Killsession Musings Part 3.

I guess it's time for some general thoughts of mine, firstly, a comment on gym etiquette (for more see here), who do you notice in the gym, that erks your niblets? As I look around the gym/s I frequent there's always the usual suspects, may I list them for you?

1. Guy wearing sunglasses
2. Guy who stinks
3. Guy throwing weights
4. Guy dropping weights
5. Guy grunting (with his 7.5kg dumbbell)
6. Guy who spends all the time in the gym and never makes any progress
7. Guy with no towel
8. Tough guy (wannabe?)
9. Guy doing UFC style workouts (with his "Tapout" shirt on, looking suitably gruff)
10. Guy who half squats (and indeed half "everything's")

The list goes on and on, we see these people all the time, and largely they count as male, and largely they count as meatheads (a sexist term?), if we could list this as the foibles of men (?) what are, indeed, the foibles of women? Allow the Killsession muser to pontificate:

1. Cardio bunny girl
2. Girl suffering from "Skinny fat" syndrome
3. Class girl

(For more on this see here)
The so-called stereotypes of women appear to be far less common and far less offensive to the senses than the men, is this a function of testosterone? Or simply the fact that men proliferate the weight room, and women generally (although thankfully the paradigm is changing) the group fitness room.

Hmm what else does the muser wish to discuss today? What about "Calories in vs Calories out"? There is some discussion, usually amongst the ignorant (not used in a pejorative sense) that fat loss (or weight gain) is simply a matter of "Caloric intake is X, simply make sure you consume X (plus or minus X to lose/gain weight), no matter where the Calories come from". What is missed here is macronutrient distribution, we need to ask the question when designing fat loss diets "are carbs and fat and protein as metabolically active as each other (hence interchangeable)?" The answer to this is no, they're not. The reason we (I) push a focus on protein is for several reason, but not the least of which being, it's thermic or metabolism raising effects. Your body has to work (i.e- burn Calories) to digest protein (break down into composite amino acids for various functions in the body, for more see here), that requires energy, whereas fat and carbs can basically be seen as metabolically dead.

Moving on, let's discuss diet briefly. What do you need to do to get lean? Simply? Cut out the shit food and alcohol, as Dan John says, we're not children anymore, yet so many of us still eat like we are.  It's really that simple. Yet it is the hardest thing for people to do. Your results come from your diet, you can't out train that fact, the tips I've given on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) are what you need to do, yet I still see status updates on FB and receive emails from my clients about their drinking, junk food etc. What can I do as a trainer to motivate those who don't wish to be?