How long will it take?

October 11, 2015 by
How long will it take?

How long will it take?

How long will it take…That is the question.

How long will it take to lose weight? To fit into my favourite pair of jeans?

How long will it take to build muscle? To get lean and ripped? To see a six pack?

How long will it take for my injury to heal? To get back to sports? To doing the things I love to do?

How long will it take to get fit? To get healthy? To have more energy and stamina?

While the end results of all of these questions may be a little different from each other, with some focusing on changing physiques, other dealing with injury rehabilitation and some primarily focused on general health and wellbeing, all of these questions are really asking one thing:

“How long will it take before I see changes?”

If we were to base our expectations on the headlines often seen on the covers of any of the health, fitness or fashion magazines that we’re constantly bombarded with, the answer lies somewhere between 10 days and 12 weeks.

We read about celebrities and their fad diets and intensive training regimens dropping 10 lbs in 10 days, or bulking up and adding massive slabs of muscles to their frames for their upcoming superhero roles in just 12 short weeks.

We see athletes with seemingly unsurmountable injuries return to play in what appears to be just mere weeks or months after major surgical repairs and broken bones.

And then we believe that’s what the norm is. We believe that those types of results are typical. That those types of results are the expectation.

We use those media published stories as the foundation of our own barometer of success.

Have I lost weight fast enough?

Have I put on muscle fast enough?

Have I come back to sport soon enough?

And then sadly, we are disappointed when our reality sets in and we haven’t achieved those lofty goals in the desired timeframe.

The scale has hardly budged. Our injury hasn’t healed.

So what’s missing?

Why didn’t our reality match the other reality?

Why weren’t we able to do what “they” did?

One thing: context.

For those actors and celebrities transforming their bodies, their work opportunities (and corresponding paycheques) often depend on their physical appearance. The roles they’re cast in may require a certain look or physique such as Christian Bale’s extreme and drastic transformations from The Machinist to The Dark Knight.

The same broad scenario applies to the high performance and professional athletes, whose finely-tuned bodies are the tools of their trade. The performance of their bodies dictates their salaries and endorsements. It has very real and tangible impacts on their livelihoods.

For them, they now have the drivers (both internal and external) to push them to allocate the resources (or find the resources) to achieve these targets.

They have teams of highly skilled and trained people at their disposal.

They can hire the elite physiotherapists, personal chefs, sports nutritionists, and specialized personal trainers to craft structured programs.  They have the time and resources to allocate to go to work – in this case, changing their bodies, building their bodies or healing them.

For them, their body is their job.

For those of us not in that context, we have matters that may take greater precedence. Like young kids or aging parents. Like our jobs and careers, the means by which we pay for life. Like our housework and chores. Our day to day tasks.

By the time these pressing daily items are dealt with, we often don’t have the eight or nine hours left in the day to sleep and recover. We don’t have the two, three or more hours a day to lift weights, do cardio or rehab. Our meals are often grabbed on the go, instead of being homemade, perfectly balanced, and fully nutritious.

Our context, when put in perspective against these media marketed norms, is very, very different.

So how long will it take?

As always, the honest answer is it depends.

It depends on our context.

It depends on what resources we can invest into our results – how much time, money, effort and energy we have to spare.

What we’re willing to sacrifice.

So while these media based standards of transformation and rehab seem unattainable, that’s not to say that we can’t make change happen. We can. Our bodies are capable of incredible feats, if given the opportunities and means.

We just have to figure out what we’re willing, and able, to put in.

From there, we can then figure out how long it will take.

And looking honestly at our context, it may just take longer.

Filed Under: Human Performance, Mindset, Personal Training, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Simple Formula For Results

October 2, 2015 by

In this short video clip, we discuss a simple formula for results.

Paying attention and addressing any (or all) of the components has the potential to take your results to the next level.

https://youtu.be/j9vMYWhO280

 

Filed Under: Mindset, Personal Training, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , ,

Chunking your way to fitness

September 28, 2015 by

Chunking.

Sounds like something that’s done to a piece of chocolate before it’s put into a cookie, but in this case it’s much more than that.

It’s a way to chop yourself back to fitness in small steps, each one building on the previous step.

Chunking is a tool used to solve a problem or complete a task. It’s when a bigger problem or issue is broken down into smaller more manageable pieces. As each piece is resolved, there is less of the whole to complete, making the overall task much less daunting.

To use a non-fitness example of chunking, let’s use one of everyone’s favourite pastimes…cleaning.

Let’s assume you haven’t cleaned your place in weeks.

You’ve got a kitchen counter piled full of dirty dishes because the sinks already full, you’ve amassed a collection of laundry hampers overflowing with pretty and not so pretty underthings and overthings, you’ve seen the dust bunnies replicating exponentially in every dark, hidden corner, and you’ve created your own leaning towers of papers piled up on every available horizontal surface.

Every time you open the door, that’s the scene you’re greeted with.

And every time, you push the thought of even starting the momentous cleaning task to the back of your mind because it’s just that overwhelming.

You don’t even know where to begin. So you don’t.

Instead, you add more clothes, more dishes and more papers to the ever growing piles. And then you repeat the same steps again tomorrow. And the day after that.

Now let’s imagine that one day, you read this blog post and it stuck in your mind. At that instant, you make a decision that today is the day that you’ll get your place clean and you’ll use chunking to accomplish it.

Let the chunking begin…

You take stock of what needs to get done in a global sense, but this time, you don’t let that foreboding sense of doom stop you in your tracks.

Using your newly found chunking skills, you decide that you’ll start your chunking with the laundry.

Because once you’ve started the laundry, you’ll have the washing time to work on another task, thus increasing your efficiency and decreasing the overall time you have to put into cleaning.

You sort and start the wash.

It’s not as bad as you originally thought (or maybe it is, but as piles are organized and distributed to the machine, there’s less of an affront to your eyes, and it doesn’t seem as overwhelming anymore ). You’ve got a load in the wash, and a few more piles patiently awaiting their turn in the machine.

You know you have roughly an hour for the cycle to complete, so you move on to your next task.

You decide that the stench of the dirty dishes is no longer tolerable, so that will be the next chunked task. As each dish is washed and dried, the counter space opens up and the once bare cupboards are now back to their glorious fullness and the kitchen is clean.

This is getting fun now!

Each completed task encourages you with the results you’re seeing, a deep sense of accomplishment washing over you with every square inch of your place becoming visible again, with every now fresh breath you take.

By this time, the washing machine has gone through a cycle, you flip the freshly washed clothes to the clothes dryer and add another load to the washing machine.

Chunked, which now gives you time to work on those papers. You sort the mail, file the receipts and recycle the unopened weekly flyers and advertisements.

And so on and so forth.

What started off as a huge, seemingly insurmountable task of cleaning your whole apartment just became a series of smaller, interdependent tasks that don’t paralyze you with their sheer scope.

As each task was completed, the overall problem grew smaller.

Now let’s use that same process with chunking your way to fitness.

Let’s say you’ve been mostly sedentary for quite a few years now. You’ve been dutifully paying your monthly gym fees, but you haven’t actually been going. You work a desk job and you have a busy social calendar, often involving socializing with good food and just as good drink.

With the above scenario, it’s possible that over the years you’ve put on a few extra pounds. Or maybe you’ve put on more than just a few, maybe 20 or 30 lbs extra and now you’ve noticed it’s impacting your health and vitality.

You’ve just identified the larger problem (you’re out of shape and overweight) and you’ve made the decision that you want to remedy it (you want to lean up and improve your fitness).

The major issue is that looking at a problem like the one above on its own often leads to paralysis.

Where do you even begin? What should you even do? What type of diet? What type of exercise? How much? At what intensity? How long will it take?

All these questions and all the questions the answers to these questions may bring…It’s overwhelming.

It’s probably better to just have some wine and cheesecake and think about them.

Well, that’s what the old you might have said, but this is the new, chunking you.

Whereas before, identifying the problem would have lead you to just quit before you even started, the new you takes that big problem and chops it up into small, manageable pieces.

You’ve taken the first step, you decided that you are ready to start your fitness journey, that you’re ready to trim down and shed those extra pounds and improve your fitness.

You want to feel energetic and vibrant again. Since we’re all about honesty, you know that leaning out would make you look good again, too.

Once that important decision is made (this is the same as deciding that today was the day you’re cleaning your place), let the chunking begin…

Since chunking involves taking a much larger problem and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable chunks, you realize that improving your fitness has two major, equally important components: exercise and nutrition. You recognize that both play different, but complementary roles in your overall health and fitness journey.

So you chunk both of them, making your bigger problem (being out of shape and over weight) into two smaller problems (lacking consistent exercise, lack of nutritional plan).

And then you chunk some more in each of those two areas.

In your exercise chunk, you know you need to start. But where and how? You could start with adding something as simple as 10 minutes of moderate to faster paced walking a day after dinner.

In your nutrition chunk instead of trying to overhaul your diet completely and putting yourself on some intense, highly restrictive and daunting diet-of-the-week, it can be something as simple as eating slower, or taking more lean protein at every meal. Something that’s just a little different than what you’re already doing but aligned with your end goals.

That’s it.

It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Now instead of worrying about being out of shape and overweight, you just need to focus on and complete the two tasks you’ve decided on. That’s how you’ll work on resolving your chunked problem.

As these tasks push you past your inertia and you get comfortable doing them consistently, you can add more tasks, still keeping each task fairly small and manageable.

It may be as simple as adding 10 more minutes of fast walking for a total of 20 minutes or adding 2 servings of high fibre veggies to every meal.

In any case, all you’re doing is consistently and diligently completing very small tasks that work towards resolving your major issue without getting caught up in the enormity of “losing 30 lbs” or going from “unfit to fit” in one fell swoop.

For many of these chunked tasks, the time commitment is small, but over time, the effects add up.

Here’s the caveat with this type of chunking…

You will have to set your expectations appropriately.

Making these types of very small changes usually don’t lead to very rapid changes. These are not the changes that will give you the hyped up, gimmicky results that are plastered all over the supermarket impulse buy magazine racks. You won’t “lose 10 lbs in 10 days”, or “drop 4 dress sizes in a month”, or “build a six pack in six weeks”.

However, at these levels of change, these chunked habits are sustainable.

These chunks lower the barrier to resistance dramatically.

Tell me, which seems much less draconian to the average person:

Scenario 1: Full diet mode with restricted food items, no eating past certain times of the day, limited flexibility/control.  Restrictive practices may lead to later binge eating (you know that feeling when you’re told you can’t have something). Committing substantial amounts of time to exercise in the 5-10 hrs/week range at moderate to high intensity while already deprived of energy from food. You will likely be moody, tired, fatigued, and generally irritable.

It’s quite possible that you’ll see rapid drop in weight initially (N.B. this drop may not be all fat loss, but also loss of important lean tissues like muscle – the number on the scale would just be smaller) but after this initial drop, you will likely hit a plateau (if you’re eating so little already, it’s very hard to eat even less, and if you’re already exercising so much, it’s tough to add more in).

Scenario 2: Chunking both exercise and nutrition. Making one small change in each area such as eating each meal slower (20-30 minutes rather than scarfing down meal) allowing hunger cues to dictate how much you really need to ingest, eating 2 or more servings of veggies with each meal, or making sure that each meal has a lean source of protein. Adding one small element of exercise daily such as a 20-30 minute brisk walk after dinner, a short morning swim before work or a circuit-based body weight workout building up to 3-5+ hrs of moderately vigorous activity a week.

With the above, there will likely be very little initial change in weight or appearance but the new chunked habits are not drastic and would cause very minimal disruption to current habits and behaviours. Over time, these would lead to fairly significant yet sustainable changes. Your new fit, healthy lifestyle.

I think it’s pretty easy to see which one of these two choices is more comfortable, and more importantly, sustainable over the long term.

And that’s where results will be found.

Filed Under: Human Performance, Personal Training, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

If you pay attention to this once concept, could it change your results?

September 25, 2014 by

If you’ve come to see me for physiotherapy treatment or for physical training, you’ve probably noticed, I use the term, “it depends” a lot.

When engaged in debate and discourse in the health, fitness or rehabilitation industries, I tend to straddle the fence, rarely committing fully to one side or the other.

That’s because one side never has all the answers, or is the right choice, in all situations.

There are never any absolutes.

The missing ingredient is often context.

Without context, it’s easy to throw absolute statements around and come across as certain. But in a world with as many dynamic and fluid situations as you can imagine, context can change and impact so much.

For one client, taking rest in the short term may be what’s required to assist with tissue healing and a faster return to function in the long term.

Because she doesn’t ever sit still and is always on the go. Rest helps her.

For another, the key ingredient may be early return to specific movement or exercise.

Because he’s usually sits at a desk and is mostly sedentary. Movement helps him.

As you can see, it all depends on the context.

Context matters – it drives the intervention.

And context can change.

So the next time you’re not seeing results using XYZ athlete’s rehab program or following XYZ celebrity’s fitness routine, maybe it’s not the intervention that’s wrong, maybe it’s the context you’re using it in.

Filed Under: Mindset, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Running sucks.

September 18, 2012 by

OK, so that’s not entirely true but it caught your attention didn’t it?

While traditional long-duration, steady-state cardiovascular exercise such as running confers numerous health benefits, for most people it’s also a very inefficient (and potentially risky) way of losing excess body fat and getting in shape.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with running. In fact, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any form of exercise that makes people get up and move.

We encourage this! We applaud this! Movement is good.

We want people to move more and sit less.

We even called this out on a previous post about the most dangerous thing you do all day.

However, on the wrong feet and by the wrong person, running can put certain individuals at increased risk of repetitive strain and overuse injuries such as shin splints, plantar fasciitis or the oft-lamented IT-band syndrome. In our experience, many novice runners unfortunately haven’t prepared their bodies for the rigors of this type of exercise, and we regularly see the painful fallout at our clinic.

For this reason, we strongly believe in getting fit to run, not running to get fit.

Now if you LOVE running for hours on end, and you’ve trained your body to an appropriate base-level of fitness that can tolerate the constant pounding, then by all means, go out and run to your heart’s content.

You’ve earned it.

But if you HATE running, it bores you, and the only reason you’re doing it is because you heard that it’s was the best way of dropping extra pounds and improving your fitness, please keep reading.

What we’re about to tell you may just save you a few extra hours a week and help you drop a few extra pounds in the process (assuming that you’ve taken care of your nutrition!).

Results in less time, isn’t that what we all want?

Enter High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

Q. What is HIIT?

A. As the name suggests, HIIT is the term given to a form of cardiovascular system training where bouts (intervals) of very high intensity exercise are interspersed with periods of recovery. In true HIIT, the work segments should be completed near or at maximal intensity whereas the recovery bouts involve complete rest or are done at a much lower intensity.

Q. How does HIIT work?

A.  Without getting too deep into the still controversial physiology behind HIIT, suffice to say that after the interval session is complete, this leads to an increase in a physiological event called Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) when compared to stead-state cardio. In EPOC, our bodies undergo numerous physiological processes designed to return us to the pre-exercise resting state. This process of returning to baseline requires energy, which is furnished by the body from its energy stores.

Q. How do I do a HIIT session?

A. There are many methods of completing a HIIT session, using various modalities (bike, swim, run, rower etc). The only limitation is your imagination! HIIT can be performed with a work to rest ratio of anywhere from 2:1 (e.g. Tabatas: 20 seconds ultra-intense activity:10 seconds rest) to 1:4 or greater and can be repeated for any number of cycles (typically 4-10) lasting for a total session timeline typically between 10-20 minutes.

The following is an example of a HIIT session that we’ve used with clients in the past, repeated 2-3 times a week:

  1. Warm up (5 minutes)
  2. 30 second all-out bike sprint
  3. 120 seconds slow recovery pedaling
  4. Repeat the cycle of 30 s: 120 s a total of four times (10 minutes)
  5. Warm down (5 minutes)

Q. Why would I want to do HIIT instead of steady-state cardio exercise such as running?

A. If you love running and have the time for it, keep running. However, as noted earlier, if you don’t enjoy it and could get similar or better results in less time, why would you do it?

  • Minimum time investment: HIIT requires only a fraction of the time investment when compared to steady-state cardio but can often confer similar or better results for fat loss and conditioning (important note: HIIT is only one component of a well-rounded training and nutrition program).
  • Decreased repetitive strain/overuse injury risk: The duration of HIIT sessions is only between 10-20 minutes, the repetitive stresses faced by the body when compared to an hour or more of running are far less. Think about it this way, in an hour long run, you are taking thousands of steps, each having it’s own impact through your body. In 10 minutes, the odds are that you’re not even coming close to the number of impacts.
  • Avoid boredom: Many people get bored with hour long steady-state cardio sessions. The fast-paced, short duration set up of HIIT is often fun and engaging. And we all know if we enjoy something, we’re more likely to stick with it.

Q. This seems too good to be true. What’s the catch?

A. Yup, there’s always a catch. You don’t ever get something for nothing and the same holds true for HIIT.

  • To get the true benefit of HIIT, the high intensity bouts have to be very high intensity. Real high intensity intervals hurt. They’re incredibly hard. They might make you feel like you are going to vomit. Your muscles will be extremely sore. And that’s why most people don’t do true intervals. They are uncomfortable. Incredibly so.
  • HIIT may also put you at risk for injury. This of course depends on your starting fitness level and the type of training you’re doing (e.g. sprinting is higher risk than stationary bike) but is still a consideration when deciding whether HIIT is for you.
  • Due to the intense nature, correctly performed HIIT should not be performed daily but 2-3 days per week at most.

In summary:

The two most important pieces of advice regarding  any form of exercise, including steady-state cardio and HIIT are:

  1. Build up your fitness level gradually and progressively (e.g. if you’ve been a regular on your couch, don’t go all out into HIIT or even jogging, start gently and let your body adapt).
  2. Pick an activity that you enjoy and will actually do on a regular and consistent basis. If you love to run, go and run. If you love dancing, go out dancing. If you prefer something more intense and are crunched for time, consider interval training. Each has its benefits and risks. Find something that suits your lifestyle and do it.

Yours in movement,

Team Primal

 

 

Filed Under: Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,