Hobart Personal Trainer | Hobart Fat Loss | Hobart Personal Training

At times you can stumble upon ideas and information in an unusual manner.

We all know that boxing workouts are great for your fitness and great for burning fat because of the high intensity and full body nature of the workout. Basically anytime you do a full body, interval based workout, you are going to get fit and lean in a hurry!

Now as you might know, Racheal managed to injure her knee last week and has been unable to do much lower body exercise during that time. But Rach loves her boxing and she was keen to make a comeback even if it meant that she would only be able to really use her arms.

Now when I teach people how to box, I really do emphasize the importance of working from the ground up with each and every punch. You have to be strong from the floor and deliver all of the power from the legs, through the hips and core and then finally deliver the punch with your fist. If you don’t do this you will run into a number of problems.

First of all your arms have small muscles when you compare them to your core and leg muscles. If you let your arms do all of the work they are going to fatigue very quickly. This is a problem because once your arms are gone the whole intensity of your workout is going to suffer and you will struggle to get your heart rate up and then miss out on most of the benefits of boxing!

Secondly, if you aren’t using your legs and core to generate the power behind each punch you will severely limit your output from both your heart rate and therefore your ability to burn calories and boost your metabolism.

So Rach certainly found out the hard way on Thursday that if you don’t use your legs, your arms are going to cop it. But please don’t take this as me saying that if you want to tone your arms and get a great upper body workout to use your legs less. In fact the opposite is true.

By using your lower body more you will be able to go harder for longer and get a better full body workout. This doesn’t mean that your arms are working less it is just that you are working smarter and by the end of the session your whole body (including your arms) will be done!

Box this way and you will get all of the benefits that go with intense boxing workouts. Fitness, fat loss, tight stomach and toned arms.

I love lists!

They make life easy.

It’s sort of like painting by numbers. Someone has done all of the hard work for you and all you have to do is follow along and reap the rewards.

So lets have a look at a list of five foods you should stock your shelves with.

1. Green Tea

Now before we get off on the wrong foot, i am going to say drinks count as a food. The calories definitely count, so I’m adding them to the list. But we want to add good ones, so it’s going to be green tea to kick things off. Antioxidants, increased metabolism and some calorie free fluid in the stomach is reason enough. By the way, when I say green tea, you will be buying bags or leaves not premade, sugar filled, pretend-to-be-healthy drinks.

2. Pistachios

As my daughter calls the, “the ones with the shell.” A couple of good reasons to eat these is that they taste pretty good but you also have to shell them which means you won’t eat as many! They contain plenty of goodness, boosting your immune system and lowering your cholesterol.

3. Cinnamon

Now if you have ever said to me that you don’t like spicy foods, you will know that my reply will have been “you don’t like donuts then….?” Cinnamon is a spice, however is mostly used to sweeten foods. Adding some to your oats in the morning, adding it to a shake or even adding it to some steak will help to control your body’s post meal insulin spike. In simple terms, less energy slumps and less belly fat!

4. Spinach

Spinach goes with anything. Anything! You can have it raw, steamed, or my favourite new trick – blended into your shake. Now before you turn your nose up, let it be known that adding spinach to you shake will have ZERO affect on the taste of your shake. It will make it a bit greener and add a whole lot of nutrients but will not affect the taste at all. Don’t comment on this or share an opinion until you have tried it!

5. Beans

Beans, any variety, pretty much any way. The more organic and less sauce they come with the better, but adding beans to your diet will add a heap of fibre and help to suppress your appetite. They can be added to basically anything (notice how I said basically anything…don’t add them yo your shake and blame me!) salads, eggs, meat, curries, hommus or just by themselves.

A nice little trick when filling your shelves with good foods is to take away an equal amount of bad foods. If you cannot bring yourself to throw the bad foods out, eat it. Eat it all, now. Seriously.

In one of my recent posts I mentioned that if you are short of time and can only do three, half hour, sessions per week that one of these sessions should be an interval sprint session.

Now running doesn’t agree with a lot of people (neither do I for that matter!!) so the sprint session doesn’t just have to be running. What we want to do is get the heart rate and intensity elevated quite high and then have a rest. So you can do this on the track, in the pool, on a bike or if you’re mad : burpees! It doesn’t really matter what the input is as long as the output is high.

These sprint/interval type sessions have been shown in a lot of research that it can be up to NINE TIMES more effective for fat loss over steady state or endurance training.

Put in the extra effort and you will have your body’s metabolism revved up for 24-36 hours after you have left the gym.

Just a quick word of caution though. Don’t go overboard with this type of training. Too much of a good thing can easily make it bad (think red wine). If you overdo these intervals (more than say three times per week) then you run the risk of injury and burning out. Incorporate it with the rest of your training and you’ll be fine.

Here are a few quick samples of how to set up your session. Remember that you need to do a proper warm up prior to going crazy at it.

Session One

2 minute warm up (specific to your task after your general warm up)

30 seconds hard (8-9/10 Perceived Rate of Excursion)  : 90 seconds easy (3-4/10) x 8

3 minute cool down

Session Two

2 minute warm up (specific to your task after your general warm up)

120 seconds hard (7/10)  : 120 seconds easy (4-5/10) x 4

3 minute cool down

Session Three (specific to your task after your general warm up)

2 minute warm up

60 seconds hard (8/10)  : 120 seconds easy (5/10) x 6

3 minute cool down

Try to increase your intensity with each session either by increasing the level or the speed on the hard section of the interval. You will be rewarded with a new level of fitness and a leaner, toned body.

Do you have a favourite sprint or interval session that you do? Let us know about it in the comment section below.

1. Eat breakfast everyday no matter what. If you don’t have time in the morning, make something the night before.

2. Aim to get zero calories from liquids. This means you will be drinking water and green tea most of the time. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different teas, both hot and cold, to find one you like. Avoid any pre-made teas that have added sugar, ideally you will brew your own but if not go for an unsweetened variety.

3. Get some quality protein with every meal. Protein can come from a variety of sources as discussed here, so you might just need to try something different.

4. Eat at least one non starchy vegetable (ideally two or more) with each meal. If you find this too much try to substitute some berries instead. Failing this grab a piece of fruit.

5. Don’t eliminate fats altogether, instead make sure you get a serve or two of good fats with each meal. These will add flavor but in moderation will make your fat loss easier.

6. Take your fish oil. If you aren’t allergic to fish oil then you have no excuse for not taking it. Bang for buck, cost versus effectiveness, there is nothing better for your overall health (and fat loss) than 3-5 grams of fish oil per day.

7. Get a food diary, and write in it!! It blows me away the number of people that have a food diary with nothing in it. Makes no sense at all. So just start writing everything down and then make the improvements from there.

8. Eat something at least every 3 hours. Ideally this would be something that has all of the above covered (vegetables, good protein, good fat) but something will be better than nothing in terms of keeping your metabolism kicking over and reducing the risk of overeating later in the day.

9. Aim for 80% or better compliance with your eating. This means of the 6 or so meals you are eating every day (every 3 hours remember) 4.8, lets call it 5, want to be ticking all the boxes. Thats per day, per week it 34/42. So don’t be getting down on yourself if you miss a meal, or don’t get a meal 100% right, just move on and try to improve next time.

10. Last but definitely not least, only eat food that tastes great. There are so many great tasting foods and recipes that are actually good for you that there is little reason to be eating ‘health’ food that doesn’t taste any good. As an added bonus you are way more likely to actually eat these foods if you like them. Not rocket science exactly but often overlooked.

Don’t forget to read my ‘Eating Made Simple‘ series which goes into a bit more detail about points 3, 4 and 5.