Before I start, I would like to just tell you about my career in the health and fitness industry.
I started working and studying when I was 18. Built up my experience as a personal trainer and then went on to go work and study in London. There I started specialising in Pilates, yoga, boxing, spinning, rehabilitation and pre and post-natal.
I’ve been in the health and fitness industry for 18 years now. I’ve worked on the cruise ships and came back to South Africa to work at Franschhoek health club, the one and only hotel, worked on expresso for 2 years and went on to win Mr Personality at the Mr South Africa pageant.
I am currently working at Viva Gym Cape Town and am still changing lives.
From my experience it all starts in the mind. If you believe you can achieve your goals, you are almost halfway there. After that you will have to put in the specific work and be consistent at it.
We must be open minded about the human body and look at the Olympics. Who are the best-looking athletes in the Olympics. Well, it will be the sprinters, short distance swimmers, gymnasts, weightlifters, and most of the explosive orientated events. Why is this?
Well its very simple really, all those athletes have predominately fast twitch fibres in their bodies.
You get two kinds of fibres in the muscle. Fast twitch fibres and slow twitch fibres. It’s the fast twitch fibres that give you that definition that you want and that looks good. Fast twitch fibres also help increase your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This is the number of calories that you burn when you are at rest. So, when you are going out to eat that pizza or steak, how many calories are you burning when you are at rest.
This is the ultimate goal you must try and reach and speed your BMR up as much as you can. Question is, so how do we do this. They recently did a study on which cardiovascular exercise burns the most calories and which one uses the most muscle groups. The results came out that boxing was number one and swimming was second. After that it was rowing, cycling and running. This makes total sense because when you box you must hit the pads or the bag very explosively and in turn you are increasing your fast twitch fibres. So naturally your metabolism will speed up.
So, in retrospect we need to do more explosive movements in our cardiovascular exercises and our resistance training exercises to increase our fast twitch fibre count in our bodies. This will increase your BMR and speed your metabolism up. We need to also mix our aerobic and anaerobic exercises so in turn to get that EPOC (external post oxygen consumption) effect in the body, this is also known as the afterburn effect. For example, if you have a very intensive workout and u feel it working even hours after the workout. This is essential for you loosing that weight very quickly. Have you ever heard of someone saying that they eat as much as they can and that they actually loose weight while doing it. Well, this is because their BMR is very fast and they are burning calories at a very fast pace.
The body can only go in two directions. It can either be in hypertrophy (which is when you are healthy, fit and strong and burning heaps of calories when at rest) or it can be in atrophy (when you are living a sedentary lifestyle and not burning much calories when at rest). We need to get the body into that hypertrophy mode as soon as possible to see the results a lot faster.
By all that being said, yes food and alcohol are also a massive player in you losing weight fast. I always say that diets never work, yes you will loose weight but when you off it then you probably will pick the weight up again if not more. This is called the typical yoyo affect. We must see it as a lifestyle change and start eating clean lean foods for example a few power meals will be.
Steak and salad, Chicken and mixed veggie, hake and broccoli or spinach and tuna, tomato, cucumber salad. We need to focus on getting enough protein in the system so that those amino acids (which are the building blocks of the muscle) can replenish the broken fibres of the muscle after a good explosive workout.
To finish off you can see that it is a combination of your mind being disciplined and having consistency to train and eat correctly more often and keeping to a routine. I always say to clients it took you 5 years to put on the weight so don’t expect to loose the weight in a month. It’s going to take time and positive effort. This will give you ultimate results and keep it off. Remember that if you believe it then you can achieve it. It just takes that discipline to tell yourself to get up and go do your specific workouts and having the knowledge and mental strength to say no to the unhealthy foods and make a mental and physical effort to make that change.
Positive journeys to all
Tinus Jordan Biermann