Five Tips for 2010 Fitness Success!

1) After a holiday season of too much beer, food, chocolate, beer, late nights, junk and beer (!) a great start is to systematically just completely eliminate all the junk from your diet. There are an entire category of diets and plans out there but my favorite is from Dax Moy – and is entitled simply the “Elimination Diet”.

This involves eliminating caffeine, alcohol, wheat, red meat, sugar, artificial sweeteners and dairy amongst others. It’s tough but you’ll feel great at the end. Couple of bonuses – you’ll probably lose 4 or 5lbs during the first week, and more importantly it’s completely free here!

You can even pick up a useful Elimination diet cookbook, which will make it a lot easier here.

2) If fat loss is your goal — Make a real commitment to lose the unwanted pounds. Write it down and make it specific. Saying that you want to lose weight is not enough. Saying how much and how you are going to do it by when is far more powerful. And WRITE IT DOWN.

For example:
I am going to lose 12lbs of fat by March 1st 2009
I will do this by exercising six days per week for a minimum of 30 mins
This will include metabolism boosting resistance training three times per week for a minimum of 45 mins.
I will meet with a trainer at least once a week for my resistance training sessions.
I will follow the Warp Speed Fat Loss Program for the next 28 days and maximize my results by February 5th.
I will then continue on a three times per week program including 30 mins of resistance training and 30 mins of cardio for the next 6 weeks.
I will cut 500 calories from my diet and track this using fitday.com

3) Maximize your cardio training by using a heart rate monitor. You wouldn’t lift weights for a completely random number of sets and reps with an arbitrarily chosen weight – but many people follow up their resistance training with a cardio program that involves just riding the bike or running on the treadmill. Get specific with a good heart rate monitor and work at a given heart rate intensity. A good rule is to use the Karvonen formula (220-age-resting heart rate= HRR – heart rate reserve). Work at 85% of your max (0.85 x HRR + resting heart rate) for 60s and then recover until your heart rate is below 60% of your max (0.6 x HRR + resting heart rate). Repeat that for 4-6 rounds.

4) Work on the quality of your muscle tissue. A regular stretching session from a trainer or sports therapist is a great investment. Failing that making a commitment to stretching regularly on your own is never a bad idea. Ideally though – a regular massage will do wonders for the health of your musculoskeletal system – but if that’s not economically viable – then pick up a foam roller.

5) Hire a coach. Outside expertise allows you to focus on your job and commitments and literally just “show up” and let them take care of it for you. Studies have shown that people exercising when a trainer only supervises (no instruction or coaching) work up to 30% harder than they do on their own. 30% more work translates to significantly faster results – imagine what you could do if that trainer actually pushed you through to harder workouts and designed a program that would work better?

If you can’t afford a coach three days per week, then hire the best coach in your area once per month and use him or her as a consultant to design your monthly workout and provide third party accountability.

One last tip — plan the whole year in advance. Writing down your goals and your plans to achieve them can greatly help.

Make 2010 a great year!

–
AC
PS- Welcome to the new website!!!
PPS – and don’t forget to “friend me on facebook”
Alwyn Cosgrove