Athletic Edge

If you quit once it becomes habit.

Never quit.

Me to my clients every week, their response every time 👿

Be stronger than your excuses.

The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow.

Weight Training Tip #7: Prioritize Free Weights over Machines

Free-weight training involves resistance exercises using equipment that you can move freely in any direction, such as dumbbells, barbells and kettlebells. They allow you to add weighted resistance to your movements in an almost unlimited range of motion.

Machine exercises are usually done seated/static on fixed equipment with a limited range of motion, and often use assistance from the machine to help you move the resistance.

While machine exercises can be a great introduction if you’re new to weight training, it’s important to transition to free weights as soon as you can safely. That’s because training with dumbbells, kettlebells and barbells offer significant benefits that machines simply don’t:

They allow your body to train with movements that are much more natural and closely resemble everyday movements. For example barbell squats give you much more practical strength when bending to pick up/carry heavy objects, whereas machine leg presses have poor practical carryover as you would almost never be pushing heavy objects with your legs from a lying down and back-supported position.

Free weights recruit much more stabilizer muscles due to the greater instability and range of motion required. While machines have a more predictable trajectory and simpler range of movement to decrease risk of injury, they also limit the number of muscle groups that work together to complete the lift. For example you can feel a huge difference between a machine chest press and a dumbbell chest press; the free weight version simply requires more muscles in your chest, back, shoulders and arms to activate and coordinate to do the lift.

When done with correct technique and progressive improvement, free weight exercises can build full-body strength and pack on muscle gains at a faster rate than machine exercises. Since free weights utilize larger areas of muscles and teach those muscle groups to work together more efficiently, you’ll almost definitely see faster progress and plateau less often than you would if you trained with machines only.

There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you only do it when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results.

Fat Loss Tip #11: Disconnect Diet from Life

Life comes with ups and downs. Your diet should not.

When you’re stressed, don’t go to the snack aisle. Put on your walking shoes and get moving.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.

Fat Loss Tip #26: Know your daily calorie limit

Would you drive your car for a long road trip without knowing whether or not you'll run out of fuel? No.

So why do people eat as much as they want every day, without knowing whether it's too much?

Not knowing what your body’s daily energy requirements are means you’re almost certainly either under-eating or over-eating…and most people will tend to go over.

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Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.

Fat Loss Tip #27: Ensure you’re having enough protein to support exercise

The Australian National Health guidelines’ recommended daily intake for protein is 70g per day, about 15% of the average person’s calorie intake.

This might be enough to maintain your body’s normal healthy function if you have a sedentary job and an inactive lifestyle.

But if you do regular intense exercise such as sport or weight training in the gym, or even lower-intensity activities such as light cardio, you DEFINITELY need more than 70g of protein a day.

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Sweat is just fat crying.

😅😓😅

Fit Benefit #2 Heavy Isn’t Heavy

Spend enough time not being fit and you may be surprised that fit folks can deal with things in life that require strength.

Whether it involves carrying a baby through the grocery store, picking up a few bags of groceries, moving a pile of bricks from your truck bed to your garden, or just getting up the stairs, fitness enables you to do it with ease.

It is not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves.

Essential Equipment #7: Resistance Bands

These bands can actually serve multiple purposes. The most common one is to use the resistance band as a stretching tool, to help you maximise the range and intensity of a stretch when you don’t have a training partner available to help you.

Using the band to open up your hips and rotator cuff before weight training can go a long way to preventing injury and improving your performance.

Another great function for the resistance band is to use it as an assistance tool to help you work your way up to bodyweight exercises you don’t have the strength to do fully yet

Sweat is acceptable.
Pain is acceptable.
Failing is acceptable.
Quitting is not.

Essential Equipment #3: Compression Pants/Shorts

One underrated item of training gear is compression pants and shorts. Compression clothing are made of fitted material that has much more beneficial properties than regular exercise clothing.

The positive effects stem from increased blood flow to your muscles due to the compression fit, as Dr James Broatch from the Australian Institute of Sport explains: “A lot of the benefits associated with compression relate to an improvement in blood flow, including both the delivery of blood to the exercising muscle and the return of blood back to the heart. As a result, compression is thought to improve the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the muscle to improve performance, and aid in the removal of waste products after exercise to speed up the recovery process. Other benefits include greater proprioception (ie. body awareness) and reduced muscle damage and inflammation post-exercise.”

Research from the Australian Institute of Sport has shown proven benefits of wearing 2XU compression include “reduced muscle soreness by 47%, increased blood flow to the muscle by 18% and reduced heart work rate by 2.5%”.

Fitness is not about being better than someone else. It’s about being better than you used to be.

Fat Loss Tip #21: Stay nourished and hydrated.

Pay attention to your food and your hydration levels.

You’d be amazed how much being dehydrated can affect your performance even away from the gym.

Today’s actions are tomorrow’s results.

Myth Buster #3: You Can Turn Fat into Muscle

One of the most common questions people ask me as a personal trainer is: “Hey Jam, can I turn the fat on my body into muscle?”

To which I break the unfortunate truth to them. If your dad Joe walks out of the living room and your mum Jane walks into the room, did Joe magically transform into Jane? No, it’s impossible. Why? Because they’re two different people. -It’s for that same reason that it is scientifically, physiologically impossible to convert body fat into muscle tissue – they are two different types of cells, just like oil and water are two different types of liquids.

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