Listening to my 23 year old daughter discussing her experiences with her PT which I was paying for, as well as my longing to keep up with my hubby when we went to Italy recently made me realize that there is no bad time to start –Just start.

I do not recommend anyone waiting until 53 to begin an active exercise routine, but if you are in this age range and want to finally begin, it is possible to succeed. I was raised during a time when most women were not encouraged to be athletic. We really did gather in gym class at school and chant:

We must, we must, increase our bust!

Over the years I have tried doing different things and I guess from being in the army in my younger days, it actually took the fun out of fitness. This was traumatizing enough for me to stay away from any serious activity. My doctor always sang the same song... eat less sugars and fats, and you MUST exercise... at least if you desire to live longer and be productive.

I drove often to the gym, would watch the fit and gorgeous go inside, I would actually go in sometimes and do an hour on the treadmill but I would eventually drive away comparing my efforts to others. When I finally decided to do something you guessed it, I got a PT.

He has survived the first day with me when I proudly told him, “I don’t do sit-ups, push-ups, or pull-ups and I never run.” To his credit, I now do most of these... not well... but nevertheless, I do them.

That first day ended with me face down on the grass, telling him there was no way I could do a push
up... it wasn’t going to happen. Rev, slapped the grass by my head and said, “What are you going to do, Michelle? What are you going to do if you fall and can’t get up? You need to be able to push up on your own.” His patience, gentle prodding, have kept me doing what I have avoided for years... plus the revelation that some day, I may need to be able to get up... falling is always a reality.
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A sense of humor is necessary to face the challenges of working out with me and I know I must be willing to push harder... it never gets easy. But, I am amazed at the difference in how I now feel, after 50 with some exercise in my life; you can do it as well. For anyone like me, who made the bad decision to wait well into life, do not waste another day. –Just start.

Written By Michelle Greenwell. 

Michelle is a published writer and author of several books.

​Check out some of her work HERE

​I’ve been a trainer for some time now and I have been blessed to work at a few different gyms and parks as you do when you’re finding what works for you and your clients.

What has always stood out for me in Rockingham is the foreshore and how beautiful the place is during a sunrise/sunset. I’m consistently being told by new clients that they take the place for granted after having completed a fitness session down there and taking in the surrounds.

Having come over from the Gold Coast QLD a little while ago, one thing that blew me away is a lot of people were talking Rockingham down as a bit of a ‘tough’ area but after spending my first few days around Rockingham Foreshore I instantly felt at home here and thought “Hey why the hell aren’t I training here?”

When I moved over I was training the majority of my clients in Perth for no other reason other than I get a lot of enquiries from weight loss clients who reside there. To be fair there are some really awesome places to train outside up in Perth but the little spot that we train at just opposite Rusticos on Rockingham Foreshore to me is one of the most beautiful spots I have ever been lucky enough to train at.

On top of being blessed to be a trainer at Gold’s Gym Rockingham which is literally a 5 minute walk away, I have the best of both worlds in being able to provide my wonderful clients with so many different variations of exercise in different environments. I mean who wouldn’t want to train here?

I did a post on my Revs Fitness instagram account this morning about how I’m noticing that we’re on our way out of winter and into spring as the sun is starting to pop up earlier and earlier. This morning it set the sky on fire at 6:30am! Compared to a few weeks ago it was only up at around 7:00am.
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I have to give enormous amounts of credit to my awesome clients who turn up literally rain, hail or shine to train at Rockingham Bootcamp. I wouldn’t consider myself a typical ‘hardcore’ personal trainer who shouts and carries on to keep his clients accountable so I think it’s safe to assume that they all love where we train and appreciate the atmosphere that is created.
 
 
Whether you get the feeling from your personal trainer, the people you are training with, where you are training and even the style of training you are doing, I believe you should always look forward to training and working towards your fitness goal.
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So make sure where ever you are training that you thoroughly enjoy being there in that atmosphere!

I’ve always found this subject interesting because I often get told by new clients that they have been doing a lot of core and ab exercises to help flatten their mid sections.
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The short answer to this question is no, you cannot simply flatten your stomach by doing ab exercises and here is why..

‘Spot Reducing’ is a concept where you can theoretically focus on one particular area of the body (stomach) and perform exercises for that area and apparently your body will burn the fat in that localized area, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Your body simply doesn’t operate that way.

Everyone is a little bit different as to where they store excess body fat and therefore they burn it off in different areas as well. The body will use this excess body fat as energy to function and recover as a result of exercise and there is no definitive way to tell exactly which area is going to be burned first.

The closest I have gotten to documenting ‘spot reduction’ is by taking tape measurements of my clients every so often to see which areas are dropping the fastest. But even then I structure my client’s training with a lot of variety so it’s impossible to tell which exercises have been responsible for the drop in body fat.

More so, dropping body fat is the result of an elevated heart rate to which your body responds by demanding more energy in the form of calories which equals more body fat burned.

Because the majority of ab exercises do not elevate and sustain a high enough heart rate, they make the process quite slow. I personally class the majority of ab exercises as ‘toning’ exercises, meaning they build lean muscle tone, strengthen and firm that particular muscle group as opposed to say running which elevates your heart rate and sustains it more efficiently.

So what can you actually do to help flatten your stomach?

High Intensity Interval Training of course! I’ve done a really helpful article of why it’s so effective so CLICK HERE to read it.

The process that I use to train my clients and keep their workouts efficient is to choose ‘one consistent cardio interval’ followed by 5-10 ‘toning’ exercises. You’ll do 30secs of cardio, then 30secs of toning then go back to the cardio. Go for as long as you like.

This method is super effective and more importantly keeps your exercise sessions fresh, fun and engaging.

When Rev asked me to guest blog for Revs Fitness I was pretty honoured and also wondering what in the world will I write about – what is it that I have to share about my journey that could be relevant or helpful for others who need to or want to lose large numbers of kilos? 

Well let’s start at the beginning. I have been a YO-YO-er since I was 17.  Gaining and losing weight over and over again, never losing everything that I gained.  It only got worse after kids until last summer I hit a maximum of 108.9kg.  Life was about covering up, about hiding away and not drawing attention to myself.  I had tried and failed at every diet program out there.  At the end of the day I just didn’t have the ability to control my will power over food – I was a food addict. 

​This year (Feb 2016) I chose to take drastic measures to stop this cycle and overcome the addiction for once and for all and had the gastric sleeve surgery.

Now some may think of this as an easy way out but I am here to tell you it is just a tool just like any other diet and exercise program this tool isn’t designed to do the work for you – you have to work the tool.  Yes, initially people who have been sleeved lose massive amounts of weight however if the core issues aren’t addressed after 6-12 months sleevers are able to start gaining the weight back by abusing the sleeve or not exercising. 

As soon as my surgeon gave me the all clear one week after surgery I started walking 3kms 4-5 times a week.  As soon as he gave me the all clear to exercise more rigorously at 3 months I signed up to the 6 week challenge with Revs Fitness.  As soon as Revel checked in with me around 4-5 weeks of the challenge I signed up for 12 months worth of training.  Why? Why did I make that jump from 6 weeks to 12 months so easily – because I know I have to. 

After having the sleeve done I know I can lose bulk weight but I also know losing weight isn’t the only thing you need to look good.  Properly defined muscle tone is important to getting your sexy back. How else are you really going to have killer curves?  I could lose the weight without exercise but I would have been saggy skin and bones – that’s not the look I am after. 

Most people don’t think about signing up to outdoor group training at the end of Autumn and then train throughout winter outdoors and yes even I was thinking I was crazy.  What I was looking for was a connection with a trainer – I didn’t want to just go to a gym and be a number.  I needed someone to notice if I was turning up, pushing me harder to correct my form or go deeper because they know I can push further and I found that with Revel. 

In the last 11 weeks I have lost 11.4kg, (I have lost 34.4kg since the very start of this journey) but better than the number on the scales I have seen massive changes to my entire shape, my waist has come in significantly, my back muscles are becoming defined and my legs have completely changed shape with all the toning and cardio intervals. 

So what are my biggest tips to staying motivated and achieving your goals?

1. Understand your WHY – Why do you want to lose weight, tone up or be fitter.  For years I wasn’t motivated because I felt the reason I had to lose weight was society had labelled me as fat – I had not made that transition to actually want to do it for me.  Once I discovered my WHY everything has flowed a lot better.
2. Make exercise fit into your schedule not the other way around.  Assess your situation and look for a trainer that fits into your life.  I knew I could work out in the evenings or early mornings. What I loved about Revs Fitness is that there were multiple class times to choose from (sure gyms have group fitness too but I didn’t always want to do Body Attack or Body Balance or see a different trainer each time that had no invested interest in me) I love HITT Training and with Rev I can do 4-6 HITT Training sessions a week!
3. Work out what you want to achieve each week as a minimum.  As a minimum I want to achieve 4 workouts.  At a maximum I would like to do 6 and a home workout/run.  This way if I miss one workout I don’t feel like a failure because I have still achieved my minimum goal set for each week.
4. Find a healthy balanced attitude to food.  Understand portion control – ok ok I know this is a lot easier for me now but there is still times I feel my food addiction come back with my food choices.  Portion control in today’s society where dining out requires finishing a meal that could easily feed you for several nights.  I use a portion control bowl and plate now to serve up my daily meals.  This helps drill in the visual of how big my meals should be – which then is ingrained into my mind when we go out for dinner. 
5. Do anything you can to make things easier for you.  Layout your exercise gear the night before, set your alarm a little earlier to give you enough time to wake up, arrive at class 15 minutes early to make sure you are relaxed and focused on what you need to do.  I make sure my exercise clothes are washed very regularly and before I go to bed everything is ready to go.  My alarm goes off at 5.30am for morning classes, I leave home just after 6am and yes I get to class too early but if I leave it too long I may just end up back in bed because I have had too much time to think about it and talk myself out of going.  So just get up, get ready and get in the car before you have a chance to think!

Hopefully you have found one thing that has resonated with you.  If you are looking to start your journey focus on doing one new thing, build yourself up to do it well then add another goal  i.e if you don’t feel you can make a full lifestyle change start with one thing.  Go along to 3 fitness classes per week and focus just on that, then once you have that mastered start by cutting out unnecessary calories out of your diet like soft drink, master that then add the next thing.  Small changes done daily will add up.

​At the end of the day believe in YOU and you CAN do anything.  ​

​Written by "The Shrinking Wife"

Follow her journey by liking her Facebook Page below

*Results will vary from person to person

#1 – Tape Measure

A fantastic way to measure weight loss (or muscle gain) is to use a tape measure to take certain points on your body, I usually take the following: Left Arm - in the middle of the bicep, Stomach - in line with the belly button, Hips - the biggest circumference of your butt and Left Thigh - in the middle. It’s really interesting to use this method because you get an idea of just where you are dropping cms from the fastest, with my clients I find they drop pretty quickly in the hips and stomach measurements. 

#2 – Body Fat Caliper Test
Another method of testing is to use body fat calipers. Basically you measure different points on your body by using the calipers to ‘pinch’ that area. You then put all of those measurements into a calculator and it spits out your body fat percentage as well as a general idea of how much lean muscle you have and your body fat in kilograms. You can buy body fat calipers off of ebay quite cheaply and I use the “Jackson/Pollock 4 Method” on this website here to calculate body fat.
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#3 – An Increase in Energy Levels

Being a trainer who enjoys seeing progress in his clients, I always found it so frustrating when clients would say to me they are “Feeling more energetic and alert from exercise” because I couldn’t measure that! Until now. Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of calories you burn in 24 hours just to function normally. An increase in energy usually means an increase in your basal metabolic rate so if a client now says to me they are feeling more energetic I can refer back to this calculation and see the reasons why. You can use this calculator here to measure your basal metabolic rate. The only hold up with this method of measuring is that it only takes into account your weight (which fluctuates quite a bit). So I actually recommend getting a body composition scan to get a much more accurate portrayal of your basal metabolic rate.

#4 – Body Composition Scans

If I had my way I would have all of my clients get one of these done. They are one of the best ways to get a tonne of data to measure progress. They measure everything from body fat percentage, body fat weight, lean muscle weight, where you’re holding body fat on your body, the amount of lean muscle you have in certain areas (arms, legs, trunk), your basal metabolic rate, water retention, BMI (outdated measurement in my opinion) and that’s just to mention a few. As well as being a great array of measurements they are also very time-efficient as they only take 10 minutes to complete. You can find out if you have a scanner near you by heading over to the Inbody Website.


I really do recommend tracking your weight loss progress with other forms other than just relying on the scales. In my experience it is so enjoyable to see progress in more than one form and ultimately it acts as a motivator to up the training intensity a tad! Speaking of upping the intensity, head over and grab a free training program here

*Results will vary from person to person

​You know why people give up on their fitness goals? Because it’s uncomfortable..

Exercising for some people is uncomfortable
Cooking healthy meals for some people is uncomfortable
Eating healthy meals for some people is uncomfortable
Giving up 30mins of your day to exercise instead of staying at home, for some people is uncomfortable
Having to track your progress and take measurements, for some people is uncomfortable
 
Bottom Line: Working towards a health and fitness goal is uncomfortable

But take a second and think right now, when was the last time you worked towards achieving something? Was it a certain KPI at work? A small project at home? Perhaps saving for a holiday or something you wanted to buy?

Whatever that was, I’m going to assume it wasn’t easy and your busted your butt to get it! Am I right?
One could almost say that you worked so hard that you were uncomfortable whilst working towards it, do you see what I’m getting at?

To encourage change within your body you must be uncomfortable. If you are comfortable while working towards a health and fitness goal there’s a very good chance you aren’t encouraging your body to get stronger, toned and burn more fat. Ultimately your body is lazy, it wants to get stronger and firmer to do these exercises more efficiently and easily, it wants to get used to only 6 hours of sleep a night, it wants to use your body fat as energy to fuel your exercise and recover so that it can adapt to your workouts – If your body adapts to your workouts it too has become comfortable and now you’ll see very little progress (also known as a plateau)
 
So what do you do?

Be happy being uncomfortable. Take comfort in being uncomfortable. Know that because you’re testing your body and demanding more from it that it will look after you in return by adapting to what you’re doing and ultimately showing you progress for your hard work.
 
After that your biggest problem is going to be finding a workout routine that still tests you both mentally and physically – And take my word for it, that is the best problem to have. Download a Free Workout Here
 
So tomorrow…wake up…put on your workout gear…and get uncomfortable.

Excuse the little role play there, I just found that funny as I was writing it down because that is literally almost every consultation that I’ve had with a new client of mine after discussing their personal weight loss goals :)

​I think the beauty of the conversation above is how much faith people put in personal trainers to give them a definitive answer as to exactly how long it is going to take to lose the 20-30 maybe even 50 kilos – with the usual answer being “It depends on how good you are with your eating.”
 
So let’s forget nutrition and focus on the training side of things for a change.
 
How many times per week for weight loss?
In short, 3 to 5 times per week. Weight loss specifically is about how many calories you ‘expend’ or burn VS how many calories you consume via food. Now as you would know there is an infinite amount of ways to burn calories when it comes to choosing the type of exercise to do it. I always recommend keeping one key point in mind when choosing it – Make Sure You Love It

Put simply, make sure there is some element (however tiny it is) of the exercise that you enjoy because that is what is going to keep to coming back for more before you start seeing results.

I use a very simple system with my clients. We choose a consistent ‘cardio’ interval to do for 30 seconds, then choose 5 to 10 ‘toning’ exercises to do for 30 seconds in between the cardio intervals, then we repeat that process 2 to 3 times. The result is a short 30 minute workout that is incredibly efficient at burning calories EVEN AFTER the session has finished. 

Here is an example:
30 seconds each exercise
 
Run or Skiing
Toe Taps
Run or Skiing
Heel Taps
Run or Skiing
Plank
Run or Skiing
Squats
Run or Skiing 
Kick and Lunge
Run or Skiiing
CG Push Up on Bench 
Run or Skiing
Dips
Run or Skiing
Plank Ups
Run or Skiing
Squats
REST for 1 minute
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Repeat 3 times
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How many times per week for toning up?
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3 to 5 times per week
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To be clear, toning up and weight loss are two different outcomes. Weight loss should be all about reducing the body’s fat stores where as toning up is about building lean muscle tone. Why would you want more lean muscle tone? Well put simply the more of it that your body has, the more calories you burn while at rest and the easier it is to keep unwanted weight off.

It also raises your metabolism, increases your strength (important for your eighties just so you can bend down and pick up a box) keeps your skin supple and ultimately fills out those areas where body fat once lived. Sounds awesome right? Why the hell wouldn’t you want to get toned up!

Toning Up sessions can be performed either in a gym or outside. You just have to plan your sessions beforehand so that you don’t lose intensity. In my experience (and opinion) toning exercises are more so associated with that ‘burning’ sensation that a lot of people are familiar with -  “Feel the burn.”

That’s your muscles releasing lactic acid into the area that you’re stimulating, lactic acid is a bi-product of exercise so the more effort you put into your workout the more of this ‘burning’ sensation you tend to feel. On top of that toning exercises are usually ones that don’t leave you completely out-of-breath like traditional cardio exercises i.e running.

Toning exercises include – push ups, squats, dips, lunges, chin ups, bench press, leg press, leg curls, shoulder press…just to name 9 out of a probable million.

But rather than give you an example why don’t you just go and download a free training program here. It incorporates both the weight loss and toning exercises into some very short but effective sessions that take no longer than 15 minutes a session.

Id say close to 50% of my clients that I train for weight loss and toning have some form of restriction in their knees when doing exercise, it can be incredibly demotivating and often at times enough of an obstacle for people to give up of their own personal fitness goals altogether - Well I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be that way!

There is an absolute plethora of exercises that you can still do that doesn't put as much pressure on your knee that will still allow you to work on your fitness goals, you just have to be patient and figure out which ones work best for you..

#1 - Toe Taps [Cardio Exercise]

With this exercise we are hopping from one foot to the other in a relatively quick but controlled movement to raise our heart rate and burn more calories. I like to have clients aim for a spot on a wall and aim for that small spot every time that change feet. The best thing about this exercise is that it is relatively low impact and doesn't put a lot of 'sheering' forces on the knee - just a fancy way of saying "bending of the knee joint"