So here I am during my new year holiday with my brother in law’s son (age 5 months).

Its awesome that there is no happy response to sweets and ice cream! Next time I see him I will try to make him smile with “vegetables” – possible a harder task! haha

As we tell all our personal training and fitness boot camp clients at Genesis Gym Singapore. The idea that only weight and height are important for indicating your level of health is (thankfully) regarded as old fashioned and incomplete now.

Your level of body fat is a far better indicator of overall health, and risk of chronic lifestyle diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular conditions and some forms of cancer. Most notably:

• Esophagus
• Pancreas
• Colon and rectum
• Breast (after menopause)
• Endometrium (lining of the uterus)
• Kidney
• Thyroid
• Gallbladder

And possibly more.

But to track the progress of your training and nutrition program, you need a way to accurately track your body fat.

If it goes down, you are on the right track, and if it does not, or goes up, you need to make some modifications

But not all fat measurement methods are created equal. Here are some common, and not so common ones. From the pros and cons, you will be able to choose a method that suits you best.

BMI – Body mass index

• Pros: Very simple to do and great for big studies with hundreds of people because it can be calculated fast.
• Cons: Incomplete picture. Not so useful to each individual because it assumes quite a fat, and weak person as the norm. For example, even a moderately sized person who weighs 73kg at 170cm height would be overweight. Any male who exercises regularly can achieve that size. And some people are genetically thicker and bigger. BMI does not account for this either.

Circumference Measurements

• Pros: Quite easy to do as long as you get the points right.
• Cons: Does not take bone structure into account, and can vary from time to time. E.g. if you just had a meal, your waist would go up even though your fat level did not.

Fat Measurement Scales & Hand Held Devices

• Pros: Simple to use – hold the handles, press start.
• Cons: Wild fluctuations in measurements. This is because these use electrical methods which rely on your body’s current hydration status in specific areas of the body. This can change if you drink, eat, sit, stand, are in different parts of a menstrual cycle, sweat, etc. Accuracy tends to be plus or minus 7%. That is too much variance to know if you are truly progressing or not. For example if a person was 14%, he may measure at 7% (professional athlete) or 21% (fat!).

Caliper Measurements

• Pros: Very accurate if done right by a good practitioner, with good equipment. For lean people can be almost as accurate as a Dexa scan.
• Cons: Needs lots of constant practice to do properly. It is like playing a musical instrument. Literally thousands of measures before it becomes “2nd nature” and consistently correct.

Hydrostatic Weighing

• Pros: Accurate, and good for general population
• Cons: May not be as accurate for other populations e.g. athletes and elderly. This is because they have different bone and muscle densities that are not taken into account by the standard formulas

DEXA scan

• Pros: Super accurate, can give readings of not only total amount but also where the fat is distributed. E.g. fat around organs is more damaging to health.
• Cons: It is an x-ray so repeated radiation exposure may not be a good idea.

The most practical method if you were alone would probably be circumference measurements. But because that is not as accurate, it may be worth it to get professionally measured once in a while by either:

• A skilled practitioner with calipers.
• Or a DEXA scan.

There are some medical clinics which have DEXA scans for about $200 per scan.

If you choose the calipers route, here are some ways to tell if the person knows what they are doing, which will help you get an accurate result.

• They use good calipers (as seen above). The cheap white plastic ones are not accurate enough for professional use. A good caliper can cost more than 600 Singapore dollars. But good calipers such as Harpenden are accurate to 0.2mm and can even help a skilled practitioner see if you are retaining water.
• They measure fat often, every day if possible.
• They use at least a 7 site formula. A 12 site Bio-Signature formula is even better and more useful for problem spot reduction.
• They pinch your fat HARD and get ALL of it using a wide grip (not 2 fingers). The common mistake I see many practitioners make is they are afraid to cause discomfort to the client/patient. Sorry, if you are overly fat, it may be uncomfortable for a few seconds when your fat is being pinched. But you want an accurate result right?
• They try to measure at the same time of the day
• They don’t measure you after long flights
• They can tell you what to do to improve your results once you get them

There you have it! A short article about all the ways fat can be measured. Even if you choose a less than perfect measure, as long as you try to be as consistent with all the variables, it can still give you a somewhat meaningful result.

There is a saying that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” and measuring body fat is certainly going to help you manage it with a lifestyle, nutrition and exercise program.

Coach Jonathan Wong is the owner of Genesis Gym Singapore which aims to provide the best personal training and fitness services in Singapore.

Bak Kwa, yummy but no, not a great idea for a meat replacement

As many of you know, most of our personal training and Singapore fitness boot camp clients at Genesis Gym are usually asked to increase their protein intake with healthy meat sources.

Meat has a good amino acid profile, and it also digests slowly. Improving blood sugar management, and feelings of fullness (so you don’t eat so much bad food).

Since Chinese New Year is coming, one of the common chats in our Singapore gym, goes like this:

Client: “Hey coach, you say we should eat meat right?”

Genesis Coach: “Yes”

Client: “So Bak Kwa is good right? CNY is coming and I love bak kwa!”

Genesis Coach: “Did a caveman have Bak Kwa?”

Client: “No”

Genesis Coach: “So there you have your answer”

Now for the more in depth explanation.

This comes from one of our coaches Chris, who actually wrote this nice article on the Genesis Gym coaches blog last week.

One of his relatives owns a business specializing in selling bak kwa.

The key thing to take note of, is the ratio of meat (which is minced and you can’t be sure of its quality), to sugar.

It’s roughly 2:1 ratio. That means that for each kg of meat, there is half a kilo of sugar.

This makes bak kwa pretty much meat flavored sugar!

I love bak kwa too but turns out its not a great CNY food…

However, a more reasonable recipe is to put a small pieces of bak kwa on your egg omelet. This reduces the total amount of bak kwa and makes a very tasty omelet dish.

Faith only gets strong when tested

Faith is like a muscle, it needs to be put under stress before it can be strong!

As the team at Genesis Gym help more clients, we get approached more to promote other people’s products because we have a (hopefully!) loyal client base who will buy stuff from us.

There are two conditions under which I will gladly promote a product to my personal training and fitness boot camp clients. So those of you who want me do to so, read this first.

1. It must solve a problem with the best possible solution available in the world today
2. It must be a good deal for Genesis clients.

If I promoted every product that came along (on average I get approached about 2-3 times per month by different suppliers) we could probably make a few thousand extra dollars each month.

But would this “easy” be worth it? I don’t believe so.

Most of these products are health based but they do not meet the requirements I have listed above.

This is important to me because this is being faithful to what Genesis Gym is.

Genesis Gym is a place where only the best methods and products in the world are allowed to be used.

Try to ask me to promote a Multi Level Marketing product – Flat “No” from me.

Some MLM’s have decent products, but they are overpriced and are a BAD deal for our clients. Simply because of the commission structure where the end user pays a large percentage of the product price into the many levels of commissions to sales people. (Yes MLM people are sales people, not business people so don’t be fooled when they offer your a business opprtunity).

Try to ask me to promote a non-world class product – Flat “No” again!

I have been asked to promote supplement brands, fitness bands (and other bits of fitness equipment) as well as some herbal health stuff.

Again, some of it may be good, but its not the best that you can get, and so you won’t find it in our products for sale corner.

Why so serious?

In the history of Genesis Gym, I have made mistakes in purchasing equipment and services before. These “less than best” products have ALWAYS had to be replaced eventually. These mistakes have cost us thousands of dollars in wasted money.

My learning point is to always get the best stuff. You will never feel like replacing or upgrading it.

What I think about constantly is: “If I had 100 times the money, could I get something better?”

And I want to have “No” as the answer.

This is also the way I hope our personal training and fitness bootcamp clients think of Genesis Gym.

In Singapore, even if they had 100 times the money, could they get coaching or information that is better? Equipment that is better? A training environment that is better?

My team and I work all the time to make sure that answer is “NO”.

After all, clients are trusting us with their bodies and their health that is also a kind of faith!

They should be provided with the best available care that can possibly be offered.

Difficult to do - Yes, Useful - probably No (unless balancing on a board while lifting is your sport!)

The British poet Alexander Pope is credited with coining the phase:

“a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.

It was true when he said it in the 1700s, and its true today, and certainly true in the fitness and health industry.

There is a school of thought that we should always use exercises that are as close to real life activity as possible. In addition, these exercises should be made as challenging as possible by doing them on one leg, or even better still, on a wobble board or bosu ball (it’s like half a swiss ball with a flat, but unstable surface).

Many personal trainers in singapore and elsewhere, call this “functional training”.

I call this “nonsense”.

Some examples…

• Doing squats on an unstable surface or vibration plate (or pretty much anything on a vibration / power plate)
• Connecting a golf club or tennis racquet to a cable machine to “try” to improve your sports technique
• Combining two good (or more!) exercises to make one bad one. E.g. split squats while doing alternate arm shoulder presses, or lunges while doing biceps curls with a barbell connected to resistance bands

While my stand is rather harsh, I will explain.

The true meaning of “functional training” is none of the above.

What it means to a client is: “training that will help me achieve my goal”

Story time!

I have actually had a client decide NOT to join Genesis Gym because he thought it was not functional enough.

While my team and I don’t hard sell any of our training programs, and he was free to find another place to train, I was sad for him because this was the “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” phase in action.

Like many of our members he was looking for a place to help him burn excess body fat, and he had seen some (misguided) books and online videos about functional training.

One of the training programs we use in a fat burning phase is the 100 rep method where you do only a few types of exercises, but perform 100 reps with a heavy weight, in as few sets, in as little time as possible. When you push yourself, this is an excellent fat burning workout and has proven effective with dozens of clients so far.

We also do these exercises with slow tempos for maximum fat burning effects at a hormonal level.

When he came for his fat burning fitness bootcamp trial class, he found this program, in his opinion “not functional” (who moves that slowly in real life!, we need a bigger variety of exercises to make things more random and unpredictable, like real life!).

However, for this group class, the main goal is fat burning, and for that purpose, the program, and the exercises are functional.

More examples:

Leg presses for athletes?

Not functional for a person who wants to jump higher, but very functional at the end of a workout for a person who wants to put on size on their legs.

Biceps curls? I thought only chinups are functional?

True, chinups do give you more benefits for your training time, but… if your biceps are too weak to allow you to do heavy chinups properly, then biceps curls are extremely functional for you. Also, your sport may require strong biceps e.g. a rugby player holding on to the ball when an opponent is trying to strip it away, for this person, biceps curls are functional as well.

So what are the benefits of those weirdo exercises that I mentioned earlier?

• Doing squats on an unstable surface or vibration plate – possible rehab uses, and good for learning to squat or play sports during an earthquake, but not functional to becoming stronger or leaner.
• Connecting a golf club or tennis racquet to a cable machine to “try” to improve your sports technique – great for looking goofy! but not functional to hitting the ball further/harder, that would require specialized strength training in the muscles that accelerate and decelerate your arms.
• Combining two good (or more!) exercises to make one bad one. E.g. split squats while doing alternate arm shoulder presses, or lunges while doing biceps curls with a barbell connected to resistance bands – In general a waste of your time, because doing one of those exercises at a time, will allow you to use a much heavier weight which will give you a better result.

Function is all about your goal. Not what your perception of exercise is.

We are here to help clients, and functional training is certainly the way to help them. It just may not look like the crazy videos you see on youtube! (thanks to one of the best coaches and stretch therapists in Australia, Keith Bearne for the link below!)

The Hyatt in Belevue, where the conference will be held

As you all probably know already, at Genesis Gym, my team and I don’t simply start by asking a personal training or boot camp fitness client to start exercising more, and eating less.

For some, this is a valid way to get healthier, however some people have under lying health conditions which can cause them problems in their weight loss or health improvement goals.

One of these problems that need to be tackled, is inflammation.

Many people have had minor injuries in their past and to them inflammation is what an ankle looks like when it gets a sprain. However there is more to it than that.

Inflammation can occur in your joints, digestive tract and even your arteries. There are many excellent, well researched and very safe (way safer than surgery and drugs) methods that can help a person with inflammation and I am going to Bellevue, near Seattle in the USA to learn more about these methods in Feb 2012.

It is going to be an excellent conference with the key speaker being Mark Schauss, whose book I highly recommend. (I have reviewed it before on my blog here)

There will also be other experts in the field of functional medicine and they will also be sharing their knowledge and experiences.

As a coach who is very focused on health, it is always great to know the latest information from people who are constantly learning and practicing in the healing arts. I always look forward to using new information to help current and future clients even more!

Here is a complete list of the speakers.

• Mark Schauss, MBA, DB
  Environmental Health Issues in Chronic Disease and Inflammation
  Reversing Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer’s and Senile Dementia
  Using Laboratory Testing in the Treatment & Prevention of Chronic Disease and Inflammation
• Andrew Cutler, PhD
  Mercury in Chronic and Inflammatory Disease
• Michael Levitz, PhD
  Family History versus Genetics Testing for Predicting the Development of Chronic Disease
• Sunil Pai, MD
  Utilizing Diet and Natural Anti-Inflammatories to Prevent and Treat Chronic Diseases
• Ann McCombs, DO
  Chronic Disease and Inflammation: A Homotoxicology Model
• Elizabeth Sheehan, DC
  Lyme’s Disease in Clinical Practice
• Joseph Quashnock, PhD
  Current Clinical Laboratory Tests for Inflammation
• John Young, MD
  Resetting the Pancreas in Type II Diabetes

In Oslo with Mark Scappitici one of the best therapists in the world, and inventor of the FAT tool

In Oslo with Peter Lundgren, accupunturist who does near magic with needles!

A month ago, I went to Oslo, Norway to learn dry needling from some of the top experts in the world. I have been practicing as often as I can. So far the results have been very good, especially considering how long it takes. Each needle is in for only about 2-3 minutes. And better still, the needles are tiny and almost pain free.

I have seen very quick results with pain reduction, and speed of healing. And combined with other treatment tools, it is a great way of helping get better results with all kinds of injuries and pain issues.

Dry Needling has been getting great results with clients and I will be using it more and more.

In the last 3 days alone, we have treated – Triceps scar tissue and trigger points, back facet joint pain, calf muscle dysfunction, increased range of motion after an ACL reconstruction, and Knee pain from popliteal tendinitis.

It makes a great combination with FAT tool, trigenics and soft tissue work!

Some needle positions to heal with knee and calf issues.

This is important because most people join the personal training or fitness bootcamp programs because they want to train hard for maximum results, but sometimes a past injury or a chronic pain problem gets in the way. Here is where treatment becomes a critical part of their success.

Imagine you had only 5 hours per week at your job or office. “Yay, happy days!” would be the cheer from most people.

But think about it…

• That means that all your work would have to be done super efficiently.
• All meetings would be 15 mins and super focused.
• There would be no facebooking or tweeting or random internet surfing at work.
• Complete dedication would be needed to get the job done in 1 hour per day.

This is the same amount of time as most dedicated people spend exercising per week including stretching and warming up. After all, even the most committed personal training or fitness bootcamp clients come about 4-5 times per week maximum.

Yet, they fool around with this precious time.

Ok, fine, if you are doing heavy squats, you can rest a little longer!

Here are some signs of fooling around.

• Doing lots of cardio – the benefit per minute are miniscule compared to a proper strength training program.
• Resting longer than prescribed between sets – If you are doing heavy squats, sure, rest longer. But most people want to burn fat, and incomplete rest is critical to the fat burning effort. Lower the amount of weights if you need to but STICK TO THE REST TIME.
• Chatting or making phone calls/text messages – seriously? If you have lots of breath to talk, your workout is probably too easy and too ineffective.
• Doing only exercises you like – the ones you don’t like are probably better for you because you are bad at them, and they will give you more benefits.

So, when you are training, you are at “work” on your body and health. So keep it focused and effective, and you will have more time for the rest of life too.

Here is what I bought for my family this Christmas. Staub brand cast iron pans. They have super good coatings, no chemicals on the pan, and a lifetime warranty. They are also SOLID iron and will improve my grip strength ( and my wife’s too!) I may just put a fat grip on it to increase the training effect.

There is a pan, and a grill, I also got the optional presser at the back to make great steaks!

I will use them for a few weeks and report if they are worth it. Not horribly expensive for a life long, safe, high quality cooking tool. Always pay for quality because its cheap in the long run.

I may even place a mass order for our personal training and fitness bootcamp clients.

Part of life is to always keep moving forward. And in the fitness business like ours, that means meeting the needs of people better. This year, we did not have the manpower to open as many group classes as we would have liked.

This is because I don’t just hire people to fit more customers into our programs. I try my best to make sure that anybody who joins the Genesis team has the technical skill, and the character that we want in a coach.

After all, fitness services require a relationship built on trust between client and coach.

However I am happy to say that the Genesis coaching team has 2 new members. Allison and Melvyn. This allows us to open new group training programs starting in 2012.

These are the new programs.

1. Lunch Time Lean Body Fitness Bootcamp

2. Ladies Only Bootcamp in the afternoon

3. Mass Building bootcamp, in the early evening

Below is the full timetable for 2012 group training programs. While we reserve the right to make changes, we will try to stick to the plan and make it a great experience for our clients.

Genesis Gym Signapore - Group Training Schedule