A Former Olympian Shares Her Fitness Rules
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@ROARFITNESSGIRL
Make Weight Training Non-Negotiable
“When it comes to fitness, the key is to increase strength and muscle mass. As we get older, recovery becomes slower, muscle mass reduces and strength decreases too – so I’m very much focused on longevity, which is why weight training is non-negotiable when it comes to staying fit and maintaining your physique, strength and muscle mass. At the gym, I lift as much weight as I can for the given reps. For example, if I’m doing 10-12 reps, I will lift as heavy as I can for those reps. Challenging yourself is a must.”
Have A Plan
“Having a plan or a goal is important if you want to achieve certain results. There are a few different factors that go into achieving your goals, and the three things that have to be prioritised are how you execute your program, your nutrition and your sleep. If any of these are lacking or not adhered to, then you won’t make progress – so think about them all if you want to make progressive change.”
Incorporate These Three Factors
“You need to look at fitness from a 360° angle when it comes to training, food, and recovery – you can’t just do one of those things and expect results. You can train really hard, but if your diet is poor and you’re unhealthy with your food choices, then you won’t recover from your training and you won’t be adequately fuelled for your training. If your body is unhealthy, it just won’t respond to anything you’re doing in the best way it could. You have to prioritise everything – food, sleep and the way you train. There will always be a weaker link and a lot of it comes down to habit. You have to make sure all three factors are addressed. It’s important to see what small changes you can make to improve the areas that are obstructing you from reaching your fitness goals.”
Work On Increasing Your Strength
“When you’re training, the goal is always to add muscle and lose body fat. If you’re looking to gain muscle, you need to lift heavy and increase the weight as you go on. The first thing about gaining muscle is having the strength to lift the weights in the first place. Your first goal, regardless of the end goal, has to be to get stronger. The stronger you are, the more intensity you can create and the harder you can train.”
Train Three Or Four Times A Week
“People should exercise every day – we should be doing some kind of activity as part of our daily routine, even if it’s just getting your steps in. At ROAR, we’re very aware of our results, and the results our clients get are from training three or four times a week.”
Use Exercise To Improve Mental Health
“Exercise is the most underrated anti-depressant. It’s so hard to be motivated to exercise when you’re feeling down, but you never feel worse after working out and I know many people who simply work out to feel better mentally. When you are feeling good, go to the gym, go and exercise and make it a habit. When it becomes just what you do because you do it all the time, it naturally becomes habit, so you don’t need to be motivated to do it. Motivation becomes discipline and discipline becomes habit. So, when you’re feeling good and you get those things down to a habit, when you come across a bad day, you’re still just going to keep exercising.”
Eat Well
“The most important thing for me is the quality of the food that I eat. I’m not trying to change my body, I’m consistently thinking about optimal health and longevity – because fuelling yourself with good quality food in the right proportions means that you have more energy and also means that your recovery and sleep are even better. I also eat to make sure I perform in my training sessions and that I recover from those sessions in the right way. That is basically the method behind what I do. For me, its high protein, relatively high fats, and my carbs are timed. I never have carbs in the morning and tend to only consume carbs around my training sessions.”
Take Your Supplements
“It’s impossible to get all the vitamins and minerals your body needs just from food. It’s a nice idea but you’d have to be sourcing it extremely well and eating excessive amounts for that to happen. I ensure everything is covered by taking the supplements we can’t get from food alone. Supplements are very individual – I wouldn’t blanket recommend anything to everybody. However, there’s no harm in taking the basic vitamins and minerals our body needs and can generally be quite deficient in. I take a multi-vitamin, vitamin D, an activated charcoal for detoxification, magnesium and zinc, collagen, MTT oil – because I avoid carbs in the morning, it’s a great source of fats – grapeseed extract, which reduces inflammation and at night I take a probiotic.”
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