3 Things You Ought to Know

   Wheat is a waste of time – it causes bloating, fatigue, aggravates our intestines, inhibits absorption of certain minerals and vitamins (mainly as a result of hybridized wheat), contains a starch called amylopectin A, which turns into sugar more efficiently than any other carbohydrate, including table sugar and is arguably the main cause of insulin resistance.

There are those of you out there who will say this:

“Yeah, but I 'literally' don't think I could go without bread in my life.”

To you gluten filled pessimists, I say this:

“Bread is not Argentine Malbec and French Brie, fresh linen sheets and Eiderdown duvets, Exile on Main St. and Jura Prothecy or Clinique face wash and Nivea's pro-collagen moisturising cream. You would not take wheat to a desert island with you. Bread and circuses were for the people, now we have Hendrick's gin and Daft Punk.

    ViPR training should be a part of your life – if you can afford a membership to a decent gym or shed out £130 on an 6kg ViPR, then do it. The functional movement patterns allow for continuous resistance, proprioception, balance training and should give you the core of a Russian gymnast, before the wall collapsed and democracy ruined everything. So, if the monotony of 'body pump' has been slowly chipping away at your resolve, you're fed up with listening to pitiful house music whilst being yelled at on a spin bike, then release your inner Diane Youdale (Jet from Gladiators) and look up ViPR training.

   Maths – do it. Drinking what you want is fine so long as you do the maths, roughly. A pint is about 200 calories, a proper glass of white wine, 160 calories, and a double G 'n' T, 175 calories. Do not do your or anyone else's maths at the bar. Do not discuss this with people at the bar, it is unbecoming. “Thank you for telling me my glass of Sauvignon Blanc is the equivalent of eating a whole cheesecake.”said no one, ever. So, if you are eating and drinking liberally, then exercising once or even twice a week is not enough. There are a lot of imperatives in this paragraph, don't ask why.

I will now finish on a letter I wrote the other day...

Dear All Women/Ladies/Girls of Bootcamp,

You all believe that you can multi-task. The vast majority will indeed be capable of this gender specific trait.

Discussing the weather in Majorca is talking. Talking and exercising is not multi-tasking. If you are not one of the following, then please refrain from doing so:

1. You are a meteorologist.
2. You are in the band Travis.
3. You are Bear Grylls.

Your Faithfully,

Freddie

PS Did anyone leave a baby behind on Monday? Small, smiles a lot and almost definitely a girl, but I've been wrong before.

The Path to Marital Bliss: Getting Ready For Your Big Day...Quickly

   Cher once said that “the trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing - and then marry him.” Wise words. Regardless, people are getting married. People I know are getting married. Congratulations. We are all thrilled that some form of utopia has been reached on your part. Well done on the happiness. (sniff). I know many of you will have been bustling around various wedding fayres/fairs across the country, soaking up the materialistic inspiration that will ensure your day is the absolute best it can be. Will you go traditional, rustic, whimsical, nautical, contemporary or even beach-bound, cementing your place in the archives of Hello magazine's back pages? Don't listen to what the doubters say, those flower girl baskets do need to be made from biodegradable materials, and no, a white lace and satin bow ring cushion does not look “naff”. However, when the doves are 'rented', confetti ready and bouquets planned, it is the dress that will forever be etched in your mind, and everyone else's. So make sure you fit in it.

   The following workout is not for the faint-hearted, but hey, you're getting hitched, so I needn't worry about commitment issues. If you can throw in some days of gentle cardio to supplement this, great, but avoid doing this more than twice a week, due to the stress it places on your body.

Warm up

• 5 minutes of cardio (starting at 4 and finishing at 7 RPE – Rate of Perceived Exertion).
• Dynamic Stretching: 20 x squats, lunges, half press ups, leg swings, heel flicks and arm rotations.
• Glute Activation: Hold the plank and bridge for 3 sets of 20 seconds, each. THIS PART IS VITAL FOR REAR ATTENTION, DO NOT LET SOME PIPPA 'THE ARSE' MIDDLETON STEAL THE DAY.

The Workout

Stage 1 - we're looking at engaging your CNS (central nervous system) properly, so maintain correct form at all times. Perform 3 circuits. Start with the 'link' exercise (skater hop), as well as performing it in between the other exercise. Do 20 reps/exercise. There is no resting period.

• 'The Skater Hop' – bounce from one leg to the other, as though you were a speed skater. Only one leg should be in contact with the ground at any time. Release your inner Scandinavian.
  
  
                                            
  
  

1. 'Bird – Dog' – hands and knees on the floor. Extend your right leg and left arm, then repeat with left leg and right arm. If in doubt, look it up.
   
   
2. 'The Dead Bug' – start with your arms and legs straight up in the air (like a dead bug). Push your lower back into the ground (thus engaging your transverse abdominus) and lower your left leg and right arm. Do 10 reps before changing arms and legs.
   
   
3. 'Reverse Lunge with Kick' – lunge back before stepping back up and kicking out, high, in front of you and making a funny grunting sound. Everyone in the gym is now looking at you. You should never have grunted. Do 10 reps before swapping legs.
   
   
4. 'Single-leg Romanian Deadlift & Forward Reach' – with a very slight bend at the knee, bend over at the waist, keeping your back straight and reach both arms at in front of you. Stand back up straight and repeat on the other side.
   
   
5. 'Moving Press Ups' – start with your hands close together (elbows at sides) and gradually bounce them out as you tire. Your hands should be much wider than shoulder width by your last repetition. Beginners ought to execute this at an incline, so on a park bench or, alternatively, drop your knees and perform the half press up (thus naturally creating an incline with your body) variety.

Now, go wander (no. not be led) over to a stationary bike, cross-trainer, rowing machine or, if you're outside, a hill or green area...you could even run on the spot, in the cosy confines of your soon to be marital suite.

Stage.2.

HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)– we want to drag your body, kicking and screaming, into a state of oxygen debt. It is from this state that your metabolism will start firing on all cylinders for, up to, the following 24 hours (American College of Sports Medicine’s 15th-annual Health & Fitness Summit & Exposition). So, whether you are sprinting up a hill, peddling on the bike or running (with high knees) on the spot, do it properly and do NOT pace yourself. 

To give you an idea of what's required, when doing this at a stationary bike, my lungs scream for air, my vision starts to slip away and I'm almost certain that, one time, I saw Jesus being taught to moonwalk. Don't finish this stage and realise you still have something left. 

Do not do this on a treadmill.

• 3 rounds of: 30 seconds 5 RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) and 30 seconds 10 RPE (flat out)
• 4 rounds of: 40 seconds 5 RPE and 20 seconds 10 RPE.
• 5 rounds of: 50 seconds 5 RPE and 10 seconds 10 RPE.

Warm Down:

• 5 mins gentle cardio.
• Extensive stretching – holding each one for a minimum of 10 seconds. A stretched muscle looks much better than a tight one.

Now go eat something sweet, within the next 15 minutes. See link for details: http://justbootcamp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-we-should-have-babies.html

The Inevitability of Summer: 5 Exercises to Start Doing Now

EXT. TENNIS COURTS. DAY

A group of women are gathered, in sports gear, waiting.

BOOTCAMPER #1

Gosh, it's cold this morning. I'm just fed up with this winter.

BOOTCAMPER #2

Oh, I know. It's the coldest April for nine-hundred and thirty years, apparently.

BOOTCAMPER #3

Nine-hundred and thirty years!? You know what, I'm just not sure whether summer is ever going to arrive.

Anyway, have you noticed how toned Freddie's bum is these days? As if bootcamp couldn't get any better?!

BOOTCAMPER #2

I know. Bonjour, bébé tomates...organique.

          They all burst into a healthy cacophony of laughter, before smiling – they appear to be picturing      the bum in question.

Right, this is, I imagine, a daily conversation at bootcamp. However, what I wish to make clear to everyone is this: summer will arrive, holidays will be taken and at some point and you will be forced to shed clothing. Now, whether you wish to begrudgingly do this, having grown accustomed to your cashmere defences, or whether you'd rather tear off the shackles of winter like you are the love child of Superman and Magic Mike, is really quite up to you. What I will say though, is that there are one or two things you ought to be building on now before you can do a little bit of this:



...play beach volleyball, in your jeans.

The Itinerary:

1. 'The Usain Bolt' – yes, this is a fabricated name, but it will do wonders to your legs, core and upper back. So, grab a cable machine or exercise band, make sure it is about head height and take the strain, so that the cable/band is no longer slack. Now step back once more, diagonally, pulling the band/cable back with you, whilst leaving your other arm out. At full extension, your shape should resemble Usain Bolt's when he's doing 'the lightening Bolt celebration'. At no point should the cable/band lose it's tension. Try 3 sets of 20 reps/arm with a resistance you'll struggle with on the 15-20^th repetitions. If you're struggling getting your head around this, look up 'one arm cable row' then look up 'transverse row', you can work it out from there.

                                     

2. Plank Up Downs – move from a planking position to a press up position and back, continuously. Keep your bum tensed and suck your stomach in to hit your transverse abdominus. Try not to move at the hips. I can not stress to you enough how important the plank is: you posture will improve, you will stand taller and thus more confidently, your stomach will be flatter and your life will get better. Throw in the climbing variety and the back of your arms and shoulders will make Jennifer Aniston cry. Try 3 sets of 30 seconds, with 30 seconds rest in between sets.
   
   
                                    
   
   
3. Hip Thrusts – yet another exercise stripped from my sermon sheet and thrown at the congress until exhaustion. So, please, please, please perform any form of the hip thrust before you workout. You may even have a whirl at the weighted variety when you're warmed up. Try something new: buy a Big Issue, punch a squirrel, ballroom dance, make some Champagne socialist remark on Facebook, but do ENSURE THE HIP THRUST IS A PART OF YOUR LIFE. Do 2 sets of 20/leg, as part of your warm up.
   
   
                                         
   
   
4. Weighted Side Bends – be this psychosomatic or not, the side bend seems to make everyone under my training umbrella happy. Just try and imagine there is a brick wall in front and behind you, so as to avoid unwanted rotation. Do this at the end of your workout. 2 sets of 20 reps/side with – and this is guidance, not an order – 8kg for girls and 15kg for guys. Build it up, add weight with time and embrace new found, V-shaped firmness.

                                                  

     5. Goblet Squats - just do them and you'll understand. Keep your chest up and imagine you are being pulled up and down by a piece of string, from your chest. Don't let the weight drop below chest height or you'll load up your back necessarily. Squeeze your bum at the top to ensure a full range of movement, and keep a curve in your lower back. Go below knee height. Do 3 sets of 15-20 reps with a weight you struggle with on the last few reps.

                                      

NB How you hold yourself, standing, walking and sitting, are quite possibly the most important things when the time comes to strip. The above exercises give you the tools to enforce the correct execution of this. However, there is little point in having the bum of a Ugandan coal miner and the stomach of a Disney princess if you don't stand up straight and give it a “little sumin' sumin'”. So, think happy thoughts, smile like you mean it, fix up look sharp and show me what you got.

Run Faster, Injury-free & Look Good Doing it - Part I.

   Forgive me for the reiteration but sometimes it is necessary: the way in which you run matters. Someone once told me, “just not to think about it”, sound advice for a four year old child, not so for the rest of us. Now, most of you won't be running correctly. Stop crying, it is not your fault, blame the system. I will be addressing what's going wrong, why, what this is doing and what can be done about it - all so that you can move more efficiently. This a two part story. (Please take heed that this subject won't be dealt with by the oh-so- familiar, all-too-theatrical but refreshingly jovial hand of late. There will be no double entrendres, crude innuendos or suggestive mention of sex (giggle giggle). Today is about running. Skip to the bottom if you are, how do I put this....experiencing a crisis of faith.)

Les Problems:

The influx of cushioned trainers, pushed on us by polo-shirt wearing salesmen who have been brainwashed by company-funded medical journals is rife and has done nothing to amend the number of running injuries per annum in the last twenty-odd years. Kids have their podgy little feet rammed into Nike Air trainers to appease their fashion-conscious but ultimately blame free mothers. Unfortunately, this little statement may turn heads in the playground but does little to aid the development of the child's feet: the arch under-develops and the foot muscles don't learn to properly engage. The damage will not have been as bad for those (the following is whispered, so as not to incite maternal fury) of the middle or older age, but a generation of problems awaits us still.

However, forgetting the youth for just a moment, if you are reading this in your running or gym gear then please take off your shoes and feel for the now infamous 'arch support' in your trainer. Found it? Well done. Now feel your foot (it's not what you think. N'est pas de fetishes here...unless you're into that sort of stuff, which I'm not...unless you are? -silence- ) and you'll find an arch or something that resembles close to being one. This arch is the key to running effectively and injury free. This is what happens to the foot, on impact:

The 'arch flattens' and the 'toes spay apart' – taking away the impact and allowing for a free-flowing, balanced gait. Now, if you whack a wedge underneath your arch, the impact will travel straight up and through your body. Add in a little corporation-fuelled encouragement and you'll find yourself land heel first, whilst your foot is taped into a £120 pair of trainers, slamming your bodyweight behind each step, unaware of the actual impact it's having on your body.

Les Consequences:

• Injury – it may not happen today, tomorrow or even next year but it will happen. Whether you destroy your knees (probably patellofemoral pain syndrome) through years of heel strikes, encounter lower back pain, wake up with a dull ache and bruising in your heel as well as your arch (plantar fasciitis), or try to live with shin splints, the injuries will come.
  
  
• You Run Slower – landing on your heel means it is in front of your mid-line, which means you are essentially braking, ever so slightly, every time you take a step. Contact time with the ground creates more friction, which slows you down; 'running is a perpetual action that is only hindered by foot contact time'.

Here Endeth the Lesson:

I will leave you with this: 'Why did we evolve the way we did only to ignore our baser instincts; the way we were born to run; the way children run; the way you run when you take off those fluffy trainers, placed there because because someone, somewhere, wants to make money? I am far from being the hemp wearing, feather adorned, free love preaching, ukulele playing hipster you imagine; I am just someone exhausted by being told to “mind the gap between the train and the platform”. You should be too.' (Frederick Wardlaw, Why We Should All Run Naked, With or Without Wolves, (Oxford: Claredon Press, 2013), pp. 39)

Part II will discuss what one ought to be doing when running, and in what footwear. It will also be positively full to the brim with puns and innuendos.