CrossFit vs. Body For Life

The first Body for Life Challenge was held in 1996, and shook up the health and fitness world with its grand prize of 1 million dollars for the person who could make the greatest physical transformation in 12 weeks.

Since then, according to their own publicity 2 million people have transformed their bodies using the BFL and EAS supplements. I myself read the book and watched the movie and was genuinely impressed with the progress that some of these people had made.

Chances are you have tried the challenge yourself, or know someone who has. What were the results? In my experience, everyone I've talked to that has done the challenge tell me that it works really well.........yet they all gained most if not all of their weight back afterwards!!

If a type of exercise or a diet plan is not sustainable long term, then you can't call it successful!
I thought I'd do a little informal comparison between BFL and CFNZ (CrossFit NZ) to see how they stack up.

• Body for Lifers exercise 6 times per week, alternating upper body weight training, lower body and aerobic exercise over and over.
• CrossFitters train up to 6 times a week, varying their routines constantly to keep motivation, intensity and more importantly progress at high levels.

• BFL encourages 6 meals per day, 3 of which are powdered meal replacement shakes.
• CrossFit sticks to real food - meat and veggies, fruit, nuts and seeds, little starch and no sugar. The occasional supplement for convenience but no reliance on them.

• BFL meals are made up of a portion of protein, a portion of starchy carbs and a portion of veggies.
• At CrossFit we make sure you eat your fat! Healthy fat is what humans evolved to utilise for energy, it's the starchy carbs you should be cutting down on. Eat eggs, salmon, avocado, nuts, seeds and olive oil, minimise your intake of grains and cereals, bump up the veggie intake even more and you'll feel great.
  

• BFL is a 12 week program.
• CrossFit is for life. The sooner people understand that fitness is not a quick fix, the better. If you can only stick with a good eating and exercise plan for 12 weeks, then you'll never get the body and health that you want. Blindly following a meal plan does not let you understand why you should be eating certain foods and thus enable you to continue eating well afterwards.

It is worth noting that I think the general idea of the 12 week challenge is sound. There are people who completed the BFL and maintained their results. Muscle gain and fat loss is hard! So a short, period of concentrated effort can be a little easier to get your head around in the beginning. But just be sure you put a plan in place for week 13; don't let it all fall to pieces after such a big effort. Educate yourself on how to maintain and even exceed the progress you've already made.

Sticking to your diet and exercise program

Well say goodbye to January - that's approx 1/12 of the year gone already. How have your resolutions to finally get in shape this year been going? Resolve starting to fail you? Is your diet getting too restrictive and your new gym program too boring?

Well it appears you're not alone. By the end of this week hundreds of thousands of broken souls around the world will be back on their processed carbohydrate diets, and never darken the door of their gym again - many of them locked into long term payment contracts. Why is it that so many people know how good healthy eating and activity is for them, and are even prepared to pay some globo-gym a hundred bucks a month and only get a 'free' t-shirt to remind them of their failure?

The answer, I think, is because they hate it.

They hate making tuna salad every day to take to work in a tupperware container for everyone to say 'Ooh are you on a diet', and 'WHAT are you EATING?!'
They hate being in a gym where everyone seems to know what that machine with the cables and metal arm thingy seems to do except you. And between the meatheads dropping weights, the plastic surgery addicted cardio bunnies and the personal trainer who wont help you unless you sign up for 10 paid sessions, you don't really feel comfortable here, especially when you've just busted your ass at work for 10 hours.

As I said before, everyone knows diet and exercise is good for you. So how does the person in the above example get around these issues?

They need to find a way to enjoy it.

Okay that's not very revolutionary is it? Sorry, what did you expect? Because if you want to be fit, lean and healthy there is still no magic pill on the market that will take the place of eating right and exercising - Big Pharma is trying to find it though, believe me.

So until then, the only way to continue with your New Years resolutions all the way till next January, and beyond is to find a way to enjoy yourself.

• If you hate the gym join a bootcamp or group fitness class.

• If you have trouble sticking to a diet, do some research and find out how to compromise your tastes with a nutrition plan that meets your goals.

• Take up a new sport, find a workout buddy to keep you company and motivate you. Learn a language, or listen to an audiobook on your ipod while you are jogging.

• Buy a dog and walk it. (I better not see it at the SPCA in a year though!)

• Learn a new recipe or try a new healthy food every week - invite friends to participate in a healthy pot luck once or twice a week and share nutrition tips you've learned.

There's no way around the fact that you need to move more and eat better. But if you are hating the process, you're doomed to failure.

Find a way to enjoy it.

Kickstart 2009

So we're almost three weeks into 2009 - but are your exercise and dietary habits still on holiday? If you drank a little too much and ate a few too many Christmas chocolates over the holidays, you may be finding it hard to rediscover your discipline - I know I am. That's why I've kicked off the year with a detox.

Now before you think I've gone all Oprah on you, I'm not recommending the type of detoxes pushed by most of the so called diet gurus out there. I'm simply suggesting going cold turkey on all the junk in your diet. I'm spending 2 weeks eating only protein shakes containing lean protein, healthy fats and a ton of fibre. After exercise I'll have a solid meal of lean protein and lots of veggies.

Why not try something similar? You don't have to do what I'm doing. How about you cut out all processed carbohydrate, sugar, alcohol and fast food for two weeks? Come on it's not that tough to do just 14 days is it? Trust me you'll feel great at the end, you'll eliminate the hold that the Xmas Crap Food has fastened on you, and maybe you'll continue for a little longer into the new year once you feel the benefits.

Train like Lance Armstrong

Endurance athletes don't need to lift weights right? It'll make them all muscle bound, heavy and slow wont it?

Guess someone forgot to tell one of the greatest endurance athletes ever........

This picture of Lance was published in the New York Daily recently.

It highlights perfectly a few principles I push regarding fitness training.

Get out of the gym
Lance trains in his garage at home. This way he has no excuse for not being able to get to the gym. It's right there morning or night. Even if you only have a few minutes, you can put them to good use. Avoid the crowds, the boofheads and the queue for equipment. Or why not get along to a nearby park for a workout. The change of scenery and fresh air will do you the world of good.
Hey, I OWN a gym, and I still think it's good advice. We always get our big roller door up for a bit of 'outdoor flow'.

Forget about machines
Lance is swinging a kettlebell in this pic (a favourite tool in our Crossfit NZ workouts), and in the back ground is a squat rack and a glute ham bench. NO MACHINES in sight!! Many cyclists are convinced they need leg extensions and leg presses to build strength specific to their sport; but functional exercises such as squats and deadlifts have much more carryover to sport even they don't resemble the sport at all.

Lift heavy
Sure you're an endurance athlete, but that doesn't mean you need to do hundreds of reps in the gym. Take care of that side of things on your bike, and when you're lifting, lift heavy to build the strength and power that will carry you up hills and over the finish line in front of a bunch sprint.

Workouts that include more time in the anaerobic energy systems will also allow you to cut down on junk miles while still improving your aerobic capacity.

And if those aren't enough reasons for you to lift free weights.......take another look at the six pack you'll get........

Keeping fit during an economic downturn

With the local and global economy being somewhat depressed many well meaning authors are urging people who are feeling the pinch to, among other money saving ideas, quit their gym memberships. The alternative according to these money experts is to go for a walk instead. Well you and I both know how ineffective walking is for keeping fit and healthy. And unfortunately, you know that I think a gym membership isn't that great either - seeing as most people don't even use theirs, or waste their time with ineffective training programs.

I say do the opposite. If you are under a lot of stress you can either let yourself get out of shape, which will magnify the effect that stress has upon you, and let your now failing health become another problem to deal with, or you can meet the financial crisis head on and make sure that you are fit and strong enough to perform well at your job and maximise your earning power.

Personally I think that everyone has a responsibility to their families to be as healthy and fit as possible - anything less is unfair to your children, spouse or parents. Why should they have to see you die early from factors that are completely preventable?

Sure hiring a trainer for 3-4 sessions a week could cost a packet over time. If I was training you one-on-one you would have handed over about $1500 before the month was out. You’d be in bloody good shape mind you……….but as this post is about money – why not hire a personal trainer to just write you a good program and progression plan each month and meet up with them each month to have someone to answer to, get a review of your progress and a new plan. Now it’s looking more like $150 a month, and you should still get some decent results.

Or why not find a gym that offers semi-private (one instructor to 2, 3 or 4 clients) or group sessions? If it’s well run, you will find you get just as much attention from the coach and the extra people around will make you lift your game a notch. People tell me they’re not competitive, but once they’re side by side with someone else, they end up working harder than ever before.

The best news of all – small group fitness is more affordable than private training. So you get a more effective workout, a social interaction (which let’s face it, we all need if under a bit of pressure at work), for a bargain price. What are you waiting for?

Using a personal trainer this year?

There's no longer any point in 'what if-ing' about your health and fitness results from 2008. If things didn't go as well as you hoped, try to think back and identify what went wrong and why, and figure out strategies to deal with the roadblocks better this year.

Immersing yourself in the right environment is crucial. Exercising with friends, or around people who have achieved the kind of results you want is important to keep you accountable and focused. If you are using a personal trainer they need to do the same for you.

Do they have these qualities:

-A personality that works with yours.
If you don't get on with your coach, you will only grow to resent them. I'm not saying you need to be best friends, but at least be on the same wavelength.

-Knowledge about effective exercise.
If the programs your trainer prescribes you has less than 80% compound exercises, find a new trainer. A compound exercise is one which uses more than 1 joint. A bicep curl (elbow joint) is not a compound exercise, but a pull down or pullup (elbow, shoulder joints) is.
Multi-joint movements are neccessary to ensure the most bang for your exercise buck, and to prepare you for whatever life throws your way.

-Keeps records
Do you have any idea about how much improvement (if any) you've made with your trainer? If they aren't documenting your progress in some form or another, they are just lazy. At the least it's always motivating to achieve a new PB. But if you can see that progress has plateaued through accurate recording, your programming can be adjusted immediately.

Kick 2009 off well by getting the right people on your team. Your coach/PT is one of the most important ones, so keep the above qualities in mind.

The Hierarchy of Fat Loss

I went for an easy 3 km jog this morning.

Those that know me, or have read some of my articles/posts on exercise would probably be amazed. I'm the guy who hates jogging, who doesn't allow his clients to jog, who tries to cut down on the miles his endurance clients run.

Yet, I went jogging today and have been doing the odd jog for about a month now. I've also been riding my bike to the gym and going for after dinner walks. Why? I'm increasing my level of fat burning in anticipation of summer holidays.

And again, those of you who know my stance on exercise must be shaking your head - 'I thought you didn't believe in slow, steady cardio for fat loss Darren?'

Well I don't.........at least not as a stand alone solution. The problem is that slow, steady cardio is usually the ONLY thing people do when they want to lose weight. Once the weather warms up, it's like the wildebeest migration down at Mission Bay.......power walkers as far as the eye can see. But the fact of the matter is that steady cardio should be the LAST piece of your fat loss puzzle.

If all the things you could do to burn fat were ranked by effectiveness, you would discover what Alwyn Cosgrove calls The Hierarchy of Fat Loss.

1. Nutrition - I'm sorry, but you can't out-train a crappy diet. It may have worked when you were 20 years old, but nowadays if you can't get your nutrition sorted, all the exercise in the world will only go so far. Make a healthier diet your priority when getting into shape.
2. Weight lifting - Whether you are a mother of three, an endurance athlete, or a grandparent; if fat loss is your goal, then lifting weights will turbo charge your efforts. Without the metabolism boosting effect of lean muscle mass, your system will go into hibernation during a diet, in order to hang on to every last bit of fat it can.
3. High intensity Intervals and Circuits - Sprints on the bike, rower, treadmill and outdoors; kettlebell work, complexes, and Crossfit style workouts. This sort of exercise not only burns a ton of energy, it increases your rate of fat burning for up to 36 hours after you finish exercising!!
4. Steady cardio - Finally now you can add in the slow, boring stuff. If you've got the first 3 components in order, then a little extra activity can be the icing on the cake; whittling away at the last couple of kgs, to reveal the six pack you always suspected was there, but had never seen before. Also once you're lifting weights 4-5 days a week, and running sprints another 2-3 times, steady cardio is about all the extra work your body can cope with and not break down.
   

But stick to the correct order! Mess with the hierarchy of fat loss and you're messing with your progress.

Travel Workouts

Some workouts for the holidays



You don't have to keep up the most punishing regime, relax a bit. But at the same time, its likely that you will be indulging in good food, and possibly being a bit more inactive during the day than you normally would be, so if you don't want to take too much of a backwards step on your 2008 progress, the odd workout would not go amiss.

Stick to something that doesn't require too much thinking, or too much time. After all, what will give you the most benefit - a full body 40 minute strength and conditioning workout that you put off all day and eventually don't do at all; or 4 minutes of sprints on the beach, or 100 pushups for time that has you done and dusted before you even have a chance to talk yourself out of it?

Here's a few simple workouts to try that require no equipment. Make sure you spend at least 5 minutes warming up though ok? Injuries are no fun on holiday........

1.
10 vertical jumps, 10 push ups, 10 sit ups, 4 rounds...for time.

2.
10 squats every 1 minute of a 1.5 km run.

3.
100 burpees for time.

4.
Run 3 km as fast as possible.

5.
10 push-ups 10 squats 10 sit ups 10 rounds.

6.
spend a total of 3 minutes in a handstand. Rest, then 10 vertical jumps, run 400 meters, 5 rounds.

7.100 squats for time. Rest 5 mins, then 100 situps for time.

8.
100 jumping jacks, 75 air squats, 50 push ups, 25 burpees. For time.

9.
Sprint 100 meters, Walk 100 meters, 10 rounds. Rest 5 min, then jog home the 2 km you just covered.

10.
100 push ups for time.