Life Transformation

pexels-photo-685530.jpegI would like to introduce you to MASS: and some of what we believe in, now you may have already read some of our blogs, ads and many of you found yourself agreeing with or totally disagreeing with what we have to say and that’s fine, for every article that is written or with any training programs in place, you will be able to find 100’s of expert’s opinions contradicting each other. So please read on and I will try and explain why we do what we do.
REASON
We started MASS: with 2 reasons in mind the first reason was to help you achieve your goals, now everyone’s goals are different, so we want to be different than most gyms, we don’t believe in the gym model of having memberships where you pay a monthly fee to walk in the door and go for your life( if you are thinking “but I know what I am doing and I don’t need your help” that is fine we gladly wish you all the best), we don’t believe in having programs stuffed in a draw to give you on joining the gym, we definitely don’t believe walking you through the gym and showing you how to use the machine means you know how to use them safely and correctly.
We believe that everyone who joins a gym has a reason, that’s why when you join the MASS: family we like to have a discovery session with you, to learn about you, why you are training, why you need to change your lifestyle or if you are a sports person what you would like to achieve. We then use this information to aid you in setting long term goals, then we develop short term goals to enable you to reach your long-term goals.
The second reason was to make a living out of helping people.
DIET
At MASS: we don’t believe in FAD diets and we don’t believe in 8-week challenges will change your lifestyle or eating habits. When it comes to the food you eat we believe to maintain, lose, or gain weight it comes down to the calories you eat. We believe the food you eat is just as if not more important than the calories. We believe food should be used to provide energy for the body to function through out the day as well as for the body to recover.

TECHNIQUE
At MASS: with all our clients we assess their movement patterns, once we know what restrictions they have, we develop and implement training to improve any mobility issues that they have, these exercises become part of the clients warm up routine (so no more just walking on treadmill believing that you are warming up and preparing your body for a rigorous workout).
We train you with technique in mind first, whether you are new to resistance training or have been training in the Gym for a while at MASS: we will always start a new client with the basics in mind (knee dominant, upper push, upper body pull and hip dominant). Before we add weight to any exercise we need you to have the correct technique down pat. The exercises we train are designed to improve your day to day life. By adding or increasing weight to early your technique is the first thing to break down, now you may feel the muscle start to strain and work harder and you may believe that this is the way to become bigger, stronger and to achieve the results you want, however over a period of time you will also find this is the way that leads to joint pain, tendinitis, back pain, strained muscles and more importantly you are training your body to move in a way that will increase the risk of injury. Resistance training should be used to teach the body to first move correctly and efficiently and then to strengthen the body to assist in injury prevention, with injury prevention I am not just talking about an athlete trying to avoid soft tissue injuries, I am talking about everyone avoiding soft tissue injuries as well as wearing through their hips, knees and shoulders and avoiding having surgery or worse replacements.

PROGRAMS
The way we design you a program we use your goals, training history, your fitness level, strength level, ability, injury history all to develop a program specifically suited to you. We don’t believe in having a draw full of programs designed for anybody to use.
If you are an athlete/sports person you need to train to enhance your chosen sport and assist with injury prevention. All sports require you to move efficiently, have explosive power, endurance and strength. Lets look at Football, if you are currently in pre-season training and you have spent the off months going to the gym to get bigger muscles by using a program designed for a body builder (think German volume training) I commend you for putting in the time and effort, but have you improved you mobility and explosive power (being able to move forward/backwards/laterally to get out of a pack), have you improved your running technique( being able to run efficiently for a longer distance at a higher intensity), Increased your strength(allowing you to break tackles, lay tackles or push off an opponent), reduced your risk of injury( improved mobility, increased strength). I would say not, if you have been solely concentrating on putting on size you have probably done the opposite of what you require.

 

 

Why not having “time” is not the reason you are out of shape, it’s just an excuse to justify what we really know.

Time.

Every one of us get exactly the same amount of time per week, 164 hours. Yet excuses, revolving around not having enough time or being too busy are constantly being used to avoid taking care of your health.

Lets Break it Down

In Australia, the national average work week is 40.6 hours per week.

If we assume you are getting the minimum recommended amount of sleep per night, which is 8 hours, that is another 56 hours per week.

When we add both of these numbers together it adds up to a grand total of 97 hours per week (rounded up).

This leaves us with 67 hours per week.

67 hours

And yet we still use the excuse of “oh I don’t have time to go to the gym ‘ or any other similar excuse.

Now yes I  understand there is other things that are important in life such as family time, hobbies, eating, travelling etc. However do you not also think that your health is important too?

The real reason you don’t want to exercise, take control of your nutrition is because you do not value your own health to find time in that 67 hours per week to take care of yourself.

-Increase in physical fitness levels allowing you to do more in your day to day life.

-Improving mental health by increasing self-confidence.

-Reducing the risk of behavioural related diseases.

But yet people still elect to undertake activities, such as watching TV, which do not have the same positive impact on our lives and then use the excuse that they cannot find the time to keep themselves in shape.

The one thing that society has to begin to realise is that our health is valuable, just like our time. However taking care of your health has the potential to give you more time whereas making excuses that you do not have time may leave you with even less time in the long run.

All it takes is 5 of those 67 hours per week to change your life and take back some of the time lost by using excuses such as “I don’t have time.”

 

 

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New Years

Today I realised that we have less than 6 weeks left in the new year. So right about now the average person is probably thinking, maybe even telling friends and loved ones all about their new years resolution.

These resolutions normally revolve around weight loss, starting the newest fad diet, getting that beach body you have always wanted or just getting fitter in general.

The problem with this is that this normality that we, as a society, have accepted always leads to one thing:

Average Results.

Nobody wants that now do they. This average way of thinking is what leads people to the exact same results year in year out.

Now if you want exceptional results and results that will last. Throw away the idea of your new years resolution and begin tomorrow. Commit to changing one thing with your lifestyle at a time and work on that one thing until it becomes a habit.

The Choice is yours, follow the crowd and enjoy average results or first thing tomorrow begin to change one thing at a time, commit to the long game and enjoy

EXCEPTIONAL Results.

Be Exceptional

 

 

 

 

Stop Chasing Acute Responses

How many of you go to the gym and expect to sweat, feel some type of soreness or feel a strain through your muscles and even worse feel pain? What about once you leave the gym? That feeling of nearly having to crawl to the car or not being able to lift your arms above your head, are these the signs YOU look for to judge whether you have had a good workout or not? Most people do.

But what if I told you it didn’t have to be this way.

Mike Boyle, in my opinion one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the world sums it up the best:

“If someone says to me I’m not very sore from that workout, next time we will go outside with a sledgehammer and I’ll beat you with it, now will that be a good workout?”

More than likely the answer will be no, but what I am trying to get across is that pain is not the indicator of a good session. Here are some reasons why those volume heavy leg sessions you have been doing are detrimental to achieving your goals:

  1. Recovery time. Doing workouts that push you to your limits means that you will have to allow an increase in recovery time before you can train again. Now seeing as there is only 7 days in a week you may be only able to do 2 maybe 3 sessions a week if you recover properly and not want to end up sick or overtrained.
  2. Injury. Smashing yourself in the gym every session will eventually lead to some type of injury and then this will be followed by forced time off, which will put you off track from where you want to be.

So what should you be aiming for instead?

What we want to be aiming for instead is the minimum amount of work to obtain full activation of the muscle fibres. The following are ways you can train to recruit more muscle fibres.

  1. Opt for compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, overhead press etc. over isolation movements i.e bicep curls, as these compound movements will use multiple muscle groups in the one exercise which will not only recruit more muscle fibres but also burn more calories (think about fat loss).
  2. Lift Heavy. Incorporate some strength training into your routine as this will lead to full activation of the muscle in fewer reps.
  3. Lift until technical failure. This is where we get our volume in. Instead of lifting until you can’t lift the weight anymore try lifting until your technique fails, not only will this still recruit more muscle fibres it will also dramatically reduce your risk of injury.

Give these tips a go and see the difference in your training when you stop going for that feeling of soreness or getting as much volume into your session as possible.

 

Talk to you guys soon,

Coach Corey

 

A good workout isn’t determined by the pool of sweat left on the gym floor.

The amount of sweat you produce during your workout doesn’t equate to how good or how hard your workout was, it simply means that your body was trying to regulate your temperature pure and simple. Any workout that you undertake should be designed to assist you in reaching your goals. To determine whether your workout was good, all you need to is ask yourself these simple questions

  1. Was the workout aimed at my goals,
  2. Did I fell energised from the workout,
  3. Was the exercises undertaken functional,
  4. Am I still capable of performing (chosen sport or even everyday tasks) after my workout.

These are just a few questions you should judging your workout on, At MASS when we design a program we use these very questions so that we can determine whether we are providing the best chance for our clients to reach their goals.