Boxing is a great way to build both strength and cardio fitness, it can be used as a great fat loss tool and can offer an alternative high intensity option for those undergoing lower limb rehab.

When taking up boxing for the first time I would always recommend you seek out a qualified PT or Boxing coach to assist you with correct technique and to give you some ideas as to intensity and drills. Having said this, some of the best boxing for fitness drills you can do are essentially any that keep the heart rate elevated!

A couple of very simple boxing circuit drills:

Drill 1: For more muscle fatigue

Throw 100 fast jabs into a bag or partners mitts. Without rest jump straight into your maximum number of push ups. Have a 30 second rest and either swap with your partner or go on to any other combination of punches and body weight exercise. Alternate upper and lower body exercises for variation, and increased heart rate and less isolated muscle fatigue or go the other way and group like muscle groups together…mix up your training!

Drill 2: For more cardio fatigue

Again start with any combination of punches, maybe L jab, R jab, L upper cut and R hook. Very simple and keeps you interested. Preform this sequence 20 times through than go straight into 250 skips with a rope, back to another punching drill together with a 200 metre sprint…Straight to another punching drill, you get the idea!

Boxing by yourself can have great benefits but try doing it with a partner or as part of a small group and I guarantee the intensity of the session will go through the roof. People get competitive and you can sit back and watch the intensity of a boxing session rise through the roof!

Specific boxing drills are far to vast to get into here but like I mentioned previously try and go and see you local qualified PT or boxing coach and they will get you started, but hey there is nothing wrong with just going and throwing a couple of light punches into a bag at your local gym to see if you have the taste for it!

Heath Barwick

Oceana Health & Fitness.

The short answer to this is technically yes. The simple reason for this is in our genetic make up and in a males higher levels of testosterone. However…

over two thirds of the male population of the western world are considered either over weight or obese yet only half of the female population is considered over weight or obese, so this would suggest other wise!

The reasons for weight gain and loss are numerous, so yes given the identical circumstances a male would find it easier to lose body fat however there are some many other factors that come in to play with regards to weight loss.

Training in a method designed for fat loss and a healthy diet are 2 essential ingredients in the battle to lose fat, if these 2 are not right than it doesn’t matter what part your genetics play, you wont lose fat!

Heath Barwick
Assistant Manager                                                                                                          Oceana Health & Fitness

Monicque asked a detailed question essentially asking 4 questions:

1) What is the best food source to fuel her weights workouts: Sports drink, oats or eggs on toast or fasting before hand.

2) Which of these would be best for muscle hypertrophy.

3) How much fat do we need per day and do types of fat matter.

4) Lastly asking what I think about stretching.

Monicque your question whilst detailed is actually very simple to answer once broken down into what your goals may be.

Lets assume that as you say want to know the straight forward answer to the first part of your question. To begin with we need to understand that for an intense weight training workout your body will use glycogen as its fuel for the effort you are exerting. This glycogen is stored both in muscle tissue and in our livers for use when we need it. Therefore the best way to extract the greatest performance form our bodies during our workouts is to ensure we have sufficient amounts of carbohydrate in out diets.

Lets assume you are training at a high intensity for a long duration and you aren’t concerned about aesthetics. Well in this case you would consume a carbohydrate and protein combination for breakfast AND perhaps consume a sports drink during your training. Now is this going to give you the best figure at the end of the day? NO it wont but it will allow you to preform at your peak for longer…If looking for fat loss then that’s a totally different kettle of fish! To give you a better answer I would need to know how long you are training for, what intensity you are training at and most importantly, what goals you wish to achieve from your training.

Now for the second part of your question…Muscle growth occurs when we damage the muscle fibres (training) give them what they need to repair (diet) and allow them time to recover (rest). Without these 3 elements your results will be minimal. You’re asking about the diet portion of the above so… The best thing you can do to aid the growth of your muscles via diet is to consume an adequate amount of carbohydrate, fat and protein. Eat small, regular meals with only about 2-3 hours between each and ensure you consume enough total calories throughout the day. Your body wont grow if you don’t have a calorie surplus to draw on. Ensure you eat a fast digesting meal/shake ASAP after training and follow this up with a good carbohydrate and protein rich solid food source within 1 hour post training.

When talking about fat intake many things need to be considered, your body size, your current body composition your overall training goals. But in short, yes types of fat do matter but from a calorie point of view no they don’t as all fats have 9 Calories per gram! This however is very dismissive of what is actually good for us health wise. Saturated fats are known to clog our arteries etc (we all know the drill!) BUT some saturated fats are good for us, for example coconut oil is around 92% saturated and has heaps of health benefits! Trans fats we are told are “BAD” for us but what about conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)??? This is a natural (not man made) type of trans fat that has great weight loss potential! In short, yes fats are essential to a healthy diet but in general we just need to stay away from the highly processed and deep fried food with little nutritional value.

Now for stretching…Well I am going to piss a lot of people off here! I am yet to read a study (and I do lots of fitness reading and research!) that conclusively proves any benefit to the fit healthy person from stretching. I have in fact read many articles (still inconclusive though) stating that there may be a performance detriment to stretching before 100% efforts! Having said this I have seen a couple of methods work very well. 1) stretching the working body part very aggressively after lifting maximal loads. 2) Stretching for rehabilitation of an injury. Out side of these 2 points I think people spend far too long stretching in the gym trying to convince themselves they are training hard enough to achieve their desired goals!

The above answers are lacking a lot of detail however if I was to cover every possible scenario I would be writing a book on just one of your questions! Just remember that there are always exceptions to the “rule”, whenever someone tells you that “this is the best way to train” they are wrong! There is no 1 best way to train for everybody and what gets you results initially will eventually fail to keep you getting results and you will need to change your training to suit. As your body changes, change your diet and training along with it and you will continue to get great results.

Heath Barwick

Assistant Manager

Oceana Health & Fitness

Hi all,

Well to answer this question I am sorry but again I need to ask a question!

What are you training for???

My answer would be “NO” if you are aiming at rehabbing a broken spine after a car accident!

“NO” if you are very unfit and new to training…Although modifying some of the “Workout of the day” (W.O.D) would suit.

“NO” if you are looking at putting on large amounts of muscle.

However if you are looking at adding variation to your stale program or an alternative to “traditional” cardio training than “YES” I think “Crossfit” type training is great.

Some reasons that “Crossfit” falls short of being the Be all and end all that many people say it is – Well it doesn’t take into account injuries, movement restrictions or your personal goals.

Some reasons it is great – It trains you to you failure point and pushes you to get the most you can from your training (this is where you will see results)

So I guess I have side stepped that question nicely!!!

Look, ultimately it does all depend on what you are trying to get out of your workouts and how driven you are to achieve your results. Yes I use “Crossfit” style training as part of my training but I don’t blame the workout when I don’t get the results I am trying to achieve. I ALWAYS train to failure (unless in a recovery session!) so if I don’t get the results I am after I need to look at why…If I am trying to put or a kilo or so of muscle yet I am burning up heaps of energy training with “Crossfit” workouts than this is my fault, not the workout! The workouts were simply never designed to do what I am asking from them!

The best thing I can suggest here is to speak with me or one of our other great trainers here at Oceana Health & Fitness and we will have a chat about what goals you are trying to achieve…and hey, you never know, depending on your goals, it may be as simple as working through the W.O.D’s. Although “looking” at the W.O.D’s is the easy part!!!

Heath Barwick

Assistant Manager

Oceana Health & Fitness

heath@ohf.com.au

One of the most common questions the trainers here at Oceana Health & Fitness would get asked is “should I eat low carb?”

Well as I am sure you will appreciate this is a very hard question to answer without first understanding what the person eats for the day. I would not suggest a person eats too few carbs but having said this the person asking the question may be having heaps of carbs in every meal!

In my experience most people could get better results from their training if they “carb cycled” instead of just eating low carb.

So what is “carb cycling”?

It is the process of alternating low carb and high carb days. (Well that’s it in a nut shell!)

As we begin dieting to lose some of those extra kilos of body fat we quite often eat too few calories, this means that yes we will lose some body fat but we also lose a fair amount of vital muscle mass and we also slow down our metabolism both from losing muscle and from entering a reduced calorie burn due to our body adjusting to living on fewer calories. This is where cycling comes in…

One 2-3 days we can reduce our calorie and carbohydrate intake below maintenance levels and on 1 day go over what we need for maintenance. Now the catch here is that we need to make sure we don’t go over by more than the amount we went under on our “low” days. All the extra calories on a “high” day should come from carbs…Simple!

If this was simple everyone would be extremely lean and I wouldn’t be writing this so it is obviously not simple. However it is achievable, all we need to do is gain an understanding for how many calories and macro nutrients are certain foods.

Now there are lots of calculators and such getting around that will work out how many calories/carbs/protein etc that you need but a good rule of thumb for figuring out how many calories you need is to simply multiply your body weight in kilos by 22-24 for you low carb/calorie days and by 28-30 for your high carb/calorie days. This figure will need to be adjusted if you find that you are not getting the results you expected but leave it 2-3 weeks before changing anything…let your body adjust before making changes.

Why do this???

Well effectively what you are doing is sending competing messages to your body. Your body won’t be able to adapt to the low carb/calorie days because you are than sending the complete opposite message and your high carb/calorie day. The purpose behind such cycling is to get your body to “burn” body fat as a fuel source instead of carbohydrates but we don’t want to slow you metabolism so we need to be careful to increase calories for that one day but make sure you don’t go over by more than your low days are under!!!

For example if you eat 100 Calories under your maintenance level for 2 days than don’t go 201 Calories over your maintenance on your high day, this will result in weight gain (very little but you get the point!)

To get you Calories on you low carb days most people will find that they are eating far more fat and protein than they are perhaps used to but it is vital that this is done to save that metabolism boosting muscle!

If you have any questions about this or any other posts on here please feel free to ask. Also check out www.ohf.com.au for all the help you will ever need from the best trainers in Australia!!!

Heath Barwick.

Assistant Manager

Oceana Health & Fitness

heath@ohf.com.au

People ask this question all the time…well as I tell people over and over again “you must train with weights to lose body fat”. That’s not to say that sitting down for 3 minutes between sub maximal sets is going to help at all but the correct weights training program will yield far greater results then going for a run for an hour plus. There is one reason for this…EPOC. Ask a trainer how to increase your fat loss today. Don’t believe me? Please read the study below.

Kramer, Volek et al.

Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999. Overweight subjects were assigned to three groups: diet-only, diet plus aerobics, diet plus aerobics plus weights. The diet group lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks. The aerobic group lost only one more pound (15.6 pounds) than the diet group (training was three times a week starting at 30 minutes and progressing to 50 minutes over the 12 weeks). The weight training group lost 21.1 pounds of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively). Basically, the addition of aerobic training didn’t result in any real world significant fat loss over dieting alone. Thirty-six sessions of up to 50 minutes is a lot of work for one additional pound of fat loss. However, the addition of resistance training greatly accelerated fat loss results.

Heath Barwick.

Weight loss depends on energy balance

If you are over weight you ARE eating too much for the amount that you are moving. Please read below…

To lose weight, your energy intake must be less then your expenditure. This will always be true. There are no foods, pills, or potions that will magically melt the kilos off. The only approach that works is eating less and/or exercising more.

If you are unable to train at a high intensity you need to be even more aware of what is going in your mouth as you will struggle to burn it off.

Come and see a trainer for more detailed advice on your particular situation.

Heath Barwick.

Well the short answer is “no”.

At the end of the day though, it is true that if you eat too much of anything you will put on fat. However this is over simplifying things.

To say that you would get the same benefit from 100 Calories of Soft drink as 100 Calories of veggies is silly. Just remember though that both still have 100 Calories!  Despite what so called “experts” will tell you by getting you to buy their “revolutionary new diet books”, there is no ‘one size fits all’ diet plan. What works for one person will not work so well for another.

The two most troubling things we need to deal with when it comes to fat loss is the type of food we consume and the timing of when this food is consumed. Believe it or not America’s number 1 source of Calories is Soft drinks, this is particularly worrying because Australia is catching up to America as the fattest nation on earth at alarming pace!

So how do we turn things around? 

1) Make sure you eat protein with every carbohydrate source. This includes everything from your toast for breakfast to your salad roll for lunch…add some protein.

2) Don’t go with the trendy “low carb” diets you may have heard about, in general however we do need to go “lower carb”. What does this mean? As a whole we tend to eat too many carbs, cereal for breaky, rolls for lunch, pasta for dinner, you wont burn fat if you have a massive dose of carbs every couple of hours  especially simple carbs (soft drinks!) So we need to ensure we have enough carbs in our diets to ensure our glycogen stores are adequate but not so much that we are consistently burning carbs as a fuel source.  Ask your trainer to explain this further.

3) Taper off not only your carbs but the total amount of food you eat toward the end of the day.  Again this depends on when you are most active so ask your trainer to expand on this.

There are lots of exceptions to all of the above but they work well as a guide. And if you only take in one thing from all this remember that when you eat simple carbohydrates your insulin levels go up. Insulin is a storage hormone so what should you NEVER eat with simple carbs…? FAT. What should you eat with simple carbs…? PROTEIN. Remember this and you are well on your way. If you have any questions about this please come and see me or your trainer.

Heath Barwick.

Exercising at low intensity or so called “Fat burning” exercise will result in about 90% of your calories coming from fat whilst working at higher intensity or the so called “cardio zone” will result in about 60% of calories burned coming from fat. Now if you stopped reading here you would continue to train at low intensity because it burns more fat right…Wrong!

If it is difficult for you to train at higher intensities you have another option, increase your training duration – how long you exercise. So if you want results you have 2 choices…Push yourself during your workouts or keep going for a longer time, I know which I would prefer!

Please see a trainer before trying to increase the intensity of your program for more specific advice.

Heath Barwick.

No one program is the be all and end all of training.

No one program will get you results in the long term. All programs are short term training “tools”.

Any specific program will produce a benefit until the point where your body has adapted. Once it adapts all you will do is maintain your progress.

Let me explain this further. When you begin a training program your body begins to make changes straight away (providing you are working hard!) It is these changes that start to occur that over time make your program obsolete.

If you are working away at your “routine” (i.e. the same thing all the time) you are doomed for failure. As your body starts to adapt, the previous stimulus that you applied will no longer be enough to make your body respond in the same way as it did previously. So your results will start to diminish.  Don’t despair there is a solution.

What needs to be done is a manipulation of the repetitions, sets and rest of your program.

If one or all of these parameters are changed your body will be kept guessing and your results will continue. It is the knowledge of how to manipulate these parameters where people get confused. There are so many variables that come into play that I just couldn’t explain them all here but you should see a trainer for more information.

The best bit of advice that I can give you in this short answer is to work to failure. If you work to your failure point on everything you do (not just until it is hard!), be it cardio or weights, then you will get results. Of course this is only true for those that want to change your body shape, we also need to remember that a big part of your gym experience can be for the social side of things so by all means have a chat, there is nothing wrong with just training to maintain where you are at. There is however a big BUT to this or should that be BUTT! If you do want results then you must do as I have mentioned above. When it comes to training there are plenty of grey areas but one thing that remains a constant and that so few people manage to achieve is that in order to change your body shape you must work hard.

Heath Barwick.