Train Free: The No Gym diet and Fitness Solution

I’d like to talk a little bit about why I decided to add to the thousands of fitness and diet titles already available. As I have aleardy mentoned, I have been working out for the best part of two decades. I have trained and eaten using a whole host of different methods and plans. Ultimately, I have never found a way of doing things that works for me, LONGTERM.

This is the key. I’m like most people. I can get enthousiastic about the latest and greatest in the fitness industry, but then be a whole lot less interested a few weeks down the line. What I was looking for was something that I could just do without overthinking things, without any complicated planning, without being dependant on some crazy diet and without being able to get to the gym whenever I pleased.

Train Free: The No-Gym Diet and Fitness Solution

And all this needed to produce results for me, with my less than spectacular gentics as I edge in on forty. I am a huge reader and have bookshelves full of various training and diet books. I also regulalry read some of the great fitness blogs on the net (as well as avoiding as much of the rubbish as possible).

After spending the last few years struggling with injuries and the consequent lack of motivation, I decided it was time for a radical overhaul of my diet and training. Trying to build myself up using the traditional exercises just wasn’t worht the pain in my back, shoulders, knees and hips from years of contact sports. And getting a bigger bench just so I could give an honest answer to the eternal “whadya bench?” just wasn’t that important anymore.

I wanted training to be fun, productive and produce results, without taking up my entire life (three kids and a fulltime job don’t let me spend all day, everyday in the gym.

Train Free is my answer to this. and I really believe it could be the solution to lts of men and women who want to look and feel good, but are working on a limited time and budget, and don’t want any more complication in their lives.

It is live on amazon kindle right now, and if you really want a good deal, it is going to be absolutely free all this weekend. If you do pick up a copy, I would love to know what you thought, so please feel free to leave your feedback on amazon, and I’ll get back to you.

Just how many of these things and I supposed to do?

If you have been training for any length of time, you have almost certainly experimented with various rep ranges. Perhaps you started with the classic (and actually much misunderstood, but that’s another story) 3 sets of 10.  Maybe you did some 5*5 along the way after reading Bill Starr’s great book. Or maybe you decided that singles was the way forward at some point.

I’ve used all these rep ranges (and many more besides), but until recently I haven’t been able to find a simple method that means i don’t get stale, use different rep ranges, but can measure progression. After playing around with this for the last year or so, it looks like I might have found the ideal way (at least for me) to consider reps. Here it is.The problem for me with rep ranges has been twofold. firstly, no matter what rep range I use, after a bit it can be difficult to progress. and secondly, most lifters tend to start worrying about the number of reps rather than doing the work. Why stop at 5 in your first set if you can really do 8 without getting anywhere near failure, for example?And when you start bringing things like rep cadence into the equation, I find the whole thing gets very artificial, less effective and not a lot of fun.

After doing some reading around, I started thinking about what a lot of these set/rep prescriptions had in common. The total reps is always more or less the same, usually in the area of 25-50. I read an intersting post on t nation (yes, there are interesting posts on t nation now and again) about simple hypertrophy training.

After playing around for a bit, I developed my current apporach. Here it is:

How complicated does training need to be?

Let’s take the example of dips (a great movement if it doesn’t irritate your shoulders). and let’s say for the sake of argument that I train dips once a week. I start out in week one with the aim of doing 25 dips using just bodyweight. It doesn’t matter how this breaks down. It might be 25 straight off or 9,7,5,4 or whatever. I don’t worry about tempo, just about getting 25 quality reps in. I don’t even count rest periods (i know, heresy) but I do work quickly between exercises.

The next week, I up the total amount of reps to 30. and so on, increasing by 5 reps every week until I am shooting for 50 total reps. when this happens, I add some weight and start again at 25.

The beauty of training like this is that, firstly it doesn’t matter if I don’t hit my target. I just stay on that total number of reps until I do. Secondly, if I miss a week, it doesn’t matter either, for the same reasons. Thirdly, this works for any exercise at any level. I might start out with bodyweight dips and add 2kg when I hit 50. Someone else might start out with a 20 kilo weight around their waist and add 4 kilos every time they reach 50. It all works and you don’t need any complicated planning with percentages.

Now the way I train is a bit more involved than this, but this is at the heart of my method. It is the best long term progression scheme I have found in over 20 years of training and is adaptable for all sorts of aims and fitness levels. When I finally get my book finished this will be a key part of the overall method.

The push up might just be one of the best exercises that you could do.

So what am I actually doing? Well without going into all the details,simply because I don’t know yet just how effective this will be long term and also because I’m trying to organize all this into some sort of coherant plan that is actually easy to follow, I’m doing a handful of basic bodyweight exercises and building up the volume week by week.

The exercise I’ve chosen are far from revolutionary. I’ve picked them because they work. Currently I use these for the majority of what I’m doing:

• Dips
• Chins
• Push ups
• Trx rows
• Rear Leg elevated split squats.

trx rows are a great bodyweight exercise

If you aren’t familiar with any of these, don’t worry. I’ll do a post at some point to explain them all and show how to do them correctly. The point is,,they cover my entire body, they are easy and safe to do at home and I’m getting results when diet and life in general are less than perfect.

Perhaps the real “secret” if there is one, is the way I’m putting all this together. Firstly, I’ve started planning my training week by week. I’ve found that this really does make sense for anyone who is pushed for time. Rather than saying ‘damn, I missed my training session again”, I simply have a target for the week and tick off stuff when it gets done. This can be as easy as banging out a few push ups between reading e-mails.

That might not sound like much, but last week when I had no time to fit in even one dedicated training session, I still managed to do about 250 push ups and 100 chins! Not bad, and it does make a difference.

Perhaps the real key here is this way of setting weekly targets and sticking to exercises that can be done at home lets anyone get a lot of quality work in without having to set aside blocks of time.  This is so much better than simply not doing anything at all through lack of time or equipment.

And what about those niggling injuries? Whilst bodyweight training might not produce miracles, it certainly does work the body through natural movements. My shoulders feel much better here than when I was neching regularly, for example.

Soe people might knock this as too easy, but I would disagree. I rarely see anyone doing sets of 20 perfect push ups through a full range of motion, for example. Alot of gym rats would do better to master their own body weight before trying to bounce a couple of hundred pounds off their chest! And given that some of the biggest benchers in the world use the push up as part of their regime, it seems silly to dismiss it as ‘a beginner’s exercise’.

As I said above, I am still playing around with the details here, but I believe I may finally have hit upon a system that will fit in with the needs and availalbe time of the majority of trainers. As I’ve said before, the real key of succesful training and getting results is not making the perfect program, it is doing something regularly. And this approach certainly fits the bill there.

I’ll keep working on the details, but hopefully I should be able to lay it out a bit more clearly very soon.

vegetables can make hundreds of delicious meals

It all comes down to diet, doesn't it? I mean, there are hundreds of ways to train that can be effective. And there isn't any training program in the world that will do the business if your diet is a mess. So how do you make sense of all the conflicting advice out there and actually get results? Here are 17 tips that you can put into practice right now that really will make a difference.

1. Drink more water. I would be willing to bet that most of us don't drink enough water. The health benefits of increased water intake are pretty well-known, but it is just as much about what you DON'T drink when you up your water intake. Apart from better skin, healthier kidneys and fuller muscles, if you drink more water, you are drinking less sweetened stuff like soda and fruit juice.
2. Sugar is not your friend. Processed sugar has quite literally nothing going for it. Stop eating it.
3. Go hungry. As I have said before, I am a fan of intermittent fasting. Even if you don't like this approach to eating, you don't need to be full all the time. Lot's of good things happen both hormonally and for the digestive tract when you aren't processing food all the time.
4. Eat fresh fruit and vegetables every day, if possible from organic sources
5. Start every meal with lean protein and vegetables
6. If it comes in a wrapper, only eat it if you have no choice
7. Stop eating when you are full. This might sound like the most obvious tip of all. Now think about how many times in the last couple of weeks that you have eaten a second helping of something when you certainly weren't hungry. Scary, huh?

8. 

   Don't shop  when you are hungry. This really does make a difference. You will buy a whole lot less crap by doing this every time you hit the shops.

9. Make a list. As above, make a list and only buy what is on it.
10. Clear the junk out of your cupboards. However strong you think your will power is, if it is in your cupboard you are going to eat it. The only way to make sure that you won't be eating crap is to take it out of your cupboards.
11. Spice up your food. Ketchup isn't the only way to change the taste of food. Neither is salt. There are hundreds of herbs and spices to try. Healthy food doesn't need to be bland, so try something new.
12. Pasta isn't a healthy meal. I know that we were all brainwashed into believing that high-carb was good. I think we can finally put a nail in this particualr coffing now. That "healthy" bowl of pasta is just making you fat. Try a tuna steak and green veggies instead.
13. Fat isn't bad. This goes hand in hand with what I said above. Eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat and saturated fat isn't aways a bad thing. In fact, an adequate amount of fat is essential for good health, including testosterone production. Remember that the next time you start to reach for fat free.
14. Sugar and saturated fat together is a horrible combination. Think deep fried mars bar. Sounds healthy? I thought not.
15. Try skipping breakfast. Do you really think that you are in danger of going in to starvation mode if you don't have a bowl of cereal, toast and juice as soon as you wake up? How exactly do you think that you are going to lose fat when you never leave you body in a state to actually burn some of that body fat? If you want to learn a bit more about why this works, take a look at what is , in my opinion, one of the very best nutrition books out there, Eat Stop Eat
16. If it makes you feel terrible, don't eat it. It doesn't matter how healthy a certain food is supposed to be, if it upsets your stomach, it isn't helping you. Personally, I love oats, but they don't like me much.
17. Don't obsess about your food. If you fall off the wagon, don't beat yourself up about it. Just don't do it again. If you make little improvememts every day, you will get there. The reson I recommemd following someone els'e diet or training is simply because it takes all the choice out of things and lets you just get on with it.

There you have it. some simple tips that really do make a difference. If you have any to add, feel free to leave a comment below.