How Strong Are You?

Have you ever wondered how strong you are? I mean if you work out regularly and lift heavy, would you like to know if you are really strong or just think you are strong. How do you know if your heavy lifting is really heavy and enough? You can't just compare yourself to the gym rat next to you, because you don't know his genetic make up and how long he has been training for. So how do you measure strength?

Well one way would be to join a competition such as a Strong Man Competition. But lets face it, most of us are not full time athletes and don't intend to become one, so this is out of the question.

Another method is to use a scientific methodology in the gym which will tell you what your strength deficit is... which means, how much strength your body can physically produce vs how much strength you currently have. This is the best way to discover how strong or how heavy you are lifting and whether you are strong strong or just think you are strong. This is covered in the Fitness Science manual, so due to copyright reasons, i can't go into full details of it. This is the correct method to use to measure strength and not the stupid machine they had everyone pull in the Biggest Loser Asia.

But for this post, i am going to share a quick lay man table with you and if you compare yourself with the exercises you are doing below, it will give you a rough indication of how strong you really are. So its you against.... well you.

This technique is simple. There are 3 basic exercises (which almost everyone will be doing), and all you have to ask yourself is, am i doing enough or am i close to the recommendation. In short, you should be able to perform up to 8 reps of the exercises below. If you fall short, then you are not very strong. If you are lifting heavier than the recommended weight and still completing 8 reps, then you are mighty strong.

So here is how you gauge yourself.

When you are lifting, the amount of weight you should have for each exercise is as below:

• Standing Barbell Curls - half your body weight for 8 reps
• Bench Press your body weight for 8 reps
• Squat 1.5 times your body weight for 8 reps

Now i am sure if you are a serious fitness junkie or gym rat, you will definitely be doing the exercises mentioned above already. it would be part of your routine. So the question to ask yourself is, are you doing the recommended amount of weight and reps. If yes, then that's great, you would be considered strong. If you are not, don't feel bad. now you have a goal to work towards, so keep at it and i am sure you will get there.

So how strong are you. Me? Well, I can do half my body weight curls and my body weight bench press. But my legs, still short of the goal above due to a leg injury i had many years ago, but i am working towards it. Hopefully i get to reach it soon. When i do, i will let you guys know.

Anyway, do share your thoughts as well as your own strength test results for the exercises above. Look forward to hearing your comments.

Whole Foods

As we all know, when it comes to health and fitness, food plays an extremely big part – even more than exercise itself. The age old saying of “You are what you eat” is so true when it comes to fitness. So because of this, I thought it is extremely important to highlight some of the food choices you should make on a daily basis. Now I could sit here and name all the good foods and all the bad foods to avoid but that would just waste both our times. So instead, let me focus on 1 important aspect of choosing food and by just making this switch, you would have taken a giant leap towards a healthier lifestyle. If you can just remember this and follow it every time you eat, you will be far better than most people out there.

What am I talking about? I am talking about Whole Foods. Whole Foods is a term used to describe food that has not been processed / refined or only processed / refined slightly and consumed the way nature intended it. This is the best form and best way to consume food. In today’s world, our food choices are filled with processed foods which are filled with additives & preservatives that only add taste and increase the shelf life of the product. No nutrition value and worse still, some of these are actually harmful to you. So not only will some of these foods make you fat, but it is harmful to your health as well.

So what are whole foods? Anything that has not been processed or refined. So if you are going for chicken, buy chicken parts as they are, not sausages and burgers. If you want to eat burgers, buy your own fresh meat and mince it up yourself. If you want to eat french fries, buy your own potatoes and cut it up yourself, rather than buying the frozen ones which have been processed. If you want to drink orange juice, buy your own oranges and squeeze them yourself, rather than buying it in a bottle or can.

Let’s be honest for a second. I am sure you know some friends who eat 2 sausage buns for lunch every day thinking that that is a diet plan that is going to help them lose weight. After all, the sausage bun is only about 250 calories (that’s what they say to comfort themselves). Buns are made from refined flour, mixed with margarine (usually margarine contains transfat which is bad bad stuff), sugar and a whole lot of other preservatives. Then comes the sausage. Does anyone know how sausages are made? Usually its made from all the left over parts of the chicken which cannot be sold… like the skin, fat and any other body part which cannot be sold. So they grind everything up, throw in a whole lot of MSG and flavouring and voila…. You have yourself a sausage. Put that together and multiply it by 2 and that is what your friend is consuming everyday in hopes of losing weight. Need I say more?

Now the next question on everyones mind is, “OK, you have made it clear about how to buy healthy food for home preparation. But I eat out a lot. So how does this help me?” Well its no secret that making your own food at home will be better than eating out. However, I do understand the constraints of making your own food all the time. So, the next time you go out to eat, have this concept of whole foods in your mind as well. Skim through the menu and see what are the kinds of food that will still be in its natural form. So between a grilled fish and fish burger, which one would you choose? Mutton Kima (minced mutton) or Mutton Curry… which one would you choose? French fries or baked potato, which one would you choose? Fried fish or fried Keropok, which one would you choose? Now I know some of the foods I mentioned above, both choices are not the healthiest choices. I am just trying to make it clear when you have to choose between 2, which one would you choose. The lesser evil of course. And when you are eating out, sometimes you have to make that choice as you are not the cook.

So remember the next time you hit the supermarket for your grocery shopping, be careful with what you throw into your trolley. Your safest bet is always buying food which is not canned, bottled or wrapped up. Go fresh and go for whole foods. Eat food the way nature intended it to be. As usual, look forward to hearing your comments.

Doing My First Chin Up / Pull Up

Hi everyone. Firstly, sorry for the very late post this week. Work has been crazy for the past few days, so I didn’t get a chance to post anything. Now since I have a bit more time, I decided I better quickly write something, so I decided to write about doing chin ups / pull ups, because lots of people tell me they can’t do it and want to know how to train for it. So here are some tips to help you do your first chin up / pull up soon.

Before we continue on with this, it is important to note the difference between a chin up and a pull up. A full Chin Up or Pull Up is where the body is suspended by extended arms gripping a fixed bar, then pulled up until the elbows are bent and the head is higher than the hands. So that’s what you want to be aiming for. Not just pulling yourself half way up. Though the overall movement is similar, there is a huge difference in the grip which makes one easier and the other more difficult to do. A chin up is done with and underhand (supinated) grip. This is easier to do than a pull up which uses an overhand (pronated) grip. Both movements require tremendous upper body strength so if you still can’t do even 1 chin up or pull up, don’t worry or feel embarrassed about it. When I was younger, I couldn’t do 1 either. Follow these tips and hopefully, you will actually be able to do your first full chin up or pull up soon.

Heavy Weights Low Reps
As you know, doing a chin up or pull requires tremendous strength. In fitness, strength is basically your ability to get the muscles to do what you want them to do over a short period of time. So when it comes to chin ups, you want to be able to lift your body up. When it comes to training for strength, you want to use heavy weights and low reps. This basically helps to condition your Central Nervous System (CNS) to give you that jolt of strength that you need. When it comes to strength, a big part of how strong you are is the ability for your CNS to provide enough impulse to your muscle to act. The more practice the CNS gets at sending signals to the muscles telling them to move with great force, the stronger you become and the way to do that is to keep pushing on heavier and heavier weights. You want to primarily hit your biceps, back and shoulders real heavy as these are the primary muscles you will be using during a chin up or pull up. If these muscles are weak, then you are going to have a lot of trouble doing a complete chin up or pull up.

How heavy should you lift? You want to lift weights that only allows you to complete between 4 to 6 reps. So if you can lift more than 6, the weight is too light for you. Pick up something heavier! So when you train your biceps, back and shoulders, make sure you choose a weight that only allows you to complete between 4 to 6 reps.

Lose that Tummy
OK if you can’t do chin ups and have a bulging tummy, here is another reason to lose that tummy. The point is doing a chin up is hard enough already. So give yourself an added advantage by reducing any unwanted baggage that you are carrying with you and lose all that unwanted fat. Not saying you can’t do chin ups with all that fat around your stomach, but why add a disadvantage to yourself? So watch your diet, do more cardio, but work on reducing your body fat percentage. The leaner you become, the easier it will be to do a complete chin up.

Use the Law of S.A.I.D
Out of all the laws of fitness out there, this one has to be one of my favourites. The law of SAID stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. In normal English, what this means is, if you want to get good at something, just keep doing more of it. The closer you replicate your exercise to the actual movement, the better you will get at doing the actual thing. For example, if you want to get good at arm wrestling, doing lots of biceps curls is good but turning every workout you have into an arm wrestling contest will be better because that replicates the actual movement more than a bicep curl.

So when it comes to chin ups, doing bicep curls are OK, doing pulling exercises are good, pull downs are better, weight assisted chin ups are even better, but the best would be doing it with a spot. Now, when you spot someone for chin ups, the spotter doesn’t have to lift you up and down. He just provides a resting place for your feet and you push off just enough with your legs to get you going. In other words, you decide how much assistance you need and who knows better than you yourself. The less assistance you rely on, the better. So try your best to use as little as your legs as you can. As you improve, you will rely less and less on your legs until finally you can do it without any assistance.

Sticking Points
Now as you improve, you will be able to do a partial chin up and somewhere in the middle of the movement, you are going to get stuck and this is what they call the sticking point. One of the best ways to overcome sticking points is to do isometric exercises. So lift yourself up to your sticking point (no assistance), and once you reach it, hold that position as long as you can. Keep doing sets of this exercise and you will soon find you will be able to overcome this dreaded sticking point. Now this isometric exercise should be in addition to your normal workout following the law of SAID and not a replacement of it.

So there you have it. Some tips to help you overcome you inability of doing chin ups or pull ups. If you follow all these tips, I guarantee you will be able to do chin ups in no time. How long it takes is up to you and how hard to train and follow these tips. But remember, everyone can do it as long as you have the right tools…. And these tips help you to have the tools.

Go ahead, try it and I hope those who can’t do chin ups now will be able to overcome this and do chin ups. It really isn’t as hard as you think it is. As usual, look forward to hearing your comments

The Burn Machine

Have any of you heard of this new piece of equipment called the Burn Machine? The first time I heard it, I was wondering if it’s going to be some kind of vibrating belt gimmick and was reluctant to check it out. But after much persuasion from my friend Azmy, I decided to check it out.

We went down to the HQ of Pure Health and met up with Brian Wong, who is the co-founder of Pure Health. Once we stepped in, we had some brief introductions and then he tossed me this wheel looking machine.

He said, you are tough guy, I bet you can’t spin this for more than 1 minute. Not wanting to be outdone, I tried it. Man, within 30 seconds, my arms were burning away. By 45 seconds, I felt like I lost control of my arms and the burning sensation just intensified exponentially every second. Yeah, I didn’t reach the 1 minute timing but boy, my arms and shoulders felt pumped, like I just lifted.

So what exactly is the Burn Machine? The Burn Machine is a geniusly designed equipment with lots of uses. The main function of the Burn Machine is to help you burn fat and of course help to build upper body endurance. You can either do just the basic spin while standing stationary or you could go crazy and add this into your cycling routine (stationary bike please). You can use it as a dumbbell, spin it while doing crunches, spin while doing lunges. In short, whatever exercise you do, using the Burn Machine actually intensifies that exercise and just makes it that much more effective.

The Burn Machine comes in various sizes (weight) and models depending on your needs. If all you want to do is tone up and burn fat, the basic model below will suffice.



They also have a barbell version as displayed below for those who want to use weights. This is what they call an Asymmetrical Barbell System as the little counter weight in the center of the barbell will move. Overall, I think the Burn Machine is a fantastic piece of equipment to add into your arsenal of home based equipments. I totally love the spin action and is great for shaping up your deltoids, so your arms look great when you wear a sleeveless t-shirt. Just one small drawback which I hope they have in future models is being able to increase the resistance of the spinning action – hence making it more difficult to spin. The other thing I wish they had done was providing a way to add on some weights rather to the basic model. Currently, if you want something heavier, you have to buy a new unit which is bigger and heavier.

But besides that, I think the Burn Machine is definitely a great machine to burn fat and most of all, I would use it to supercharge my cardio workouts or replace your cardio workouts with an intense session of the the Burn Machine. We are working closely with Brian to come up with a special deal for everyone who is interested in buying the Burn Machine, so stay tuned for more details. As usual, look forward to hearing your comments.

The secret to BIG arms

OK, this weeks post is a little different. Instead of just talking about weight loss like i usually do, i want to talk about something i am passionate about ie muscle gain. Since i was young, i have been obsessed with having big arms. So i literally tried every kind of workout there is and none of them were as effective as the one I want to share with all of you. So here is the secret to having big arms. It’s a lot of hard work, but the results speak for themselves.

Go Heavy
If you want to get big (whether its your arms or chest), one of the surest ways is to train heavy. When i train my arms, i do between 8 to 10 reps and with heavy weights where you find it difficult to pass 10 reps. For me, I usually train till failure. I have tried training lighter 12 to 15 reps twice a week, but personally, I feel training once a week heavy helps you grow faster. Also, just a word of caution, I would not recommend this routine to beginners. To effectively try this, please ensure you have at least 6 months of weight training under your belt.

Don’t cheat.
When you are doing bicep curls for example, it is important that you use only your biceps and nothing else. I have seen people in the gym who pound on huge plates and when it comes to lifting, they sway and swing in every way possible just to bring the weights up. But the end result, you walk away with a back ache and your biceps barely did anything because your used every other muscle in your body except your biceps to raise the weights. If you are going to lift, don’t swing and don’t sway. Maintaining your form is extremely vital not only for the growth of your arms, but to avoid injury as well. Reduce the weights a little and do it properly making sure only your forearms are moving up and down.

Do it slowly.
Another way to avoid cheating is to do each rep slowly. Ideally, each rep should take about 4 seconds to go up and come down. You will have to do a mental time count when you first start doing this, but once you have the correct speed, you won’t have to count the time anymore as the speed and timing will come naturally. Chances are, you are already doing it fast, so next time you hit the gym, make sure you do it slowly following the 4 second count. 2 seconds to bring the weight up and 2 seconds to bring the weights down.

Bringing the weights back to its original rest position is equally important.
Let’s use the example of the bicep curls again. Once you pull it up to your chest, don’t drop it back to your start position in half a second. The time it took you to lift it up to your chest (which is about 2 seconds) is the amount of time it should take for you to return back down. So take about 2 seconds to bring it down slowly back to the original rest position. The movement of returning to the original rest position gives your muscles negative resistance. Doing it slowly increases the negative resistance and this negative resistance is also vital for growth.

Do your triceps as well
When it comes to arms, a lot of people only focus on their biceps. They forget that there is another important muscle called the triceps which accounts for another 50% of your arm. So, the best way to bloat your arms up fast, is to do triceps as well. The same rules mentioned above apply for your triceps workout as well. So don’t just focus on your biceps. Give the same amount of attention to your triceps as well.

Do super sets.
When it comes to arms, train only your arms and not any other muscle group for that day. I used to do my chest and then my triceps after that, but then I found super sets. Super sets are basically exercises that are done back to back without rest. When it comes to arms, I do my set of biceps, and then immediately hit my triceps without a break. Once I finish my triceps, I take a one minute break before I hit the next set. So this way, each set you do will consist of one set of bicep exercise followed immediately by one set of triceps exercise. Make sure you perform all your exercises for your arms and do them in supersets.

Do 3 varieties of exercise
When it comes to my arms, I have 3 varieties of exercises for biceps and 3 varieties of exercises for triceps, which are all done in the same work out. So when choosing your arm routine, make sure you have 3 exercises for biceps and 3 exercises for triceps and do them in supersets.
So its 3 Sets x 10 reps x 3 exercises for biceps and 3 sets x 10 reps x 3 exercises for triceps. So if you do the math, its about 90 reps total for biceps and 90 reps total for triceps.

Indirect work out for your arms are essential
If you are doing bench press, inevitably about 30% of your strength will come from your triceps. This also means that your chest is only doing 70% of the work during the bench press and your triceps are still working out and doing the rest. When you do lat pull downs or chin ups for your back, yet again 30% of your biceps are being used. Quite a big number if you ask me. Hence, even when it is not your arms day, your arms are still working out. This is why I recommend only doing this superset routine once a week. So make sure you push heavy on bench press, incline press and other chest exercises to boost your triceps and push heavy on your back exercises as well to boost your biceps.

Change your routine
Change the 3 varieties of exercises you do every 3 or 4 months. This will shock your muscle enabling it to grow further. If you do the same routine for too long, your body becomes accustomed to that work out, and it will stop growing. Another way is to take a break for 1 whole week and then come back again. There are a variety of ways to change things up and shock your muscles. I shall discuss this further in another posting. But with that being said, it does not mean that more changes / shocks make it better. You only want to change things up every 3 to 4 months.

To sum it up:

1) Do your arms in supersets
2) Train it only once a week
3) When you are doing your arms, don't train other muscle groups
4) Go heavy
5) Do your triceps as well
6) Keep your form
7) Make sure you work out your chest and back as well
8) Change your exercises every 3 to 4 months

So there you have it. Some of my friends who have tried this routine are amazed by the results that they have gotten. Hope you guys out there who want big arms try it and as usual, look forward to hearing your comments.


PS: please take a moment to cast your vote on the latest poll.

Eat for what you are about to do

I am currently going through the Nutrition Science for Fitness course and am realizing that a lot of what I held as true, turns out to be not so true after all. What exactly these are, well I will cover in another post. Another Wow factor is, I didn’t realize our body was such a complicated piece of machinery and there is just so much you can do by tweaking your nutrition plan. Anyway, all that to be covered some time soon. For this week, I just want to share one of the most important things I have learnt from the course and I thought it’s a must to share with everyone, especially those who want to lose weight.

One of the best and simplest rule you can follow is “eat for what you are about to do in the next 3 hours”. Now I am sure all of you have read millions of things about weight loss in magazines, on the web, on Oprah. Well sometimes there is just so much information out there, its hard to remember and decide what to do. So, if you forget everything else you have read on the internet and magazine, its fine, just remember this simple line “eat for what you are about to do in the next 3 hours” and you will be fine. What exactly does this mean? Let me break it down for you.

Ideally, we should all be eating 5 meals a day or every 3 hours that you are awake. The reason for doing this, is to ensure our body has a continuous stream of nutrition, so it never ever has to feel like its in a state of famine and start storing reserves… in our body, reserves means storing nutrition in our fat cells. I know doing a 5 meal a day plan is hard for most of us, and the best I can do is 4 meals a day – Breakfast, Lunch, evening meal (between lunch and dinner) and dinner.

Now for those who are more committed and more serious than me, you can plan your day ahead and pack food for all those odd moments when you need to load up. Ideally you want to pack up things which are simple to consume and of course, easy to prepare so you don’t spend 3 hours preparing for it. Things like carrot sticks, celery, sandwich, high fiber biscuits, muesli bars etc are easy to make and can be eaten anywhere at anytime and takes less than 10 minutes to prepare. So try to stock up on these and take it with you and every 3 hours, make sure you consume it.

So now the question is, how big should each of my meals be? The answer to that is “Depends on what you are going to be doing for the next 3 hours.”

So if you are going to help a friend move houses (lots of manual labor) for the next 3 hours, yeah, you are going to need more calories compared to sitting in front of the TV for the next 3 hours. If you are going to workout in the next 3 hours, again, you are going to need more calories than if you were going to take a nap for the next 3 hours. The basic thing is, ask yourself this question before every meal

What am I going to be doing for the next 3 hours?

If it’s sitting in front of your PC and reading this blog (though I can’t imagine why you would want to read this blog for 3 hours), heck you don’t need a whole lot of calories for that, some carrot sticks and celery sticks will do just fine. This is also why, you should keep your dinners small (unless you are working the night shift as a security guard where you got to keep walking) and how the popular cliché “Don’t eat anything after 7pm” started. It’s not entirely wrong, but again, a 7pm cut off is too early unless you go to bed by 9. But we shall discuss that in a later post. So try to keep your dinner small, since most of us usually hit the sack shortly after dinner.

The only time this rule kind of doesn’t apply is post workout, meaning even if you are just watching TV for the next 3 hours after your workout, your post workout meal needs to have a higher calorie content to replace back what you lost during your workout. But for all other situations, think forward of what you are going to be doing and eat for that.

So just a quick re-cap

· Eat 5 meals a day or for every 3 hours you are awake
· Plan your day and keep simple, healthy foods handy for those 3 hour breaks. Carrot sticks, celery sticks, muesli bars, sandwiches etc. You can be creative with this, but please ensure you don’t snack on unhealthy foods like Twisties, nasi lemak etc.
· How much you eat should be in relation to what you are going to be doing for the next 3 hours. If its sleeping, a roti canai will be way too much calories for that activity. In short, eat more fruits and vegetables when your activity level for the next 3 hours is going to be low.

That’s it. Simple, easy to follow and best of all, I guarantee you results if you truly follow this. So try it out and see and as usual, I look forward to hearing your comments.

Poll Results - What's the most important quality of a PT?

Work is finally taking a slightly slower pace these days (maybe its because of the CNY holidays) and I am finally done traveling for work (and leisure as well). So I finally get sometime time to post something. Sometimes having a weekend with no big travel plans can be nice.

Anyway, enough chit chat, it’s time once again to review our poll results and see what everyone thinks and share why they chose the answers they chose. The question asked this time was: If you had to choose only 1 quality, what is the most important quality that a Personal Trainer should have? To be honest, all the 4 answers I gave were important but of course I wanted you to choose which was most important to you. Let’s just have a quick review of why each one was important and the votes that it received.

Certification
Well your personal trainer should know the basic science of fitness and what he is teaching you. You don’t want someone who doesn’t know anything about fitness teaching you. I honestly felt that this answer would get a much higher score but surprisingly, only 6 people voted for this. This goes to show that though certification is important, its not everything. Being a good personal trainer is more than just being a good student who can pass certification exams. You need to be passionate about it. I knew of one personal trainer in California Fitness who scored the highest in the certification course, but then I saw numerous clients shouting at him and sharing their dissatisfaction with him. So I guess I understand why this answer got such a low vote.

Looks Fit
This is extremely important to me and my vote landed here. As a personal trainer, you need to look the part. Do you really want to take fitness advice from someone who is fatter than you? Learn how to cook from an anorexic? In short, don’t sell Nokia hand phones to other people when you yourself prefer an i-Phone and use that instead of a Nokia Phone. To me, if my personal trainer looks fit, I am assured he has some basic knowledge on fitness even if he doesn’t have the paper to show it. Plus, I feel a whole lot more confident knowing that my personal trainer has personal experience on how to get there. Being fit needs a lot of self motivation, so I am sure he will be able to motivate me, the same way he motivates himself. Only 8 people out of 51 voted here and I was 1 of them.

Able to motivate me
This was of course the big winner of the whole poll by a huge margin. 70% of people felt that this was the most important thing to have. If you have a certification, look fit, but don’t know how to motivate people, the first 2 criteria are just wasted. It’s like having a Ferrari but not enough money to put petrol in the tank. What’s the point of having a Ferrari then? No wonder so many people chose this. End of the day, people want to be motivated to push themselves to the limit.

Good listener
OK, I know I kind of skewed the results by putting up a post about Personal Trainers who are hired only because their clients want someone to talk to. But in actual fact, being a good listener is important as well. By this, I don’t mean about him listening to your complaints in life or why your favorite TV Show got cancelled. What I was referring to was listening to what your fitness goals are and what motivates you as a person. A lot of personal trainers try to impose their own fitness goals onto clients without stopping to ask what their clients want. This is why being a good listener is also important to being a personal trainer. When your client shares his emotions, you need to listen to and connect with them. This way you can truly motivate them because you understand them better. So yes, listening is important as well. Only 1 person voted for this answer. Does the person who voted here want to share why you chose this?

So there you have it, what it takes to be a good personal trainer. For personal trainers who read this blog, I hope you are taking notes. :-) Anyway, what was your vote and what was your reasoning behind it. Do share and as usual, look forward to hearing your comments.

Biggest Loser Asia - Part 2

Due to popular demand from last weeks post, here is Kasey’s second post on the Biggest Loser Asia. Take it away Kasey….


*********************

The Biggest Loser Asia is probably the best reflection of everything that's wrong with the fitness industry at large. WHY Fitness First would have their name attached is... well, just another part wrong with the fitness industry at large.

At first I was so astonished by the trainers Dave and Kristy's complete and total ABSENCE of any education whatsoever, but now I think I'm beginning to understand it. Given the premise of the show, which is to tear people down with no regard to their well being and completely screw them over under the pretense of 'getting in shape', you'd simply need trainers who really DONT know fitness, and will wear their ignorance like a badge of pride, as they smile and make complete fools of themselves.

Just to make sure, I decided to do a little research and find out what their qualifications were. I started at the Biggest Loser's website, where you can find a profile on all the contestants and even on the host, and yet you cant find anything on the trainers themselves. Almost like they're deliberately keeping the trainers info off the site.

I found 2 profiles for Kristy - one here:

http://weightlosswithshamala.com/the-biggest-loser-asia/the-biggest-loser-asia-trainer-profile-kristy-curtis

and the other here:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=175048847717

So after viewing these, turns out I was right. She doesn't have any qualifications... at all. No degrees, no certs, nothing. This is probably why she gets snippy that her opponents team is drinking liters of water because she doesn't understand drinking water doesn't cause you to lose fat. Maybe understanding a few of the mechanisms behind fat loss, such as epinephrine, its effects on beta-2 receptorcites, the release of triglycerides from adipose tissue, the use of fatty acids in the aerobic pathway of energetics, etc might help.

Nope, forget all that, DURRRRRR UR GAIZ ARE DRINKING WATER THAT’S CHEATING DURRRRRR!!!!

Gosh, I cant figure out why my clients have all plateaued! Oh wait I have an idea! WORK HARDER!!! Oh what your knee snapped again? Well that cant be my fault (cuz I'm the trainer and all) - KEEP WORKING!(snaps a whip) "whhhPSSH!" HARDER YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING FATTY! As your trainer and someone in whom you've trusted your health and well being to, I will NOT be showing you any of the compassion or encouragement that one would routinely expect from a health and fitness professional!

Anyway, lets take a look at Kristy's profile, shall we? (Yes I'm picking on Kristy but that's only because Dave is not such a douche).

From the first link I provided earlier:

Although a little bit more low profile
◘ Yeah being on national television is SO low profile. I mean its practically a mandatory step in the witness protection program - go on nation wide TV and tell everyone who you are! You probably mean her fitness background is low profile but that’s only because its embarrassingly absent of any of the qualifications you'd expect from a fitness trainer.

Kristy Curtis is no less accomplished than her counterpart Dave Nuku.

◘ A woman with noodly arms who probably couldn't do the exercises she demands from her clients with no education at all in the field she's supposedly an expert in? I'm guessing Dave wasn't training professional athletes.

She is one of Australia’s leading health and wellness expert

◘ HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH man!!! Seriously a f*cking kangaroo could do better!

who runs her own personal training business

◘ Running a business is an entirely separate issue. I don’t know what Kristy's business qualifications are, but if she can recognize market trends, understand supply and demand, anticipate changes in consumer behavior, manage a sales team, and keep comprehensive records of business transactions, then she might be great at running her own business! In fact as long as you've got the start up capital needed, you could skip the need to understand anything at all about fitness by hiring others to handle that for you. In other words: running a business is not a fitness qualification. Nice try though!

and is a Group Fitness Manager in an international fitness chain where she teaches classes all over Sydney.

◘ Only serves to reinforce my point. Maybe she's a good manager and can handle loads of paperwork, but this isn't a fitness qualification either. Its painfully obvious from watching the show that concepts such as fat loss are just wayyyyyy over her head.

Kristy has lived in London where she worked in the corporate fitness industry and her passion for fitness has taken her all over the world in spreading her message.

◘ Wow, what a fantastic way to keep a low profile!

Of Chinese-Australian descent, Kristy faced body image issues as a teenager,

◘ Really? Cuz, I mean, it’s so rare that teenagers have body image issues.

a struggle that she conquered

◘ Yea most people grow out of it.

and went on to become a National Aerobic Champion.

◘ Now this sounds impressive at first, but after considerable research, I couldn't find any aerobic competition Kristy had entered in which she won the championship title. That’s sort of a mandatory step in being able to call yourself a "National Aerobic Champion", with capitalized letters no less, with any degree of honesty. What’s even more conspicuous is that the year, date, and location are missing. Not even the name of the event where she supposedly won this title, or the name of the organization that hosted it.

I mean this is a truly impressive title! You don’t just go leaving it in the dark like that! Its possible she simply forgot to give any details when they asked for her profile, but its unlikely someone so accomplished in business would make an error like that. Not unless you were deliberately keeping details off your profile... much like keeping the trainer's profiles off the The Biggest Loser website.

I could be completely wrong on this, so to be sure, I tried sending an email to The Biggest Loser Asia website, requesting more information. This part of the site doesn't seem to be working, so its off to the site forums next! We'll keep you updated in the comments section.

Also just had a look at Dave's profile (seen here; http://weightlosswithshamala.com/the-biggest-loser-asia/the-biggest-loser-asia-trainer-profile-dave-nuku ).

I wont go into my usual routine on this one, but he does seem slightly better. Although again, I think they might have been looking for people who *weren't* qualified and who would just provide more drama. I mean really, even on the website's forum under "Experts", where its written

"The host and the trainers are there to help the contestants lose weight."

There aren't even any replies! Not from experts or the trainers from the show! Did they just completely forget about putting this here?

Look forward to hearing your comments guys.

Biggest Loser Asia

OK, this week since i am absolutely swamped with work and traveling for work, Kasey Brown decided to volunteer a post on my blog as a guest writer. So take it away Kasey....

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Hi everyone! Kasey here. Rajan's letting me sort of guest-write on his blog this week, so I thought I'd talk about the Biggest Loser Asia, which I just recently started watching. Mostly out of disbelief.

First I need to lay down a few scientific reasons behind why the show is completely retarded. I mean most of us know how retarded the show is, but we'll get specific. The entire premise of the show is ridiculous. The contestants are judged based on how much weight they've lost, NOT on how much fat they've lost. Does anyone here know how much weight you will lose if you fast for a week? Depends on activity level and metabolism of course, but whatever amount you lose, around 70% of that weight will be muscle, not fat.

The body has plenty of stored fats and carbs in the adipose (fat)tissue, but it does not store protein OR amino acids there. 1 protein is made of 20 amino acids. Each of those amino acids has an important job in the body. L-Arginine and L-Tryptophan help regulate hormones, while L-lysine assist in calcium absorption, bone formation, and fights viruses. L-Glutamine has a dozen different functions, as do the branch chain amino acids, Leucine, Isoleucine, and Valine. Out of those 20 aminos, 8 are ESSENTIAL (meaning you'll eventually die if you dont get them)

So where does the body store the aminos and proteins? In the muscles of course. And the body is more than willing to start tearing up its muscle reserves to provide itself with the vital tools (amino acids)it needs to continue living. Thats generally why fasting is a BAD idea, and eating 5 to 6 times a day is a GOOD idea. By getting protein in every one of those 5 meals, your body has no reason to tear down its own amino acid reserves (muscle). Since muscles are the primary providers of metabolic rate, losing muscle means fat loss becomes more and more difficult as time goes on.

This is also why the best way to beat a fat loss plateau is to start deliberately gaining weight. By eating more than you need and lifting heavy weights, you rebuild some of that lost muscle, which then helps you start losing fat again.

The creators of the show, and the trainers (hell even the contestants and most of the audience) are seemingly oblivious to any of this. As a result, the contestants work themselves to a dangerously unhealthy state, are extremely malnourished, and lose tons of muscle mass.

The real irony being that the show is supposedly related to the health and fitness industry, yet the contestants are the most unhealthy people I've ever seen. Underneath the layers of lose skin is probably a person with all the nutritional fortification of a holocaust survivor.

Call me crazy, but I always thought this is NOT what fitness is supposed to be. A lot of the people on the show have probably never consistently exercised or dieted before in their lives. Their first exposure to what diet and exercise should be like come from completely unqualified / uncertified trainers (more on that in my next post) who force them to do work they hate, while injured, and placing them on a

diet that are completely unrealistic.

I mean even in the United States Marine Core the training is brutal, but at least its productive. Physical training is given in measured amounts and they make sure you eat enough so you can see the results of your training. The point of yelling and screaming at you is to force you to develop coping mechanisms you'll need to survive in actual combat. The Biggest Loser Asia has you doing endless amounts of work that do nothing but place you in a catabolic (muscle wasting)state and the yelling / demanding is entirely pointless.

Contestants believe drinking loads of water before a weigh in is going to help, and no one corrects them on this because no one else knows any better either. The deficient diet and overtraining is probably why the contestants have so many various injuries, and yet the trainers still demand they train despite all the pain and injuries the trainers themselves cause without any considerable readjustments. Really, if your client's knee is hurt, how hard could it be to let them do bench presses instead of push ups, especially if the push ups are hurting the knee?

If someone has been weight training intensely, and he weighs in with a 0 kg weight loss, most likely he hasn't "plateaued" at all. He probably gained 2 kg of muscle while losing 2 kg of fat. This is actually the ideal situation - you want as much fat as possible offset by the replacement of muscle mass, and since a pound of muscle is smaller in size than a pound of fat, the contestants will definitely be getting smaller while keeping the same weight. So the ones who haven't lost any weight are actually getting healthier - and are chastised for doing so. Its like being healthy is actually a BAD thing!

There is so much wrong with this show, and I could go on... in fact I will go on next week (or whenever Rajan lets me post again)! Let us hear your feedback. Would you like to see more posts like this from me, or if you'd like to stick with Original Rajan Recipe?

If you found this post interesting and would like to know more about the exact how and why of fat loss and nutrition, ask us about Nutrition Science Level 1 course currently being offered from Kasey Brown Fitness.

This post was made possible by Fitness Malaysia, the letter H, and viewers like you!

Should I workout when I am ill?

Just the other day I was telling someone how I have not gotten a flu in over 3 years now. With everyone around me having the sniffles, I thought wow, I must be in great shape. despite hanging out with people who had bad flus, i still did not get sick. But as luck would have it, I finally did fall ill and dealing with flu as I write this.

Anyway, the purpose of this posting is not to bitch about being sick, but rather to answer a simple question that many out there ask me. Should I work out when I am ill?

Well for starters, you should see your doctor when ever you are ill. Ask your doctor if its OK for you to work out. Now most doctors will tell you its better to stay at home and just rest, so this is where your own judgement comes into play. Doctors are not wrong when they tell you to skip the workout, and they have your best intentions in mind... which is to recover as fast as possible. But if you are a fitness addicts like me, I usually nod my head and then decide later if I should rest at home or work out.

For me, I usually decide based on how ill I am am. If all you have is a little blocked nose and nothing more, I usually hit the gym anyway. I usually go a little lighter on weights and at a lower intensity for cardio. I never push a full blown workout when I am ill. How light or how intense you should push all depends on how ill you are, and with years of work out experience under my belt, I am a pretty good judge on how hard I can push at the gym. So you know your body best, and will know how far to push it. now i am not saying you should go against your doctor's advice and workout when you are ill. i am saying that you need to judge for yourself if you are up to it or not.

If I feel pretty ill and have a fever, headache, sore throat etc, then I stay away from the gym all together. Trust me, even if you did go to the gym, you would not be giving your best, so its better to rest and stay at home. When I am that ill, the only thing on my mind is to rest and recover...not pumping iron at the gym. So rest, recover and once you are better you can go crazy at the gym again.

Some people tell me that working out when you are ill actually makes you feel better. So rather than resting at home, you should workout more. Well the feel good factor is usually due to endorphins released into your bloodstream after a workout. whenever you workout or do vigorous activity, your body releases feel good hormones called endorphins. It has little effect on actually helping you combat the illness itself. For the fastest recovery results, resting at home will be your best bet. You will still recover even if you worked out, but your recovery time might be slightly longer. So this again, is where your judgement comes into play. If you are not sure on what to do, its best to stick with your doctor's advice.

So in summary, follow these simple steps when deciding whether to workout or not when you are ill
1) Speak to your doctor first. You can even ask him if its OK to do a light workout and he/she will tell you yes or no. If your doctor is the kindd that works out, he / she may even tell you how hard you can workout.
2) You know your body best. So decide on how well you are feeling before going to the gym. If you feel like crap, stay at home. IF you just feel a little whoozy, then yeah, go ahead.
3) If you do decide to work out, ensure it is a lighter one (maybe about 70% to 80% of your usual intensity)

So I hope this helps to answer the question on whether or not you should workout when you are ill. With lots of people having the sniffles these days, I hope this posting will help you. As usual, look forward to hearing your comments