One of the “specialties” I am known for as a Singapore Personal Trainer, is that my programs and nutrition plans help “hard gainers” pack on muscular body weight faster than they EVER have in their lives. Besides helping them break the mentality that “I’ll be thin all my life”. One other thing that I, as a coach has to do, is to show them that they need to eat more high quality foods in bigger amounts.

Assuming their digestive tracts are in order (which we look at during their assesment upon signing up at my personal training gym), they should be able to eat and digest a bigger amount of quality nutrients – needed for maximum muscle building. This can be hard because most people have NO IDEA what kinds of quantities and quality of food it takes to build muscles.

Just to give an example, I used one of the free “calorie tracking” websites to log my food intake for a day. I’m not super huge (80+kg) and I’m not trying to put on alot of weight. I am fairly active because I train most days for about an hour, and I am at about 10% body fat at the moment.

Here is a snapshot of what I ate – I did not include the 5-6 servings of veggies and 4-5 servings of veggie drinks which would add maybe another 150 calories.

I am NOT a calorie counting fan, but in this case it should give a skinny person an indication of just how much he needs to eat to gain size! At this amount of food, I’m not even gaining weight! So if you want to gain quality weight you probably need even more food than this.

You see that right – 1.5kg or so of meat, including a pound of steak at lunch + a bunch of other stuff and a cup of cream on my berries. And thats only 3400 calories (including my veggie stuff). So – skinny guys, if you are not eating at least this much, don’t complain about being a hard-gainer… go cook some animals and then we can talk about it!

We have been working hard over the past 2 weeks to get Singapore’s best gym, the Genesis Performance Center up and running! We are ready to go and are open for the business of helping Singapore residents burn fat, build muscles and perform to the best of their God given ability! Our personal training and fitness boot camps are going to be better than ever.

Building our olympic lifting platform - its beautiful!

Ready to roll at the Genesis Performance Center

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?

As a Singapore Personal Trainer, I see people go on “bulking” and “cutting” diets all the time. A few months eating recklessly followed by a few months eating a super low calorie diet. You know what this is? This is a Yo-Yo diet that “healthy lifestyle” people condemn. The best analogy I have heard or read about before is that muscle gain is like building a house. You need workers, bricks, and money to pay the workers. (all credit to whoever came up with this, its very smart)

• Bricks are protein
• Workers are your muscle building processes
• Money for the workers are your energy nutrients like fat and carbs

Too much protein, it gets left around and wasted (stored as fat) No money for workers and they are not motivated and don’t perform much work the problem with bulking diets is they have too much “money” and too many “bricks”.

Even the most motivated workers can only build at a certain maximum speed. So there is no point “overpaying” them or giving them too many bricks. If you do, you will just be tubby! For bricks you need at least 4g/kg of body weight.

Yeah yeah, there are the so called people with “Dr.” before their names that say you don’t need that much. But they are not the ones giving the money back guarantees on their services. I have seen pretty impressive things just by upping protein intake.

Clients gain muscle even when on restricted calorie diets, they burn more fat, they feel better. Yes there are certain metabolic types that don’t need as much protein but you are likely to do alot better with more protein.

For actual workers, you need to have good hormonal levels this is done with hard exercise and solid nutrition as well as good lifestyle habits (no smokin, drinkin and sleeping 3 hour nights). For payment of workers, here is where people make the biggest mistake. They eat too much during bulking periods.

Here is what I recommend to maximize muscle gain and avoid gaining too much fat in the process. I don’t have a fixed number for anybody because we are all different and DON’T DO THIS IS YOU ARE FAT ALREADY! Note: these recommendations are for a fairly large guy of about 80kg weight and fairly lean. Reduce the amounts accordingly for yourself.

• Step 1: Add carbs post-workout. Start with 50g. Check you fat levels for 2 weeks and see if they increase. If so, stop here.
• Step 2: If not, add 25g to breakfast. Check you fat levels for 2 weeks and see if they increase. If so, stop here.
• Step 3: Add 25g more to the post-workout shake. Check you fat levels for 2 weeks and see if they increase. If so, stop here.
• Step 4: Add 25g more to your breakfast. Check you fat levels for 2 weeks and see if they increase. If so, stop here.
• Step 5: Add 25g more to the post-workout meal. Check you fat levels for 2 weeks and see if they increase. If so, stop here.
• Step 6: Add 25g to the meal 60-90 minutes after your post workout shake. Check you fat levels for 2 weeks and see if they increase. If so, stop here.
• From here on, add 25g to meals early in the day (before evening) till you reach the 50g max.

Do not go over 100g for post workout carbs and not more than 50g per meal for other meals. Personally, I’m a fairly carb intolerant guy so for most of the year, I have carbs only post workout. If I do try to gain muscle, I go only till about step 2 or 3… or else I get tubby real quick!

Our personal training programs guide you step by step through your mass gaining phase so that you get lots of muscle and minimal fat gains.

One of the key roles of a strength coach or personal trainer is to teach exercise technique. This is actually not a “difficult” thing to do.

As a personal trainer or coach (fitness coach, sports coach, pretty much any coach at all) we have to believe that there is a correct way to do things.

A correct way to run, jump, land, change direction, turn, squat, lift, press etc.

These have been covered many times in magazines and videos and DVD’s and websites.

The problem occurs when we are forced to adjust to individual differences. This is where a coach earn his/her money when it comes to teaching technique.
people differ in:

• height
• shoulder width,
• hip width
• angles at the knees and ankles
• natural flexibility
• muscle imbalances
• ratios of arm length to height
• ratio of leg length to height
• ratio of upper arm/leg to lower arm/leg

All these things mean minor adjustment in technique and leverage to perform exercises safely and effectively.

With serious imbalances or postural issues, this also means adjustment to loading and finally to exercise selection.

Some general guidelines:
Thickly built people tend to have shorter legs and longer torsos. They are good at squatting and squat with near perfect form with just a bit of careful instruction.

However they need modifications to their dead lift technique to make it more effective.

For the upper body these guys excel as well in pulling and pressing movements because the total distance lifted is less and thus they can handle more weight.

Longer limbed people need more help with squatting sometimes going wider and opening up the hips more. They also will likely not lift as much as the stoutly build thicker people. However these long limbed guys will usually excel at dead lifting because their long arms and short torsos give excellent mechanics for good pulling.

Longer limbed people tend to do better in ball sports because they have more reach and have long limbs that can, with proper training be put in good control.

Even among Singaporeans who are all supposed to be of Asian descent, there is a huge variance in body types. But rest assured with the correct training, anybody can achieve an awesome physique that is aesthetically magnificent, and performs just as well as it looks.

World class physiques come in all shapes and sizes. And they do need modifications in training to help them reach their potential!

That is why the exercises prescribed to you as part of out athletic training and personal training programs help you get results so fast! Not only do we tailor the program to you goals (i.e. a person trying to lose fat is on a different program from one trying to build muscle or trying to jump higher) but we tailor the performance of each exercise to your body type as well.