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.

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

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.

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

I recently got a comment on my blog asking if eating organic food is the best way to lose weight.

Is organic food better? Yes it probably is. No so much because of nutrient content although it is superior there as well, but because it has less bad stuff in it. Less pesticides, anti-biotics less pollutants etc.

However eating organic is not going to help you lose weight by itself. You still need to make good choices. As you all know I suggest a paleo type diet of meat, veggies, nuts, a little fruit and lots of water!

If you eat organic bad choices such as… wheat, soy or corn you will still be fat!!

The non-profit “Environmental Working Group” has listed the most and the least important foods to try to find organic. The “Dirty Dozen” are the foods you should try to buy organic, and the “Clean 15″ are those which are ok to buy regular.

There have been, and will continue to be, big misinformation in the field of nutrition research. Good thing much of this research is sponsored by food and drug companies who make millions by getting us to consume things we don’t need…

Latest example is a study I read in the New England Journal Of Medicine.

It is another example of a “population” study, passed off as a directive to do things by over-enthusiastic members of the media.

A population study takes a group of people (in this case, a massive 120,877 people!) and does a big survey on them (in this case, actually well performed, over 20 years). Quoting the study..

“We performed prospective investigations involving three separate cohorts that included 120,877 U.S. women and men who were free of chronic diseases and not obese at baseline, with follow-up periods from 1986 to 2006, 1991 to 2003, and 1986 to 2006. The relationships between changes in lifestyle factors and weight change were evaluated at 4-year intervals, with multivariable adjustments made for age, baseline body-mass index for each period, and all lifestyle factors simultaneously. Cohort-specific and sex-specific results were similar and were pooled with the use of an inverse-variance–weighted meta-analysis.”

I.e. We surveyed them and gathered the results.

There is nothing wrong with this kind of study except that, egged on by the media, we jump to conclusions which may be correct… or not.

In this case the results seem correct enough.

• potato chips
• potatoes
• sugar-sweetened beverages
• red meat
• processed meats

Are the top 5 weight gaining foods. Potatoes were in fact more than 3x worse that the red/processed meat in this case. (3.35lb gain per year, as opposed to 0.95)

• yogurt
• nuts
• fruits
• whole grains
• vegetables

Are the top 5 Weight loss foods, fairly close with yogurt being worth -0.82lb/year and veggies at -0.22lb/year.

And to no surprise, Physical exercise was the top lifestyle choice that helped limit weight gain.

Before we say “thanks for wasting 20 years and millions of dollars on the obvious”, we need to understand that a population study doesn’t do anything for finding causes. It only provides hypothesis for POSSIBLE causes.

Is it possible that people who eat lots of unprocessed red meat gain weight because steaks are mostly eaten with… potatoes and chips? So is it the steak or the potatoes that are the problem?

Is it possible that people who eat more fruits, nuts, and yogurt are, in general, also those more health conscious who also participate in more physical activity and thus, don’t put on weight?

Of course it is. That is why the next step after a study like this, is to isolate the factors one by one.

We need a study with two groups – each with the same population type, where one group eats exactly the same as the control group -  except for, lets say nuts. And we need a separate study with the same conditions for potatoes, and one for fruits, and one for veggies and so on.

This is the only way to prove causation that is scientifically valid. And the chances that it will be done are next to zero due to cost.

So we are left with only half baked studies, and experience. Well, not quite, biochemistry gives us most of the clues we need to get on the right track. And large amounts of potatoes are not part of this track for most people, except for the leanest and most active ones. For most of us, a paleo-style diet with reduced carbohydrate content works best. And in our Singapore gym, each personal training client has their nutrition customized for them for maximum fat burning or muscle building results.

One of the new things I tried (besides a fancy spa) while on honeymoon was an introductory yoga class. Many of our fitness bootcamp and personal training clients ask about yoga or other fitness products and services like yoga or pilates and how they compare with what they do at our fitness gym here in Singapore. Here are my thoughts.

Firstly, any form of exercise is better than sitting your butt on a couch watching 20 DVD sets of emo korean dramas. And I certainly don’t have a problem with yoga as a form of physical activity. I’m not a fan of the spiritualistic element of it but after all, it is stretching. And most people need more stretching.

One of the benefits of yoga (and in my opinion, a big part of its success) is that it is done in a relaxing environment – which people need in today’s hectic world. In addition, if its hot yoga, it encourages sweatting which is a basic form of detoxification for our body.

Also, the stretches in yoga, are actually good for you. They encourage a lot of more upright posture, with more retraction of your shoulders (as opposed to the slouching, shoulders forward position most people are in all day). There are also quite a few stretches for commonly tight muscles like your hip flexors, and quadratus lumborum. And there are poses that work on the fascia of the lower back which also help with some kinds of back pain.

However all is not rosy, I do have some issues…

1. Individualization – not every stretch is good for every one. In our personal training programs we customize each person’s stretching routine. If a person is already flexible enough in a certain joint, more flexibility is a waste of time, and even more seriously, a possible cause of injury from overly loose joints. Group classes of 30-40 people, done with maximum profit in mind, cannot address the different needs of each person. Every sport or activity has a flexibility requirement and doing more flexibility work does nothing more for the person. He or she should spend their time training other areas of need.

2. The claims that some of these method’s (yoga, pilates etc) practitioners make. They claim their specific art form makes you stronger, faster, leaner, more toned, etc. This is untrue. Each physical attribute requires different training methods, holding pose for 30 seconds is not going to make much difference to your speed, and it’t not going to help you burn much fat. It will only improve your ability to hold that pose!

3. Progression is a problem. There are some people who fall in love with yoga after the first session. I can understand why. It’s relaxing, its in a nice environment, it makes you feel like you are really exercising. But look out, in 4 weeks, you won’t progress much anymore. There is no way to improve performance incrementally. There is no “pose A” and then one week later, “pose A + 10% difficulty”. For basic body weight movements, you will hit the stagnation wall quite soon.

4. It’s not the most elegant solution. There are more science based, quicker and more effective methods to improve flexibility. Check out the work by Chris and Ann Fredricks to see what I mean. Their stretching system is almost magical. And we use their principles in our stretching routines at the Genesis Performance Center.

So, in conclusion, add some stretching system to your training. But make sure you stretch only what you need to stretch, only as much as you need to, and understand that if you want to make big changes in other physical attributes like strength, fat burning and weight loss, a group stretching class is not going to get the job done.

Here is a program of a guy on the internet who asked for advice. It is impossible to design a complete personal training program without meeting a person but when things are really messy, even basic fixes will give better muscle building results.

3 times a week, 1 day rest in between.

Workout A: Legs/chest/biceps

• Squats 3×5
• Bench press 3×8
• Cable flyes 3×12
• Barbell curls 3×10
• Incline bench dumbbell curl 3×12

Workout B: Back/shoulders/triceps

• Deadlifts 3×5
• Weighted pullups 3×5
• Overhead press 3×5
• Lateral raise 3×10
• Weighted dips 3×10

Before we begin, you should know that fixing other peoples training programs is 1000X harder than designing good ones for them.

But I will try to give some tips…

• You routine is too imprecise.
• What tempo? If you lower in 2 seconds, and 5 seconds its totally different (ask the people who went to the one day arm cure!) If you raise as fast as possible, or raise in 2-3 sec also totally different.
• What rest?
• What grips do you use for your chinups and other exercises, wide? narrow? neutral?
• What angle bench?
• This is not being “overly particular” Just try squats with and without heel elevation and you will know.
• Record everything – weight, rest tempo etc
• Use supersets e.g. Squats, then bench press, then squats again etc.

Do this: (NOTE: TUT = time under tension = how long the set lasts)

• At the beginner level, you should alternate between 3-4 weeks of 30 sec tut per set (about 6 reps…) with 120s rest, and 3-4 weeks of 60s tut with 75-90s rest… (about 12 reps).
• “Oh why the high reps?”
  • Well, the lower reps recruit new muscle fibers, the high reps make them bigger.
• You are doing too many rep ranges in one workout, some sets 5, some 8, some 10, some 12…..this is random programming. And you get random training effects.
  • Reps (and thus TUT) determine the training effect, if u do so many different ranges, your body is confused and adapts slower. (only some specific cases use so many rep ranges in one workout but that is for other reasons and too much to cover here)
• Every 3rd or 4th workout, halve the sets to deload
• If you cant recover and get better than last workout, stop the exercise and move on to the next exercise, don’t do rubbish sets of lower weight to “have a good workout” all you are doing is taxing your recovery further
• You can keep the exercises you mentioned, there is nothing better than squats, dips, chins etc but modify as I said above. It will make your program much more effective and much less random
• Too many people stray from the fundamentals of reps, tut and rest and end up with nonsensical programs. But once he fundamentals are in place, results go up!

Besides the skill of helping people lose weight or build muscle, one of the key components to a good personal trainer or fitness bootcamp instructor in Singapore is a deep care for their clients results.

Caring for our bootcamp and personal training clients is what causes this Holiday season to be somewhat “stressful” for the team at Genesis. We don’t want them starting again from square 1 in terms of results, when the new year gets going.

Nobody wakes up 15kg heavier and fatter than they were yesterday…

This is the far more likely progression…

In Singapore, for most Singapore residents, our “festive” season lasts from December, with Christmas, and New Year parties, all the way to somewhere in Feb the next year with the Chinese New Year Celebrations. There are also many holidays and vacations within this period.

It is very easy to gain 2-3kg during a few months of festivities like these. The problem is that, with the stressful, mal-nourished, overfed and inactive lives most Singaporeans live the rest of the year, the 2-3kg never go away.

Uh-Oh.

5 years later, and 2-3kg per year heavier, we wake up and oops, there are those extra 15kg.

Here are some tips to reduce holiday damage.

1. Overtrain – I do this myself before going overseas for travel. I recently went to China to visit friends and family. Before that I did some brutal, heavy training. Go ahead, get weaker, get sore, because you will have many days of no training to recover from it.

And the day after I got back… I set a personal record in the overhead press from all the resting and eating. Did I get a little fatter? Yes, but with a week of clean eating, that extra fat should easily be gone.

2. Make it festive days not festive weeks

Parties go on forever because of gifts and take-away of extra (usually unhealthy) foods. If you have a party, keep the cakes and cookies to that one meal!

3. Take some supplements that help control blood sugar.

There are many supplements that help regulate blood sugar. Control the blood sugar, prevent the fat storage.

These include plant items like fenugreek and bitter melon, as well as nutrients like magnesium, vitamin D3, and fish oils. They are all well researched, however not all of them work for every person. Nutrition is very customizable. And if you don’t want to waste time and money “guessing” what works for you, that is where our customized nutrition and supplement coaching can help you.

Over the past 3 days I was in Perth, Australia for a muscle testing course taught by Bob Guiel (see more about him on that link). Muscle testing uses the body’s feedback to help determine the best choice and amount of supplements for each personal training client.

It can do alot more than that, but this course is tailored to coaches and personal trainers so it focuses on using muscle testing for helping clients get the right supplements in the right amounts. A personal training client may pay extra for a muscle testing consultation, but they will save money in the long run because they will not need to buy unnecessary supplements.

For example, if you have excess stress that leads to extra fat on your tummy (i.e. fat tummy, and less fat in other places), there is a large variety of herbs, supplements and nutrients that can help your body manage stress better.

These are well researched and you can get them at our Singapore gym. But that doesn’t mean that they are all the right one for you. In fact some may do nothing, and some may even have negative effects on you.

Why? How can this be? Didn’t you say they were “well researched”.

The thing is, that your bio-chemistry is special. There is only one of you. In research, if a good proportion of the participants gets a good benefit, the product “passes” but the size of the benefit differs between subjects of the research, and a minority may get no benefit at all!

Using muscle testing, I would test such a “stressed” client with some stress busting nutrients and herbs and find which ones gave him the BEST benefit. I would eliminate those that did him harm or had no benefit. And I would test to see if there were any underlying causes such as digestive issues or toxicity that would need to be addressed first. This precision saves clients money and time.

We can also find the right amount (e.g. 4 capsules, 3 times per day) that he needs further saving time and money while getting the best possible result.

While selling large, random amounts of supplements may seem like a “good business” – it seems to work for many companies! – I am far more interested in getting clients the best result. That helps our gym to build a business, instead of simply making a sale.

This service will be added to the health and nutrition consultations.

On a personal note, I took a private consultation with Bob and he found that I was having heavy metal toxicity (not surprising since all major cities like Singapore can’t possibly be that clean no matter how hard we try). I’m starting a heavy metal detox program tomorrow! Will keep updates on how its going.