Your Daily Kcal Needs

Here we are going to discuss how to calculate our approximate Kcal daily needs.
BMR = basal metabolic rate
Your basal metabolic rate is the amount of kcals you burn at rest – i.e to keep living! Heart pumping/lungs working/temperature controlled etc.
Below is a general simplified method for calculating your approximate BMR
Women BMR= weight (kg) x 22
Men BMR= weight (kg) x 24
Next you need to take into account your activity levels to calculate your daily kcal expenditure. This is known as your PAL (physical activity level) and is used by placing yourself on the following scale:
PAL

• Mostly inactive/sedentary mostly sitting = 1.2
• Fairly active (walking and exercise 1-2 x week) = 1.3
• Moderately active (exercise 2-3 x weekly) = 1.4
• Active (exercise hard more than 3 x weekly) = 1.5
• Very active (exercise hard daily) = 1.7

Daily kcal expenditure = BMR x PAL

E,g. female 60kg, active
= 60 x 22 = 1320 (BMR)
= 1320 x 1.5
= 1980kcal per day

And that is your total Kcal needs calculated. This is what your body individually requires to maintain it’s weight with your current activity levels.
Energy Balance:


To maintain weight your energy intake and expenditure must be in balance.
You gain weight when you food intake exceeds your energy expenditure,
If you want to lose weight you need to create a deficit in your energy balance. I suggest you look at losing 500-600kcals per day from your food intake. This way you will lose between 1-2lbs of fat a week. I would not suggest trying to lose weight fast than this as it will generally be via an unsustainable method and a greater energy deficit than this will force your body into ‘survival mode’ and cause you to metabolise lean tissue as well as fat.

A Recap And What's To Come…

So, we have now covered all the firsts steps to starting a work out plan;

• you’ve thought about your goals and made them ‘SMART’
• from this you’ve considered anabolic and catabolic states
• you’ve thought about the order and make up of your cardio and MSE sections
• And you’ve applied the principles of training

From here, with regards to session plans, we shall go on to discuss more specific areas of your training, including…

• how to train different components of fitness e.g. speed, endurance, strength, flexibility etc
• how to train at home
• how to train in the gym
• breaking down training by muscle group
• how to train safely- warm ups/cool downs/injury control
• how to improve your posture to maximise your training

…And lots more. So stay tuned and use the comments box to add any requests!

The Principles of Fitness

The ‘principles of training’ should be used in conjunction with your ‘smart’ goals to tailor your training for what you are aiming for and to make it as functional as possible to you. They are made up using the SPORT FITT acronym;

S – Specificity- training for what? Make your training specific to what you are working towards- if you're training to run a 10km race, row sprints are not for you!
P – Progression- Consider the rate of how you will progress, e.g in intensity/duration. No progression will lead to little/no results, too fast progression can lead to injury etc. Also, always record your progressions so you can monitor them.
O – Overload- making the body work harder. The body needs increased physical demand to improve physical fitness. (see FITT acronym)
R – Reversibility- ‘’if you don’t use it, you lose it’’ any physiological adaption's made through training will revert if they are not sustained and overloaded. e.g. muscle growth occurs at 1/3 of the rate it reverses if its not used.
T – Tedium- if you find training boring it becomes de-motivating and you are less likely to sustain it- leads to reversibility. It must be stimulating!

F – Frequency- consider the number of training sessions per week and the number reps/sets etc within the training sessions.
I – Intensity- how hard are you working? Heart rate level/amount of resistance?
T – Type- what kind of training for the type of fitness your trying to achieve? (see anabolic/catabolic states for example)
T – Time- the duration of your training.

Planning Your MSE Section

Muscular Strength and Endurance
Resistance training includes any exercise that causes you muscles to contract against and external resistance, with the aim to increase muscular tone/mass/endurance. This external resistance can be in the form of free weights, resistance machines, your own bodyweight, resistance bands or any weighted object used to make your muscles contract.
In simple terms, resistance training works by microscopically tearing muscle fibres for them to be repaired and regenerated, growing back stronger- anabolism. During this regeneration process nutrients as well as testosterone, protein and growth hormone move in to help repair the muscles during the recovery period after MSE training.
Benefits of MSE Training:
+ increase muscle strength and tone
+ increase metabolic rate, helping to maintain weight
+ increase bone strength, reducing risk of osteoporosis
+ can reduce blood pressure
+ maintain muscular strength throughout life- after age of 30 muscle fibre size and type 2 muscle fibre quantity decreases.

Strength Training for Hypertrophy:
Muscular hypertrophy refers to increasing size, so bulking for large muscles. For this type of training you need to be looking higher weights/resistance that cause your muscles to fatigue by around the 6th-8th rep, and this should be done for 2-3 sets. This is a very general overview of reps/sets to start strength training on, and we shall go in to more detail on more specific training methods and plans in the future.
Muscular Endurance Training:
This type of training is aimed more at increasing muscle ‘tone’ and definition without focusing on grain large muscle size. (Again, not to stereotype! But ladies, this is often a popular choice for you when your looking to improve muscle shape and tone without bulking). For this you need to be looking at lower weights/resistance but working the muscles for longer. For example to the point of fatigue setting in more around the 12th-15th rep, for 2-3 sets. Still, this is again a very general overview of reps/sets to start on and we shall look in to more specific plans in the future.

Categories of Muscular Training:
Isotonic
Isotonic contractions create movement by the muscles contracting and shortening.
+ good for movements/actions relative to your sport
+ strengthens your muscles throughout a range of movement
- can cause muscle soreness through stress whilst lengthening
- the strength gains are not evenly distributed throughout the action
Isometric
Isometric training involves contracting the muscle without it shorting, therefore giving no movement. e.g the plank. This should be done as well as isotonic training.
+ develops static strength, e.g used in pushing/pulling/holding up a heavy object
+ they’re quick
+ can be done anywhere
+ no expensive equipment needed
- can cause temporary raises in blood pressure and be risky for those with heart conditions
- the muscles worked only gain strength at the angle it is used during the exercise.
Isokinetic Training
Isokinetic training involves constant speed of muscle contraction throughout the action, as opposed to isotonic contractions where the contraction is usually slower at the start and gets easier as the resistance comes closer to the body.
+ even strength gains throughout range of movement
+ fastest way to increase muscle strength
- very expensive gym equipment

Planning Your Cardio Section

Now we’re up to what what exercises you are actually going to do. Again we need to think about what you want, what you want to do, when and where.
So, we’ve already discussed the affects of anabolic and catabolic states and so you should have decided whether you are going to put your cardio before, after or on a different day to resistance training.

Let me starting on this by busting a myth that haunts cardio activity- low intensity CV work for long periods of time is NOT the best way to burn fat (stomach fat in particular) working at a higher intensity burns more fat per unit of time. By using higher intensity work you burn the same fat that you would at a lower intensity and then some!
As a rule of thumb you should try and aim to be doing at least 20mins of cardio training 3 times weekly. Government guidelines is 30mins 5 days a week but everyday is the ideal.
Heart rate zones- when thinking about what intensity you are going to work at you should be considering your heart rate. For a healthy asymptomatic individual, there is no reason why you cannot work at at least between 60-70% HHR (heart rate reserve) and the duration you can withstand this at will improve as your fitness improves. If you are already well conditioned you may be able to work at a higher intensity or if you are symptomatic of some kind (high blood pressure, heart condition) you should see a doctor before commencing exercise and then consult a fitness professional to prescribe you lower intensity exercise. Calculating HRR…
HRR= 220 - your age – your resting heart rate
e.g. 65% HHR of 20yr old with 60bpm resting heart rate
= 220- 20- 60 = 140bpm
= 151bpm
From this you can then monitor your heart rate to ensure your working close to your target heart rate by either wearing a heart rate monitor or using the HR sensors on many CV machines in the gym                  

Interval training is a great way to get fit and burn fat. Recent studies have also shown that interval training is particularly effective at burning belly fat. Its also a popular choice as the variance throughout the work out can make it more interesting and make your workout seem to to go faster, so many people find it more sustainable. The key is picking something you are going to do regularly, correctly and work hard on, so pick something you  enjoy.
It may be that you hate the gym, so don't go! You don't need a gym to work out! Do what you enjoy, if that's bike riding: go for a bike ride. If that's walking in the woods: walk in the woods. if its road running: go running.
Cardio training is most effective when you use the larger muscle groups- legs, bum back. So take this into account when you choose your mode of CV. (If in a gym) this may be choosing the rowing machine over a predominantly arm based exercise. But any CV training is better than none and all will be beneficial to you! Below is a list of CV gym equipment you could choose from:
+ treadmills
+ steppers
+ cross trainers/elliptical trainers
+ rowing machines
+ exercise bikes
+ climbers

The Right Training For What You Want!

Catabolic Vs Anabolic!

After thinking about your fitness goals, then next step is to plan your training plan! Here you need to think about what you want to achieve, how you’re going to achieve it and when. You need to consider the functionality of your training and think about the biology behind it to get the results you want.
Although of course everyone and their personal goals are different and these two goals do overlap, generally you can spilt people into one of two groups when it comes to starting training; the ones that want to build muscle mass and the ones who want to loose fat mass. From this you are instantly talking in terms of catabolism and anabolism.
Anabolism is the construction of molecules from smaller units- i.e. in this case, the building up of tissue, using energy. Catabolism is the opposite- i.e the breakdown of tissue to release energy. Different types of training force our bodies into either anabolic or catabolic states.
To build muscle we want our bodies to be in an anabolic state, promoting the build up of muscle tissue and increase muscle fibre size. For this we need to be doing resistance training (to build muscle size weight should be heavier for 6-8reps and to build muscle endurance 12-15reps) Resistance training releases testosterone in the body which promotes the anabolic state.
To burn fat we want our bodies to be in a catabolic state, breaking down triglycerides and fatty acids the burn off as energy. To do this we need to do cardiovascular training (this can be low or higher intensity but need to be long lasting- over 20mins) When we do CV training our bodies release cortosol which release fatty acids to break down for energy, hence fat burning.
These two metabolic states don’t work together, you are either in a catabolic or anabolic state. The cortosol released in CV work inhibits the anabolic process of testosterone.
So, if you want to improve fitness but also increase muscle mass CV work should be done on a different day to resistance training or at least 6hours after for optimum results. This way you get the health benefits of CV training, including fat burning to increase the definition of you muscles, without it inhibiting the hard work your are doing resistance training to build muscle size.
If you want to burn fat and improve muscle tone without massively increasing muscle bulk, do your cv training before the resistance training within your training session. This way you will get the toning benefit of strength training, but the cortosol inhibiting the action of the testosterone in your body will prevent your muscles gaining bulk- often relative to women (not to generalise!) that want tone but not a masculine shape.

So, before you think about your training sessions, think: what do i want? and so: do I want to be catabolic or anabolic?
Hope this helps!

What's your BMI?

BMI is a calculation of your body fat based on your height and weight and can be a good indication of where you stand in terms of health brackets. Hydrostatic weighing is the most accurate way to test your body mass index, but I’m assuming most of you reading this don't have a big water tank available to weigh yourself in right now!
Below is a generalised formula for BMI.
Of course it is not totally accurate and does not take into account excessive amounts of muscle weight for example, so wont be good for someone very muscley with low fat, but for the most people will give you a good idea to what group you fall into.


BMI Classification
<18.5                  Underweight
18.6 - 24.9           Healthy
25.0  -29.9           Overweight
>30                     Obese