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7 Tips for transforming your body this January
7 Tips for transforming your body this January
We spoke with Ciaran Ruddock MSc, co-founder and head of strength and conditioning at Fitter, Faster, Stronger gyms about his tips for anyone looking to transform their body this January. Ciaran has given us these seven tips to get in your best shape.
Based on my experience, if you want to improve your body composition, I would recommend that you implement the following habits:- Lift more weights with the aim of getting stronger and increasing your muscle mass.
- Eat until satisfied not full. For me this meant eating out of a bowl instead of plate.
- Eat more green vegetables. With exception of breakfast, every meal for me included at least one serving of green vegetables. The reason for this was that they helped to fill me and the numerous healthy benefits. How do you think Popeye became so strong?!
- Make your goal a high priority.
- Steady state cardio can help you to be leaner and fitter. I added one day of steady state cardio to my weekly training routine.
- This helped to drop body fat, decreased my resting heart rate and aerobic capacity.
- Increase your daily movement. The more you can walk, stand or cycle throughout the day the better. This summer I used a fit bit to track my daily activity and noticed that when I moved more my body composition improved and I felt better.
- Enjoy the process and constantly learn and adjust your approach based on your results and how you feel.
Creatine* is an important element of a post work-out stack, which improves power and performance during high intensity sprint performance. Creatine is a compound which can increase your body’s physical performance during successive bursts of short term, high intensity exercise. It's naturally produced in the body and is also found in food like red meat (but you would have to consume a lot of steak to get the performance benefits of a creatine supplement.) After high intensity training your creatine stores are naturally depleted. Supplementing with creatine monohydrate can help replenish the creatine stores in your muscle, which is especially important if you want to be ready to push yourself through your next big session.
BCAAs: Amino acids are literally the building blocks of all biological proteins. Every protein you consume in your diet or through supplementation is broken down in the body into amino acids which supports the growth and repair of your muscle. The Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) leucine, isoleucine and valine, are all essential amino acids, meaning that they must be consumed through the diet or supplementation as the body can't produce them which makes them important elements of any stack.
Caffeine: Caffeine** can help improve focus and concentration. Caffeine will help if you are hitting the gym earlier or another kick for your second workout of the day.
Nutrition: It’s important to remember that supplements are just that, they will supplement your gains but can’t replace the benefits of a healthy nutrition plan and a hard, intense, training regime.
If you want to go with a great 3 in 1 work out stack to get the absolute most out of all your hard work BSN have now released R3BUILD EDGE containing BCAAs, glutamine and creatine helping drive your performance and power in the gym.
*Creatine increases physical performance in successive bursts of short-term, high intensity exercise.
**Caffeine contributes to increased alertness and increased concentration.
