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No Time To Get Fit?

Is this your condition?
What does this question even MEAN?

At Abstract Bodyworks Newbury we have been providing personal training services since 2012 and have improved the health and fitness of more than 200 clients over more than 20,000 sessions, so we know what we are doing. But does this statement, “No Time To Get Fit”, apply to you, and what does the question even mean to you? We understand two different meanings to the question, which have two different answers

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  1. It’s too late for me: this is the most common observation people make – they’ve lived their lives and have accepted, reluctantly mostly, the inevitable decline with age, and they don’t think there is anything they can do about it.

  2. I can’t find the time: the second most common observation is that life is busy enough as it is – there aren’t enough hours a week to do everything I have to do and then get to the gym, change into workout gear, attend the class or do the activity, shower and clean up.

 

But neither of these rationalizations are correct:

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  1. IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN REGAINING YOUR YOUTHFUL FITNESS

  2. YOU DON’T NEEDS HOURS A WEEK, OR SPECIAL CLOTHES, OR EVEN SHOWERS

 

When is it too late to begin regaining muscle and fitness? Many articles and academic research show that the body, ANY body, in ANY condition, is entirely capable of regaining strength, at ANY age. At around the age of 25 your body stops developing, but unless you work to maintain it, the body readjusts by losing muscle and gaining fat, because MUSCLE IS 10 TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE TO MAINTAIN than fat. Your body, every body, is constantly trying to maintain a balance between external conditions and your body – think sweating in a heatwave or breathing hard after racing for a train. Muscle, and fat, are in a similar balance; if your body has more muscle than you use in your daily activities (and typically in your youth you do use it) then your body will dispose of this “excess” to get you in balance between energy expenditure and energy input.

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Over time we typically loose about 1% of our muscle mass per year – doesn’t sound like much. But think about it – over 25 years, when you hit 50, you’ve lost 25% of your “best” fitness – and that is when things you used to be able to do without thinking (move the furniture, dance all night, play tennis for an hour, whatever) become more and more difficult. When you hit 75 you’ve lost HALF YOUR BEST EVER MUSCLE MASS, which is why you fall more often (muscles keep your upright and able to recover from a trip), you can’t swim as far as you used to, you can’t play with the grandchildren. We have developed a picture that shows what happens to normal people over time:

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But unhappily it is worse than that. As the picture above shows, muscle percentage drops from around 40% to 20%, but typically, in this high food availability environment we live in, we DON’T MODULATE OUR ENERGY INPUT – we keep eating and drinking as we did in our youth (maybe even more), so we don’t balance our calorie intake with our expenditure and we STORE THE EXCESS CALORIES AS FAT for periods of famine (which we never experience today) – typically fat increases from around 20% to over 45%. But just as the body will dispose of muscle it doesn’t use, it is happy to put on muscle if it needs to – which involves STIMULATING THE BODY to use (actually exhaust) the muscle you currently have, to create the internal environment to grow muscle back. In order to do this, it is NOT THE QUANTITY OF EXERCISE YOU DO, IT’S THE STIMULUS IT PROVIDES – specifically it is the process of stimulating muscle growth (HYPERTROPHY, as compared with ATROPHY). Medical research going back over fifty years has shown how easy it is to do this – which we will describe after answering the second question.

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How much time do I have to allocate to exercise to make a difference? The exercise routines that many people undertake today are not a result of scientific analysis. There is a lot of science involved if you are a “professional athlete” – which can include the weekend warrior who wants to complete the couch-to-5K challenge, all the way up to an Olympic skier. But if you are average – and let’s face it we are all more average than exceptional – then following “Olympic” training programmes won’t help. But there IS A WAY FOR AVERAGE PEOPLE TO GET BACK THE LOST MUSCLE, and that is to stimulate the body to exhaustion and let the body recover a little bit of strength every time you exercise. And happily it does not take much time – or a lot of designer workout gear and protein shakes. What it takes is a disciplined and monitored set of targeted activities that make inroads into your muscles, and then time off to recover from this inroading so that your muscles get a little stronger. And amazingly that can all be achieved in less than 20 minutes of the right kind of exercise, and no more than two times per week.

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HYPERTROPHY, growing more muscle, is a result of exhausting the current muscle and letting the muscle recover, and grow. Think for a moment about callouses – those hard bits of skin you get on your feet or hands because of the activities you undertake. They come about because you stimulate the skin (a lot of walking, playing pickle, whatever) and you almost damage it, and then the skin gets thicker to cope with what you are asking of it. So it is with muscles – you can stimulate the inside of your body in a similar way to your skin – by stimulating your muscles to exhaustion, and then – crucially – allowing sufficient time for the muscle growing response to take place. This is how we train you at Abstract Bodyworks – we create a workout routine that is DESIGNED FOR YOU, with YOUR CURRENT BODY and CURRENT STRENGTH LEVELS, and we coach you to achieve the fastest and safest route to muscle growth. And it takes place wearing your everyday clothes, without sweating or getting uncomfortable, and in a private environment that allows you to focus on getting stronger, rather than on what your workout neighbour is thinking of you or how they are performing.

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So in answer to the observation “I have not time to get fit” we reply – really? 15 minutes, twice a week, in your everyday clothes, in the privacy of a downtown fitness studio? If you can’t find the time for that investment in your health and fitness then you are accepting the slow decline into frailty and all that does involve. But if you actually want to have a full and complete life throughout your years, then you should want to maintain, or grow, your fitness back to a more vibrant, active, self.

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But if you don’t think that’s possible then we have an offer for you – come and try out our workout regime for free, for two sessions, so that you can understand what we do, understand if you can do it, and maybe get some control back into your personal fitness.

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We look forward to seeing you!

About Abstract Bodyworks

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Abstract Bodyworks® Precision Exercise Newbury is part of a family of personal training facilities in the UK and USA dedicated to one thing - helping our clients live YOUNGER and STRONGER in as little as 15 minutes a week.

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Our exercise methods come out of fundamental research carried out in the 1980s by Arthur Jones and later Ken Hutchins. They looked into how ageing occurred and if and how it could be stopped or reversed. They found that the body is perfectly capable of reversing many of the supposedly "natural" consequences of getting old - reduced strength, osteoporosis, increased fat, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and many more. Through receiving the right stimulus the body will respond by producing more muscle which in turn begins to reverse many "old conditions". Ken went further by helping first Nautilus® and then MedX® develop training equipment that aided this process.

 

Later, Ellington Darden and Doug McGuff took on more research and developed the approach even further, so that now we can make the following commitment to our clients:

 

Every private 1to1 Abstract exercise session is designed to create change. In just 15 minutes of proper exercise your body will be stimulated to make a dramatic transformation by adding new lean muscle and stronger bones.  An added benefit is this new muscle will rev up your metabolism helping to shed fat with a proper diet.

 

Abstract Bodyworks Precision Exercise is located in the heart of Newbury within convenient walking distance of many offices and businesses. Local free parking is available for those that have to drive here. We offer training sessions when our customers book them, so feel free to contact us to arrange a look around or a free consultation during the following times:

 

  • Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday
    8:00 - 16:00

Training and consultation outside these hours is available upon request.

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