Today, I’m giving you a round-up of all 10 installments of my regular series of Quick and Easy Health, Physique Transformation and Sports Conditioning tips.

I’ll certainly be writing more of these.

In the immediate future my focus will be on writing more detailed articles, less often, and ensuring that every article I give you is high quality, cutting edge, actionable information that will make an immediate, positive impact on you.

If you’ve got anything you want to see featured – let me know in the comments section below!

Enjoy every installment of the series so far by clicking on the links below!

Installment 1

Installment 2

Installment 3

Installment 4

Installment 5

Installment 6

Installment 7

Installment 8

Installment 9

Installment 10

I hope you’ve enjoyed all the editions so far of this regular series and found it useful.

Thanks for reading and please do share with anyone else you know will benefit!

Feel free to post some of your own ideas in the comments section below and on RHP’s Facebook or Twitter pages, too!

Rich

P.S. – to access every installment of my regular ‘Quick and Easy Ways to Look, Feel & Perform Better’ series, click here.

First.

Today is Remembrance Day; a time to remember all those who gave up their lives fighting for our individual freedom since World War One.

Jen and I are just two of the many people that recently visited the Tower of London poppy display to pay our respects.

We Will Remember Them.

Here’s the latest edition of my regular series of Quick and Easy Health, Physique Transformation and Sports Conditioning tips.

You can put these into action right now to Look, Feel, Move and Perform better.

These tips are organised into 3 different categories:

1. General Health & Motivation
2. Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)
3. Nutrition

Enjoy!

 General Health & Motivation

‘Taste the fish before you learn how to fish’

I’m sure many of you have heard the proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.

In the context of physique transformation or sports conditioning programs, this means that many people would benefit from learning to write their own programs.

However, it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you haven’t already done many programs to get a feel for how a session should flow, what exercises should be included, how you respond to fluctuating training stress, and loads of other factors.

So, it’s not a bad idea to taste the fish (try some programs, or have one designed for you) before you run out to buy a fishing rod and bait, then spend all day knee-deep in water (attempting to write your own program).

 Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)

‘Modify total work as a fat loss diet progresses’

You will be more successful with your fat loss dieting when you understand this concept: the harder you train, the hungrier you get.

The most important thing in losing fat is, has been, and will continue to be your nutrition.

Your strength training program should be the priority in training when dieting. You want to maintain as much lean mass as possible (because lean muscle mass is metabolically active), and what made the muscle (resistance training) is what’s going to keep it on you. However, you can’t just continue to strength train, add more conditioning, and eat less. It just doesn’t add up. Either you’re going to fail on the diet or get really weak.

Neither of those are cool.

So what’s the solution?

Lower the volume of ‘work’ you do as you lower the calories. Whether that comes in the way of shorter strength training workouts (focus on the main sets of big lifts and keep the accessory work limited), or you do less conditioning, do less somewhere.

‘Metabolic resistance training’ is a trendy term in fat loss circles, but in reality, all training has a metabolic effect (of course, some types more than others). For fat loss, your diet needs to come first, and these tweaks to your program are just better management of total work done to match your nutrition.

Base your training around your diet, and as you eat less, do less. Pretty simple.

 Nutrition

‘Make food taste better…by adding more food’

Chicken, turkey and pork all taste great when you eat them right out of the oven or off the grill.

However, everyone knows that ‘dry as a bone’ sensation you can get when you eat them as leftovers. To get around this, try chopping the meat up and adding it to an omelette; it tastes great!

This is just one example of how you can ‘disguise’ something healthy that might not taste so good.

Don’t like spinach? Blend it into your shakes. Not a fan of tomatoes? Grind them up and add some spices and fruit to make a salsa. Your imagination is the only limit.

My personal favourite?

Blending offal, like liver, into bolognese or chilli.

Give it a try – you won’t notice the taste one bit – it’s an easy and delicious way to incorporate a tremendously healthy and affordable source of protein, vitamins and minerals into foods you enjoy.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the latest edition of my regular series and found it useful.

Thanks for reading and please do share with anyone else you know will benefit!

Feel free to post some of your own ideas in the comments section below and on RHP’s Facebook or Twitter pages, too!

Rich

P.S. – to access every installment of my regular ‘Quick and Easy Ways to Look, Feel & Perform Better’ series, click here.

Here’s the latest edition of my regular series of Quick and Easy Health, Physique Transformation and Sports Conditioning tips.

You can put these into action right now to Look, Feel, Move and Perform better.

These tips are organised into 3 different categories:

1. General Health & Motivation
2. Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)
3. Nutrition

Enjoy!

 General Health & Motivation

‘Remember to have fun!‘

If you’re reading this, then you may fall into this category.

You take the time to educate yourself on training and nutrition – so much so that sometimes, you probably over-analyse everything you do health and fitness-wise.

I do this more often than I’d care to admit…

It’s great to stay hungry and continue to learn as you achieve your health and performance ambitions. Most of the time, to get results, the right thing to do is push on and be consistent with a plan you’ve set yourself.

But if you find yourself in a bit of a rut, or second-guessing your choices, it never hurts to think back to the days when you just started training. Maybe some of you had to fight against your will to train, but most of you probably did it because you – I dunno – actually liked it?!

If I scrutinised everything I do in my training, I’d come to the conclusion that some of my most successful times have been when about 10-20% of the stuff I do isn’t actually that ‘intelligent’ at all.

Then why would I do it? After all, aren’t I supposed to know better than most?

The truth is, sometimes we know too much for our good. We over-analyse and dissect every little thing we do in the gym.

Make sure every so often your training includes some things you just feel like doing.

Want to get under the bar with your pals and squat until you’re the last one standing? Had a rough day and want to unload on the boxing bag until you can’t see straight? Do it. You could do worse…

Train smart, safe, and have some FUN!

 Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)

‘Realise that not everything needs to be difficult‘

Throughout a strength-training program, you will have exercises that are meant to be loaded up to their limit, and others that are there purely to practice a position or motor control pattern.

As a client or athlete becomes more advanced, certain exercises will become less challenging. This doesn’t mean that you need to continually find ways to make a movement harder and harder. Too often, when we do so, we take away from the integrity of the movement.

Sure, you can load up your basic deadlift and squat patterns until the cows come home. But exercises like the rollout, prone bridge, or side plank will eventually reach a limit in ways that you can productively make them ‘harder’. This by no means renders them useless, though.

In fact, by loading them excessively, or adding an infinite amount of bells and whistles to them, you will mostly find ways to compensate and stray further from their intention. As they become easier to complete, it just changes their purpose from one of teaching the body, to one of reminding the body how to recruit properly.

 Nutrition

‘Always cook more than you need’

To help my clients at RHP, I talk to them pretty regularly about nutrition. Often, I will review a 3-day food log for them. Here is a scenario I encounter A LOT.

• Breakfast: SUCKS
• Lunch: SUCKS
• Dinner: a solid, balanced dinner

This goes on for the next two days as well.

I get it. We all lead busy lives and dinner is the only time to actually cook something of quality.

It doesn’t have to be this way though. Here’s a simple strategy – one that everyone can benefit from.

Each time you cook, do so for 2-3 more people than you plan on serving that night.

For example, Jen and I tend to cook the bulk of our main meals during a couple of hours at weekends, so we don’t need to spend much time cooking in the week unless we want to.

If you don’t have the time (really?), or just don’t want to dedicate a set time to food preparation, then do it little by little. Double recipes, cook a few extra pieces of meat, whack on some extra veg, etc. As soon as you’re done cooking, store the extra in your fridge.

If you consistently do this, you should have a plethora of ready-to-go high quality meals, random healthy ingredients, and no reason to have two meals every day that suck anymore. Easy!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the latest edition of my regular series and found it useful.

Thanks for reading and please do share with anyone else you know will benefit!

Feel free to post some of your own ideas in the comments section below and on RHP’s Facebook or Twitter pages, too!

Rich

P.S. – to access every installment of my regular ‘Quick and Easy Ways to Look, Feel & Perform Better’ series, click here.

Here’s the latest edition of my regular series of Quick and Easy Health, Physique Transformation and Sports Conditioning tips.

You can put these into action right now to Look, Feel, Move and Perform better.

These tips are organised into 3 different categories:

1. General Health & Motivation
2. Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)
3. Nutrition

Enjoy!

 General Health & Motivation

‘Up your Vitamin D levels’

Numerous scientific studies show great benefits from getting Vitamin D levels up to normal, such as improved body composition, hormonal levels, bone health, muscle tissue quality and immune system function, to name just a few.

Interestingly, this study showed a significant improvement in power production over four weeks in the Vitamin D supplementation group, as compared to the control group.

These results are tough to interpret, as the subjects were overweight/obese adults. Ideally, we’d study trained athletes with smaller windows of adaptation ahead of them to see just how beneficial Vitamin D supplementation is on performance.

Nonetheless, the study concluded that elevated Vitamin D status was associated with reduced waist-to-hip ratio; an absolute win for overweight folks striving to lose weight.

It certainly makes sense that if we’re improving body composition, endocrine status, and tissue quality, people are going to get more out of their training and make faster progress.

Vitamin D is one of very few supplements that I view as “must-haves’ for the majority of the population, especially as the darker period of the year sets in (we get Vitamin D from the Sun, as well as certain foods).

I advise pairing it up with a good fish oil and multivitamin/greens supplement to cover one’s nutritional foundation.

 Training (Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Athleticism & Strength)

‘Use concentric-only exercises for “off-day” training’

The most stressful, and therefore demanding part of an exercise is actually the eccentric, or lowering phase. This is where the majority of muscle damage occurs, and is the part that will elicit the most muscular soreness.

If you’re like me, you enjoy doing some kind of physical activity on a daily basis. Some people scoff at the idea of never taking a rest, but in reality, moving is good for you, and it can be done daily. If overdone, it can interfere with recovery and lead to over-training. If done intelligently, it can keep you focused and actually speed up your recovery.

While there are many ways to go about off-day exercise correctly, one option is to use mostly eccentric-free, or concentric-only exercise choices.

As examples, think of Sled Pushing, Dragging, and Towing. Additionally you can attach handles or a TRX to your Sled and do Rows, Presses, and Pull-Throughs – you’re only limited by your imagination here. If your gym doesn’t have a Sled or Prowler, find one that does.

Another great option is Medicine Ball exercises, which can be organised into complexes and circuits, or Kettlebell and Sledgehammer Swings, which all have minimal eccentric stress.

These methods will get blood flowing to the appropriate areas and give you a training effect that won’t leave you sore, and may actually improve your recovery time.

 Nutrition

‘Eat more pumpkin!’

Autumn is here! I love it.

The air smells better, leaves get colorful, European Cup/Autumn International Rugby arrives, and, of course, pumpkin flavored everything becomes available around Halloween!

Pumpkin tastes great, and it’s really good for you, too.

For starters, pumpkin seeds are a great source of essential fatty acids. That’s probably not breaking news to you, but guess what? Pumpkin oil actually exists! It is delicious as a dressing, and an easy addition to shakes and smoothies. Just make sure not to cook with it, as the heat will destroy the important fatty acids.

Pumpkins are orange – very orange. That means they, too, provide the health benefits found in other vividly orange fruits and vegetables. These include high amounts of carotenoids and Vitamin C. Carotenoids help fight free radicals in the body, cardiovascular diseases and infection.

Just like carrots, the high lutein & zeaxanthin content protects the eyes, and prevents formation of cataracts. You will also be happy to know that pumpkin is low calorie and serves up a tremendous amount of quality fibre.

Do you like pumpkin too? If so, let’s get some recipes posted up in the comments section!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the latest edition of my regular series and found it useful.

Thanks for reading and please do share with anyone else you know will benefit!

Feel free to post some of your own ideas in the comments section below and on RHP’s Facebook or Twitter pages, too!

Rich

P.S. – to access every installment of my regular ‘Quick and Easy Ways to Look, Feel & Perform Better’ series, click here.