A Key Element Of Detoxification

As all my personal training and fitness bootcamp clients know, my staff and I can’t stand NOT getting them results. And the MAIN factor that stops committed clients from getting results is toxicity.

That means that if you eat, sleep, exercise and have good habits and STILL don’t get great results, toxicity is probably what is stopping you.

If you are eating prata and cookies, then no detox, no exercise gadget and no personal trainer can help you.

The reason detox is important is that our environment is not as clean as it should be. We have plastics, heavy metals, allergenic food, pesticides, and it is estimated 80,000+ chemicals that are man made and which our body is not designed to handle.

The only effective way to detox plastics (and it helps all other stuff also) is through far infra red saunas. They are touted as “weight loss tools” because they burn up to 600 calories per hour… but I prefer exercise for that! We are using the saunas to get rid of bad stuff so that our bodies can function fully.

Toxins get in the way of our cells producing energy (they reduce the efficiency of mitochondria) – so we feel sluggish, our metabolism drops, the reactions in our body happen slower, we can’t lose weight, burn fat, or gain muscle mass – all because our cells are not as energetic as they should be.

I got only the best brand! “Heavenly Heat” – why? It got the most recommendations by natural medicine doctors and fellow coaches that I respect. It cost’s up to 10X the price of other brands or sauna options… but I think it’s an investment that my personal training, and fitness boot camp clients will appreciate. Nothing but the best stuff for them!

• These saunas keep a relatively low temperature (40-50 deg C – instead of up to 100 deg C in regular saunas) so you don’t run out screaming after 5 mins…
• It uses NO GLUE and NO LAMINATED WOOD – If you use glue or laminated wood, the toxins from their production will get into you while you sit in the heated enclosure. That is NOT what we want during a detox session.
• It uses focused Far Infra Red (FIR) Heaters not “carbon” synthetic ones which spread the power out too much and dilutes the FIR output. This means you get a better heating, sweating and detox effect.
• It has heaters targeting every part of your body ( there are 7 heaters for just 1 person).
• Proper ventilation so the toxic air gets out properly and you don’t need to use the DOOR as a FAN
• Glass door/windows – plastics are poison!
• VERY IMPORTANT - I will provide each person a set of customized anti-oxidants, liver support and detoxification supplements to maximize their sauna time. Without these your body will not be able to effectively remove all the toxins that the sauna stirs up. (This is one of the key value added benefits of doing your detoxification here rather than anywhere else!)

I look forward to using this health and energy boosting method to get our clients even better results!

It is normal for customers to compare products before buying or signing up. That is totally the right thing to do. And one of the things they as me, is “what makes your Singapore fitness boot camp better than any of the others around?” What they are actually asking is “why should I join this one and not any of the many other options”.

Besides the quality of coaching and the positive environment, the key component of the science based training program itself that makes our weight loss and fat burning program so effective is that we have an emphasis on strength.

Yes we do circuits of various kinds, we do interval training of many varieties and we do teach nutrition and lifestyle habits that boost energy, improve sleep and even get our diabetic or cardiovascular health clients come off the drugs they have been using for years.

But we never neglect the ONLY physical attribute that improves all others.

STRENGTH

• Strength improves flexiblity because your body is more comfortable moving to new ranges of motion when it knows it is strong enough to control itself in that extreme range.
• Strength improves endurance because it improves efficiency and “ease” even when you are doing stuff like marathons or triathlons.
• And strength improves fat burning because fat burning is about doing alot of work in as short a time as possible.

For a simple example, lets say I can lift a maximum of 100kg one time. Perhaps in 10 mins I could lift 50% of that 50kg 50 times. Thats 2500kg of total weight lifted.

But lets say I am strong enough to lift 200kg one time. 50% of that is 100kg! And if I lift that 50 times in 10 mins, that is 5000kg. Twice as much work done, that means more fat burned.

It’s not as “simple” as that of course and there are alot more things going on… but the idea is the same.

Get strong – And your fat burning workouts get more effective – You burn more fat, and lose weight from your fat stores faster.

And strength doesn’t mean “size” when we train for strength, it’s possible to do so without getting too “big”. Our female clients haven’t complained:)

Check out what a strong 48kg woman looks like. Certainly not “huge” or un-feminine by any means. Below is Marilou Dozois-Prevost of Canada, a lifter in the under 48kg category (hey that’s a weight many ladies want to be at!)

This is what a strong 48kg looks like

So everybody, being strong makes you more lean, more fit, more firm, more toned, and more of everything good. It also improves your bone density, and makes you have a stronger immune system… that’s why even though people come to bootcamps for weight loss, we incorporate strength training as well. That’s why I’m happy to say our boot camps for fat loss are held in a fully equipped gym where there is stuff to not only help you burn fat and lose unwanted weight, but also to get strong so that you can maximize your results and your potential.

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

Disturbing news from Time magazine last week! In an article called “Exercise does not make you thin”, there is this author who has this “special” idea that exercise makes you fatter.

WHOA!! Maybe I’m in the wrong industry If I want to help people! Seriously, I earn a living helping people lose weight, get lean and strong, get the physique they want, get into the best possible health and perform to the best of their ability! None of these things require “more fat” and if exercise makes us fat, then I should be asking all my clients to do as little exercise as possible.

Now there is scientific basis for this article as I wrote about in my previous article on the topic of fat loss and exercise.

In fact there is another study I just came across from the University of Oklahoma which came to exactly the same conclusion. I.e. 10 weeks of proper exercise had no effect on fat loss (only about 1kg of fat was lost on average!).

So… it seems this article has some merit!

Time to look for another job Coach Jon… you just spent 3 months (10-12 weeks as demonstrated in the studies) of all your client’s time, effort and money for what is in effect the same scam as any slimming center or infomercial product!

We better stop teaching clients to exercise...you know...in case they get fat!

NOT SO FAST!!

Just because the author of the article spends many hours each week exercising (and even getting a personal trainer to help him!) without getting results – doesn’t mean that he is doing it right.

The article mentions nothing about the role of eating correctly for burning fat. In fact it says that exercise makes you hungrier and you end up eating more. For example after exercise that burns 300 calories, you feel like eating a piece of cake that has 500 poor quality, fat storing, no-nutrient calories in it… YES that is true. And if you keep doing something as foolish as that – exercise will make you fat!

But exercise has so many benefits that it would be totally outrageous to stop.

• Maintaining strength, power and muscle at all ages and especially as we get old. This is a key determinant of happiness, independence and quality of life of senior citizens.
• Fitness in both the short and long duration energy systems (aerobic and anerobic) that mean life becomes easier
• It improves brain function, and happiness. My sister can attest to this! She is a therapist in the area of mental health and exercise is the BEST modality that is non invasive, drug free and has no side effects.
• It prevents age related disease like osteoporosis.
• It builds muscle mass which has direct co-relation to the strength of our immune system. (You don’t fall sick)
• It makes us look good! Yes, there I said it. If you just diet yourself till you are thin you will be weak, sickly and unattractive because you will be “skinny-fat”.
• The list really does go on and on…

So we can’t afford to ditch exercise (especially proper exercise that is the stuff we do in our personal training and fitness boot camp programs).

If there is a member of the media in Singapore who is having trouble with their tummy fat like this Time magazine author is, I would invite them to participate in our Singapore fitness boot camp. Along with our nutritional coaching.

If they did that for 12 weeks, irresponsible articles like this would never be published and I would never need to quit my awesome job of helping people in Singapore burn fat and get strong!

Crossfit is a pretty popular training system across the world. It’s not really so much a system in Singapore, but rather its done by individuals in their own training sessions. I tried the crossfit workout named “fran”. This workout is done as fast as possible:
1.    21 thrusters with 95lb weights (I used a 50kg bar + plates so thats 110lbs… yeah I’m tough hehe!)
2.    21 Chin-ups (some swinging allowed)
3.    15 thrusters
4.    15 chin-ups
5.    9 thrusters
6.    9 chin-ups
My time was exactly 4 mins… I believe the record I have seen on the net is 2mins 37 sec… but 4 mins is not bad for a first time:) I just finished it and my heart is still racing as I type.

Take note though: Crossfit “Workouts of the day” are not for beginners and I don’t agree with some of them and how they are structured.

Sometimes, exercises like cleans and deadlifts are put together in the same workout, very close to each other (or maybe even right next to each other in sequence or pairings). This is not such a good idea beacuse of the lowe back fatigue and technical mastery needed for these exercises.

“Fran” though is safe enough. The exercises use different muscle groups and challenge both the upper and lower body muscles separately.

Will I use a circuit like the crossfit “fran” in some of my client’s programs? Possibly, but remember why circuits work for fat loss/conditioning in the first place…

Time under tension and lactic acid buildup. You can do this with a circuit for sure, but there are other ways as well like slow eccentrics. I believe those would be a better choice for most of the personal training clients I see.