Posts

Weight Bearing Exercise and why it is important for good health & great fitness

osteoporosis

For both men & women, modern living, poor diets, lack of exercise and stress all contribute to a range of health issues.

Osteoporosis is becoming more common amongst men and has always been an issue for women, especially when going through any hormonal changes.

However, its not all bad news. Exercise in many forms can help with osteoporosis – it won’t reverse the condition but it can control it and it can stall the spread.

 

What are the best exercises? What does weight bearing exercise mean?

 

  • Weight bearing exercise includes any exercise where you bear the weight of your body or indeed where you lift weights, so….
  • Weight lifting, resistance training is top of the list. Lifting weights stimulates the skeleton to produce new bone cells and discard older weaker bone cells (known in science as osteoblasts and osteoclasts!)
  • Hour of Power – lifting lighter weights for long reps is a great way to strengthen bones and tick off a great cardio workout too
  • Running is great for putting force through the legs and hips
  • Good old fashioned bodyweight exercises such as press ups, burpees, squat thrusts – basically all the moves you perform in Metafit, Insanity or any other circuits style conditioning class
  • We can add Yoga & Tai-Chi to the list too!

 

Watch this wee video for a short educational view of how you build bones

http://random42.com/bone-biology-osteoblasts-and-osteoclasts-animation

 

Conrad Rafique, Fitness Coach & mPT  November 2015

 

Conquer Your Personal Fitness Mountain

Coming soon….. my booklet on how to take command of your health, what you need to commit in order to develop life-long fitness and why your brain & body need certain nutritional elements to flourish.  I will add this as a downloadable file soon.

Running Development

Many of my clients are runners – aspiring marathoners to sub-40 minute 10k people…. What do they have in common?

 

The one thing they have in common is a tendency to not warm up thoroughly enough thus picking up lower leg injuries.  Of course, its not just about a lack of warm-up.  It goes much deeper into their running technique and their individual bio-mechanics.

Man was born to run – as I have stated before – we evolved with an innate ability to run, either to hunt or to evade danger – the classic ‘Fight or Flight” (I know in some cases the brain just Freezes….we’ll set that aside for now)

However, the majority of runners pounding the streets of Great Britain today are doing so in well cushioned footwear and with a stride that doesn’t really pay true homage to our great evolution as runners over the last 200,000 years.  Its for this reason that I am currently writing a new Running Development programme to help both existing and new clients with running technique and with an objective of making running:

  1. PAIN-FREE
  2. INJURY-FREE
  3. EFFICIENT, ECONOMIC and therefore…….
  4. FASTER

Watch this space its coming soon, drills, videos, articles, maybe a forum, definitely some live events and sessions using the magnificent Bebington Oval – Mid-March launch date

YOURS IN Running – Conrad,

 

Ultrasound Body Composition TEASER

Ultrasound Body Composition Assessment

What is it?

–       Using the latest portable ultrasound technology from the USA we scan 1, 3 or 7 sites to measure tissue thickness & evaluate body composition

Does it hurt? Are there any risks?BX-Tissue Graphic

–       The process is completely non-invasive and an overview can be done by simply scanning your biceps. There are no health risks.

How accurate is it? Why is it better than modern scales?

–       This is a clinical grade ultrasound unit. Scientific testing showed up to 25% more accuracy than high-end modern weighing scales

What do I receive at the end of the assessment?MyHealth

  1. All clients receive a full personalised body composition assessment detailing body fat, lean muscle mass, water content, BMI & waist-hip ratio.
  2. A nutritional assessment outlining optimum calorie requirements
  3. A rating of likelihood of illness along with targeted weight loss, if appropriate

 

Assessment…… £95

 

Note that this service is currently unique to Rock Mountain Fitness and Joints & Points in the North West of England

 

What should I bring?

  • Shorts, ¾ length running tights, a t-shirt or vest, training shoes
  • Water

(Changing facilities are available)

 

 

41aVwdlUuTL

Other Services include Run, Bike & Swim Coaching

 

 

 

About Your Coach

Conrad Rafique qualified as a Fitness & Motivation Coach with The European Institute of Fitness based at Lillieshall National Sports Centre. He is a Master Personal Trainer & competes in duathlon, off-road trail marathons & cyclo-cross. He is an experienced PT, Running & Cycling Coach. His previous career was in Finance with Kellogg’s

Nutrition to fuel Ultra-Marathon Training

In sport, fitness and life generally food is a passion.  It’s the fuel that makes us function and it can taste fabulous and enable great social occasions with close friends and family.

A friend of mine at Wirral Athletics Club loves food…. well to be fair he loves the chippie and he really loves chips with curry sauce.  He is not some lard arse though – he is a mid-40s self-employed Dad who still knocks out a 10k at 6 minute mile pace.  He is light and ‘healthy’ and a wee bit mad, you see, he has entered the Anglesey Ring o Fire Ultra-Marathon.  It’s a 3 day megathon totalling 140 miles on trails around the beautiful and windswept Isle of Anglesey.

His first training 21-mile training run resulted in a full-on bonk and ‘wall-hit’ that saw him back in his caravan with 2 jumpers and 3 fleeces on shivering under the downie whilst trying to recover.

On hearing of this training debacle, my pal Jon asked me for some nutrition advice, safe in the knowledge that I had fueled similar efforts on the bike.  My diagnosis of his ‘fueling” was damning – the training run was fueled by some water and 2 crunchy bars…… without knowing the brand we are talking 350 kcals…. not much fuel.

In summary, we focused on fueling in the days before – not skipfuls of pasta carbo-loading – but bringing more fruits and veggies into the prep along with good quality carbs to fuel the glycogen stores in his muscles.  Sure, there are traditional carb sources on the list – rice, pasta, potatoes – but not in the vast quantities that some people seem to think they require.

I’ll post more on the details of his “Ring o Fire” prescription next week.

In the meantime if anyone else out there requires nutritional advice, drop me a line.

See you on the Trail – Conrad Rafique
Head of Rock Mountain PT