In our Singapore Gym, our personal training clients and fitness bootcamp clients who have the goal of weight loss and fat burning, often undergo great transformations in 12 weeks. Our record for 2010 is an 11% drop in bodyfat in just 1 month – literally that client’s friends said “who is that guy?… Isn’t that so and so…No… can’t be, that guy is fat! This guy isn’t”

But at the Genesis Performance Center, we are not interested in “flash in a pan” kind of result. After you burn lots of fat, build lots of muscle or get to the performance goal that you want? What next?

Keeping yourself there is the next step that no other fitness center, personal training studio or gym in Singapore focuses on. It’s all about getting more and more new clients. However the people with the truly outstanding physiques are the ones who live a consistent life of health and energy.

That means a good digestive system, a good detoxification system, a good brain and of course a good level of leanness and strength.

If you see most 12 week body transformation contests e.g. the Biggest Loser (Asia or otherwise) you will find that contentants end up fat or fatter than their previous selves really quickly. Why?

There is no community to support them – that is why at our gym, personal training clients who are with us for more than a year get membership benefits and our fitness bootcamp members have lots of other trainess working together each session to support each other. It is important to remember that you will be the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with! So spend time with lean, healthy, strong, fit people several days per week and you will be like them for life.

There is a crash diet system - low fat, low calorie diets simply don’t work long term. Almost nobody in our gym counts calories. In the long term calorie counting is just a pain and adds to our already stressed up lives. I have tried almost all the Iphone apps, softwares, and online calorie logs, just to see what is out there. Even these “simple” methods are quite troublesome. In addition calorie counting dosen’t work very well. I only use calories as an indicator to show people how much or how little they are actually eating. But once the habits we help our clients build are in place, calorie counting is almost never talked about again. In my fitness bog entry here, I wrote about just how unwise calorie counting is for most of us.

Low fat is not suitable as a diet plan. Our bodies live on fat as a preferred fuel source. Every system in the body likes fat as a fuel. Only red blood cells use a bit of sugar to keep the oxygen fresh. And that’s only a teeny bit required which can be made from protein and fat anyway. Oh yeah… the other kind of cells that use sugar instead of fat are cancer cells – and we don’t want to feed them! So healthy fats are the prime source of energy for most of the cells we like! Many nutrients are also fat soluble and don’t get absorbed without fat. All in all, people who recommend low fat diets are ignoring how most of our bodies work. That damages our health.

They never learned to “fish” – Part of our coaching teaches clients how to read a training program, how to record their progress, how to perform exercises and how to tell what foods are good for them and what isn’t, we also teach habits and lifestyles that boost sleep, reduce toxicity, and improve all your body’s functions. This is a lifetime benefit because our whole idea is to teach our Gym members to “fish” instead of just giving a cookie cutter program that gets some result for 12 weeks but leaves the client on their own from then on!

There we have it – this is the reason that I am so proud of the clients I have at the Genesis Performance Center. They change their lives and their health so that they are able to maximize their productivity, time and talent! This is the most satisfying part of my job.

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It can be hard for some of our Singapore personal training clients who travel, to eat well on the road. So here is how I do it. I am away for 9 days in the USA to learn about cardiovascular health with Dr Mark Houston, as well as level 3 strength and performance coaching with Charles Poliquin.

Here is what I’m doing to stay lean and strong on the road.

The USA actually has good food choices if you know what to look for.

Choose organic if you can, eat meat, veggies and no refined carbs. And you will not come back fat from your trip!

Buffalo Patties and organic cheese

Wild salmon

Salmon, cheese, bacon and spinnich leaves

Cooking Area (clean it yourself!)

Opps I forgot to turn on the extractor the first day and the smoke alarm went off… we don’t have that problem at home haha.

Today was the first day of the course and we learned 49 factors that affect training for energy systems. That means sports specific endurance. Some stuff I know, some stuff I don’t but nobody has put it all together like Poliquin has. It really puts the thought process for designing conditioning programs together.

Triathletes and marathoners are big fans of high carbohydrate foods. But is that really best? The answer is… it depends on who you are. If you are gifted for long distance activity (naturally thin and lean) yes, carbohydrates are a good source of energy for you if you are a endurance athlete. But if you are a thickly built, former fat boy (like me), even if people like us went for marathons, I would not suggest high carb diets. These diets simply would make us fat.

“oh but I don’t have energy for my long runs” – YES, but only at first. That is because your body is used to using carbs as fuel. It needs some time (10-15 days usually) to get used to burning FAT as fuel.

Once this transition is made, you can eat what is naturally better for you (protein, green veggies, healthy fats) and yet do well at endurance sports. Science studies agree with my experiential knowledge.

In fact these studies were done in the *gasp* 1980s!! A good one was done at MIT and a group of endurance athletes was placed on a very low carbohydrate diet for 4 weeks. The first week or two they felt lethargic BUT at the end they felt great!

In fact I think they would actually improve performance over the medium and long term because they would lose FAT on a low carb diet. Being FAT is a BAD and is hindering their performance.

There was no drop off in their aerobic capacity.

So what can we learn?

1. Eat the right food for your genetics
2. Be objective about what works and what doesn’t and don’t just listen to the high carb “old wives tale” that it is all endurance athletes need

How do you know whats best for you?
That is what we can help you find out as part of our athletes training programs.

There are so many definitions of fitness, and it means different things to different people.

• For a weightlifter it means that you should be able to lift as heavy a weight as possible from the floor, to overhead. For a soccer or basketball player it means that you would be playing at a highly competitive level even late in 2nd half or 4th quarter.
• For a triathlete it would mean improving on your personal time (swimming, running and cycling suddenly become easy if you are undergoing our triathlete training program)
• For a golfer it might be putting 15m on your drive (which should take us just weeks to help you with)
• For a “regular” man or woman who works a “normal” 9-6pm job, fitness may be looking good, having good energy and productivity, and having the ability to do whatever tasks life throws at him or her.

And even for this “regular” person which is, most of us, he or she may have such different goals.

• Lose Fat
• Lose Weight
• Bulk Up/Build Muscle
• Lower Cholesterol and improve other indicators of health
• Prevent osteoporosis
• Have energy to chase their kids around
• Overcome diabetes… and so on…

Different goals need different programs, techniques and planning to achieve.

It is best to go after one goal at a time for best results. (Don’t be fooled by programs that claim to do everything all at once for everybody!)

Even if there are too many “problems” to solve, we go after the most challenging and biggest one first.  E.g. if a person needs to run faster for his sport but is overweight, we target his oversize tummy as a priority because in the big scheme of things, that will give more benefits.

What to go for first, how long before you change “target”, how to best go about each of these goals and what method would work best FOR YOU is how we design our personal training programs for clients.

To get into the Singapore’s best personal training / fitness coaching sg program, just click on the link here.

NOTE: Even things like exactly how long each set should last, must be customized for your body type for maximum results?

I just got back my results for a food allergy test I took recently. It’s bloodwork and it’s not cheap. About $700 sgd. But I just wanted to see if any of the foods I have been eating are causing any problems with the body that are forcing it to work harder than it should and increasing my stress responses.

Usually a food allergy is genetic, or its caused by eating the same food over and over again.

That is why I encourage clients to rotate their meats, veggies and nuts throughout the week.

Turns out pretty good. I am clear to eat all kinds of meat and seafood except for seabass. And I can eat everything except the following list:

• BEET SUGAR
• CARROT
• CAYENNE PEPPER
• SCALLOP
• STRAWBERRY
• BASS
• CLOVE
• FIG
• FRUCTOSE
• PINTO BEAN
• SARDINE
• SWEET POTATO
• TOMATO
• BEETROOT*
• COFFEE*
• CRAB*
• CUCUMBER*
• HADDOCK*
• LIME*
• PEANUT*
• PINEAPPLE*
• RASPBERRY*
• RYE*
• SESAME*
• STRING BEAN*

Those with * next to them means that I am only mildly intolerant of them.

Yay! All the manly meat sources are fine and so are eggs etc. But I need to stay away from fruits (fructose), High fructose corn syrup (I hardly eat this) and carrots and tomatoes as well as chilli/curry (sadly). The rest of the stuff I don’t eat often anyway.

Hopefully staying away from these (I actually eat tomatoes and carrots and sweet potatoes quite a bit…) will help me stay even leaner!

It is common for clients to gain 5-6kg of muscle in 6-8 weeks of training. And some of these guys are not new to exercise or training, they have been lifting weights for a long time already (at least a few years). In fact one of our coaches put on 3kg of weight and got leaner in just 2 weeks of proper training and eating. What are the things that we do that help you get these kinds of results?

1. Digestion – Make sure that you have a good digestive system either through a low stress, healthy life with good sleep and good micro-nutrients like zinc OR via supplemention with digestive aids like Hydrochloric Acid (you can get these from out center)
2. Training Programs - These need to be suited for you experience, training age, past injury history, muscle balance, and fiber type. We test for these for all our clients who want to get stronger and more muscular. In general you want sets that range from 40-70 seconds of “Time under tension”. Also, training OFTEN is important. In fact, this is why I recommend the “unlimited” programs in both our personal training packages and Singapore fitness bootcamps. Simply because they give the best results!
3. Hormone Levels – This is tested by checking your body-fat distribution. Different fat storage sites mean different things and we recommend lifestyle, training and nutrition (minerals and herbs) protocols to help you balance out your hormones.
4. Recovery – You can only train often (see no.2) if you can recover! Use a good pre/during/post-workout recovery drink because a BIG percentage of your recovery is determined by what you do DURING and IMMEDIATELY after you train.
5. Protein Intake - You can do all you like but if you don’t give the workers bricks, the house never gets built. That is what adequate protein does for you. Make it come from good meat sources. Shakes are fine but only after training.

No Protein - No Results!