I was in Sweden over the last week on a private internship with coach Poliquin for personal trainers and fat loss specialists. We learned alot about the customization of nutrition and training for rapid fat burning. One of the main things that I learned that has already helped me customize my own supplementation methods, is the use of supplements to improve neuro-transmitter balance. Different people have different dominant brain functions and when we realize this, we use different nutrients to help each person perform better.

Better brain function, better sleep, better motivation, better growth hormone output, better training focus, better results.

Results is what all our training programs aim to deliver!

Take this test called the “braverman” test. Print it out and do it honestly – after all, its for your own improvement. And tell me what your scores are in the comments below:)

Learning is a continuous process and it is necessary for excellence. After all, it has been estimated that in most fields, knowledge doubles every few years. Those who don’t learn get left behind. This is especially true in the fitness, and health arena.

This week I will be off again to the Eleiko Barbell factory in Sweden for a seminar on advanced methods of burning fat. The knowledge will be applied immediately once I get back so that our Singapore personal training clients, our Singapore fitness bootcamp clients (and myself!) will have even better fat burning workouts.

This is a practical course and we will be training 2x/day. I will bring along Amino acids, whey and carnitine to improve recovery. While recovering we will be doing some theory lessons.

Stay tuned for updates as the week goes along.

As many of you know I am a big fan of traveling light. This trip is no exception. No check in bags. No laptop. Just my Ipad. I have added incentive to do so as well because I plan to buy some “friction plates” and bring them back and I will need the extra weight allowance.

These are cool rubber weight plates that are “sticky” to the bar. They are the smaller sizes like 0.5kg to 2kg plates and when we use these plates, we don’t need to use bar collars any more! If you think about how expensive precisely made collars are… these plates are a pretty good deal. Here is coach Poliquin demonstrating them.

Dear Reservist Unit Commander/PE Teacher,

Hi, my name is LTA (NS) Jonathan Wong, in my “civilian” job, I own a fitness and sports training facility called the Genesis Performance Center. It is a world class training center that is without equal in Asia.

Over the last 12 years coaching, I have noticed that a larger and larger proportion of our clients have been NSmen, Students and NSFs who need to do better at their IPPT and NAPFA tests.

Them come to us with these main problems.
1. They are overweight
2. They are poor at the Standing Broad Jump
3. They are poor at chin-ups.
4. They are poor at the 2.4km run.

Many of them have tried all kinds of methods for improving their results including self training, remedial training and the IPPT prep program, as well as the training that goes on in schools, NS trainings and In-camps. However a large percentage of them still struggle especially with the standing broad jump and the chin-ups.

But in our fitness center, my staff and I customize programs that take customize their nutrition and training, improve their sleep and even help them mange stress. This science based approach, together with exact training in the correct techniques of running and jumping help us get outstanding results for our clients.

However the fees that each individual client pays may be out of the reach of some NSmen and students, that is why, from September 2010, we have opened a specialized IPPT training program that puts the science and knowledge from out individual programs, into a group training format that keeps all the benefits and results and adds one more – affordability. We pass on the savings of a group training on to our clients.

In our program we will cover
- The exact method that regularly helps men (and women) go from failing chin-ups to passing, within weeks.
- The exact method that boosts SBJ performance by up to 15cm in ONE DAY
- Progressive and IPPT / NAPFA focused training sessions that will help participants get results FAST. These sessions last 45-50 mins a few times per week. This keeps clients free to go about their other family, school or work responsibilities.
- Exactly how to train, eat and peak for the test for maximum results. We teach these methods just like we teach our clients who are national level athletes preparing for an important competition.
- Much Much more!

Never fear IPPT or NAPFA again.

In Strength,

Coach Jonathan Wong & Team

Find out more about the IPPT/NAPFA program at our IPPT training page

The Singapore health and fitness industry is (unfortunately) well known for scams, fakes and frauds in products and information. Unfortunately, much of this mis-information is passed along by well meaning people. But when it comes to your health, your fitness and your results, it can be hard to tell the truth from the fakes especially in the intentions of the source are good!

But here is a quick question that has helped me alot in both business situations and in the murky waters of fitness information. I learned it first on a audio program by the late personal development author Napoleon Hill.

Whenever somebody gives an opinion (and it is increasingly easy to hear opinions on the internet), simply ask them this question.

Here it is…

“How do you know?”

There. It is simple, just four words!

Whenever somebody with questionable intentions or knowledge is presented with this question, they will usually struggle to answer (watch them squirm, it is entertaining…). It is alot easier to tell if they are trying to pull a quick on on you by listening to their answer to this question, than by listening to their (perhaps rehearsed) initial statement or opinion.

Try it on shady salespeople, internet forum “gurus” and personal trainers who aren’t qualified to help you get results!

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:)

NOTE: Most of my caucasian and foreign friends can’t stand the smell of durians, so this post may not apply to them. I remember on a trip with a basketball team from the USA a few years ago, our coach, a 6 foot 4, 120kg man ran out of his hotel room like he saw a ghost after we left durians in there as his “birthday gift”.

I have always suspected that durians are not that fattening. Beacause the causes of fat storage are more often the hormonal response of the body to the food, rather than the raw number of calories, durians don’t seem to be as “fattening” as people think.

It is a fruit, it is rather fatty (like an avocado) and it has fiber. These factors slow down the release of sugar into the blood stream, making the insulin response (that causes fat storage) less.

So I actually asked one of our coaches Chris, to dig around and see what he could find out about the glycimic index of durians.

Hey good news! In the 2008 Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, a study was done Titled: “Glycimic index of common Malaysian fruits”.

They tested durian, papaya, pineapple and watermelon. Turns out durians had the lowest GI among them all at about 49. Probably due to its high fat content which slows the speed of gastric emptying. That is within the “Low GI” category (below 55)

While GI is not the whole story, with Glycimic LOAD and Insulin LOAD (which take into account portion size) being better indicators, it shows that durians are certainly not the the evil that many people think they are as long as you keep portion size in check.

It’s certainly not an “unlimited” food like meat or veggies, but it can certainly fit into the lifestyle as part of a “cheat meal” or for a person who is already fairly lean or carb tolerant.

But no matter what, hearing that durians aren’t evil should make our individual personal training and fitness bootcamp clients happy!

Quite a number of the personal training and fitness bootcamp clients at the Genesis Performance Center are Muslims. And in August, they begin their fasting month. Most of them would still like to exercise to maintain their strength and weight loss / fat loss results. Last year I wrote about what to eat and how to schedule training during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Here are some additional tips and supplements that can help you or your Muslim friends during Ramadan.

The general idea is to make sure that everything you eat is nutritious! Because you will eat more infrequently, and there is only a certain amount of food that you can stomach at one time, every ounce should be full of nutrients. So, the same “caveman” rules apply. No refined food, and if a caveman didn’t have it, you shouldn’t either. This ensures that you are eating whole, non-refined foods.

Eat red meat, with fat. This is slower to digest than white meat or purely lean meat. That is good for keeping you full, and reducing the impact of the infrequent meals. Lamb, mutton beef! Yum.

Eat healthy fats in larger amounts. These include fat from meat, fish oils, and nuts. Fats slow digestion so that keeps nutrients coming in nice and slow over time. You feel more full, you don’t get elevated blood sugar, and you will store less body fat.

Supplements that can help you are things that will maximize digestive health (to get as many nutrients as you can from limited/infrequent meals) and stuff that will reduce the impact of stress hormones on your body because semi-starvation increases overall stress on the body.

Stuff like….

HCL to aid digestion

Omnizyme – a broad based digestive enzyme formula

Probiotics - to keep the good/bad bacteria ratios healthy in your digestive tract

Glycine with evening meals – to relax the nervous system and fight stress

Some form of herbal stress buster like serenity 2.0 or yin-hance

Something to get you up and going early in the morning, like Acetyl-L-Carnitine found in Yang R-ALA.

There we go! It’s tough to make maximal gains during Ramadan, but with these suggestions you should be able to train and maintain the gains that you have gotten from your past year of training.

After writing about what to put into a home gym setup, here is a picture of what I actually have in my house.

• Cybex Adjustable Flat to 80deg incline Bench
• Fat Grip, rotating handle Adjustable Dumbbells
• Bunch Of olympic size plates to go with the dumbbells, up to 60kg per dumbbell (only some of the plates shown here)
• Floor matting – I ordered red… but sadly the shop keeper’s idea of red was a rather un-macho pink.

Quite a number of our personal training clients come to us because they have not been able to get the results they desired from other personal trainers or online fitness programs. One of the most lacking things that I have seen from these ineffective programs (if they are written down at all! – you will be shocked how many “personal trainers” come up with random stuff off the top of their head when their client appears at their door) is the lack of tempo prescriptions.

For those of you that are not familliar with them, tempo refers to how each rep is performed. We use a 4 number tempo system e.g. 4-1-1-2.

• The first number “4″ refers to the number of seconds that it takes to lower the weight.
• The second number “1″ refers to the length of time that you should pause the weight at the bottom of the lift.
• The third number “1″ refers to the speed at which you should lift the weight. In this case – as fast as you can. The only thing faster than “1″ would be an “x” where you would jump or throw the weight.
• The fourth number “2″ refers to the pause you should take at the top of the lift.

Variations in tempo between workout programs can greatly improve your training results. I use up to 30 second lifting and lowering times for certain clients with special needs.

However variations in tempo during the SAME SET can give you trouble in determining if your workout is effective, and if you have progressed.

For example, if you start out with a 4-1-1-2 tempo but later in the set, as you fatigue, your tempo changes to a 2-0-1-0, your reps are not consistent. A 2-0-1-0 rep would usually be much easier to perform.

This means that you have no clue if your improvement is because of progress, or simply using a easier tempo (its the same as using a lighter weight!).

Even the most experienced trainees have a tendency to “cheat” on tempo as they fatigue. The best solution for this is a good strength and conditioning coach or personal trainer.

The next best solution is a metronome. Since nobody plans to carry a foot long wooden box with them as they do their training, I went to find a solution.

I spent some time during my last infra-red sauna session testing out all the available metronomes for the iphone/itouch platform. In the end I thought that the “Flash Metronome” (it’s free) gave the easiest way to set things, and the most adaptability for gym use.

Set the “Beats per minute” to 60 so you get one beat per second, keep your phone a distance away (mobile phones in pockets make you weaker), set it to airplane mode so you don’t get distracted by messages and calls, and check out how “hard” your training suddenly has become because you have probably been cheating on tempo all this while.

Suffer the ego drop, but enjoy the improved results!