Real Fitness Experts

“Workout to live, don’t live to workout.”

In today’s day and age there is so much emphasis on body shape and ‘looking good’. You only have to pick up a glossy magazine and there will a number of stunning people, who look great and seem to have put minimal effort into achieving this look. I’m here to show you how less is more. You don’t need to spend hours in the gym working out trying to achieve the figure that you want. I want to tell you about The Truth About Fitness.

Being truly fit is when you have the highest resistance to illness and injury and having the highest amount of energy.

Simply there are 4 areas to the Truth About Fitness:

• Exercise
• Nutrition
• Rest
• Emotional Fitness

Exercise

The Truth About Fitness requires three 30-minute sessions per week. This is all the exercise that you will need to achieve results. When exercising you need to focus on 4 main areas:

• Engaging Abdominals – engaging your abdominals throughout the exercises, this is the root of the programme.
• Body Alignment – keeping good posture throughout, pulling your belly button towards your spine will ensure the correct body alignment during exercise.
• Exercising to Failure – always work to momentary failure, this is the point where you are unable to complete another successful repetition. From failure you succeed.
• Make movements Slow and Controlled – do movements slowly, the slower you lift the weight the more you feel it.

Examples of resistance/strength exercises are:

• Squats
• Push ups – good old reliable press ups, there is no better exercise for your chest, shoulders, triceps and abdominals. Push ups raise your heart rate more effectively than cardio machines.
• Dips
• Sit ups – abs should always be done at the end of a workout because if you ‘knacker’ your abs at the beginning of a workout they’re not going to be able to stabilize you throughout your workout.

Nutrition

You must remember that food is not your enemy. It’s not about avoiding foods, it’s about choosing the right ones.

Eating in the right way is a meticulous process that depends upon you planning and monitoring your diet and eating habits. Each meal needs to be a perfect balance of protein and carbohydrates, and to achieve this every meal time you need to know on a daily basis where and what you will be doing. That way you won’t be caught out.

Eat 5-6 small meals per day, with 3-4 hour gaps between each meal. For each meal, combine one “palm size” serving of carbohydrate and one “palm size” serving of protein.

An example of an average meal plan:

• Breakfast – 1 slice whole meal toast with 3 scrambled egg whites
• Snack – palm sized portion of nuts and palm sized portion of dried fruit
• Lunch – 1 small jacket potato with canned tuna
• Snack – 2 rice cakes with cottage cheese
• Dinner – 1 small haddock fillet with fresh spinach and wild rice

Keeping hydrated is also very important, so make sure you drink 8-10 large glasses of water per day, depending on how hard you train that day. Many people mistakenly confuse hunger and dehydration and end up having a snack when all they need is a glass of water.

Rest

If you don’t rest then you’ll never truly be fit. When you put stress on something you need recuperation for progression to occur. These non-training days are essential because it is during rest and recuperation that the body becomes fitter. Once you’ve trained a muscle you don’t have to train it for another 48 hours.

Sleep is also an important ingredient for a healthier lifestyle. It is a proven fact that with 10 extra hours of sleep per week every person can improve his or her aerobic capacity, lean tissue and flexibility.

Emotional Fitness

I have a saying, ‘Free your mind, and your ass will follow’. If you are not emotionally fit you will never ever be truly fit, or reach your true potential.

Quite simply my advice is:

• Love yourself, treat yourself right.
• Surround yourself with positive people who treat you how you want to be treated.
• Let your emotions go and release that tension (crying) which is going to hinder you.
• Talk to your family and friends.
• Don’t be afraid to talk to professional people (certified therapists), it’s their job.
• Remember, you are never a loser until you quit.

This may seem a lot to take in but with little changes you can get yourself into the best shape of your life and that’s the Truth About Fitness.

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About the Author

Josh Salzmann was born in Pittsfield Massachusetts. In his childhood years he struggled with a weight problem and it wasn’t until he found is eventual love of ‘working out’ that the weight was lost. Since 1984 Josh has been based in the UK. Josh has an extensive client list including Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson. To find out more about Josh and The Truth About Fitness go to www.truthaboutfitness.com