Elite Fitness Solutions

I’m not a very public person, and this is a little difficult to be honest. However, I’m keeping accountable to all of you so here it goes! My “before“ pictures.

 Today officially starts my 6 week “transformation”. On Monday, April 13th, I will have my “after” pics.

I will be keeping a nutrition and exercise log along the way. I welcome comments, etc. on your own journey as well!

It’s great to know that I have the tools to see great changes!

By the way, if you haven’t heard already, we’re doing a seminar Free to the public Thursday, March 19th at 6:45pm about nutrition. Please RSVP if you plan on attending!

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I didn’t think much of it until recently.

When I met my husband about 8 years ago, I was struggling with my weight and body image. I was completely lost and frustrated!

James introduced me to weight training and mountain biking. Both have made a lifechanging difference on my physical appearance.

In becoming interested in how fitness changes your body when done the “right way”, I found the nutritional side of things very interesting as well. I have become the “nutrition expert” of sorts in our business.

Now, this is where I have to confess something. I have some old habits, cravings and vices that don’t seem to want to go away! I find that every so often, (particularly at “that time” of the month) my willpower takes a backseat to these things.

It does seem to get easier the more I educate myself, but nonetheless they’re there. I know the saying goes, we are all our own worst critic, and I find that I am particularly hard on myself. I mean, how can I preach to my clients about nutrition when I have my downfalls?

Then, it dawned on me. Part of what I try to teach is to eat well most of the time. I tell each and every client to allow for set backs, and “cheat” meals. So, just recently I have found my relief.

I have also told clients that they need to be realistic. If they eat the wrong things consistently, their results will be inconsistent.

So, as the last week has been full of birthday planning, family visits and dinners, which means lots of great, indulgent food, cake and ice cream, I allowed myself indulgences, knowing that I have all the tools to get right back to where I want to be physically.

I’d say I’ve taken about 3 weeks “off” nutritionally. I don’t feel terrible because I’ve kept up the workout side, but I can feel the changes. This is a great way to re-start the motivation, rather than continue down this path! Therefore, I’ve set specific goals for myself, I’ve told people what I’m wanting to do, establishing accountablilty.

I have scheduled a photo shoot with a local photographer, further adding to my motivation!

I am going to be posting my “before” pictures, and food logs, keeping myself accountable. I hope this will encourage all of you! Enjoy life, expect setbacks, don’t beat yourself up about them. Tomorrow is always a new day!

I’ll see you in about 6 weeks, photo ready!

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Most exercise professionals would agree that there are many components to fitness. A well rounded approach to fitness that addresses all of them is usually the best way to achieve lasting gains and continual progress from a program. Being deficient in even one of these components leads to slow progress and results in a condition I call “false fit”.

“False fit” is when someone perceives themselves to be fit when there are glaring holes in one of the 5 Fitness Components. While each area can cover other, more specific concepts here is a list and brief description of 5 Fitness Components you need to work on:

1. Mobility – Your ability to move freely while maintaining good posture. Also includes elements of body control and body awareness.

2. Core Strength – Your ability to properly use your core to create a strong platform around which movement is created. Emphasis is on stabilizing the lower back and mobilizing the hips and shoulder blades.

3. Power – Your ability to coordinate your muscles in order to create quick, dynamic movements. Life is dynamic and so everyone should have some sort of power training in their program, even if it is something as simple as slamming a medicine ball into the ground.

4. Strength – I define this a little differently than most. I define strength as your ability to create proper movement and maintain that proper movement under load. Creating a movement through compensation, such as using your lower back during leg exercises, is not true strength no matter how much weight you move.

5. Conditioning/ Endurance – Your ability to engage in your chosen activities without excessive fatigue. A good conditioning program will also act as a catalyst for fat loss. For most people proper conditioning should focus more on intervals than on traditional steady state aerobics.

Do you do yoga and/ or Pilates but do not work on power and conditioning?

Do you run or bike but don’t work on mobility and strength?

Do you “body build” but don’t work on mobility and conditioning?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, or if you see something on the list above that you are not addressing, then you have developed the “false fit” condition. You are fit as it pertains to the particular activities and exercises you engage in but the truth is your fitness is limited. Get you outside of your comfort zone and your true fitness levels will get quickly exposed.

Our body wants to maintain a balance between the 5 Fitness Components. When we lose that balance we slow down our progress and set ourselves up for pain and injuries. Sometimes the answer to achieving the fitness levels that you want is not in looking for different twists on what you are already doing but in looking outside your box for new elements.

I tell people all the time that if you do not want to look and/ or perform like everyone else don’t train like everyone else. Most people are dissatisfied with their current fitness condition so don’t take the same approach they do. Make sure that you work on developing true, well rounded fitness and avoid the pain and frustration that goes with being “false fit”.

-James Wilson-

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Most of us are twisted in one way or another…and I’m not talking about anything that you might be involved in (that’s your business). What I am talking about is how your body holds itself. Whether you realize it or not your body is probably contorting itself in order to give you the illusion of being “straight”.

Here is what I want you to do. Go into a quite, darkened room and close your eyes. Keeping your eyes closed, start to march in place. Make sure that you are bringing your knees up to that the top of your thighs are parallel to the ground. Set a timer for 60 seconds and march until the timer goes off.

When you open your eyes see where you are in relation to where you started. Odds are pretty high that you will have turned significantly to one side. If this is the case, it indicates that your body is twisted.

When we take away the auditory and visual stimulus (which is achieved by the quite, darkened room) your body will start to show you how it really holds itself. We don’t even realize it but our body will contort itself in order to keep you moving straight ahead. The underlying causes of this contorting are imbalances in the body that must be address in order to avoid injuries.

When you take your eyes and ears out of the equation your body will simply “untwist” itself and as a result you will start to turn as you march. The side you twisted towards is usually tight in the hip flexors and quads and weak in the glutes. This imbalance means that you are overcompensating for this bad movement with the other leg.

All of this adds up to one thing – you are going to break down and get hurt at some point if you do not restore balance to your body. Odds are you are already dealing with some sort of chronic pain as a result of this imbalance and the bad movement it causes. Your exercise program needs to play a major role in this correcting this.

I highly suggest that if you found yourself facing a different direction when you stopped marching that you avoid much in the way of two legged exercises. Every time you use both of your legs at once your dominant leg is making up for the bad movement on the other leg which just reinforces the imbalance.

Instead, concentrate on single leg exercises, particularly the Cook Hip Lift and the Split squat. You can find video demos of both of these exercises on this blog. just type their name into the Search field and hit enter.

Both of these exercises will help to retrain the bad movement on the weaker side which will save wear and tear on the other side. Restoring balance between your limbs is essential. Some studies have shown that imbalances between limbs are one of the biggest indicators of injury potential. You ignore these imbalances at your own peril.

This twisting is also one of the biggest reasons that people seek chiropractic, massage, yoga, Pilates and a whole variety of other means of lengthening, loosening and restoring balance to the body. All of these methods can be helpful, if they are being applied in a way specific to your condition. Taking responsibility to know what you need and how to best address it is the best way for ensure the results you are looking for.

So try the march in a dark and quite room…you may be surprised by what you find out. If you are twisting take some time to build your single leg strength and quality of movement. Using your training program to help restore balance is the best way to make sure that it is helping you do more than just burn some calories and not setting you up for a future injury.

-James Wilson-

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This is one of those exercises that gets little attention but can deliver powerful results. Unilateral leg strength is vital for most human movement and this exercise is the first step in gaining it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMfbdugbcL8]

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4I9F9rIqwM]

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-Note: While this article was originally written for my mountain biking blog (www.bikejames.com) the concepts discussed apply to any athlete that requires short bursts of intense effort for their sport. Athletes that participate in soccer, baseball, football, volleyball, softball, wrestling, basketball and just about any other sport besides cross country would do well to apply these lessons-

Ever since I came out about a year ago and blasted some huge holes in the idea of aerobic base training for DH and 4X riders I’ve had a lot of people doubt my sanity. Aerobic base training has been a staple of training programs for decades and many an off season program for mountain bikers has included an extended period of time reeling off boring miles on a trainer. While some people embraced my concepts (and proceeded to achieve better “aerobic endurance” despite doing little to no aerobic training) many others have questioned why this concept is so different that the “scientific” one.          

Well, one of the problems is that the sports sciences are more like sports training history. Let me explain – people in the strength training trenches figure out what works in the real world (which is MUCH different than a controlled lab setting) and then implement it. Sometimes what we do flies in the face of the traditional “science” of training. Sports scientists pick up on what we are doing, study it and then tell us why it works. This process usually takes about 10 years or more to go from the cutting edge in the trenches to being taught in the classroom.

So, this meant that there was not a ton of scientific studies to confirm what I knew – aerobic training is worthless. But, now there are two landmark studies that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that anaerobic interval training is vastly superior to the out dated models still being promoted by the mainstream fitness media.

The only reason that mountain bikers feel compelled to include aerobic training in their program, particularly an aerobic base period, is to increase their aerobic capacity. The scientifically accepted method to determine aerobic capacity is VO2Max (Maximum Volume of Oxygen Consumed), which is an indicator of how well your body can utilize oxygen. Aerobic training had been shown to increase your VO2Max, so therefore was considered necessary for overall cardiovascular development.

However, few people realize that the best way to raise your VO2Max, and therefore your aerobic capacity, is through interval training, not aerobic training! While this may not make a lot of sense, it is true. Several recent studies on anaerobic intervals produced some of the largest increases in VO2Max ever see, including studies done on aerobic training.

One study in particular was done on what is popularly known as the Tabata Protocol. This method calls for 20 seconds of sprinting followed by 10 seconds rest and these mini-intervals are repeated 6-8 times per round. A workout may involve 1-3 rounds (complete recovery is allowed between rounds).  Researchers found massive increases in the subjects VO2Max in addition to the anticipated increases in anaerobic endurance markers. The increases in VO2Max were some of the largest ever seen in a study and proved that aerobic training is not the only (or the best) way to increase aerobic capacity.

Another landmark study that came out in the September 2006 Journal of Physiology studied the effects of 20 minutes of interval training (30 second sprints followed by 4 minutes of rest) vs. 90-120 minutes of traditional aerobic heart rate zone training. They found that the interval group which did only 1 hour of exercise per week had the same improvements in aerobic capacity as the aerobic group. Did I mention the aerobic group spent 4-6 hours per week exercising?

4 to 6 times as much exercise to get the same results in aerobic capacity? This isn’t even taking into account that the interval group improved their anaerobic capacity, something the aerobic group did not. This finding is astounding and shows just how much time you waste with aerobic training.

I’ve mentioned this before and here is the proof – anaerobic intervals will increase your aerobic capacity as well as your anaerobic capacity but aerobic training does not increase your anaerobic capacity. All of this means that if you have limited training time (and who doesn’t) you are wasting your time with aerobic training. Anaerobic intervals are the only way to maximize the effectiveness of limited training time.

Also, there is no evidence at all that you will burn out or get injured by training with intervals year round. This is simply a myth that has been told so many times that it has been taken as the truth. I challenge anyone to find me a single study that backs this claim.

What has been found is that going straight into hard training (either strength or intervals or aerobic) without a preparatory period will increase the likelihood of injury. So, like everything else, you must work into full blown hard core intervals and cycle their intensity and duration but there is no reason you can not do intervals year round.

Now, just to balance this out, there are 2 times when aerobic training has a place in your program. First, if you are so out of shape you can not tolerate even the easiest intervals then you should spend some time doing aerobic training to build your work capacity up a bit. But once you can do intervals you should make the switch.

Second, aerobic exercise is great for active recovery (something I have also mentioned before). Going out for a light 20 minute jog or ride will help to flush blood into the muscles and help you recover from your strength training and interval sessions faster. Outside of these 2 things, though, aerobic training is dead.

My mission in life is to drag our sport into the 21^st century. Old and outdated training methods that waste your time and effort need to be confronted and dealt with. I know that taking on sacred cows like this will never make me popular with the mainstream bike industry but as one of the best strength coaches in the world Mike Boyle puts it – “I will never cease to be wrong, I may just cease to be popular”.

So, there you have it. It took me a few tries to get everything out there but I feel that I have proven that aerobic training, particularly aerobic base training for DH and 4X riders, is a waste of time and effort. You can get better results in aerobic capacity in less time while also increasing anaerobic capacity. This should be something that mountain bikers everywhere rejoice at because aerobic training is some of the most tedious and boring stuff around.

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