Recent Gym Activity

Well its about 3 weeks till i go in for my Shoulder Reconstruction...so the knowledge that I will be out of action for up to 3 months has spurred a big motivation spike in relation to hitting the gym!


Now its been just over two years since I started working out with Jackson and in that time I have seen some pretty amazing progress! But lately I have been really focussing on the healthy eating side of things. Its one thing to hit the gym, its another thing to eat properly. A lot of people go to the gym regularly, but dont see much in the way of improvements. There is an abundance of blogs out there that talk about this in details so i wont go into that in too much detail.

But in relation to my own progress, at the beginning of this year i had a Body Fat % Test. I was happy with my result then, I was just over 13% body fat. Referring to references on the web, the recommendations are as follows:

Description	Women	Men
Essential fat	10–12%	2–4%
Athletes	14–20%	6–13%
Fitness	21–24%	14–17%
Acceptable	25–31%	18–26%
Overweight	32-41%	27-37%
Obese	42%+	38%+

Now Im quite partial to sweet foods, so i was happy to be positioned in the Athletes range...but Jackson felt i could get down to 10% or less...so I embarked on the journey of healthy eating and better gym workouts. After 6 months...I did the test again...and i was pleasantly surprised to see my fat percentage is down to 9%!! Jackson was amazed...I guess all the hard work does pay off.

So I just wanted to share a few of my more valuable tips:

1. Cut out the sugar!! If you want anything that resembles a "six pack" at all... you need to cut down the sugar foods as much as humanly possible. The "six pack" will be worth it!
   
2. Dont go to the gym without a plan!! This was something i did a lot in the past and it makes the workout almost useless. And to take it to the next step...you should have your whole weeks worth of workouts planned ahead. This will ensure you cover all areas of the body appropriately and have enough rest.
   
3. Dont waste your time with boring Cardio! This will sound ridiculous at first...even for me it sounded strange. But doing slow boring cardio has very little benefits. A much better thing to do it HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Just spend 10 minutes googling HIIT and you will find a wealth of knowledge. It wont be easy...but it will well be worth the pain. I will probably talk about this more in the future as I think the benefits of HIIT are amazing!!
4. Understand what you are doing. Its one thing to know you "should do Back Squats/Deadlift/Chinups" etc....but you should also know "why" and "what muscles" you are working. It sounds really simple...but its something that i didnt really pay attention to at first. When you truly understand what you are doing, then you will be able to work to your full potential

Well these are just a few of my tips...I will definitely spend more time talking about Gym in the future.