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Want Quicker Recovery?

Allot of athletes think the secret to getting fit is who can train the longest/ hardest. This is not always the case. Hard training leads to sore damaged muscles. The athlete that can train hard and recover quickly to be able to train hard again will have the edge. With that in mind here are my top 5 recovery tips:

#5 Hydration- Its more than just drinking water. If doing a long training session weigh in before and after. The difference between weigh in amounts is water loss. I have lost three pounds on a three hour ride. One L of water weighs a Kilo (2.2 lbs). make sure that you replace the fluid but also minerals (you can add electrolyte to your water with products like Elyte or by adding a pinch of organic sea salt). Don’t use Gatorade etc, has too much fructose, food coloring and is highly acidic.

#4 Nutrition- Anti-Oxidants prevent free radicals from forming, preventing soreness. I use Proflavonol made from grape seed extract, but there are lots of sources. Blueberries are a tasty addition to your post workout recovery drink. Have a post workout shake with a 4:1 ratio of protein to carbs and high in anti oxidants. You have a half hour window post exercise to prevent further tissue breakdown. I prepare mine in advance so its ready to go.

#3 Stretching- Most people do a few half ass stretches right after training and forget about it. Try dedicating one hour weekly to your flexibility and you will feel better and recover quicker. It takes 3 minutes of stretching a muscle to get into the connective tissues (tendons) and the ligaments supporting the joint. Try a Yin yoga class they hold the poses that long and you feel great release.

#2 Myo-fascial Release-  Fascia covers  muscle and is often tight and cannot be stretched. You will need to get a specific myo-fascial release massage and supplement with foam rolling. Using a foam roller you can release the tension in the fascia (and therefore the muscles below). I would recommend blocking 5-10 minutes immediately after your training session to foam roll the affected areas.

#1 Sleep- the most overlooked aspect of training and recovery. Your body repairs between 10 pm- 2am, no exceptions. After that it is on to mental repair. If you are not getting a deep sleep between these hours your body will not recover to 100%. I recommend avoiding caffeine at all times (it stays in your system for a long time preventing a deep sleep). Also, make sure you are in bed by 11 latest otherwise you will not  be in a deep sleep and your body will not repair. Track your training volume and sleep hours. Make sure as you are training more and harder you are allocating time for more sleep.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver top personal trainers, nutrition coaches and bootcamp instructors. Check out his websites at  http://Precisionathletics.ca and  http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com .

Hitting the Road for the long Weekend?

If you are planning on hitting the road on the long weekend have a quick look at this list of 19 worst fast food items. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30038585/?pg=20#TDY_MH_DriveThru

Everyone knows that drive thru food is bad, but would you have thought that a value meal could have:

 Carl’s Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger
with Medium Natural Cut Fries and 32 oz Coke
2,618 calories
144 g fat (51.5 g saturated fat)
2,892 mg sodium

Of all the gut-growing, heart-stopping, life-threatening burgers in the fast food world, there is none whose damage to your general well-being is as catastrophic as this. Consider these heart-stopping comparisons: This meal has the caloric equivalent of 13 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Donuts; the saturated fat equivalent of 52 strips of bacon; and the salt equivalent of seven and a half large orders of McDonald’s French fries!

Wow, now that is a meal. You would have to do over 4 hours of cardio to burn that puppy off.

Have a great long weekend!

Craig Boyd is Vancouver’s leading personal trainer, boot-camp instructor, and nutrition coach. He is available for personal training, nutrition coaching and boot-camps. Check the schedule for his classes here: http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com/Bootcamp-Vancouver-Pricing

Top Five Core Exercises You Are Not Doing

I’ll keep it brief. I hardly see anyone do these exercises in the gym. I do see lots of decline board sit-ups and other ineffective exercises.
#5- Prone Jackknife- Your feel are on a Swiss Ball and you are in a push up position. Draw your knees in toward your chest maintaining a neutral curve in your spine (i.e. do not tuck your butt under). Slowly straighten your legs out. For harder put less legs on the ball (toes only) for easier put more legs (shins on). Aim for 12-15 reps before trying the harder version.
#4 Swiss Ball Plank with knees to elbows. Place your forearms on the ball and align your hips and shoulders, keeping natural curve in your spine. Pull one knee across  your body and try to reach your opposite elbow. Again do not tuck your tailbone under. To make this harder you can raise your feet up higher by placing them on a bench or small step. Aim for 15 reps per side before trying a harder version.
#3 Side Bridge hip raise- Lie on your side and place your elbow under your shoulder. Keep your shoulders, hips, knees and ankles in a straight line(push your butt forward). Raise your body up until you are aligned in a straight line. If this is too much pressure you can bend your knees and do this exercise from a 90 degree knee bend. To make these harder add weight such as a medicine ball or raise your feet. Aim for 15-20 reps before increasing intensity.
#2 BOSU or Swiss Ball Crunch- When done properly this is an extremely effective exercise. To do this properly you should align yourself so that your shoulders are extending back over the ball. You should not feel like you are going to fall on your head (if this is the case move your hips lower on the ball). Extend your shoulders over the ball and draw in the belly button. Keeping the belly button in curl up making you stomach as small as possible. Maintaining the belly button in uncurl over the ball until your shoulders are extended over the ball. To make this harder you can add a weight or use a resistance band fixed to an object. Try for 15 reps before increasing difficulty.
#1 Swiss Ball Roll outs or ab wheel Roll outs- I rarely see people do this exercise and 80-90% of the people who do are doing it wrong. For this exercise to be effective you have to maintain natural spinal curvature. Most people preform this exercise with their tailbone ticked under. You start kneeling with your hips at 90 degree angle and your forearms on the Swiss Ball or hands on the ab wheel. Your arms should make a 90 degree angle at the shoulders. Here is the hard part, extend your hips and arms equally and maintain a neutral spinal curve. Only extend as far as you can holding your belly button in and your spine curved. If you lose either shorten the range of motion so that you can maintain the proper alignment for every rep. To make harder, extend the range of motion when you can do a full range try kneeling on a BOSU or eventually standing (extremelydifficult to do correct). Aim for 12-15 reps with perfect technique before increasing range or difficulty.

If you would like to be shown how to do these exercises with perfect technique book a session with one of our trainers at http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ or http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com . Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, Crossfit and   Boot-Camp instructors.

Tried some new technology runkeeper for I-Phone.

I went for a 11.5 km run today in the snow. The snow seemed to be in my face both ways,  but that is the nature of snow. I downloaded and tried out the free I-phone ap Runkeeper. Basically it uses the GPS on your I-phone to track your run then emailsthe data to their website. You get feedback on speedand distance as you run on your I-phone. Afterward you can go to the site log in and view a report of speed and elevation with a map showing where you were that cross referenceswith the speedand elevation and distance at the bottom. Very cool. I liked the feedback on speed and elevation and when your speed drops you can check the map and see if you were at a light etc. Check out their website at http://www.runkeeper.com and download their software for your I-phone from the apps store.  It works for other sports such as cycling as well.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers and boot-camp instructors. Check out his company websites

http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/ .

5 exercises you are not doing but should……

If you saw my post about what you should not be doing (preacher curls and cable cross overs), you are wondering what should I do to see results. Here you go……

#5 Rings/ TRX- These training tools similar to the rings you see in the Olympic Gymnastics are amazing. The amount of stabilizer recruitment is incredible. The TRX is a scaled down version of the rings (your feet stay on the floor). The number of exercises on this equipment is endless.

#4 Pull ups- The most avoided upper back exercise. I see countless people waste time with lat pull downs and various rowing movements. Why? because pull ups are hard. If you cannot do a pull up, do a jump pull up and lower yourself down slowly, until you can. If you can do pull ups add some weight!

#3 Sprinting- The best cardio ever. The leanest athletes in the Olympics are the sprinters. Do you think they do long slow distance cardio to burn off the fat…..hell no. Sprinting leaves your body with a huge metabolic debt so you burn a ton of calories during and  for many hours after the fact. Why don’t more  people sprint for cardio, because it makes you feel like you are going to puke and people avoid hard work.

#2 Squats- The grandfather of  all strength exercises. Your whole body gets trained and build whole body strength. If you are not squating you are not strength training.

#1 Dead-lift- King of hard work. Why does it rate higher than squat, well it is impossible to cheat. You can do 1/4 or 1/2 squats as most people in the gym do. However, you can have bad form on a dead-lift ( which is not recommended and dangerous) but you cannot cheat. If you dead-lift 400lbs now matter how poor your technique you are damn strong.

 

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers. He is currently questing for a 400lb dead-lift (350 PB)  as well as training for the Ironman Canada. Check out his company websites www.precisionathletics.ca and www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com .

First Race of the Season

The first race of the season is done. A few hearty souls braved the cold and did the UBC triathlon on the weekend. They had a sprint, Olympic and a duathlon (no swimming). It was fun, a bit cold. I did OK a PB by a few seconds3:01:14, although I question the timing it has me down for a 38 minute swim I was out of the water in 30 so that time must be with the two transitions (from the pool to change tent then run 500m and get on the bike). Transition is not a strong point for me…..

http://www.winningtime.ca/09/09ubctri/olyage.txt (I am in the 30-34 category)

16  16/22   M3034   1141 O Craig BOYD                  15   38:30   17 1:27:06   17   55:39 3:01:14.3

I have a long hard road ahead for Ironman…….

 

Craig Boyd is a Personal Trainer and boot-camp instructor in Vancouver, his company websites are http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/

Iron Man?

I have signed up to do Iron Man Canada this August 30th in Penticton, B.C.. For those not familiar it is a 3.8km swim, 180 km bike and 42.4 km run (marathon). I may have bitten off more than I can chew, longest tri before this has been an Olympic distance. However, I love a challenge and aiming high will definitely get me in top shape. Stay tuned for updates on training methods and fuels as I use my body as a lab rat for the next 6+ months.

Vancouver Personal trainer Craig Boyd of

 http://www.precisionathletics.ca/index.html and http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com/ shares fitness and nutrition tips.

Vancouver Personal Trainer Craig Boyd gives you the goods on health and fitness

Worst 5 Exercises:

Here is a list of the worst 5 exercises I rated  them by effectiveness or lack thereof and popularity. The more popular a useless exercise the greater my hate for it!

#5- Decline Bench Press- Lifting slightly more weight by shortening the range of motion is the cheaters way to feel strong. Stick to regular bench press, if you want something from a different angel weighted dips are more effective.

#4- Leg Extensions- You will never in your life be strapped in a chair with 200 +lbs. to be moved with a double leg kick. This exercise canes on your knees and is the opposite of functional. Stick to squats and lunges and their variants for legs.

#3 Leg Adductions-See above this time a seated weighted splits…yikes! Also , not a flattering machine. If you want to “tone your inner thighs” try decreasing your overall BF% with a hard interval cardio program (sprinting) and squats, lunges and sumo dead-lifts.

#2 Preacher Curls- Sorry guys the ultimate pipe exercise is useless. Most guys shorten their range of motion on this one as well leading to arms that cannot straighten. If you absolutely have to do direct arm work (I rarely do I put my effort in to allot of pull-upswhich trains your arms), I would do standing 1 arm straight bar curls. If you have not tried this exercise you are missing out, your arms will be fried as well as your whole body taxed to stay in good posture while you balance the bar.

#1 Cable Crossover- Again a non-functional glamour movement that is often done wrong by using body-weight to get the weight stacks moving. If you want to train your chest do some hard work on the bench and dip bars, then rest come back and try to lift more weight next time. Wasting energy on a fly pattern can wreak havoc on your shoulders and create further in roads to your recovery with no real pay off. Lastly it looks dumb, next time you are in the gym look at the facial expressions on guys doing this exercise, they make an intense face for one of the worst exercises ever.

If these exercises are in your program time to get out of the dark ages of training.

 

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers and bootcamp instructors. Check out his company websites at http://www.precisionathletics.ca/index.html  and  http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com/

Welcome to Craig Boyd’s Fitness and Training Blog!

Thanks for checking out my personal training and fitness blog! Come by regularly for updates on fitness and nutrition. Got a question, just post it and I will do my best to answer it.

Lift Heavy, rest, repeat to infinity………

 

 

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouvers leading personal trainers and group fitness instructors. Check out his websites:

http://www.precisionathletics.ca/index.html

http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com/