Fit Club’s aim is to introduce young, developing students to the world of elite fitness, strength and functional movement. Our goal is to develop stronger, faster, fitter and more physically functional individuals. Whether you’re an aspiring athlete or a complete beginner, Fit Club will deliver results in a safe, challenging, progressive and professional environment.

For the athlete with ambitions of playing sport to a higher level, Fit Club represents the transition between ‘mass participation’ and ‘Elite level performance’. For the individual looking for a change in lifestyle or looks, Fit Club will provide professional guidance coupled with an ongoing education in health and fitness to ensure individuals ‘learn through doing’.

So what’s the difference between the best and the rest? Having worked and competed in an elite sporting environment, the Coastal Fitness team have developed a training programme which is designed to to develop maximum functionality in our athletes. Our programme promotes what we like to call ‘Max Function’, a mixture of all of the key sporting components needed to achieve your athletic potential:

1.Speed
2.Agility
3.Quickness
4.Reactivity
5.Stability/Balance
6.Strength
7.Power
8.Recovery/Regeneration

The Fit Club programme will teach you how to move more efficiently through postural correction, sport specific mechanics and movement skill patterning. The need for strength and power is obvious in almost every sport, whether its tackling in rugby, holding off opponents in football, or jumping for a smash in badminton. Once a foundation of movement is built athletes will focus on increasing their first step quickness, deceleration, explosive speed, reactivity, core/functional strength and multi-directional movement skills.

The Coastal Fitness team are delighted to have West Island School as the first school to enroll in the Fit Club programme, and look forward to achieving great things in the 2010/2011 academic year.

Check out the awesome new Fit Club Training video below, and join the Coastal Fitness youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Coastalfitnesshk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqnSokm5C28

Having played football at an elite level and having worked under one of the best functional fitness trainers in the world, Peter Twist, Andy brings a whole new approach to efficient movement and fitness conditioning. Ant has represented the Hong Kong National Rugby 7′s team for the last 4 years and has an extensive background in strength and conditioning, as well as a passion for nutrition, weight loss, total body strengthening and muscle gain. Both Trainers advocate the importance of adding fun, laughter and enjoyment into all of their sessions, and share a burning desire to induce positive change into people’s lives.

Some very exciting times ahead for the Coastal Fitness team, and we’re over the moon to have these two along for the ride!

Firstly, a few points to think about regarding a warm-up:
1. A good warm-up doesn’t have to make your body warm – well at least not all of it. The ideais to make the right parts warm.
2. Low-intensity cardio warm-ups such as jogging or cycling, don’t improve strength performance. Yes they increase body temperature and blood circulation, but don’t transfer when it comes to preparing for a set of heavy bench press, for example.
3. The more intense the exercise you’re about to do, the more you need to warm up
4. The more similar the warm-up activities are to the lifts for which you’re preparing, the more effective they’ll be.
5. Static Stretching before exercise before exercise actually limits power potential in muscles by down-regulating the muscles and central nervous system. So you should always opt for active or dynamic stretching.

Why warm-up?

1.Increase body temperature
2. Improve motor unit recruitment, which in turn helps with gains in size and strength
3. Increase overall mobility
4. Turn on stabiliser muscles to prevent injury
5. Prepare you mentally for the training ahead

With this in mind, we have put together a 10 minute warm-up protocol that we like to use with a whole range of different clients which will get you firing in all cylinders! Remember, if we’re preparing to train our upper body, then we need to warm up our upper body – whilst agility ladders, cross trainers, treadmills and glute activation exercises are great, they don’t do much to prepare the upper body for optimal performance.

Follow these 4 steps and feel the difference!

1.Self Myofascial Release (self massage)
2.Dynamic Mobility
3.Muscle Activation
4.Central Nervous System (CNS) Activation

I will discuss each of these steps in more detail below. Feel free to chop and change some of these exercises with your own if you feel they work better for you.

Step 1 – Self Myofascial Release (SMR)

SMR is a stretching technique that uses objects such as foam rollers, tennis balls, golf balls, medicine balls to apply force to your muscles. This will help to release muscle tension and help restore the body back to its optimal level of function.

The key to SMR is to find the spot which is tight (you’ll know when you find it as it’s disgustingly painful) and to hold for 20-30 seconds whilst trying to relax the muscle.

Step 2 – Dynamic Mobility

Dynamic Mobility can be thought of as muscle flexibility and joint range-of-motion exercises performed at a high paced, dynamic rate. Dynamic Mobility exercises are essential to any warm-up as they wake up your muscles by helping the body to understand how to control your muscles and joints through a full range of motion, generally using little to no extra load (just your bodyweight).

Jumping jacks are great at working the entire body in a fast, dynamic movement. When performing jumping jacks, make sure your hands touch at the top which will ensure full range of motion at the shoulders, perform 15-20 reps. Below is one of the best illustrations you’ll ever find of how to perform a jumping jack.

We can also play around with the jumping jack to target other areas of the body. This time, rather than bringing your arms up by your sides, bring them up at a 45 degree angle in front of you with hands starting together in front of your body, and finish with your arms in a ‘Y-position’ at the top. Perform 15-20 reps.

Asides from jumping jacks, there are many other great ways to mobilise the body. The TRX is a great way to do so as you can easily adjust the amount of bodyweight load you use.

Step 3 – Muscle Activation

Muscle activation is a key component of our warm-up protocol as it is essentially waking up the muscles that haven’t been doing much whilst sat in your office chair. This links well with Step 2, as it ensures you have the correct muscle activity to control the range of motion you achieved with your dynamic mobility exercises.

Exercise 1 – Push up with rotation:
Pushups are a fantastic exercise for your upper body, working your chest, triceps, shoulders, shoulder stabilisers and core. By adding in rotation, your body is having to cope with controlling your torso as it twists.

To do this, perform a regular push up, then as you extend your arms, bring one arm off the ground and rotation round, finishing in a T-position. Return to the starting position. Perform 4-10 repetitions.

*If you find this easy, add some light dumbbells to your hands which will increase the resistance as you rotate, and the balance as the dumbbell is on the ground. Similarly, this can be regressed by placing your hands on a step or bench, or coming down onto your knees.

Again, there are plenty of alternatives to this exercise, and ideally you should hit your posterior shoulder and back muscles. A great exercise is the YTWL routine created by US Strength Coach, Nick Tumminello. Click here to watch his YTWL routine.

Step 4 – CNS Activation

Last but not least, we need to fire up our CNS. How? By doing fast and coordinated movements that require an element of skill, we can stimulate the nervous system. Here you will need a medicine ball or a straight bar to hang off (smith press, railings etc.).

Exercise 1 – Medicine Ball Chest pass

Stand facing a partner or a wall. Start with the Medicine ball at chest height, quickly push arms forward and release the ball. Repeat 10 – 16 times.

Exercise 2 – Inverted Row

Hand underneath a bar or railing, the more horizontal your body is, the more challenging the exercise. Start with hands wider than shoulder width apart, and pull your chest up towards the bar whilst maintaining a straight body. Explode up fast towards the bar and lower down slowly. Repeat 5 – 10 times

And there you have it, a great way to get you fully prepared for your session in under 10 minutes! Remember that you can use different exercises than the ones I’ve used here, but make sure they have a similar purpose. Incorporate this into your next upper body session and see if you notice the difference. My next blog will focus on the Complete warm-up for the lower body. Enjoy!

Ed

Here at Coastal Fitness, we like to keep things simple…not saying that our training is easy, but there are a few training methods that we like to stick to…because they work! One of these is the Tri-set.

A Tri-set involves performing three exercises one after another. I’ll leave the amount of rest in-between sets to your discretion as everyone is different. Follow this simple formula in the following order, apply it to your ability level and goals, and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your workout.

1.Strength Exercise
2.Core Exercise
3.Mobility Exercise
4.Repeat!

Although this can be applied in a variety of different ways, I thought I’d give you a head start and show you a working example of a Tri-set. Here’s one that I may use for someone who’s workout is focused on their posterior chain (back of the body):

1.Standing Cable Row x 8 reps
2.Stability Ball Ab Rollouts x 12 reps
3.Prone Cobra x 10 reps
4.Rest 30 – 45 seconds
5.Repeat

This Tri-set combination, as well as hundreds of others, will help you to maximise your time spent training as well as see some awesome results!

Incorporate these into your workouts, and leave a comment below letting us know some of your favourite Tri-Sets.

ED

We are proud to announce the launch of our new Blog site! Coastal Fitness invites its current clients, clients of the future and anyone who shares a love for health and fitness, to tune into our blog site each week to check out some of the latest and greatest trends and news in the industry. We promise to cover everything from nutrition, lifestyle advice, special guest interviews and exercise techniques to some of our favorite and most grueling workouts…

Watch this space to stay ahead of the game…

ED

Ed has also been working with young children and teenagers for 5 years – as a Rugby Coach, Fitness and Conditioning coach to Schools and Sports Programmes, Multi-sports coach and Kindergarten Teacher. Ed believes that by teaching correct movement patterns and introducing them…

Our energetic and individual approach encourages success, whilst our excellent and empathetic client care ensures that you are always the first priority. Whether you are thinking about taking up exercise for the first time, or are an elite athlete in your sporting field, Coastal Fitness promises to provide invigorating, challenging, varied and fun exercise programmes customised to fit your needs, goals and ability.

Coastal Fitness was established in 2009 by Personal Trainer and athlete Ed Haynes. Its services cover the whole of Hong Kong, with its headquarters located in the Gold Coast, New Territories.

Our energetic and individual approach encourages success, whilst our excellent and empathetic client care ensures that you are always the first priority. Whether you are thinking about taking up exercise for the first time, or are an elite athlete in your sporting field, Coastal Fitness promises to provide invigorating, challenging, varied and fun exercise programmes customised to fit your needs, goals and ability.