Iron Fit Personal Training
Helping people achieve a better lifestyle, through effective and personalized workouts.
Enjoy The Holidays!!!
This is the time of year that you start to worry about everything you eat. The gym becomes secondary to parties. Healthy eating takes a back seat to all the goodies people are bringing in. But don’t worry! If you follow a few simple tips, you can enjoy your holidays without needing to change your wardrobe after.
– Watch your plate size. Go with the smaller plate if you can. Or, don’t pile it on high with the bigger plate. Save some of the food for everyone else.
– Eat the healthier items first. By eating healthy first, your stomach will feel more full. Therefore, you won’t feel the urge to over eat. You will feel much more satisfied.
– Keep you fitness routine as best as you can. If you keep your routine, you stand a great chance of not putting on too much excess weight from eating. It’s when you start to skip workouts that you start to notice changes and feel worse.
– Don’t starve yourself. Enjoy some of the treats around you, as many times if you don’t, you’ll end up binging at one time. And we all know binging brings you nothing but mentally stress and heartache.
Enjoy the holidays and stay on your routine. We are working up to and including Dec 24, and returning back to training on Dec 29. Contact us to reach your fitness goals.
(780)718-4805
marktrains@gmail.com
You Need Goals!
Plain and simple, when doing any fitness plan, you need a set of GOALS. Something to strive towards, and to keep you motivated while you are on your path. Without goals, you may end 
up getting bored, lazy, unmotivated or completely lose track of why you started out. It’s similar to taking a test. Most of us need to study for that test, or else we end up failing. Studying is our path to success, and you need a similar path to achieve your fitness goals.
At Iron Fit, we use a monthly plan that incorporates the S.M.A.R.T. principle to help our client achieve their goals. When broken down, S.M.A.R.T. looks like this;
Specific
– you need to set specific goals for what you want to achieve. For example, weight loss, be faster, be stronger are not specific enough. What weight or body fat are you looking for, what time are you looking to be faster than, is there a weight that you are looking to push? Those are specific goals.
Measurable
– there needs to be a way you measure your goals. Do you look at inches lost? A change in pant or shirt size? Can you jump farther than you’ve ever jumped before? Those are measurable ways to see your progress. You tend to stay on track when you have measurable ways to see how you are doing
Attainable
– one of the toughest aspects of goal setting. You need to focus in on which goals are most important to you, can try to attain those. Once you break down one goal barrier, the next will fall that much easier with your newfound confidence.
Realistic
– in my opinion, this is the toughest one. This is the one where you have to sit back and really focus on what’s attainable and realistic. Is 20lbs of weight loss in a month realistic? No. Is shaving 20s off your 100m dash time in a month realistic? No. You need to realistic with yourself in what you can achieve. People may think you can do more or push harder, but that may not be the case. When working with your trainer, you are able to see what you can realistically achieve.
Timely
– we all want the results now. However, in reality we know that’s not possible. Sit down and create a realistic and attainable timeline for your goals. If you have a larger goal in the end, that’s great! Let’s set out some smaller goals to achieve on the way to your bigger goal. That way it will help keep you motivated while driving hard towards that end goal. You get to feel a bunch of accomplishment along the way, which will likely keep you on track.
Iron Fit clients have been running this method, and we have seen huge successes with it. We incorporate it into all of our clients programs, and it just recently turned a client back around and gave him more focus as he was struggling. Without this method, he may have wandered off into the abyss of Lost Fitness Goals.
We never want to see you go there. Set a good path out before you start, and you’ll never enter the abyss.
Patience Is A Needed Trait In Training
All of us have seen the diet commercials or exercise commercials that promise quick results to the best body ever. TV shows such as The Biggest Loser twist our reality into thinking that that amount of success or weight loss is attainable AND sustainable. However, I’m hear to tell you that likely… it’s not. You can get there, but it’s time to look at reality and realize that it will take time & patience.
Let’s look at the weight loss theory as our example for this article. As recommended, the average person will lose roughly .5 – 2.0 pounds per week. It depends how much you have to lose, and how you are going to go about losing it. Likely a sedentary individually will see more loss of the start, because they are starting from doing no physical activity. Whereas the active person may find it a tad harder to lose that much off the start, because their body is already used to the shock that is accompanied with training.
The key is to gradually integrate yourself into the workout phase and healthy eating. Let’s say you’re used to drinking 5 cans of pop per day. It’s very unrealistic for us to cut that to 0 pops per day and expect you to keep that routine for the rest of your life. That pop has become a habit, where habits are hard to break. Eating out 3 times per week has become a habit for you that can’t easily be replaced or changed. If you went about shocking your system that fast, you have a higher rate of returning to your old habits and not seeing success.
To avoid returning to your old state, the key is to gradually reduce your intake. It’s such a key factor that many people fail to realize about limiting and restricting their diets. If you’re new, you wouldn’t set the treadmill to a 9.0 m.p.h. speed your first day and go try to run for 30 minutes on it. So why would you do that to your nutrition.
It’s about slow and steady steps. Whether it’s weight loss or weight gain, any success is just that, SUCCESS. If you start to beat yourself up over not losing this much, or not running that fast, you’re creating those negative ghosts that are hard to exterminate. They are the barriers that stand in the way to your goals.
We try to set attainable and measurable goals with our clients, and teach them to take any success as a positive. You’re on the right track, just keep going and you’ll find the journey is worth it.
Weightlifter Look With Weights? Likely Not…
One of the common things you hear is how people avoid weight training because they don’t want to look “huge”. They don’t want the big muscles bulging from every facet of their body, and they think all weight training will do that. Well, you’re not fully wrong, just 90% incorrect. Weight training has some great benefits for everyone, and is essential to 100% of the workout/ fitness programs out there. Here’s why….
To get the big muscles or the body builder look takes a strong focus on your nutrition. Just lifting weights alone will not give you the muscular look that you see on body builders or figure competitors. That look takes dedicated training, eating and a mentality, similar to high profile athletes you see on TV.
There are a bunch of great incentives to incorporate weight training into your daily life and exercise regime. Here’s a few reasons why:
– you burn calories while you are lifting weights AND while your muscles are repairing themselves from the workout.
– your muscles are key to your movement. Better muscles and muscle activation, better movement.
– keeps your workouts interesting and advancing. There are hundreds of exercises you could do to stay motivated and not bored while doing weights.
– look. Yes, this sounds self centred, however you can get great muscle tone without having bulging muscles.
– sense of accomplishment/ more goals to break through. When you break through that weight you were struggling to lift, it will give you a greater sense of accomplishment/ success.
There’s no reason to be scared of the “weights” area at the gym. The goal is to be able to incorporate it into your fitness lifestyle. With the proper training program tailored for you by your Iron Fit trainer, you can master that section of the gym.
Overthinking Weight Loss = Potential Failure
Do you remember when you were in school and taking a test? There was always that one question you just knew the answer to, but you couldn’t grasp it. No matter how hard you thought about it, the answer didn’t come to you. Then you handed in your test, leaving that answer blank, and all of a sudden it hits you. NOW you know the answer, after you handed it in. Or you meet someone you already know, but can’t place their name? Then you head home and later in the day or the next day the name comes to you. You thought so hard, but once you were relaxed and started thinking about something else, the answer came to you. Fitness and weight loss is very similar.
In North America, we get bombarded by the media on how to lose weight. It’s very simple to add weight on, it’s around you everywhere you go and whatever you look at. However, very rarely do you hear about the struggles people went through to lose weight. YOu end up just seeing the results on their infomercial. Or the dedication it took to lose the weight, and stay consistent at that weight after years of over eating. The newest and most popular fads come and go, leaving you by the waste side when they disappear from the shelves after you have invested a ton of money into them. History is lined with fads such as Body by Vi, Atkins Diet, Subway Diet and many more different ways to try to get your money. Yet many of us fail to realize that it’s actually hard work that requires us to lose weight. And it really isn’t as complicated as you think.
To lose ONE POUND, you need to have a calorie deficit of 3500 in a week from what you regularly eat/exercise (not including your sugar intake). If you think about cutting 3500 calories from your diet, that’s 700 calories a day. The average weight training workout has you losing between 250 – 500 calories. If you happen to go out and eat at a restaurant, you likely consume between 1500-2500 calories just in that one sitting. And there’s a strong likelihood that you’ve gone over the 2500 calories, that’s just a rough estimate for you to think about. That’s part of the reason everything seems so hard when it comes to weight loss. Most times people don’t have both the proper nutrition and exercise program to help them succeed. Because they’ve let their mind wander on how to eat and what to eat. Or they’ve tried to make the hardest and best exercise program possible, and completely dislike doing it so they stop. This isn’t rocket science, you just need to be taught how to properly eat and exercise. It can be done so that in the future you don’t have to watch every little thing that you eat, or worry about missing a day at the gym.
It’s all about portion control when it comes to your eating, and getting the proper exercise program set up for your body. At Iron Fit, we give you the best of both worlds by incorporating a balanced and maintainable nutrition program to work through while you are training. It’s not realistic to expect you to eat chicken and rice all the time, nor will most of you want to do that. We incorporate everyday eating, while allowing you to go out with friends every now and then and enjoy yourself. Because that’s what it’s all about. You may have the best “body” in the world, but if you hate how you’re eating and missing out on things, what’s the point?
Building & Fighting Back
Everyone is looking for the quickest way to get the quickest results. Building and maintaining muscle is something that many of us want to achieve. And if this is somethinng you don’t want to achieve, you have to ask yourself, why not??? Your muscles are the key to your long term mobility, so your focus should be on developing them. The key is to figure out how to get the best results from your post workout meals and nutrition plans. Here, we will focus on repairing and building your muscles without using any form of supplements availalbe. You will be surprised what you can do on your own and see tremendous results.
Why does it happen?
The first thing we need to look at is why? Why do our muscles get sore after a workout, or after we change up our workout program? That muscle pain you are feeling is call Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). DOMS occurs after workouts because each time you train, you make microscopic tears in your muscle fibers. Each time you are training your muscles, you end up continually ripping them. This haappen when you do your eccentric motions (lengthening) then contracting your muscles quickly after. There’s a reason we say give it 48 hours between workouts of the same body part, because how do you expect it to rest. If you go everyday and work the same muscle over and over again without giving it a break, are you giving it time to recover and recoup? NO! How many of you do ab exercises daily thinking it is going to help, yet you haven’t seen any results? I bet some has to do with diet and cardio, but your muscles need that rest. However, there are some ways to enhance your recovery to see quicker and better results.
How do I stop the pain!?!?!
Unfortunately, you cannot fully stop this ache and pain from coming. But you can help speed up the recovery. You can also enhance the strength of your muscles, and make a positive and more lasting effect from that workout you just did. When we look at getting rid of those aches and pain and building your muscles, we can lump it into the same category. For the purposes of this post, lets clump it together as Muscle Recovery.
Relieving the Pain & Seeing Your Results -Muscle Recovery
There have been many studies that have been trying to focus on how to help get rid/repair the pain caused from DOMS. However, everything in the fitness world has something saying to do it this way, and something saying to do it that way. It’s a very grey world that is trying very hard to go black and white. But there have been a few recurrent themes that have shown up
1. Building back your muscle requires protein intake. The more effective the protein intake you can consume, the higher the likelyhood you see better results. Eggs, chicken, fish, lean meat & legumes are all great sources of protein. You need to be gettting protein into every meal you eat, making it the central focus of your meals. Your muscles will love you for this, and you will see better results in your training regime.
2. Vitamin C has been shown to be a major contributor in your muscle recovery. Oranges, milk, spinach peppers, broccoli & cauliflower are all high sources of Vitamin C. Incorporating a good balance of these foods in your meal plan with give your muscles that extra kick that not many people know about.
3. The Foam Roller & Sleeping away your pain. Anyone that has trained with us knows our love for the foam roller. The foam roller allows you to get deeper into your stretch, while effectively hitting target areas that static stretching just doesn’t hit. The more effective your stretching regime, the less your muscles are going to hurt after your workouts. As well, sleep is something we do not get enough of to help build and repair your muscles. Your body needs that time to rest and recover, so give it that extra little bit of time to recover. The weights will still be there the next day, don’t rush it and push it too far.
Your diet is crucial in repairing and building your muscles back after any workout. It’s like putting regular gas into a high performance car. It will run, but you will not get the true speed and performance that you would get it you put tthe premium fuel in. Think of what you treat better, you or your car?
Iron Fit Personal Training 