As we near the end of Ramadan a quick update on timings.
THERE WILL BE NO BOOTCAMP DURING EID.
The full Bootcamp schedule will resume after Eid. i.e. 0600 Corniche session, 1800 Ed City Session and 1930 Ed City session on Sunday and Tuesday. On the Thursday sessions are at 0600 on corniche and 1830 at Ed City only until further notice.
The last session before Eid will be tonight, Sunday 28 August, at 1900.
Have a great break.
Posted in Uncategorized
At Bootcamp this week there has been a strong bias on the muscles that you don’t always see in the mirror. In fitness parlance this is called the “posterior chain” with posterior simply meaning “back”. That is all the muscles along the back side of your body from the legs up to the shoulders.
There is a general tendency to only work those muscles that you can see in the mirror (hence the title). “I want a six pack” etc. It makes sense as this is the image that you present to people. The side effect of that, and the fact that many hours sat in an office desk atrophies your posterior chain, is a very weak and underdeveloped back of your body.
A good indicator of the strength of your posterior chain is the basic bodyweight lunge. You should be able to lunge with a big stride and keep your torso completely erect and stable with the back leg bent and knee touching the floor and the top of the front leg parallel with the floor. If you need to use your hands to support you or you can’t keep your torso upright you have a weak posterior chain.
Why is the posterior chain important?
Proper Muscular Balance
The very first reason why you must be sure to train the posterior chain is for good muscular balance. Those who only perform exercises for the front of the body will develop the front while the back muscles actually grow weaker.
Over time this can lead to a muscular imbalance which can not only cause poor posture but can also set you up for a number of long term injuries.
Good muscle balance will reduce the risk of a range of injuries and niggles including common problems with knees and the lower back.
Greater Strength Development
So many real life movements are compound exercises. That is they use a range of joints and muscles to allow the motion to take place. If you train the front of the body and neglect the back (which is used less frequently anyway in today’s sedentary work) then you will not develop your overall strength and this will make compound exercises more challenging.
Having greater strength allows for greater intensity which will help you with your weight loss and fitness goals.
Workout
Perform 3 sets to failure of bodyweight or assisted pull ups
As it warms up it is good to know a little bit about how your body cools itself and the way to maximise the cooling effect and allow you to get the most from your training.
The body exchanges heat with the environment in 4 ways. Conduction, Radiation, Convection and via the cooling properties of sweat. Air being a poor conductor means conduction is negligible and can be ignored, radiation is the body’s primary form of heat loss when the air temperature is cooler than the body but when it is a similar temperature +- it is negligible. Convection helps with heat transfer and is most significant when the air is moving; on a strongly windy day the convection heating effect (if air is 37C and above can cancel out the cooling from sweat.
Sweat cools your body due to the physical properties of water which, when it evaporates, requires energy from the environment to allow the change of state (from liquid to gas) (Latent heat of vapourisation).
Sweat is the ONLY cooling mechanism available to the body once the air temperature exceeds the body’s (37C).
In low humidity conditions (encourages more evaporation) sweat can cool a 38C surface to 20C so sweat can actually make your skin feel cold if the air is dry. In higher humidity the results are less strong but still significant.
For us, as residents of a country, where the temperature is high and we are relying on sweat to keep us cool it is essential to consider a few things
A key element in staying cool in the hot weather is acclimatisation. People exposed to heat become better adapted at dealing with it and in fact produce more sweat than someone new to the environment. If new to training outdoors take this into account.
Ahh the first Tuesday of the month. Fitness testing time on the bootcamp calendar. The BCQ (Bootcamp Qatar) Fitness Test is really just a way for participants to measure their progress if they join for more than one month (and the vast majority do). The difference between one score and another after a few weeks of training.
The fitness test has evolved from the time we first started and just measured a 300yard run (yards not metres for this one), 1 minute of push ups and 1 minute of press ups. We now do this and more including squats, lunges, and burpees.
As each of the tests is maximal (i.e. you are pushing yourself to your limits) it is a tough session in itself even though there is plenty of rest too.
The 300 yard test is a standard US (hence the yards) of anaerobic fitness. We didn’t adapt it (i.e. convert to metres) because there is some data out there on the yards test to compare yourself with.
At BCQ we have seen some amazing improvements and we hope they keep on coming.
It is fitness test week this week so we are working on your core today. The core is a fundamental building block of your strength and fitness and a real victim of today’s sedentary office and home lifestyles.
In anatomy, the core refers, in its most general of definitions, to the body minus the legs and arms. Functional movements are highly dependent on the core, and lack of core development can result in a predisposition to injury. The major muscles of the core reside in the area of the belly and the mid and lower back (not the shoulders), and peripherally include the hips, the shoulders and the neck.
Put simply if you can visualise your body try and imagine what it is that maintains the body’s upright posture given that the only hard material between the hips and the ribs is the essentially flexible spine. Clearly the muscles in the midsection have a great deal of responsibility in maintaining us in our, uniquely human, upright posture. There is much more to it than that though. Aside from the static core functions of maintaining posture there are the dynamic core functions. A strong core improves balance and application of power to movement. It is an essential component of athletic ability and a much neglected area.
Today’s gym trainers so often avoid the functional exercises that recruit the core muscles instead relying on the, easy to use, resistence machines which invariably allow you to train whilst seated and supported. The core is not at work.
At Bootcamp we advocate functional fitness and much of what we do works and develops your core to help maintain your strength despite the long hours spent at the desk or on the sofa!
We all know that a healthy lifestyle involves a combination of diet and exercise. For weight loss your diet is probably 80% of the equation. So what is the right thing to eat?
At Bootcamp we don’t align ourselves with conventional nutritional wisdom. It is our belief the most nutritional advice widely accepted as fact is based on science that is flawed and 50 years out of date. The low fat high carb approach to nutrition was founded on a non factual basis in the USA in the 1950s. We will leave it to you to do the research. In the meantime if you are looking for a diet plan please see the bootcamp diet on the Resources page. You may also be interested in this http://www.foodrenegade.com/say-goodbye-to-the-food-pyramid/
Thursday night’s session was a lot of fun, a good warm up for Tuesday’s fitness test. Plenty of 25m shuttles and a lot of core and technical work. It is sweaty work as we enter June but you know you love it.
Have a great weekend.
So Bootcampers., I spent half the day changing the website. Still a bit of work to do to get it as slick as you’d expect but I am pleased with the results so far.
The reason for the change lies in the very words you are reading. This new site format gives us the ability to communicate more regularly via this blog.
As time goes by we will use this to keep you up to date on the latest trends in fitness and nutrition as well as discuss the results of the various sessions we do.
While I am here thanks to all those members who came to the BBQ last weekend. It was a lot of fun (see the picture of the group pool cliff jumpers). Don’t worry if you missed it, we will have another one soon.
Remember Thursday’s sessions have now been merged for the summer so there is only one evening session at 1830. It being the start of the month, June already!, next Tuesday will be the Fitness Test (we do our main fitness test on the first Tuesday of each month).
Please feel free to comment on any of the posts and make suggestions etc. However, if you have a query please email us directly at info@bootcampqatar.com so that we can reply to you quickly.
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
Naturally engineered
