keys to success

​Whether you're looking to lose a few extra pounds, get bigger and stronger, or improve your posture and ease of daily living - there are always a few key points which are paramount to success, yet are unfortunately frequently overlooked! Some of the most important ones are outlined below, along with how I can help you capitalize on this new knowledge.

Fat Loss

Pounds will melt off with the help of a controlled, sustainable diet, along with higher intensity resistance training and cardiovascular exercise.

When it comes to fat loss, one thing is far more crucial than anything else: proper diet. You can spend hours at the gym throughout the week, and ruin all your effort just by indulging in one meal at a restaurant! Luckily, maintaining a diet that is conducive to fat loss (while still being sustainable!) is a lot easier than most people make it out to be. While macronutrient intake, meal size and timing, and pre/post-workout nutrition all do play a part, they key underlying factor is simply calorie in versus calories out.

Unfortunately, most people severely underestimate how many calories they are consuming, so I will teach you all the key points of nutrient content and meal tracking, as well as give you tips for how to cut down on meal sizes, while still saying fuller for longer. Awareness and consistency are key!

To hasten the fat loss even further, that’s where proper exercise comes into play - and contrary to popular belief, long, boring hours on cardio equipment is an extremely inefficient way to go about doing it! A far more effective way is to do shorter, higher intensity training. Not only is this more fun and engaging, it’s also more efficient. Time goes by quickly, your metabolism is revved up, and you’re burning fat and calories for the next 24 hours.

Together, a healthy, sustainable diet, along with more intense training, go hand in hand in creating rapid fat loss!


Hypertrophy

Attack your muscles from every angle and nourish them with the fuel they need to ensure continuous growth and adaptation!

The key to muscle gain is equal parts diet and exercise. If either part is lagging, so will your results. Workouts must be intense and varied; each individual muscle group needs to be challenged with various exercises, sets, and rep schemes. Additionally, workouts must be progressively more challenging - failure to do this is a common cause of the dreaded plateau and subsequent loss of motivation for many!

This may sound intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be! I will design you a program that will continuously push every muscle fiber to keep growing and adapting to new challenges. An added benefit is that your workouts will never be boring! Everything matters in the quest for hypertrophy, from slight variations in form to specific rest times, and I will take the guess work out of all of it.

Diet is unfortunately a commonly overlooked variable. You can torture your muscles for countless hours at the gym, but if you don’t give them the proper fuel for growth and repair, the only result will be injury and fatigue. Proper caloric intake is absolutely essential, as is adequate protein and micronutrient supplementation. This is one of the most common missteps for trainees, and it can be extremely frustrating to reap minimal benefits from the hours of hard work put into the gym. Again, I will thoroughly cover all of this, and make sure your body is getting the proper fuel it needs!


Strength

Rewire your nervous system and maximize your muscles’ potential by exponentially increasing their strength output!

While increasing muscle size does result in some strength gain, there are more direct ways to pursue this if it is your primary goal. Heavier weights, fewer repetitions, and longer breaks are all conducive to retiring the central nervous system and gaining maximal strength; additionally, maintaining perfect form is even more important than ever. Going to fatigue here is not the goal; instead the focus will be on optimal execution of every lift.

However, these types of programs are extremely intense, and require a certain level of coordination, muscular size, and lifting experience before they are to be sought out. This is where a well-planned program comes into play, to ensure your body is ready to take the step into strength training. It’s also important to note that due to the intensity of strength-based workouts, it’s essential to cycle away form them now and then to give your body a chance to recover; otherwise, injury will result. I will therefore provide you with a periodize program that will allow the proper build-up to prepare you for maximal strength gain, as well as reloading periods to allow you to recover and adapt.

As always, nutrition is very important here - so I will cover all the fundamentals of nutrient intake to ensure you are getting enough fuel to power through the most intense workouts.


Postural Correction

Learn key activation exercises to create long-term improvements in posture, mobility, and confidence!
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Poor posture is something that plagues the majority of today’s population - and with it comes aches, pains, and difficulty carrying out even the most basic of everyday activities. More often than not, this manifests as the rounded shoulders and upward tilting neck caused by hours spent on mobile phones or computers, or as the excessively arched lower back (and accompanying lower back pain) due to sitting in a chair all day. Surprisingly to some, the gym can also be the culprit - namely, overworking some muscles (such as the pecs and lats) and underworking others (such as the rear deltoids and external rotator cuff muscles).

Whatever the cause, muscle tightness is almost always addressed in the same fashion: stretching and myofascial release (i.e. foam rolling). However, these good intentions are usually met with frustration, as the temporary mobility which is gained is lost almost immediately as soon as one inevitably gets bored of lying on a piece of foam every day.​

While release is important (especially when mobility is extremely restricted), what’s even more important is strengthening the opposing muscle groups so as to prevent the problem from recurring in the future. Furthermore, activating key stability muscles can often result in surprising increases in mobility, due to the release of the protective tension being provided by muscles which are currently standing in for others. 

All of this obviously requires a sufficient understanding of both anatomy and biomechanics, so it can be a daunting task to begin to tackle in the correct way. Muscle imbalances and postural correction are subjects I touch on with all my clients, but if improving these areas are a primary goal for you, I’ll be sure thoroughly go over everything with you in detail, so you understand both what’s going on and how to apply your new knowledge in the future!