Fitness Advice
Here at The Bankside Health Club we know our members are often away on business or simply too busy toget along to the Club. To that end if you have any questions relating to your Health or Fitness needs, pleaseuse this page. All responses will be answered by one of our Personal Training team.
To ask a trainer a question please CLICK HERE.
Fitness Advice Archive
CLICK on the links below, to access a wide range of fitness advice, which will surely help both you and your fitness routines.
Tip Of The Month
A pot belly...love handles...the spare tyre...call it what you will. It seems to be the area of your body that you’d really like to do something about!
Researchers have found that losing abdominal fat is one of the most important steps you can take to stay healthy for life. The key is where the fat is distributed. People with apple-shaped bodies (fattest in the abdomen) have a greater risk of heart disease and diabetes than those with pear shapes (fattest in the hips, buttocks and thighs).
There are two main types of fat in the stomach area. Visceral fat is stored deep inside your body. It surrounds and protects your internal organs. Subcutaneous fat, on the other hand, is stored just under your skin.
It’s not all about doing abdominal crunches, it’s about a combination of resistance and cardiovascular training to increase your metabolism helping you burn more calories and fat. It’s not just about exercise either, it’s about what you eat. Sugar is more readily taken up into fat in your stomach than the rest of your body so a high sugar diet encourages fat to build up around the stomach. Alcohol and sweet foods should be avoided.
As you get older, do you lose muscle and gain fat, no matter what you do?
Fortunately the answer to this is no. The metabolism does slow down as you get older therefore keeping a mindful eye on your diet is a good idea.
However, in addition to managing your diet, keeping your muscles active is hugely beneficial. Muscular growth, repair or sustainability all feed off the three energy or nutrient sources we have in order for regeneration to occur and to a large extent this is fat. Therefore, it stands to reason that should you want to cut down your fat percentage and keep or maintain both healthy looking and able muscles you will need to exercise them to some degree. Your Metabolism monitors the speed with which you burn energy and the more you exercise the faster your metabolism will become.
A good idea would be to work on a "3 day a week routine", ideally spending 1 day doing cardio work and the other two days starting with cardio for 10% to 20% of your workout followed by a resistance weight routine that will target specific muscles groups. Try to work on a basis of 10 to 12 repetitions with 3 sets of each.
If designing a workout that gets you the results you want is a little daunting speak to Holly Crouch our Fitness Manager. Click here and email any questions you have though to her or ask her for a time that she can see you.
Does exercising with weights make women bulky?
Plenty of women workout with weights all the time and don’t put on any bulk. In fact they even go so far as reducing fat content and gaining tone, just without the size or muscle mass. Largely, there are two reasons for this. Our muscular structure is controlled by a complex and carefully balanced hormone or chemical make up. The hormone responsible for increasing growth (bulk) is testosterone. While testosterone is present it is not in large enough quantities to make any major increase in size. If Increase in size is required certain forms of dietary supplementations would be a direct route to take. Men on the other hand, have much higher levels of Testosterone and therefore will naturally build bulk when working on a resistance training programme.
Woman who do use weights in their training programmes will classically use light weights and do high repetitions where fatigue after 3 sets is the target. This is known as endurance training and trains the specific muscle or muscle groups being worked but keeping at a fairly low heart rate over a longer period of time which concentrates on fat as the energy source therefore reducing fat content and increasing toned muscle visibility.