week to week and of course your diet is critical.  How many calories should you be eating each day and what are the ideal macro nutrient ratios.  To be extremely successful with your diet you’ll need to take some time to prepare food in advance so you are not scrambling to find something to eat when you get too busy. 

The final step and perhaps the most important is to make sure none of your goals are contradicting your lifestyle.  For example, if you’re goal is to lose 50 pounds of fat in 6 months but you eat out at restaurants three times a week, drink socially with friends every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and only plan on spending two hours a week working out, then we need to be realistic and reassess.

We either set a different fitness goal or we look at designing your life around meeting these fitness goals, perhaps by cancelling some current time commitments, hang out with friends that don’t drink so much and learn to cook your own clean meals at home.  Sometimes the most important things you have to organize to achieve your fitness goals have little to do directly with fitness.

Of course the number one thing to get you hooked on fitness for life is seeing results!  Once you can stand in front of a mirror and you can see with your own eyes a different person staring back at you you’ve made it and you’re hooked.  You no longer have to work out or need to.  You wake up everyday excited to work out and actually want to.  Wouldn’t that be great?

http://www.vitalityfitness.ca/events/thinner-winner/

I watched a new report on CBC news last night and it talked about how some doctors in Ontario think that we should be adding Disgusting pictures to the packages of junk foods just like the Tobacco industry.  Childhood obesity will see that 75% of them will grow up into over weight and in some cases morbidly obese adults.  This of course will lead to diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.  ”If we don’t start taking immediate action now, our health-care system will soon be overwhelmed by the demands of a completely preventable complication associated with obesity,” said OMA President Dr. Doug Weir.

The group suggests that the province introduce policies including:

• Increasing taxes on junk food and decreasing taxes on healthy foods.

• Restricting marketing of fatty and sugary foods to children.

• Placing graphic warning labels on pop and other high-calorie foods with little to no nutritional value.

• Adding retail displays for high-sugar, high-fat foods that prominently advise consumers of the health risks.

• Restricting the availability of sugary, low-nutritional value foods
  in sports and other recreational facilities frequented by young people.

Almost one in three Canadian children aged five to 17 — 31.5 per cent — is overweight or obese, compared to 14 to 18 per cent in the early 1980s, Statistics Canada reported last month.  That is a 50% jump and shows no signs of stopping with more junk food now than ever, video games that are very hard to pull away from and parents who are over protective and don’t just allow their kids to run around as free as we did in the early 80s.  

I don’t think that adding pictures to packages is going to make much of a difference and will probably just cost more than it ultimately saves.  I do like some of the other ideas but who is to say what will work and not work until it is tried.  They say that Denmark tried taxing foods high in saturated fats but then abandoned the practice shortly after.

What I think should be done is give tax breaks to those that invest in personal training and gym memberships and score certain metrics on their medicals.  I have also been a big proponent of insurance companies recognizing the benefits of personal training and adding that into the main stream of coverages along with services such as chiropractic, massage and physiotherapy.  

In order for this to become a reality there needs to be stricter guidelines on what constitutes a personal trainer.  Until the government steps in and sets a high standard that must be met the public will have to continue to endure inexperienced, poorly educated, uninspiring, fat personal trainers at some of our biggest big box gyms in Canada, such as GoodLife.

For some reason we didn’t get any footage of the actual movement of the machine but it just slides the bar down you from top to bottom. Took about 6 minutes from start to finish. Felt absolutely nothing, only hard part for me was holding my arms close to my body for 6 minutes within the lines.

I tested my fat immediately after the dexa scan and scored a 23.5%bf on my lower half and 18.1% on my upper half. That translates into 20.8% bf on average, which represents a 9.1% deviation. One of my clients had to add 6% to his bio test and another was exactly the same!

So in comparing the 2 obviously I will go with the Dexa scan gold standard as what is accurate and we’ll perform the bio tests moving forward using our deviations to calibrate.