The guide every beginner needs to read before commencing their weightlifting journey!

by Michel Klann | Jul 17, 2019 | Training, Training and Nutrition Advice

Congratulations, you’ve decided to start hitting the gym and craft that perfect physique to gain some self-confidence or even impress that girl in your class. Whatever your motivation, there are a few tips to keep in mind when first stepping foot in the gym.

Before we start, it is crucial to mention that most of your gains will occur during your first year of lifting (AKA noobie gains). Thus, it is imperative that you implement these tips to ensure you maximise your progress in the gym.

Firstly, become informed. This is by no means an all-inclusive guide for first timers. There are many sources to expand your training knowledge. Hiring a fitness coach, watching YouTube videos and browsing the web are all great methods to provide you with a level of guidance in the gym. You can use these sources to learn about how to perfect your form, choose the right workout split or what exercises to perform. It may seem overwhelming once you start learning, but I can assure you that armed with this information, you are at a significant advantage to your peers who failed to conduct their due diligence. This is because you’ll make smarter decisions in the gym optimising your muscle development and preventing your risk of injury.

Secondly, frequency is king. Since you are a beginner, it is pivotal you get your body used to performing the exercise and feeling the stress on the muscle. You may see a plethora of opinions online, however, we recommend a full body workout three times a week. This may seem like a lot, but since you are training your entire body, the amount of volume per muscle group would be much less compared to training a single muscle group per workout. As much as us gym bros like to think that we can go hardcore in the gym every day, rest is paramount for optimal muscle growth and recovery. Thus, we propose one or two rest days in between your full body workouts. This higher frequency will allow you to adapt quicker to the movement and acquire what’s called neurological efficiency or muscle memory, a form of procedural memory that creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems and improves your muscle retention abilities. Once you feel comfortable performing the exercises and the movement pattern has been ingrained, you can scale back the frequency to once or twice a week and bump up the volume.

Lastly, like doing anything for the first time, it is critical to take it easy and slow. Loading the bar with preposterous amounts of weight and training to utter failure, is the fastest way to get yourself injured. Use a weight that you can handle comfortably and perform 8 – 12 reps, leaving a few reps left in the tank. Once you have introduced it to the movement with low to moderate intensity and familiarised yourself with the motion, you can slowly increase the weight as well as the intensity as your body is constantly adapting.

Whatever your motivation for hitting the gym for the first time, abiding by these three guidelines will ensure you develop a strong foundation and maximise your muscle growth. By becoming more informed, hitting the gym frequently and performing exercises steadily with perfect form, you place yourself in a position where you can train smarter and more consistently, allowing you to start packing on crazy amounts of mass in no time.

The 3 keys to maintaining progress over winter

by jonathan | Jun 30, 2019 | Training, Training and Nutrition Advice

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Quick Tips for Big Results – what your training and nutrition might be missing!

by Michel Klann | Jun 16, 2019 | Nutrition, Training, Training and Nutrition Advice

Low Hanging Fruit Article

So, coaching out of a gym and even online, I get talking with a lot of people. Often when I speak with others, both guys and girls, we get onto the topic of what they’re trying to achieve and discuss what they’re doing to get there.

They want to be bigger, fitter and stronger

They want their ass to look like (insert instagram fitspo’s) ass

They’re prepping for a comp, event or holiday

Or they want to progress themselves because they loving pushing themselves, gain fulfilment through the health and fitness life-style and it makes them a better person.

These are all awesome, achievable and common goals that I’m sure you reading this can relate somewhat to.

We want our goals badly, often those I speak to vouch that they’re doing “everything they can to get results”. They’re training incredibly “hard” 6-7 days per week, getting their cardio in, eating all the “right” foods, eating 1 “cheat meal” per week. But the results are not coming quite as quickly as they’d like.

Dig a little bit deeper, in only a couple of questions, and it turns out they’re really missing a lot of the very low hanging fruit that pay off massively when tracked, monitored and then progressed!

Training Sessions & Log Booking:

Are you progressing week to week across your lifts, adding load, gaining reps. If yes, keep going, if not why? Something isn’t working, so it may be time to rotate an exercise out, drop or increase volume, change your weekly set-up, look at your exercise execution, push bodyweight up, if dieting introduce a refeed and the list goes on.

If we are not measuring this, via a logbook, each session you train you don’t really know if you are progressing from the session prior.

You’ll be standing at the rack thinking, “oh I hit the 30’s last week, or was it the 32’s. Not sure but my warm-ups felt hard, I’ll go with the 30’s”.

We want to eliminate that doubt and go in with a plan of attack to push forwards from the last time, as the body needs that stimulus to grow.

Yes, you’ll look at your book and think “fuck last week was hard, how am I meant to beat that” but you can. You push and you challenge your body to respond!

Programming:

Many either do one of two things, they go in and go by “feel” or they run the same session they’ve always done that they learnt from a magazine, an intro session from a gym attendant or what they did at football training.

Think of this; they don’t build Lamborghini’s by just throwing the pieces together, they have a plan and execute upon that. So how can we expect the build our greatest body without a direction to go.

This is where programming comes in. This is our blueprint to ensure you progress, we start where you are now and progress over time to where you want/need to be, it takes us from A to B then right through to Z and then onwards to every other potential.

Following a plan and progressing it will also show us how you’re responding and then adjustments can be made accordingly so you continue to progress.

Exercise Execution & Technique:

If we’re not performing a movement pattern properly, we’re not going to reap the benefits the exercise is meant to give. If some reps we sling the weight up, others we control and some we just go through the motions, how can we be for certain, that we are progress? We can’t, plain and simple.

We want and need precision in every single set and with every single rep so we know, with 100% conviction that we’re gaining what we’re after from a given movement.

It then becomes a simple matter of gradually adding weight to the bar over time.

Intensity:
The aforementioned Programming and Exercise Execution are absolutely nothing, without intensity. If you want really, really good results, and I’ll assume you do because you’re here, we need to really get after it within our sessions. It’s all well and good to check “train” off the to do list but to progress yourself forwards and get to where you want to be you must apply yourself.
Imagine you were only able to do one rep for a movement and then weren’t allowed to do anything else until the next session, one single rep…

How much effort would you put into that?

You would contract as hard as you can, squeeze it senseless and lower, resisting against it with all your might to make sure you made it count.

Now do that.

Do that for every single rep of every set, for every movement, for every training session. That is how you get stronger and that is how you get results. Don’t come in and half ass your sets and then put your hand out and complain.

Earn it.

Nutrition:

Whether you’re working to gain muscle, lose fat or improve performance, going by feel and eating intuitively doesn’t really cut it if you’re looking to really improve. Start by logging everything you eat in a food tracker app over the next 7 days. Now we have a baseline and from this point we can make adjustments up or down, backwards or forwards based upon what you really need, if you’re at your perceived maintenance. It’s quite a simple formula to work this out based on you Bodyweight (BW):

BW x 30 to 35 – This is your total calories
BW x 1.8g to 2.5g – This is your protein intake, multiply by 4 for calories

BW x 0.5g to 1g – This is your fat intake, multiply by 9 for calories
Take your total calories minus protein calories minus fat calories and divide that number by 4 and you have your carbohydrate intake

e.g – 100kg Male

100kg x 32 – 3,200 calories
100kg x 2.2 – 220g protein, 880 calories

100kg x 1 – 100g fat, 900 calories

3,200 – 880 – 900 = 1,420 calories divide by 4, 355g carbohydrate

There is your intake sorted so we have targets to hit. From here we want to get protein in from a variety of sources, same thing with fats and the same with carbohydrates. Avoid things that upset your digestion or do not sit with you, eat whole foods, eat your fruits and vegetables and drink your water.
That’s quite a simple breakdown, but using that information you can get yourself quite far, especially now that we have some numbers to work from.

Sleep, Recovery & Stress Management:

Now this one is a massive one, many monitor their training and nutrition but falter here. This is where we grow, get lean and restore our body to attack the sessions, along with our daily life ahead.

If your sleep and recovery isn’t at the forefront of your mind and being pushed to progress, just as hard as you push in the gym, you’ll find yourself spinning your wheels.

Sleep – With your sleep we want to aim for an average of 8 hours per night high quality sleep and there are a few things we can do to ensure we’re getting that.
Get your bedroom to a cool temperature 16º C or below and get it as dark in there as possible.
Turn your Wi-Fi off and mobile phone to flight mode so we’re not exposing ourselves to the Electro-Magnetic Fields (EMF) that they emit, which have adverse effects on our health.

Finally, the hour before you go to bed, spend time winding down in low light, reading, meditating, playing with your dog or watching a TV show.

Whatever it is you do, do so in a way that soothes your whole body and is preparing it for a restful sleep

Recovery – This is a broad brush that’s going to cover several things, but we want to think of stress management as our main factor here. We have so many stressors already going on in our life, then we add training on top of that, we must balance that out.
Going for walks with your dog, spending time with loved ones, favourite TV shows or comics, meditating, massage, float tanks and the rest, all these things benefit our recovery.
You don’t miss your gym sessions and you put effort into those, so do the same with the things that are going to improve your life and recovery!

These are all things that are very do-able and really make a world of difference. Put a bit more effort into tracking, progressing/regressing training, ensuring your sleep and recovery and you’ll start to notice incredible improvements, not just in your training pursuits but wholly your life experience.

I can’t wait to see your improvements!

– Brady

If you want help with building muscle, losing body fat or just improving your overall health and fitness get in touch

Brady Curtin

A | 99 Murphy St RICHMOND

P | 0458 957 686

E | bradycurtinfitness@gmail.com

The importance of training through an injury

by jonathan | Apr 28, 2019 | Training and Nutrition Advice

Injuries are inevitable, whether in the Gym or in any sporting activity. People often become unmotivated, scared and quite reluctant to set foot back into the gym as they are worried about reaggravating it again or they simply become inactive and lazy. Most people fall into the mindset that they must cease all exercise in order to heal and recover. Recovery is the priority but how long should you rest for until it becomes a habit and you’re too lazy to exercise again?

Injuries happen

Everyone gets injured and it is unavoidable at times. Whether it’s a minor or major injury, you should refrain from being sedentary as there are many alternatives that could still allow you to be active – depending on the injury and its severity. Frequent and low impact exercises such as walking, or cycling can help maintain your fitness levels without affecting your overall recovery. By doing some physical activity, you will not fall into the trap and overtime become a victim to laziness. Being lazy is a choice but choosing to make that choice becomes a habit and before you know it, you’ve lost all motivation to be the best version of yourself again. To overcome an injury, you must work around it and find ways to adapt.

The key to managing injurie

The first thing you should do when encountering an injury is seek professional advice. They will be able to provide you with a parameter to how much you can and should exercise. A key factor to dealing with injuries is to work around it by finding variations and alternatives that will not affect the injured site. This will avoid falling into the trap of being sedentary. Lifting weights is one of the best methods. What? Weights! You must be thinking how am I supposed to do weights if I’m injured? Well, continuing to do strength training will be beneficial for both preserving your muscle mass and fitness levels.

For example, you have injured your shoulder and cannot train upper body for a while. Instead of sitting at home and watching Netflix, you should take this opportunity to focus on your lower body. Whether its light intensity with resistance bands or kettle bells, you are still allowing your injury to recover but you are not allowing your mind to adapt to being sedentary.

Not only is your physical health important but so is your mental health. When working out, your body releases endorphins and other chemicals which work together to make you feel good. Most of you go to the gym to destress from a long day at work but once that outlet is taken away due to this injury, you will become frustrated. The key to recovering effectively and efficiently is to not rush the process. Staying positive will provide you with the motivation and determination to overcome this setback.

What are the key points to consider?

The first step to take is to redesign your current program to suit your needs and work around the injury. By implementing alternative exercises, you are still able to continue your progress in the gym and not become a victim to laziness. Seek medical help to know what you can and cannot do in order to nurse your injury back to full strength.

The most important take home message is to take your rehab and prevention very seriously. Most of you will jump back into the intense training you’re use to, once you feel that the pain has gone away. This is the most common mistake that people make as it will increase the risk of re-injury. Like with anything you do in the gym, the best course of action is to follow the plan. Research has shown that those who stay positive throughout their rehabilitation will increase the rate of recovery. Therefore, instead of using it as an excuse or as an obstacle, use this time to focus on any weaknesses you may have. Happy training 😊

5 Tips to Up-The-Ante on Your Sleep and Recovery Game

by jonathan | Apr 19, 2019 | Training and Nutrition Advice

Tired of training hard with little to no results to show for it? Perhaps it’s time to rethink your approach to sleep!

When it comes to rest, it’s no secret that most of us simply aren’t getting the quality of sleep our bodies require to grow, repair and function at their best. So, what’s the big issue? From work-related stress to caffeine loaded diets, sleep – or rather, the lack thereof – is a leading contributor to adverse mental health problems and a lack of progression in the gym. Believe it or not, a lack of quality sleep not only stunts your body’s ability to recover and subsequently to grow after a training session, but it also plays a pretty serious role in impacting energy levels, mental wellbeing, immune health, motivation, cognitive function, weight loss, digestive health, libido and fertility…just to name a few!

If you’re keen to up-the-ante on your sleep and recovery game, check out Australian Sports Nutrition’s top five strategies to improve your quality of sleep in order to optimise your recovery and productivity, in and out of the gym.

Cut down on caffeine

We just heard a thousand hearts shatter as they read the words “cut down on caffeine”. However, like all things in life, moderation is key…particularly when it comes to caffeine. While caffeine is a hugely beneficial ingredient for enhancing energy levels, cognitive function and ultimately, workout performance, it can have a negative effect when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep.

As a general rule, we recommend cutting your caffeine intake at least 4-6 hours before bedtime. Wondering why? Caffeine has a half-life of roughly five to six hours, which means it will continue to circulate in your body long after you feel the immediate effects. Simply put, a half-life refers to the time required for the amount of any specified property to decrease by half.

But, what does this actually mean?

Let’s say you take a pre-workout supplement loaded with 300mg of caffeine at 5:30 pm to get you feeling mentally alert and ready to take on an intense workout. Believe it or not, by 10:30 pm, as you’re winding down or already in bed, you will still have approximately 150mg of caffeine in your system. While you may not necessarily feel the energy-boosting and focus-enhancing benefits, the caffeine is likely to prevent you from having the highest quality sleep that’s required for optimal recovery. To put this into perspective, you can expect around 95 mg of caffeine in your average cup of coffee!

Trying to cut out caffeine but struggling to keep motivated and focussed in the gym? Try Evolve’s stimulant-free pre-workout formula designed to assist with weight loss and performance, while simultaneously boosting cognitive function. Introducing: Carnitine Rx!

Control your exposure to light

Did you know that your brain secretes more melatonin when it’s dark, as opposed to when it’s light?

Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone influenced by light exposure that plays an important role in regulating your sleep-wake cycle. Simply put, your brain produces more melatonin when it’s dark, which makes you feel more tired, and less melatonin when it’s light, which makes you feel more alert. While this seems like a flawless system, the reality is that many aspects of modern day life can easily alter the body’s production of melatonin, which ultimately impacts how our body regulates our natural waking and sleeping times.

The solution? Minimise your exposure to artificial lights at least one hour prior to bed. You may have heard about the benefits of switching off all electronics in your room while you sleep, and there is certainly some truth behind it. In this day and age, the artificial light emitted from our smartphones, TVs, laptops, light bulbs and iPads is disrupting our body’s natural cyclical release of melatonin, which impacts our ability to switch off, unwind and relax (three core requirements for a good night’s sleep). If, for whatever reason, you are required to use electronics at nighttime, try the following tips for minimising your exposure to artificial light:

Opt for a device with a smaller screen
Turn down the brightness on your devices
Try not to read with backlit devices
Avoid late-night television

Get your carbs in at night

Consuming carbohydrates prior to bed helps to increase the production of the neurotransmitter, serotonin. The result? High levels of serotonin at night helps to soothe your brain into a calm, tranquil and relaxed state, which in turn helps you to enjoy a restful night’s sleep. All in all, the higher the amount of serotonin in your bloodstream at night time, the better quality sleep you’re likely to experience.

We know what you’re thinking…”won’t carbs at night make me fat!?”

Short answer: Nope!

Carbohydrates alone will not make you fat, just like any other food group. However, consuming an excessive amount of calories that exceeds your body’s daily requirements over an extended period of time certainly will. Just like we said earlier, it’s all about moderation!

Let’s elaborate on this point further…

With regards to your carbohydrate consumption, the best way to ensure it fits into your dietary requirements is to plan your intake across the day in accordance with your personal needs. As a rule of thumb, aim to consume 40-50% of your daily carbohydrate intake in the last meal you eat before bed to maximise the benefits of elevated serotonin levels.

Find your routine

Thought set bedtimes were only for kids? Think again!

Believe it or not, having a set sleep schedule in place may be the difference between you tossing and turning all night long or you feeling well rested and recovered in the morning.

Can it really make that much of a difference? The answer is YES!

Going to bed and waking up at a similar time each day sets your body’s ‘internal clock’, which essentially alerts your brain when it’s time to rest and when it’s time to rise. Sticking to the same sleep schedule every night allows your body to find its natural rhythm and to settle into a regular sleep-wake cycle. It’s as simple as this – If you have an inconsistent sleep schedule that throws off your internal clock, you won’t feel or function your best. In fact, an inconsistent bedtime routine is known to cause irritability, drowsiness, mood swings, memory loss, headaches, and a decline in cognitive ability. Additionally, people with irregular sleeping patterns are more susceptible to experiencing a restless night’s sleep, which means your body isn’t able to enter the deep REM sleep required to restore and repair your brain and body. This poses a very real threat to those who work out regularly, but aren’t getting the consistent sleep they need to repair their muscles overnight!

Top tips for scheduling in a set bedtime:

Plan out your week ahead and incorporate a set bedtime each night
Set daily and weekly goals i.e. how many hours of sleep would you like to achieve each week?
Switch off the TV and turn your phone to flight mode at least 1-2 hours prior to jumping into bed
Limit your social media time – Scrolling through Instagram can be a serious time waster and an ineffective way to wind down at night

Supplement with Hyper Sleep

Tired of waking up feeling tired?

Struggling to have a restful night’s sleep?

Sick of seeing your gym results fade away?

Hyper Sleep may be just what you need!

Whether you’re short on time, struggle to change your schedule to incorporate more effective sleeping patterns, or are simply tired of watching the hard work you put in at the gym fade away due to a lack of sleep, Hyper Sleep is a potent sleep aid designed to induce a deep anabolic sleep to enhance muscular recovery through protein synthesis and human growth hormone release.

Why is sleep so important for muscle recovery? A lack of sleep makes it much harder for your muscles to recover, repair and grow post-workout as it slows down the production of growth hormone. Additionally, it also impacts your body and brains ability to function optimally to get the most out of your workouts!

Are Cheat Meals The Key?

by jonathan | Mar 11, 2019 | Training and Nutrition Advice

Cheat meals are often thought of as the dark and evil temptation in a dieting phase, that are sure to ruin all the progress you’ve made. But are they really? If you find yourself unable to stick to your diet, constantly falling off due to cravings and temptations ending in a cheat meal and finding yourself back at square one, then incorporating strategic cheat meals into your diet might just be the thing you’re missing.

But won’t a cheat meal ruin all my progress? Not if it’s scheduled into your diet and you know how to incorporate it! What most people fail to understand is that it all comes down to balance – not just the cliché saying but actual calorie balance. For example, if you know that you get cravings on weekends or you want to enjoy a pizza with some friends, you simply need to work out what your weekly calorie balance needs to be in order for you to drop weight. Then roughly equate how many calories your cheat meal will be and eat a little bit less either the day before, the day after or even the entire week leading up to the meal to meet your weekly calorie target – be flexible!

If you’re one prone to falling off your diet, doing this and actually incorporating cheat meals into your diet will ensure that you stay on it and continue making sustainable progress. It’ll give you something to work towards and look forward to throughout the week, making the dieting phase a lot easier and enjoyable. You won’t have to shut yourself off at social events by declining to eat out and won’t miss out on anything. Best of all, it won’t leave you with any regrets after – it’s easy when you know how!