GetFit Top Tip

My wife tells me these things to me, as I am clearly not “in” with the latest fashion news… In fact by the time I finish writing this post high heel shoes will be back in again.

But I was happy to hear that flat shoes for females are all the rage, possibly down to the stunning Carla Bruni wearing flats so beautifully so she doesn’t tower over French President Sarkozy. But there does seem to be a fair amount of disagreement of the health benefits of flat shoes…

I have literally just had an argument with the front desk girl at “The Gym”, she claims her doctor says that you need about 2cm of heel on your shoes for good healthy muscles in the calf and ankle. Various “experts” on the internet claim you need a shoe with good support for the arch, and switching from heels to flats can cause excessive achilles strain.

Without adding to add more confusion to the debate, a healthy dose of common sense is needed I think.

You see the body has been designed in a specific way, if we were meant to walk around on our tip toes all day, then our feet would have been shaped that way, ie. with a heel that is 10cm bigger than it is currently.

Unfortunately trying to argue the point with many of my clients is like pulling teeth, regardless of the evidence i can provide to show the massive negative impact heels have on your posture, causing all manner of problems such as knee, hip and back pain.

Claims that flats will put strain on the achilles is actually very true if you are coming straight from wearing 4 inch “spikes”, your calf muscles will be shortened to such a degree that the extra pull on the tendon that attaches to the bottom of your foot will cause pain.

So what are the benefits of wearing “Carla’s” flats

• The biggest benefit is improvements in posture
• Lesser risk of knee and back pain
• Greater flexibility in the ankle joint

I also have a theory that says that wearing heels causes you to have a stomach bulge! Given the position your ankles and knees are forced into when wearing heels, the pelvis needs to compensate by tilting forward, pushing your abdominals and stomach forward giving the appearance of a bulging stomach!!!

Now at the risk of writing the most unpopular BLOG post in history, I am going to sign off now and leave it up to you to see some common sense when it comes to wearing heels!

Tim

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Last Friday, i did a talk with a fantastic group of people, (thanks to Tower Training for the invite!)

One of the questions/comments from the group related to how inefficient the human body is. You see the body utilises around 60% of the fuel(food) we take in to keep it functioning, and that is before we start moving and exercising!

60% is an awful lot of the energy we consume, when we are doing NOTHING!

As a fitness professional, the aim for me is create bodies that are even more INefficient! I want to make your body work harder and consume more energy to keep itself functioning on a day to day basis, whilst you are doing NOTHING.

Going back to the car analogy from last week, if you had a Renault Espace and ferrari sitting with the engines running but not moving, the ferrari would consume more fuel… Because it is a ferrari it has a sleek, sexy body, however the Renault Espace is fat and frumpy.

If you create a bigger engine for your body, you will develop a sleeker, sexier body, as you will strip away the fat. This bigger engine I am talking about is more muscle in the body which will in turn burn more calories to survive even when you are sat doing nothing! Creating larger muscle is easy, just using your muscles with short bouts of efforts to fatigue them will create larger muscle fibers.

This means resistance workouts, utilising your body weight and at times external weights too.

If you are not doing these exercises already, add them in from today and start creating a ferrari body and not a Renault Espace one!

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I like cars, actually anything related to cars, it is not just a practical thing for me, it is a passion…

In the car tuning world, there are two main factions…

1. Show cars: their owners spend countless hours perfecting the bodywork, brightwork, polishing, cleaning, ironing out the dents, creases and scratches. The car is an object of beauty.

2. Fast Cars: The “Go” faction don’t really focus much on how it looks, but on how fast it is, how agile it is, the quickest from point A to point B

For people we are also split between these two schools of thought…

Those working on their looks, perfecting their shape, regular tanning sessions to top up the bronze, all in the pursuit of a beautiful looking body!

Then there is the sporty folk, who work hard to develop a body that is lean, fast and agile, fuelling themselves with the best products to get the best performance.

Which category are you in?

Maybe neither at the moment?

Are you the rusty, decaying heap in the corner, unable to move efficiently, your body has been neglected, your engine doesn’t run so well on the poor fuel you feed it, constantly breaking down with regular illness.

Whilst I don’t believe you should become a Show or GO, not to the extremes of the fanatical individuals anyway, but I do think that most of us can look after our body’s better, and become the reliable “family run-about” instead.

If you are in  Luxembourg, come and meet us for a consultation

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Another new video this week, this time a super exercise that really utilises the potential metabolism boosting muscles in your butt and legs.

This is not a beginner exercise, your legs will burn when you do this exercise…. don’t say I didn’t warn you!

More videos to come next week…

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Have you noticed there are lots of “skinny” fat about, those folk who look skinny but are in actual fact “fat”, sadly skinny fat people are just as likely to have problems with cardio vascular diseases as a “large” fat person.

A skinny fat person is someone who is constantly dieting, heavily restricting their calories, keeping the “weight” off, but always seems to be a little soft and quite fragile. Their BMI (body mass index) would be happy reading for a normal health professional, but a layer fat over a minimal frame and muscle structure means that they are not as healthy as the BMI figures suggest.

Unfortunately I see this quite often in teenage girls up into the mid-twenties, where they fight tooth and nail with rabbit food diets and hour upon hour of slow steady state aerobic workouts.

The problem is that their precious metabolism is completely shot, vitamin and mineral intake is extremely low, colds, flus and all sorts of nasty illnesses are ever present, and structurally they are more likely to have bone density issues and joint problems later on in life.

Psychologically this group of people are the hardest people to break through when trying to assure them a “sensible” nutritional plan where calories are NOT restricted and a program of exercise to boost the metabolism, will give them the body shape they crave with much less effort and a much improved lifestyle.

A body with a lower percentage of fat and a higher percentage of muscle tissue means your body is

• structurally more healthy
• less likely to have cardio vascular illness (type 2 diabetes, heart disease etc…)
• and looks great too!

Things a skinny fat person can start doing today:

• Eat 5-6 small but sensible meals a day with high quality proteins and unprocessed carbs and sensible less of fat content
• STOP doing aerobic style training and start a program of resistance/ body weight exercise.
• Learn to accept calories are NOT a bad thing, we should be using them to our advantage!

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I have been working on a few new videos recently…

This one is for the Arnold Press Exercise, a great shoulder and upper back exercise.

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