Optimal Life Fitness, for health, fitness and a new lifestyle outdoors.

If you utilise options 1 or 2 above the following is an example of how you can implement your KB Jerk or Snatch sessions:

The first Performance Boxing Instructor Course is being held this weekend in London. The Performance Boxing Course is designed to give fitness professionals the skills and knowledge to:

• Safely design and implement boxing into group fitness or personal training.


• Display and teach the correct technique and movement for punching and holding focus pads and coaching mitts.


• Communicate positively with class participants and clients to create positive relationships that will ensure people will be returning to your sessions time and time again.


• Successfully structure group and personal training sessions and have the skills to vary sessions so participants never get bored of your routines.

The Performance Boxing Course is run by B.J. Rule, Andy Phillips and Ex pro world champion boxer Stevie Smith. The 1 day course costs just £150.00 + VAT and is fully REPs accredited with 10 CPD points

Course Outline:

• Introduction to Performance Boxing
• Physical Execution
• Learn the key techniques punching and padding
• Fighting Stance
• Punching Technique
• Focus Pad Technique
• Hand Wrap Sequence
• The Boxing Instructor
• Learn how to teach effective sessions and get the most out of your clients.
• Communication
• Instruction
• Interaction
• Structuring a Class or Personal Training Session
• Learn how to design the perfect session that will give you great results
• Group Training Options
• Designing a Boxing Workout that Works
• Personal Training Options
  

For more information on the Performance Boxing Course visit www.optimallifefitness.com or call 0207 731 3133

That's right I said it. Have a think about it you see a lot of 'soft' joggers plodding around. However if you head down to your nearest '5 a side' pitch, athletics track, martial arts club (ignore the super-heavy weight judo fighters) you will see a lot more lean bodies.

Why? Well there is a number of reasons. Here are 5 reasons why training aerobically can make you fat:
When training at 60% (often prescribed) you aren't working hard enough (burning enough calories) to change your body composition
Training aerobically can be catabolic (breaks down muscle tissue) which slows metabolism- slow metabolism = more fat!
It can cause you to increase cortisol a stress hormone which can lay down fat
It can increase stress and disrupt sleep patterns which the body to defend itself stores more fat.
Repetitive and long, slow aerobic work can lead to repetition induced injuries (knees, lower backs), which in turn lead to inactivity which causes more fat storage.

We aren't to blame. For years we have been told that all you need to do is workout 3 times a week at approximately 60%. Well to be honest this doesn't quite cut it. The same people who put out these recommendations nearly 20 years ago last year amended this statement. Recommendations now state that exercise should be strenuous and vigorous and individuals should be doing something most days for health and body composition benefits.

CV machines in gyms don't help either. Fat Burning Zones are given at 60% of your maximum heart rate. Now this in itself isn't false, however it is hugely misguiding. It is true that at 60% of your maximum heart rate your main fuel source is fat- so what? Your main fuel source while you sleep, sit at your desk and do very little is fat. What's important is that at 60% of your maximum heart rate you don't burn enough fat to make any significant changes to your body composition. You need to be working harder!

Now that I've told you that what you've been doing up until now has been a waste, it would be amiss of me not to let you know what you should do. So- what should you do?

Here are 5 things that will help you to burn fat:
Perform 2-3 sessions of weight training per week.
Perform whole body compound movements: Squats; Lunges; Pushes; Pulls- seem familiar?
Increase your intensity; intervals are fantastic. Try 5 bouts of 1min on 1min off. Think of boxers 'lean as butchers dogs' comes to mind' their whole training is based around 2 or 3 minutes on and 1min off
Have protein at every meal and cut sugar from your diet
Chill out, meditate, play a game of something' have some me time. Try and do something at least once a week that will help reduce your stress levels- for how this helps to burn fat, see all the correlations between stress and fat above. Exercise is great but you also need some down time, this may be walking the dog or reading a book.


There you go. I've given you 5 reasons why aerobic training makes you fat and I've also given you 5 things you should do if you want to get rid of your blubber. We'll all hopefully be a little more "as fit as a butchers dog"!

All the best.
B.J.Rule
The Optimal Life Fitness Group

I hope this newsletter finds you fit and well, maybe not as fit as Michael Phelps and his golds or as quick as Usain Bolt, but maybe just fit and well in your own world. Speaking of the Olympics I’ve been reminded of a strength coaches quote to keep you motivated:

“Remember somewhere a little Chinese girl is warming up with your max!” (it’s not word for word but you get the idea- can’t remember the coaches name though)

In this our 10th instalment of the Extreme Kettlebell Newsletter we have a new member to introduce you to, a change of dates and an article from Tommy that appeared in Peak Performance.

Firstly we’d like to introduce our newest team member Nadia Minardi. Nadia joined the team last week and we believe Nadia will be an extremely useful addition to the team; she has a wealth or experience in the industry as a personal trainer, fitness manager and operations manager. For all course and product sales Nadia will now be your first point of contact- be nice and don’t make her angry she holds a Black belt 2nd Dan in Judo.

Our next Olympic Weightlifting Course for the Fitness Professional has had to change dates. It was scheduled for the 13th and 14th of September, but we have a very large EKI course in Manchester on the same weekend and we need all our tutors available for this course. The new date for the next Olympic Weightlifting for the Fitness Professional Course is the 27th and 28th of September to be held in London. For more information:

http://www.optimallifefitness.com/optimal_life_fitness/olf_calendar_olympic_weightlifting.php

For an in depth article chronicling the origins of kettlebells and kettlebell sport check out this article Tommy wrote for Peak Performance:

http://www.optimallifefitness.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=764#764

Thank you to those of you who have sent in their results from the protocols we forwarded on last week. If you are still interested in partaking in the assessment please let us know.

Enjoy the rest of the games!

Keep Lifting and Keep Strong

BJ and Tommy

Below are the graphs showing the results from our pilot study at York st John's University. Firstly a big thank you to John Gray for working with us on this and being the brains behind it all. Secondly, although just a pilot study and not conclusive set of results, these graphs do show some really interesting results.

John has taken a look at the initial results and has the following observations:

you appear to sustain high (80-90%)exercise for 4 minutes.
Doing intervals is possible and it appears that it may be possible to tailor, depending on using either time or reps, to sustain a %HRR training zone and therefore develop a specific endurance component.
It seems that you don't reach a steady state after 5 minutes which would indicate that you are working anaerobically throughout, but, due to the length of time the force output can be maintained, this would appear advantageous for developing anaerobic endurance.

"it could be suggested that there appears an cardiovascular and muscular endurance advantage to adding swings and snatch to a kettlebell training routine. From the observations of similar movements with bar and dumbbell, the development of these components might not be possible to a similar degree with traditional weight training methods due to the inability to sustain the force output for a comparative length of time."

John Gray 2008

Last week the Extreme Kettlebell Team went to York St Johns University to start their research into Kettlebell training. We had a great 2 days working with John Gray of the Sports Science Department. Our aim was to start exploring what effects kettlebells had on the human body. This meant that we would have to do some work! Firstly we were maximal tested on the treadmill, to allow us to relate the kettlebell exercises to our maximal output. This pilot study has set up some great studies which we are now setting up and are looking for people to take part. So any EKI's out there reading this who fancy contributing to the UK's first major scientific kettlebell research project should get in touch with us ASAP.


We spent the first day testing the our bodies physically, pushing ourselves to the limits and looking at the heart rates achieved at those limits. This was a great day and although immensely hard we have gained some really interesting results. The next day we woke up feeling like we did when we first used a kettlebell 5 years ago! Stiff and warn out we went back into the laboratories and started working on some initial analysis of the bio mechanics of the kettlebell exercises and their similarities/differences to olympic lifting and dumbbell lifting.



Although currently all the work is just part of a pilot study we aim to have some concrete results by the end of the year. We are also working closely with some athletes and students on studies looking at the effect kettlebells have on performance over time.



Keep an eye out for all the results of the pilot study which will be posted on the forum shortly.

Fitness First Newcastle were the kind hosts of the the first EKI course in Newcastle and what a huge success. We had 18 trainers take part and 18 trainers finished with their full EKI certification. So firstly congratulations to you all for completing the course and secondly it was great to work with such an enthusiastic group of trainers. On a personal level, obviously great to be back up north, but it was also great to see so many trainers from the area taking part. It looks like the north really is loving kettlebells, we already have 20 trainers booked into the Manchester course and it's over a month away.
Highlights for the weekend were definitely the guys challenging each other with the 40KG kettlebell. Turkish get ups and 1 arm presses seemed to be order of the day, with the guys getting up with ease with a 40kg.
With a wide range of backgrounds it was good to see some great discussions and questions coming up. It was also the first chance for the Extreme Team to present some of their research from York St Johns University, the pilot study ran last week produced some interesting results which we'll be posting shortly on our forum, so keep an eye out for this.

Once again thanks to all the group in Newcastle, best of luck with your training and look forward to seeing you on another one of our courses in the near future.