Eat Natural

I like to try and eat a natural, whole food diet as much as possible as I believe that it is the best way to eat for health, vitality, and well being. So, what is eating natural?

Eating natural is eating food in its natural state with minimal processing, human interference and packaging all of which can contaminate, alter and degrade the qualities of our food. It goes back to the old saying,
“You are what you eat.”
This statement is totally true as it is the food that we eat that is used to construct every cell and tissue in our bodies from your little toe to you left lung and everything in between. If we eat rubbish then the quality of our cells will be rubbish, and we will be less able to function healthily and properly, making us more susceptible to disease and injury. If we eat high quality food full of nutrients then we will build strong, robust and healthy bodies.

To eat a natural diet the most important thing to consider is the origin of the food. Ideally fruit and vegetables will be seasonally grown in high quality organic soil, and then sold fresh in their natural state. If we buy low quality fruit and veg that has been factory farmed and covered in pesticides and soaked in fertilizers a number of things are likely to happen to the quality of the food. Firstly traces of the chemicals used to force it to grow quickly will remain in the plant tissue and will ultimately end up in your body where you will either excrete it or store it away in your fat cells as the body is unable to cope with it properly. Secondly the actual veg has grown in low quality soil, lacking in nutrients, meaning that the end product is going to be similarly lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. There is also the environmental effect of intensive farming to consider, but that is a whole new blog post!!

The meat and poultry that we eat also has similar considerations. What was the animal fed? How did it live? If the answer is that it lived indoors its entire life, being fed a cocktail or growth hormones and antibiotics then you really need to avoid it. Unfortunately this is the case with much of the supermarket meat available to us today. Ideally you should pay a little more and get grass fed beef and lamb, and proper free range chicken and eggs that have been allowed to grow at their natural speed in a natural environment. Your local butcher should know the origin of all of his products and should be able to advise you on how the animals are reared. Animals raised and looked after properly produce higher quality meat with more nutrients that ultimately tastes better. Why aren’t antibiotics working as well as they used to? Because we eat so many traces of antibiotics day to day in the low grade supermarket meat that we buy and consume in such vast amounts!!

This is only meant as a short introduction, I could go on all day about eating whole natural foods. I just want to stimulate your own interest and get you researching and reading. In the meantime try an organic veg delivery from Abel and Cole, or Riverford, and enjoy the difference in quality and taste for only a little more money. Your body will thank you for it.

Ben

What We Did At Ravenscourt Park Boot Camp Today

It was a beautiful day for training in the park, probably one of the hottest days this year so far.

This is what we did.........

Warm Up: A fun and friendly "get to know the group" warmup with high fives, funny handshakes, and other group work to get the pulse raised for all.

Agility and Cardiovascular: Used cones to do a zig zag drill and also a lines drill doing shuttles. Also used the agility ladder to keep the guys on their toes (literally).

Strength and Conditioning Circuit: Skipping, Squat, Lunge, Press up, Plank, Get-ups

Stomach and Core: Pairs situps and crunches. Hard work but good fun!!

Then some stretching and a cool drink.

It was a great fun session with some new faces too!!

See you all next Tuesday

Ben

Stop Making Excuses!! A Simple No-Kit Beginners Workout

“I would be thin, but I can’t afford the gym membership.”
“I don’t have anywhere to train.”
“I just don’t have time to get fit.”

I have heard it all before, so to try and help all of you out I have prepared a short, effective workout that you can perform anywhere and without any expensive kit.

“The best and only piece of equipment you need to get fitter is your own body.”

I said that just now and I think it sounds good, so keep on reading and actually TRY out the workout and see how you go. Remember, nobody got any fitter reading a blog!

WORKOUT 1
All exercises are to be completed for 30 seconds without rest between exercises. After the final exercise you have a 1 minute rest and then start over again. As you progress you can increase the work time to 45 or 60 seconds, and decrease the rest time.

1. Squat – Standing feet shoulder width apart and keeping the chest upright cross your arms. Looking forward squat down until your thighs are parallel to the ground or as far as you can go. Keep a steady rhythm of 2 seconds up and 2 seconds down.

2. Press Up – Start lying flat on your front and place your hands on the floor just wider than your shoulders. Now, keeping your body straight and rigid push the ground away from you until your arms are nearly straight. Lower down under control. If that is too hard then try on your knees and apply the same rules.

3. Lunge – Start as per the squat but step forward confidently with one leg and then lower your weight so that the rear knee is about 1-2 inches off the floor. Now push off the leading leg to the start position. Change legs and repeat.

4. Plank – Lie on your front again and this time lay your forearms on the floor with your hands together making a point or triangle in front of you. Now lift your body so that you form a plank or bridge between your toes and forearms.

5. Squat Press – As per the squat however have your arms extended in the air as if somebody has a gun pointed at you!! Now as you squat down also lower the arms so that the hands are at shoulder height. As you stand upright again reach the hands up, keeping the body upright.

To start with try and complete the circuit 3 times which is only a 10 minute workout! If you are fitter and stronger then do more or wait for more advanced workouts on this blog. Remember to warm up first and to stretch after and if you are new to exercise just take it step by step and listen to your body.

For some help with your squat, just watch my video on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TrilogyPT#p/a/u/0/H6ExUsouL5I

My Training Session Today

The sun was out so I headed to the park with a 20kg kettlebell (a workout in its own right) for a good session and some tanning.
This is what I did:
60 two handed swings
20 one handed each side
20 alternating swings
2 sets of around the world (shoulder death!!)
3 sets of 15 squats with KB held in front of chest
Normal, narrow, wide, offset, and Hindu press ups.
10 snatches each side
30 figure 8's around my legs
10 push-press either side
Lots of sweat..............A fair amount of grunting................Harrassed by dogs wanting to sniff me..........Lots of sun

Perfect!

Ben

How to Lose Fat and Influence People

Do you want a flat tummy, less wobbly thighs and a more toned body? If so you are not alone with obesity rates soaring in the UK despite all that modern technology and science can offer.

I do a lot of my training in parks in West London and every time I go out I see the people doing crunches and situps to get a flat tummy, thinking that if they work that area, they will “tone” that area. If it were that simple then we would all have washboard stomachs by doing a few exercises per day. These endless situps will make your abdominal muscles stronger, and give them more endurance, but if you are carrying a spare tyre around your belly then nobody will see the product of your hard work. So how do you shift that weight?

Well it is not going to happen overnight, but what you need to do is start doing a mixture of cardiovascular training and resistance training, combined with a healthy diet (see future posts) and balanced lifestyle (also coming soon). At the heart of your weight loss programme should be resistance training. By this I mean using your body weight, dumbbells, medicine balls, resistance bands and so on in a progressive manner to change the composition of your body. By performing these exercises you can build new muscle, which in turn raises your metabolism and capacity to burn fat as fuel throughout the day, even when you are not training. This is where the women always say....”But I don’t want massive arms like Arnie!!” Well you won’t get massive as you are missing one vital ingredient – Testosterone.

So let’s think about some good exercises that will have the desired effect. What we want to do is whole body or “compound” exercises that use the big muscles of the body like those in our legs. A few perfect examples are the squat, lunge, dead lift and press up. All of these exercises recruit a large number of muscles all over the body to perform them and as a result they will stimulate muscle growth. We will look at exercise form in the future. By performing a circuit of different exercises we can maintain a high intensity and really make the body work hard. If you are not sweating, or are not out of breath then you are not working hard enough and will not shift much weight from those flabby areas – Simples!

I will talk about circuits and routines in future posts, but for now go out and learn to squat and deadlift. Ask your trainer or a friend or just go on youtube. Happy training.......

Ben

Raw Milk is Good Milk

Have you heard of raw milk? Do you know what it is? Well you should do, as raw milk is what comes directly out of the cow when it is milked. This nutritionally rich super food is actually greatly different from what we now call milk and buy in our supermarkets and local shops.
Before we understand raw milk we should first have a look at how the milk we buy in the shops is prepared, manipulated, and ultimately ruined for human consumption. Pasteurisation is the first step in modern milk production, taking raw milk from the cow and passing it between hot plates, quickly heating it to about 70 degrees Celsius, before flash cooling and continuing on through the processing plant. So, what’s the problem? We were all taught at school about how pasteurisation kills bacteria, and how it is a great victory of science over disease and illness so surely it is for our own good? The simple answer is that the pasteurisation process causes irreparable damage to the milk in the following ways: Firstly it does kill all or most of the bacteria in the milk, but this includes the good bacteria like the probiotic ones in those fashionable little yoghurt drinks. These bacteria are beneficial to the health of our gut and digestive system, and by ingesting them we can remain healthy and are much less likely to have food allergies and intolerances. Pasteurisation also kills the enzymes needed to allow us to properly digest the proteins and other nutrients from the milk. The simple fact is that if the milk comes from healthy, well looked after cows in the first place, that there should not be any bad bacteria in the milk. They should be free of Tuberculosis and the other diseases that we are told we can catch if we don’t pasteurise our dairy products.
The next step is homogenisation and this is done to make the milk more pleasing to the eye and to stop it from separating with a layer of cream at the top. The modern perception is that cream is fatty, so is bad for you, so the milk producers change it to fit what they think we want. To do this the pasteurised milk is passed through tiny holes at high pressure, breaking down the fat globules so that they are so small that they are unable to re-form and create the layer of cream on top. During this process the previously good, healthy cholesterol found in raw milk becomes oxidised making it damaging to our health and putting us at increased risk of coronary heart disease.
Finally milk is skimmed, and depending on the degree of skimming it takes the fat content down from about 4% in raw milk to as low as 0.1% in skimmed. What we are left with is devoid of nutrition and is little more than white water.
So....... what to do? The best thing I believe you can do is to find a raw milk supplier, and try it. It is usually available at farmers markets as well as direct from farms. You can’t buy it in the shops though - which to me is criminal! If you can’t get raw milk the second best option is un-homogenised milk that is often available in organic and health food shops as well as farm shops across the country. I would not drink supermarket milk FULL STOP.
Raw milk is creamy and tasty. It is natural and healthy, giving us energy and high quality protein and you and your family should be drinking it.

Ravenscourt Boot Camp is Growing!!

Hey guys, I have just got back from beautiful and sunny Ravenscourt Park in West London where I ran my 2nd bootcamp. Today I had 4 keen volunteers to try it our and they all had a great time and should be back on Friday or next Tuesday.

Here is what we did......
Warm up: Jogging in different directions within a coned off box. Floor touches. Rugby passes. Shoulder and back mobilisation, and a little more intense jogging/running heart raisers.

Circuit 1: Similar to a "ton up", but only doing five exercises each time, you run out to a line of cones and perform 5 press ups then back. Next time you do 5 press ups and 5 squats and back, and so on building up the number of exercises.

Lines Drill: There are a series of lines at different distances and the drill involves running out to them in order and back. Made harder by having to touch the lines with one or both hands.

Relay: Teams race out to a line and perform an exercixe and then high 5 their team mate who performs the same, and so on.

Game: Fun game passing a medicine ball between team members.

Cool down and stretching. Ahhhhhhhh (and lots of water becasue it was hot hot hot!!)

Bootcamp is at 10.00 every Tuesday and Friday in Ravenscourt Park. First session is free!!

About Ben.....

First of all welcome to the Trilogy Personal Training blog written by Ben Plenge.

Before I start blogging I thought I would introduce myself, and tell you all a bit about me. I am a 30 year old Personal Trainer living in West London, working in parks and outdoor spaces. I spent most of my 20's as an officer in the British Army, retiring as a Captain, having lived in Northern Ireland, Germany, Cyprus, and the UK from time to time! I also travelled widely with the Army including Canada, South Africa, France, and of course Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have always been an active and outdoors kind of person and something of a "jack of all trades," when it comes to sports and fitness. I love the variety of doing different sports and activities week in week out rather than just focusing on one. At heart my love is for mountain biking, and getting off the beaten track and into the countryside. I am also a keen climber and walker, but also enjoy racket sports, the odd game of football as well as fitness training and running. In the winter I love snowboarding and hitting the mountains, although my ambitions sometimes exceed my skills!

I now run Trilogy Personal Training in West London, training a real variety of people and helping them to achieve their goals. I believe in a holistic approach to problems like obesity, and find that through building a great relationship I can educate my clients so that they maintain a healthy lifestyle in the future. I eat a largely organic diet of natural and whole foods, and use tools like kettlebells to keep fit and strong.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you on the site again soon.

Ben