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Category: Muscle Building

Spotlight Sunday: Debbie Marriott! “I lost 7 inches off my waist and realised PW had become like a family to me!”
28 Apr
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Spotlight Sunday: Debbie Marriott! “I lost 7 inches off my waist and realised PW had become like a family to me!”

When I got married my waist was 22 inches, and I had never worried about what I ate or whether I exercised. Over the next eight years I had four children and was one of those annoying people who went back into jeans very quickly still not having to worry about weight!

As my children got older my husband and I started all-inclusive holidays while the grandparents had the kids and the older they got the longer the holidays got! Once they had grown up and left home the holidays became more regular and that’s when the weight started to creep on. We were all inclusive after all if would be rude not to try and eat and drink everything in sight, right??

Over the next few years I had tried lots of different forms of exercise and was even still involved in amateur dramatics, dancing and singing, but still the weight crept on! I then had painful knees which slowed me down resulting in a replacement knee two years ago. After that I was scared to exercise in case it hurt and also the weight increase was obviously down to my age, going through the menopause and nothing would work right???? Wrong!!!

Read more about Spotlight Sunday: Debbie Marriott! “I lost 7 inches off my waist and realised PW had become like a family to me!” …
How Fitness Models Get a Tiny Waistline
26 Feb
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How Fitness Models Get a Tiny Waistline

I hope you guys are having an awesome week so far! I had a fantastic conversation just this morning talking about waistlines.

It started off talking about belly-fat and moved on to how to get a tiny wasp-like (is the term they used) waistline.

A while ago, I did a workshop called The Swimsuit Body Solution (which I might do again closer to the summer), where I talked through a bunch of secrets the professional swimsuit models use to get their figure. You know, other than Photoshop… 😉

One of the things we covered was, what I called, body sculpting. It’s the illusion they create by their overall shape. If you just took their silhouette, for example, you’d notice they go in significantly at the waist. And that’s probably exactly what you’d note.

Read more about How Fitness Models Get a Tiny Waistline …
6 Ways to Get (and Stay!) Motivated
10 Nov
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6 Ways to Get (and Stay!) Motivated

Has your mojo done a runner? Motivation got up and started sneaking out the back door when you turned your head?

Remember how excited you were the first time you walked into the gym? Or when you stepped on the scale and lost that first pound? Or when you ran that first mile without stopping? It’s time to get that feeling back and here are six ways to regain and keep your motivation when it starts to wander like a toddler in a toy shop: Read more about 6 Ways to Get (and Stay!) Motivated …

It’s all about family (Monday motivation)
18 Sep
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It’s all about family (Monday motivation)

Prior warning, this is going to be a serious one! I’m going to be getting pretty deep here, so if you’re in this post looking for jokey, doesn’t take the world seriously Punshon, he’ll be back after a short interlude. 🙂

A couple of weeks back I had a photo shoot with my family. We went down to the little mini-woods in Goring Gap.

It’s great down there. It’s like a crack in the universe. You just step through a tree branch out of this field into this strip of tiny forest, where through the gaps at each edge you can look out onto wide open field and beach like looking through a portal.

It almost didn’t go to plan either. Our photographer, Sophie, had an old wooden step-ladder as a prop. That very morning, she’d lean’t it up against something while she took some photos of the family she was shooting, turned around, and they’d completely disappeared!

Turned out Beach Patrol had taken them! So she had to go right down to the beach office to get them back.

So when we got there she was running a bit late!

But fast-forward to today, and we were in her studio looking at the photos, trying to narrow it down to 10. as they were laid out in frames for us to choose.
Read more about It’s all about family (Monday motivation) …

5 fat burning food swaps to painlessly drop 500 calories
20 Aug
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5 fat burning food swaps to painlessly drop 500 calories

Changing your eating doesn’t have to be painful. In fact it can be painfully simple! Just by making some simple substitutions to foods you already eat can drop several hundred calories from your diet without even trying.

Here’s 5 foods you can swap out straight away to go from Freaky Friday to Fat-Burn Furnace!

Bread for small pita

Assuming you don’t have a wheat intolerance, bread being the devil when it comes to weight loss is a little bit exaggerated. The real problem with bread is that it tends to come in pairs.

A slice of bread is anything from 80-120 calories depending on the size. Multiply that by two for a sandwich and you now have around 200+ calories before you’ve even started on the filling.

Instead switch out the bread for a small wholemeal pita bread. As well as cutting the calories, the pocket of the pita acts as bonus portion control!

Read more about 5 fat burning food swaps to painlessly drop 500 calories …

6 Simple Ways to Meal-Prep Like a Boss!
14 Dec
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6 Simple Ways to Meal-Prep Like a Boss!

One of the major hurdles in losing weight is the ability to prepare and cook healthy, low-calorie and delicious meals. Many of us mistakenly believe that that this requires endless hours concocting and cooking complicated recipes. Locking yourself in the kitchen so long you start to swear like Gordon Ramsey isn’t necessary though. All that is required is a little preparation.

Here’s 6 simple ways to meal prep like a boss!


1) Set aside a specific time to prep and shop each week

There’s a bit of an in-joke in the fitness world that Sunday is international meal-prep day. Although Sunday may not work for you, find a time that does work for you every week to shop for healthy meal ingredients and to prepare your meals. Read more about 6 Simple Ways to Meal-Prep Like a Boss! …

5 Ways to Sort Post-workout Soreness
07 Nov
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5 Ways to Sort Post-workout Soreness

When you’re new to working out, few experiences are more off-putting than a bout of post-workout muscle soreness. The immediate post-workout period is misleading; you don’t experience soreness straight away, which leads you to believe you’re getting an easy ride. Then perhaps the next day, or even the one after that, it kicks in with a vengeance.

doms_memeDrumming up the motivation to return to the gym is difficult when your aching muscles are making it difficult to even get out of your chair. Fortunately, there are ways to tackle soreness so you’re more motivated for your next session.

Stretch like your life depends on it

Did you stretch after your workout? And if you did, did you stretch in the right way? While the generic stretches you learned during PE at school were okay, they’re not a match for targeted stretching that’ll address specific muscle groups or sports activities. Do your research and find out which stretches will best benefit your workout.

Factor in rest periods and cool down days

Even the boffins don’t know for sure what causes the muscle soreness, the most popular theory is that your muscles experience small tears, which then repair over the next few days. While you can’t avoid such injuries if you want to progress, you can factor in rest periods and cool down days to ease the pain. Taking days off gives your body time to heal and it’s during rest periods (especially sleep) that you produce more growth hormone. Alternatively, you can try a cool down day where you just walk or swim. Read more about 5 Ways to Sort Post-workout Soreness …

How to Burn Fat While You Sleep
31 May
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How to Burn Fat While You Sleep

I remember once many years ago watching a great video that properly illustrated the problem. In the video was two guys. One was on a treadmill, and the other had a slice of pizza.

Funny-Pizza-02Just one large one, this wasn’t man vs food or anything, but that slice of pizza was about 500-600 calories. Pretty standard.

The task at hand was pretty straight forward. The guy on the treadmill was going to run for the same amount of time the other guy ate his pizza slice.

So one was burning calories, the other ingesting them.

So off they went. One guy started chowing down on the pizza – Not fast, but not slow either, and the other guy went for it on the treadmill.

This was proper hell for leather too! He was sprinting, and if it was a cartoon, smoke would have been coming out of the treadmill belt.

It took the one guy about 2 minutes to get through the 500 odd calorie slice of pizza.

On the other hand, by sprinting for 2 minutes, the other guy had burned around 33 calories.

So the point was pretty obvious! You can take in 500 odd calories in about 2 minutes, but to burn that off, that 1 single slice of pizza, you would have to sprint for over 30 minutes. (And yes, it’s impossible to sprint for 30 minutes, but you get the point!)

In short, trying to burn off what you eat through exercise is a false economy.

Unless you’re an extreme endurance athlete, you’re never going to burn enough calories during exercise to make a dent.

However, there is a way to burn more, and that’s using a concept we call Afterburn. Read more about How to Burn Fat While You Sleep …

Bootcamp is dead :-(
29 May
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Bootcamp is dead :-(

13321654_1073772549335745_6720899411017857265_nToday’s the day I finally close the doors on Bootcamp.

The decision comes with a heavy heart, but it’s something I’ve been wrestling with for a while.

The truth is, Bootcamp died several years ago, but we powered on with it like a dog with a bone.

You see, “Bootcamp” outside of the military refers to an “Intensive, immersive programme to get results quickly”. So in terms of a fat-loss or transformation camp, that would mean a complete programme of fat-loss specific workouts, eating plans, lifestyle coaching, nutrition coaching, group support… Like I said, a complete programme.

And that’s what we’ve always done with our Bootcamp.

We’ve never shouted at anyone, talked down to people, or told them to “Move your fat arse” because “That’s what they do in the military”.

But for a few years now, people have been putting on workouts that include a few squats, pushups, and planks, or anything they can use to create a military connection, no matter how tenuous, to piggy back on the term “Bootcamp”.

You can just drop-in to free “Bootcamps” in local parks, or nip down to your local leisure centre and join in a “Bootcamp” workout on an ad-hoc basis.

But of course all of those things are the opposite of what a Bootcamp programme is. An “Intensive, immersive programme to get results quickly”.

Without everything else that makes the programme complete, it’s just a workout.

That’s not what we do. Read more about Bootcamp is dead 🙁 …

3 Fitness Model Secrets to Tighten and Tone at the Last Minute
15 Sep
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3 Fitness Model Secrets to Tighten and Tone at the Last Minute

Unless you’ve been hibernating in a dark room, you’ll have noticed the elusive on-off bursts of British sunshine have already started to creep up on us with a mini heatwave. Get out the factor 50!

Problem is though, because the British summer always seems to hit us with ninja-like stealth, we’re never prepared! So here’s 3 techniques we use in those last 21-28 days to get models ready for photo shoots that you can use to drop a few extra pounds before your mate’s barbecue at the weekend. Read more about 3 Fitness Model Secrets to Tighten and Tone at the Last Minute …