A lot of women like to be slim and strong without being over-muscled. Women are told a lot that they won’t get muscular, and I have to say I do think that’s rubbish. Women totally can bulk up and get a shape they don’t want from doing the wrong exercises and eating in the wrong way for the result they want, whilst some women don’t want to slim down too much. So there seems a lot of confusion out there…

With this blog and programme I approach training styles for women who are ‘skinny fat’ or have poor posture, weak core and arms.

I think there are a lot of women who are ‘skinny fat’ who go to trainers and end up bulking up.

From my successes with women who wanted to be stronger and firmer but were ‘skinny fat’ some easy solutions were:

Less sugar and more protein with each meal. Also, to eat sweet potatoes which are anti-inflammatory and also work as carbs. By eating more fats, such as avocados and nuts, you won’t lose muscle.

In terms of fitness, a 5 minute run is useful for some fat burning, as well as cardio with big weights movements for 12 reps – where you do squats with push presses for 4-5 sets with reps for 12 reps.

Added bridges if they can be done either for 5-6 reps, where you raise your whole body, or glute bridges for 90 secs. And then added in with 60 second intervals progressively set at higher and higher speeds and added with planks held for 60 secs.

A lot of women suffer weak triceps as they have lymph nodes there, so an absolutely essential exercise is for women to do tricep extensions and skull crushers.

Try these tips in the kitchen and in the gym!

I’ve seen articles on magazines such as Mens Health saying that certain tasks are ‘fitness’, but when looking at the whole article I don’t think any one person could do all of them during a normal workout, unless perhaps they only trained on those exercises. In fact, a host of athletes couldn’t even necessarily do all of those tasks, and then they are written by different scientist proving different hypotheses.

To me, fitness isn’t how much you lift or how far you run, but the ability to move your body doing different tasks for high reps and very little rest e.g. a maximum of 30 seconds.

Fitness or getting fit would be you doing push ups for 30 seconds without stopping, then pull ups, then squats, then lunges, followed by a short sprint, sit ups and back extensions.

Therefore, I would show a whole-body circuit with perfect form, where each rep looks exactly like the first one, with very minimal rest between each exercise. 

That is fitness in my eyes, and again it’s very hard to measure how fit someone is by how far they run or how fast. Rather, it is the ability to endure and keep moving under resistance, strength with very little rest, and strong form throughout.

I find that the most effective workouts are often the simplest, such as 4 movements or exercises done repetitively and then more intensely as you progress.

The reason this method is so effective is because doing fewer exercises enables you to master those movements, so that you can be more effective at performing them and therefore progressing in them.

Increasing intensity also makes you productive, so instead of taking a long time trying to teach yourself a new technique, you enhance and better the technique of the given exercise.

So, here’s what I gave a client this morning and his body got worked hard…

Start with a five-minute warm up, jogging up a hill or a high incline. Once that’s been worked, introduce a faster speed and a higher incline for less time e.g. 2 minutes.

Then keep doing that, whilst increasing speed and hill height until you have found the maximum performance you can run at for 45 seconds. That’s your first exercise complete.

Then move onto raising your knees up higher than hip height and moving your arms in sync with your legs, just as a sprinter would do in a bounding or sprint drill.

After doing 4 of these drop down into a sprawl, which should look like a cobra in yoga. Google search sprawl if you haven’t seen it one before. From there, jump back up and repeat – that’s one rep. Do 10 of these.

For the next exercise, do pull ups or assisted pull ups for 10 reps or your 10 rep max if using assistance.

After this is planks: push yourself into a push up hold position and then back down into a plank.  Make sure you change the first hand you decide to push up with after each rep so you alternate arms and work them evenly. Do 10 of these.

Continue doing all 4 of these exercises, with progressions if you can, and with minimal rest.

This is gruesome and will get you fit. It will help you lose weight and fat, but it is not for the faint hearted.

For the final step, do my 5 favourite stretches after a workout. Read my other blogs on stretches, as this covers what to do!

Tennis elbow aggravates a lot of people, not just from tennis but from many lifestyle and repetitive movements, as well as poor posture.

Luckily for me and my clients I recently worked out the remedy.

You basically need to isolate the biceps and the triceps. This can be done by doing dumbbell curls with tricep extensions to warm up the joints and ligaments. Then you should strengthen the back by doing pull ups and hex bar deadlifts as well.

A lot of people confuse warming up the body with warming up specific joints and ligaments by getting the blood and fluids to move into that area so that the body now moves more fluidly and healthily.

If anyone has tennis elbow and doesn’t know how to treat it, please come and see me as I can definitely fix it.

This isn’t to say the above is the solution for everyone as I truly believe everyone’s body is individual when it comes down to what works for it or doesn’t. However, you could definitely try this with light to medium weights and see how it feels after.

Split squats are an incredible exercise. If you want to engage your glutes, get a deep stretch in the quads, and form strong functional muscles then do the split squat.

Split squats also improve feet health, which in turn creates health not only in the body as a whole but in the mind and brain. This is due to the stimulation of the nervous system from having to balance on one foot flat and one-foot balancing from the toes pointing and gripping down into the floor.

Step 1. Place your feet in a long stance with the feet about hip distance apart, with the front foot flat and the back foot pointed.

Step 2. Line the back knee up directly in line and underneath the hip, then engage the core so you drop downwards in a straight line.

Step 3. Move literally up and down vertically with absolutely no movement of the torso going forward AT ALL.

Step 4. To add the arms in have the arms in a T-shape widely held up – this will also improve posture.

Do 4 sets of 12 reps as slowly as you can on each side (8 sets all together) and you will look and feel great!

A blog dedicated to lunges… Why? Because I believe it is one the most painful and valuable exercises. As a movement, they are functional, technical and complex. As an exercise, they are most outstandingly beneficial to health, posture and sports performance and abilities.

Lunges are also a great rehabilitative and strengthening exercise. A lunge requires a deep kneed bend which is very difficult to achieve and quite frankly not actually or rarely done properly in the gym.

The postural benefit of this movement has a lot to do with the fact that one foot is flat and the other is pressing from the toes, so what’s happening is a strong requirement for balance.

Done correctly, it’s even harder to balance because there is a deep knee bend, meaning that the knee, glute, back and head are in a single line movement – vertically up and down. Most people that lunge have shallow knee bends, and the torso rolls forward which won’t really challenge the core, the posture or functionality. This will only equal a good exercise to sweat from or get a quad burn.

That’s the other thing about exercise: just because it’s a functional exercise does not mean you will reap the rewards if the execution is off.

I’ve been studying posture since my car accident 16 years ago when I decided to become a personal trainer. The inspiration came from the fact that I was in a lot of head, neck and spinal pain. No-one was able to fix the pain or my spine until I met a great chiropractor. I was told by him that my recovery was rapid, and that the rapidity was inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s modern encyclopaedia of body building. 

Since then I’ve played with a lot of training styles, as originally I was training to get into the UK karate squad; martial arts and sport have been a passion of mine since I was 7 years old.

Anyway, back to you, why is posture so important?  I’ll be frank, I’ve met many people and trained many people.

“The difference between a confident person and a strong person can be as simple as their posture.”

Another thing I’ve noticed is nowadays a lot of people have poor or weak posture. But posture isn’t a sexy topic – it’s not a buzz word people go for. Yet, people still ask about muscle building and weight loss.

Words of my typical client are ‘toning up’, but what I always see again and again is poor posture.

When the client realises that I am helping them to tone up, build muscle or lose weight with the aid of posture, they are really grateful that I have done so.

So, what are the key components of posture?

1. Strength – weights, bodyweight, or sports (personally I think it should be a mix of the above).

2. Movements that challenge – climbing, jumping, walking, throwing, striking, sprinting or crawling.

3. Stretching – not Yoga but stretching tight muscles that worsen posture on a regular basis so that it improves.

4. Balance – balance of the foot or feet and the hand or hands.

So today I was talking to an Instagram famous lady who has trained with five personal trainers and has taken out two gym memberships, but hasn’t been impressed by one trainer yet…

I find this interesting because I wanted to find out why and what’s going on. What is wrong with my industry that could be improved? As I want trainers to be great and the world to generally be a healthier place.

The first thing I discovered is that she wants to look like a fitness model. Yet, she has never had skin fold callipers to measure her body fat, she has never had her measurements even from a tape measure taken and she’s never had before or after shots of her physique.

For her fitness aspirations, this is what she needs from a personal trainer. Yet, it hasn’t been done. Perhaps what is wrong is that PTs don’t know how to do measurements; either because they can’t be bothered or don’t know how to communicate effectively with their clients the necessity.

So, as trainers lets reverse it. If there is knowledge and good communication this can easily be rectified.

The second problem is food. My client has never been given a food diary, nutritional guidelines or even an ability to tell or communicate with her trainer what she is eating. This is a major problem in itself. If there is no log, no feedback and no regime, then it is not actually possible to tweak her nutrition in order to get her the best results.

Again, I feel this is a lack of communication, knowledge or programmes.

Thirdly, it is likely that a template used to prepare both exercises and layout of each week has not been executed. Structure is imperative, as it helps people to stay motivated and provides a routine.

My fourth and final point is that I believe every trainer not only has to make sure that they ask that their client is committed, but also that their client will take responsibility and accountability for their own results.

“The trainer and the client are a team: the trainer has the skills and the knowledge, whilst the client must have the discipline.”

I believe when communication is effective and a commitment to holding disciplines is decided on from the client, personal training can and will work. However, if the communication, connection and vision is not aligned, it’s simply not going to work. But I also believe that is important to never give up; find a good team or individual that will help you on your fitness journey to get the results and quality of life that you desire.

I feel like it’s an important question to ask yourself, and one that doesn’t often get asked in commercial gyms. Hence why you see a lot of people walking aimlessly in high-street gyms and paying membership fees, but not particularly using the gym or knowing what it is they want to do or achieve there.

And then there are age differences. Guys in their 20s will generally want to build muscle by hitting the weights because they are leaner and possess greater cardiovascular health than they will do in later years. Women in their 20s will either want to be toned and slim like fashion models or muscular and slim like fitness models. These goals will remain until mid 30s.

I believe a shift occurs for people after 35, as they are now more experienced in muscular terms but will also tend to gain more weight and more injuries. Therefore, they will want to slim down injury-free.

But where is the point where everybody meets in the middle? I would argue that training for muscular shape, cardio fitness and weight loss would all seek the effects of rehabilitative work, mobility work and postural work.

Why is this?

Because those three will help you attain the above typical goals long-term, with the best results. This combination is the most effective way to maintain and improve results while still feeling great and being more confident.

So, when you are next training solo or with a trainer ask yourself (or the other person) why are you doing the exercise you are doing? This self-awareness in the gym will help you holistically for the long term. If you are securing the best results, continue doing it, and if not find something or someone that will get you there!