High volume back and shoulder session

Following on from a recent blog post from Nick Mitchell regarding a chest and arm workout I used a similar system to create a leg and a back and shoulder workout which I did this morning.

The idea is sometimes you need a higher volume workout than usual to trash as many muscle fibres as possible using different rep ranges, exercises variation, tempo prescription and rest periods.

I specifically wanted to work on my upper back with rowing variations as because I have been performing a lot of chin ups recently, wanted to ensure the length tension in my back was healthy. Another priority was medial delts however in hindsight, I could probably add another exercise in.

This is how it went...

A Wide Grip Pull Ups (4 x 3-5, 40X1, 150s)

B Thick Double-D T-Bar Row (3 x 12-15, 20X1, 90s)

C1 50' Inc One Arm DB Row, Elbows In (3 x 6-8, 20X1, 0)
C2 Seated Row to Neck (3 x 10-12, 20X0, 60s)

D1 Arnold Press (3 x 10-12, 30X0, 45s)
D2 L-Lateral Raise (3 x 10-12, 2012, 45s)

E1 Bent Over Trap 3 (3 x 6-8, 4010, 30s)
E2 Flat Powell Raise (3 x 6-8, 4010, 30s)

F1 Cable Rope Upright Row (2 x 6, 30X0, 0)
F2 Trap Bar Shrug (2 x 12, 20X1, 0)
F3 Standing DB Shrug (2 x 15, 20X0, 60s)

This is a workout slightly adapted from the strict Poliquin guidelines I usually stick to. For a 3 week microcycle I think it will be a nice (read torturous) change from what I'm used to. However my training partner did describe it as 'one of the best workouts I've had this year'.

Judging from the 3 workouts so far, this might be something I adopt regularly in the future.

If your struggling for a workout template this week, give something similar to this a go and I'm certain you'll be happy with the results.

Arm Sessions

Over the last 6 weeks, James and Ben have run an arm course, designed to increase specifically muscle mass but also strength within the arm musculature.

Each week focused on a different training system which was designed to create a different stimulus through volume, variety and time under tension.

Every week had the main workout and then a finisher of some kind, whether it was our Watson Fat Grip Wrist Roller, constant tension curls or close grip press ups we made sure that our trainees had nothing left!

Here is a brief overview of the 6 weeks.

Week 1 - 6,12,25
Week 2 - Nasty Sets
Week 3 - 8,8,16
Week 4 - Origin/Insertion
Week 5 - Gironda 8x8
Week 6 - EBW Special

I just want to focus on the final week, the EBW special. It's called this because I haven't seen a workout written like this before, that's certainly not to say that there hasn't been, but until I find out it's proper name, it will stay as this for now. Here's how the workout looked...

A1 - Supinated Close Grip Chin Ups
A2 - V Bar Dips

B1 - 1 1/4 Fat Gripz 60' Hammer Curl
B2 - Decline Close Grip Bench Press

C1 - Fat Gripz Straight Bar Cable Reverse Curl w/ Isometric Hold at 90'
C2 - Standing Rope French Press

Not too bad right?

Here's how the reps, sets, tempo and rest was set out...

Set 1: 6 @ 50X0
Set 2: 8 @ 40X0
Set 3: 12 @ 30X0
Set 4:15 @ 20X0
Set 5: 25 @ 10X0

You would complete the super-set and then rest just 60s between each set! The workout should take just 40 minutes!

The idea is that with the varying rep ranges, you complete destroy every muscle fiber. The high volume and minimal rest ensures high growth hormone levels, essential for building muscle and losing body fat. You would think the guys were doing a leg workout!

Thanks to: James Godfrey, Lee Sharp, Nick Stanley, Keith Tucker, Adam Wilson, Mattais Andersson, Gary Dinsey, Paul Adams and Jon Richardson. You all trained very well (standard moaning from Adam and Gary) but hope you all enjoyed the course.

Our Chest and Back course, starting on Monday 26th September is now completely full which we hope is a sign of things to come.

Please email james@elite-bodyworks.com for any information on upcoming courses.

Paleo Nutrition NOT a salad diet!

The eating habits I advocate are those of a paleo nature. This is to avoid sugars as much as possible and to keep insulin levels down.

Let's review the rules of what paleo nutrition includes:

• UNLIMITED red meat (buffalo, beef, lamb)
• UNLIMITED poultry (chicken, turkey)
• UNLIMITED seafood (scallops, salmon, sea bass)
• UNLIMITED healthy fats (nuts, coconut oil, omega 3)
• UNLIMITED vegetables (broccoli, spinach, cabbage)

The biggest problem initially when you say that you want to restrict someones carbohydrate intake is 'Well what am I going to eat then'? It's important when you take something away to put something else back in so increasing protein portion size, vegetable intake and most importantly healthy fat content is paramount.

Here are a couple of example meals:

Buffalo burgers fried in organic butter with cashew nuts, spinach and tomatoes.

Wild Alaskan Salmon Parcels with roasted vegetables

Organic chicken fried in avocado oil, add almond nut butter to coat the chicken and serve with sliced banana and a mixed salad.

The point I'm trying to make is you should never go hungry and when people tell me that they are just having a salad for lunch it's easy to see why they find it hard to stick to.

It's true that carbohydrates give you energy but fats give you more! Carbs provide 4 calories per gram whilst fats provide 9. That is why it is important to include fats to keep your blood sugar steady and stable. From this you can see that you will have to control your fat intake to an extent but it also proves that all calories aren't equal.

Initially you may experience nausea or slight headaches, this is your body switching fuel sources from sugar to ketones. If this gets unbearable then add in some berries or thin skinned fruit and this should subside.

Research has shown that as homosapians we were lean and muscular but as of the present day, as many as 66% of our nation could be considered overweight. Let's go back to what we designed to thrive on!



There are hundreds of websites giving paleo recipes and advice so there's no excuse to get bored. Jonny Bowden's 'Living the Low Carb Life' or Rob Wolfs 'Paleo Nutrition' are both excellent reads.

Paleo nutrition provides outstanding health benefits and body composition changes and now you know that you can have far more than a garden salad to get lean.

Recent results...

I’d like to share some things that have been happening with me and my clients recently. Pictures tell a thousand words so hopefully these pictures will give a great indication of just how hard these 3 have worked over the past few months.

I’ve been training Adam Wilson and Rachel Cook for a little over 4 months now. I first met Adam when he booked in for a strongman session in February and towards the end of the month he approached me about training. After about a month or so his fiance also started training with me as they were both motivated by their upcoming wedding in August.

I first met Katie when she came to one of our Modified Strong girl classes on a Saturday and it was clear that she was already in very good shape. After a while it became evident that whilst her upper body was very lean, relatively her legs weren't up to scratch. Our main goal was to lower her body fat slightly and work on leaning her legs out.

Adam Wilson

Adam has gone from over 18% body fat at 70.6kg to just under 10% at 72kg in 16 weeks but more noticeably went from 12.3% to 9.9% in the last 2 weeks after committing to his training and nutritional guidelines 100%.

We started off with a biosignature assessment and for sure one of Adams priority's was his carbohydrate sites. Gradually reducing these, increasing his protein and healthy fat intake along with some lactate body composition programmes resulted in Adams dramatic transformation. He has also increased his arm size by over an inch in this time, no doubt helped by the one day arm cure that he completed in April.

He has also been a regular attendee of Modified Strongman Training and this has undoubtedly helped in shifting body fat and increasing lean muscle tissue. Most noticeably his grip strength has increased dramatically transferring to a multitude of personal bests including chin ups, deadlifts and tyre flips.

His next goal is 8% at 75kg, certainly achievable given the level of commitment he has already shown.

Rachel Cook

Rachel was a touch below 27% when she first started training with me. She had just had her first child by c-section 9 months previously and with her wedding looming in August was desperate to feel in better shape. 

Rachel has just measured in at 19.8% so too has made considerable progress, especially with having to deal with the added stress of getting up to soothe a screaming infant nightly (I’m sure Adam helped).

Rachel, like most women, was a carb fiend, with a high sugar breakfast, followed by a sandwich at lunch and potatoes with dinner. Introducing her to a paleo nutrition has made a huge impact on her body composition. Most noticeably she has reduced her ‘love-handle’ site by over 10mm! This is the site that refers directly to how many carbohydrates your currently consuming so you can see how effective reducing carbohydrates can be.

She too has been doing at least 1 session a week of a lactate style fat loss workout as well as a modified strong girl class on a Saturday. Having been a novice to weights before she could now be considered more than capable after being exposed to deadlifts, all types of squats, tyre flips, farmers walks to name a few.

I think you can agree that with her wedding dress measurements fast approaching, she is going to look great on the big day!

Katie Dixon

Katie Dixon is quite simply the leanest female I have ever seen. At a mere 7.5% body fat and skinfolds that represent male athlete norms, through smart training and nutrition she has got herself into phenomenal shape.

When she came to me she was 11.2% and wanted to get sub 10%. She has far exceeded her expectations and is delighted with the result.

She is also one of the hardest working individuals I have ever trained in the gym, regularly out training the guys not only in work capacity but sometimes in strength levels too. She can comfortably chin her body weight for reps and squat and deadlift well over her body weight.

The next goal for Katie is to compete in a figure or bikini competition and I’m sure you’ll agree when I say that she is going to destroy most, if not all the competition.

These are just a handful of clients getting results in record time, look out for more being posted regularly.

Check out our website; http://www.elite-bodyworks.com/, find us on facebook ‘Elite-bodyworks’ or email james@elite-bodyworks.com for any more information.

Biosignature take 2

It's been a while since I updated the blog so I thought I'd share my experience of the Biosignature I recently completed in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Biosignature method for those of you that don't know is a body fat system designed to shed excess blubber directly from the problem sites on your body. If you store fat on your love handles then your carbohydrate leveis too high which is affecting your blood sugar, if you store fat on your legs mostly then it could be an estrogen problem so the idea would be to help detoxification.




You can find out more about the biosignature here... http://www.elite-bodyworks.com/

Being a Biosignature practitioner you have to re-certify every year to keep up to date with the latest research and also to make sure that your site readings are accurate. All the London courses were sold out so I thought I would go a little further afield to better my world knowledge as well as my learning.

I loved the environment I was in for the week, completely stress free, uninterrupted 10 hours sleep, training each day and learning some great information from one of the world leaders in strength training. I also made some good friends with some of my colleagues on the course, always nice to network within the Poliquin community.

As usual the course was jam-packed full of knowledge that was all geared to getting your clients leaner and healthier in the quickest time possible, We went through all the different sites and the hormones they related to slowly as there was so much information on each. I could see the difference that retaking the course made, I was able to retain quite a bit more information than some of my first time colleagues. Some of the lectures of estrogen metabolism and methylation pathways were quite complex but I felt happy that I could understand most of what was saying and after conferring with some of the other students after the course felt that I had taken in alot more than some of them.

Some clinical pearls I picked up from the course were...

• Cook your food in butter to help get leaner, the type of fat in butter buytric acid help your body to detoxify.
• Add GLA to fish oil to enhance your results, you become deficient after a while of taking a high dose.
• Make sure butter and coffee are always organic.
• Make sure that your cosmetics are always paraben free to save you from more estrogen exposure.

The biosignature method is an amzing way to help get your clients in shape and some of the results I have been getting recently are only proving this point more.

For more information on the biosignature please contact me on james@elite-bodyworks.com.

Body Development Course - Training the MMA client

Some of you may know that on Saturday 26th February I travelled west to Bath to undertake a private seminar hosted by Tom Crudgington of Body Development Strength Institute.

http://bodydevelopment.co.uk/

This was to discuss specific training techniques for MMA fighters/wrestlers/martial artists and what methods were indicated for these individuals.

The course exposed me to a lot of new information that I had never come across before, especially in the type of implements that can be used to train these athletes. Within the course we used such things as Indian Clubs (imagine a big heavy rounders bat or skittle), stick fighting, using an implement called a mace which is effectively a heavy concrete football at the end of a pole as well as numerous other things.

It's important with fighters to increase grip strength in tangent with increasing self awareness to use your whole body to strike with your fist or leg. Using certain exercises to improve brain awareness of certain muscles that are sometimes hard to address with bigger movements.

There was not a huge emphasis on core conditioning and certainly not laying on the floor and doing crunches, more using exercises that braced the core in a functional standing position such as sledgehammer drills or heavy bag work which transfer to martial arts a lot more.

We got drilled for 2 x 15 minute workouts to show the sort of work capacity that Tom expects of his fighter athletes. One using a combination of body weight exercises, the other using a weight circuit specific to the sport. We also got showed the 'Card workout' where you cycle through a pack of cards rotating exercises and the reps is indicated by the number on whatever card you pull out. We rotated 9 cards and we were in pieces! Tom expects his athletes to complete it in under 18 minutes if they want to be trained by him.

Overall it was a great day and i recommend his training facility and courses to anyone, especially if they work with the type of athletes I mentioned above.

BCAA Excellence 2.0

One of the best things that Elite-Bodyworks offer is the chance to improve your training sessions with correct supplementation.

BCAA Excellence 2.0 is great for improving lean muscle mass and gains of up to 9 pounds in 3 weeks have been witnessed if used in the correct capacity.

I have been using BCAA’s in mine and my clients training and found them to produce great results. The most noticeable effect they have is their ability to dramatically decrease post-workout soreness (DOMS) as they increase protein synthesis thus improve muscular recovery.

Some other benefits of supplementing with BCAAs include:

• Increasing testosterone levels
• Decreasing cortisol levels
• Increase of anabolism with a decrease of catabolism of muscle tissue
• Increased work capacity

So how many should you take?

Charles Poliquin recommends that for a 90kg man you should take 5-10 caps, 45 minutes before your workout and 20-30 during your workout.

Please email me at james@elite-bodyworks.com to find out more information and to order your BCAA's today!

Fish Oil

It never ceases to amaze me how effective fish oil (or more importantly the Omega 3's that it provides) continues to be for numerous reasons.

Every human being should be consuming at least 6g of fish oil a day and in a perfect world we would get this from fish in our natural environment. However this is not a perfect world and because of the increased contamination in seas, rivers and lakes as well as commercial seafood farming where animals are fed the wrong food and pumped full of anti-biotics it renders the benefits they should be supplying useless.

Some of the benefits that fish oils provide are:

• Increase fat loss
• Decrease fat storage
• Improve cognition and brain function
• Improve immune system
• Improve mood and decrease depression
• Reduce inflammation

There are many more benefits which can be found in numerous articles all over the Internet but if there are so many positives so fish oil then how can we get it safely without risking any of the possible side effects that consuming large quantity's of poor quality fish pose?



Using a highly potent, well tested fish oil supplement is the most effective way to reap the benefits. There is still a catch though. Should you use any fish oil? What's the difference between the £3 pot that Asda sell and that £25 tub on the Internet?

It's all to do with how the oil was tested and by who. It's been shown recently that most fish oil have already rancified by the time they reach the shop so by the time a consumer has bought one and then taken home and started using you can see how very quickly it can become ineffective and even dangerous.

A quality fish oil should be tested for the following:

• PCBs
• Solvents
• Heavy metals

More information on this subject can be found on the following link.

http://www.charlespoliquin.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/263/Fish_Oils_and_PCBs_The_Cost_of_Cutting_Corners.aspx

I recommend that Poliquin brand of fish oils because as the article demonstrates they use rigorous testing to make sure there fish oil is of the highest quality and one the most potent on the market.

With all the evidence provided above and the advice that through natural causes we cannot meet our body's requirements can you afford to continue to not take fish oils?

Contact me today for more information.

MST: Photo Session

Today I had my first taste with how the Modified Strongman Sessions will run after I lead a taster session this morning to get some photos and videos for the website.

It went very well, everyone enjoyed the experience as it meant using a lot of equipment that you would never find in other gyms. Using some of the equipment also creates some of the most effective sessions for strength, fat loss and work capacity that you will have ever experienced. They don't call them the 'ropes of death' for nothing!

As a session that's an extra to my personal training, biosignature and supplement business this is proving to be very popular with over 30 people signing up for the launch on February 5th. I'm hoping that Elite-Bodyworks can be the leaders in this type of training in the area and begin to receive recognition for the types of results that this training will produce!

Modified Strongman Training

Using Modified Strongman Training (MST) we can deliver some of the most challenging and demanding sessions you will have encountered when training. This type of training not only increases strength but because of the tremendous amount of lactic acid built up, MST is fantastic for encouraging fat loss and changing body composition.

MST combines classic strongman lifts such as tire flipping, farmer’s walks and deadlifts with a modern approach and training protocols that transfer to the athletic population and also for people wanting that extra edge when training. Strongman training uses exercises that are directly correlated to sport thus making this true “functional training”.

The group-based workout ensures a highly motivating atmosphere and team challenges within the session, such as tire battles, tug of war and different types of races, only increases the enjoyment of the session.

The Fitness Experts is the only gym in the surrounding area that offers this type of training so this is a fantastic opportunity not to be missed.  What’s more, the first session is completely FREE.

How will Modified Strongman training benefit you?

• Increase strength
• Decrease body fat
• Improve athletic performance (increase speed, power, agility)
• Decrease risk of injury (increase bone, ligament and tendon strength)

Sessions are open to males and females of any age and teams looking for a group session.

There will be a maximum of 8 people per session to begin with. Sessions must be booked in, please follow the link.

If you are a sports team looking to improve your team’s performance with a training system sure to give you the winning edge we can set specific times for you to train.

MST will begin on Saturday 5^th February and will run between 11-12pm and 12-1pm.

Price: £9 per session or £27 for a calendar month. Fitness Experts members will be given individual sessions at £5.

For more information please email jsmith.picp@hotmail.com

VMO Training

VMO is the abbreviation for Vastus Medialis Oblique, one of the quadriceps muscles that sits on the inside of the knee. This little talked about muscle is essential not only for optimal knee function but also athletic performance whether it's a track or field event or a team sport.

The VMO is the one of the muscles responsible for increasing jump speed and power because it the primary muscle responsible for the stance phase, the part where you switch from an eccentric to a concentric. Charles Poliquin has noted not only this but in his experience the most powerful athletes are those who spend least time in the stance phase.

So once learning this, how do we train this little muscle.

Different forms of step ups are vital to begin with if the muscle is weaker than it should be, Poliquin and Petersen step ups for the really weak or unco-ordinated. Females especially will need to start with less challenging exercises to build proprioception.

Then you can move on to split squats and full squat variations. It is essential in both exercises that you use full range of motion to ensure full VMO activation. The muscle is most active at the top and bottom of the range. An exercise to really target the VMO is 1 1/4 squats which is basically an extra quarter movement at the bottom of the range. This is however an advanced exercise and you should go through all the other variations first.

Hopefully this gives you a little more insight into the VMO, it's functions and how to train it effectively.