Besides working with our personal training and fitness bootcamp clients, I often work with people who need help with injury rehab / injury prevention. Today I just had a consultation with a competitive floorball and soccer player complaining of “unexplained” back pain. This is quite a common type of back pain that seems to come and go. It isn’t the kind caused by a bulging disk that you can get from lifting a weight improperly, or from twisting yourself into an un-natural position.

When visiting most back health people, they would focus on – no surprise – the back. Adjustments, massage, or even acupuncture, usually focus on the site of the injury.

However, because this client is extremely active in many sports this means a few things…

• He has to train alot to get good
• To get good at a particular skill e.g. kicking a soccer ball, you need to do thousands of repetitions of that skill
• All sports have “overuse” patterns – the movement most done in that sport
• All overuse patterns lead to some parts being tight/short and some parts being long
• The uneven length and tightness of the various muscles leads to them pulling on the connective tissue (called fascia) unevenly, twisting the body gradually over time, leading to poor function and likely, pain.

I experienced this myself because I played six years of competitive softball, and I must have swung the bat thousands of times in one direction and nearly zero times in the other. I also used one hand to throw with that same direction of twisting. That is why one side of my body is tighter than the other and it has taken alot of massage and stretching to get things back to somewhere near normal.

So… for this client, we assessed his range of motion all over his body and found out where he was out of balance. We used acupressure and stretching techniques to help balance him out, and within 10 mins, he was pain free. I also taught him how to do these stretches at home to keep his new found range of motion.

These methods are by no means “magical” although the fast results may appear to be! But I do know that there are many people who can benefit from a personalized stretching program. That is why I have managed to get my Australian colleague and stretching expert Keith to come to Singapore to give a stretching seminar. 3 hours of pure usable knowledge that will help you customize a stretching program to keep you pain free and flexible forever!

Check it out here, its a once in a lifetime opportunity:)

BTW thats Keith in action in the picture.

Recently I was asked a lot about the range of motion that we should have in training. “why do we use exercise A rather than B?” etc. Here is what both clients and personal trainers need to know about range of motion.

You need to know that there are three different ranges of motion (ROM).

• ROM of the muscle
• ROM of the joint
• ROM of the exercise

While it is not possible to go through every possible exercise, lets use the common bench press as an example.

When using a barbell, the full ROM of the exercise is until the bar touches your chest. However, the main muscles used (prime movers) are the deltoids, the pectorals and the triceps muscles. The joints involved are (mainly) the shoulder and elbow joints.

When the bar is at the bottom, touching your chest, is your shoulder or elbow at the end of its ROM? No. Are your triceps, pectorals or deltoids stretched fully? NO.

For example the clavicular portion of the pectorals (the “upper chest”) would have a fuller range of motion in a elbow in line with ears fly. And the triceps would have a fuller range of motion for example in a lying dumbbell triceps extension.

The shoulder and elbow joints would be at their end range when doing one of the many possible flexibility tests for those joints.

So, whenever you think about ROM, you need to know which ROM you are talking about. And also note that it’s not possible to get full ROM in everything all the time. If you did so, you would dilute the benefit of the exercise you were trying to perform by using too light a weight, or by risking injury.

This means that the key to success and complete development is variety of exercise structured into your program. This is how we help out clients succeed in both our group bootcamp fitness programs and our personal training programs. Science based variation of your exercises for maximum results.

As you know from my previous posts about how training program design and sticking to tempo are important, our staff who run both the group training fitness bootcamp programs, and the personal training programs at our personal training and health center are very picky about not just exercising for the sake of exercising, but focusing on training that is precise and that will help to get you your weight loss or muscle building results.

I really want to thank our clients for noticing! One of them, Khim, just bought me a hammer as a symbol of how we “hammer” good habits into our clients:) – Hey tough love is part of coaching! I’m touched!

As for the new hair cut, it was a charity event raising money for kids with cancer – I might just keep this look for a while:)

We all know that people come in all shapes and sizes. And the differences can be very large. On one of my trips to attend a seminar, I met a guy who played professional American Football. He could bench press 140kg on an incline bench for 8 reps as a warmup. His shoulders were almost as wide as the bench press station, just about everything about him was big, even his fingers, and head.

No matter how much I train, I am physically incapable of achieving that sort of size.

So whats the point of this article?

I am often asked why we don’t count calories when we teach nutrition, or why we need to eat a certain amount of protein, fats, or carbohydrates to have success. Can’t we just eat a “balanced” meal of rice, some vegetables and a few pieces of meat and get great results.

Of course we can.

But only if our genetics allowed us to.

We have a client who weights 75kg, has sub 6% bodyfat (veins in thighs and calves and a nice 6-pack of abs) is strong and has a very nice looking physique.

He eats only 2 meals per day – or sometimes one, he trains with average consistency, and he sleeps only 4-5 hours per night. I am trying to get him to have better habits – imagine how awesome his strength and physique will be then!

That sounds easy! Why can’t we all do that?

Simple… genetically, we are less gifted.

He can – We cannot. Myself included.

He has an excellent metabolism, high levels of muscle building and fat burning hormones, strong detoxification ability and very good ability to tolerate carbohydrates of all kinds.

The rest of us have to follow our customized personal training programs, nutrition and lifestyle plans, detoxification plans and sleep plans closely to even get close to the physique that such a gifted individual has.

It can be done but it just takes more love – love of being healthy, strong and fit.

World record sprinter Usain Bolt’s meal before he broke the 100m world record at the 2008 Olympics was chicken McNuggets. That is by no means ideal nutrition. But he broke (totally smashed) the world record.

He Can – We Cannot.

Michael Phelps eats a high carb, high starch, 12000 calorie per day diet and wins multiple medals in Olympic swimming. (He also has long arms and flipper-like double jointed, big feet).

He Can – We Cannot.

People on the internet claim that weight loss is as easy as counting calories, eating less, and exercising more. This would work for a few gifted people (but still with less than optimal results)  but they are not the ones who will benefit from our personal training, nutrition coaching and Singapore fitness bootcamp services.

They Can – We Cannot.

It is those who have tried many methods but failed or who are frustrated with other kinds of fitness services who will benefit most.

I hope all this doesn’t discourage you! As an encouragement, I too am a former fat boy who is by no means a genetically gifted athlete. But being less gifted helps me to be diligent in searching the world for the best methods to help my clients and I get the best possible results from their training and lifestyle plans.

Apart from the technical skill of understanding anatomy, physiology, bio mechanics and biochemistry, one of the most important skills in a personal trainer is that of coaching. Because the goal of our personal training, nutrition coaching and fitness boot camp programs is to teach clients how to maximize their health and strength, coaching skill becomes of utmost importance.

One of the people I look up to very much as a coach just passed away this past week. He is basketball coach John Wooden. A man known for his character, leadership, teaching ability and also his knowledge of strategy – oh yeah his teams won the College basketball tournament in the USA 10 times  – in a row! And his players all look up to him.

A very complete coaching skill-set I would say!

I look for role models to follow because “it is better to emulate (i.e. copy and learn from!) genius, than it is to create mediocrity”. I know I have grown because I have had the privilege of learning from the best. I like to follow real people who have made it to the top , not internet celebrities who hide behind a “screen name” or who’s focus is slick marketing rather that consistent success of their clients.

Some of my favorite John Wooden Quotes:

“Never mistake activity for achievement.”

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

“Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

“Make each day your masterpiece.”

One of my fellow coaches from Texas, Luke Leaman pointed me to this article at consumerreports.org. While I don’t agree full with all the protein recommendations (I see better results with slightly higher protein content in food and less starches for most personal training fat loss or fitness bootcamp clients), this is a non-profit, unbiased lab test of some common protein brands.

Shocking levels of heavy metal toxicity and other toxins.

That is why I started a new website to sell only the best supplements in Singapore. I call it www.singaporesupplementstore.com. Check it out. As an extra service, my staff and I give customer support and QnA help to those who buy from this site through my distributor links.

Saving money is good. But not at the expense of your health. And with supplements, like many other things, cheaper is NOT better!

Yesterday I went for a massage and when you get deep tissue work done, your body will release toxins. Massage is a manual form of detoxification. After the massage, I also took supplements like a multi vitamin, antioxidant support and a green veggie and berry drink. However today I was still feeling the effects of the toxicity coming out, and my body still dealing with it.

I am doing “German Body Composition” program with short rest intervals, and the day after the massage I was doing that workout for the 2nd time. I managed to increase weight for all the exercises compared to the first time. In fact, there was much less discomfort from the lactate as well. (less burning feeling in the muscles)

However, after 2/3 of the workout, I had to stop. Light headed and with a headache. Power went up (as I used at least 5% more weight for every exercise and got extra reps too!) however work capacity went down (I only finished 2/3 of the workout).

This is a sign of possible overload on your body’s systems due to the cleaning up of toxins. So if this happens to you, just take it east for one workout so that you body gets detoxified and you have potential for even further gains in the future.

A clean body is a lean body.

Areas like the knowledge of understanding a less than optimal performance during workouts are things that only an experienced coach can help you with. That is what my staff and I do for our fitness boot camp, Singapore personal training and health consultation clients.

Of course there is nothing wrong with looking good! I too enjoy being fit and healthy and strong looking. I know it can be tougher for ladies. There are clothes, bags, shoes and accesories and they all have to match.

While I am no fashion expert, I do care about the health of the female clients at our fitness bootcamps, personal training and nutritional / health consultations. And here is a good website that can help all the readers and clients choose good cosmetics. So here it is.

There can be incredible amounts of heavy metals, and other toxins in cosmetics (and these can absorb through the skin!) so I hope you ladies can stay healthy while lookin good.

If you think that cosmetics or other conditions have caused you internal toxicity, no problem, we provide a complete detox program to help you out as well.

I know family members, personal training or bootcamp fitness clients and friends who have been seriously injured playing sports or performing daily tasks like shifting furniture or carrying kids. The question is are these preventable? Well, they are preventable if they are non contact – i.e. you were not punched, kicked or tackled! However almost all non-contact injuries are preventable with the right kind of athlete training programs.

Below are two videos inspired I believe by Australian sports performance coach Ian King, one of the veterans of the field of sports conditioning, and a man who has helped many athletes get medals in international competition. They illustrate how the usual mindset of “oh it’s just my bad luck that I’m injured” is wrong and doesn’t make sense.

Proper strength training can vastly reduce the chances of all injury.

A recent discussion online asked which type of fat measuring calipers to buy. In my opinion there is only one that you should get. It is the only one I will use in my Singapore personal training private gym.

The brand is “Harpenden” (shown above). It is accurate to 0.1mm and you can actually “see” the measurement change even if the personal training or fitness bootcamp client is already very lean. One of my clients is under 5% bodyfat but he had a break from training for 2 weeks because of exams. I was able to see a 0.5% change in his bodyfat percentage… which works out to about a 0.4mm difference in most of his skin-fold sites.

You will NOT be able to see these changes (good OR bad) with a cheapo, plastic toy style $40 pair of calipers. These can miss by up to 4mm per site because they are simply not accurate or consistent enough. Because I take 12 body-fat measurements per client to get the most possible information to help my client, 4×12=48 and 48mm is a MASSIVE potential error. Might as well use the near-useless electric, hand help methods then!

The principle of “if its good, it isn’t cheap, and if its cheap, it is very unlikely to be good” holds true here just like it does for gym equipment or fitness instructors or nutrition coaches. The Harpenden fat measuring calipers cost more than $700 SGD. But once you get one or use one, you will neever need to “upgrade” and you will never use another fat measurement device again.