Our Baker's Dozen!

13 Sessions For The Price of 12!

Just for January!

With any of our personal trainers, yoga instructors, Pilates teachers, or nutritionists. Whether you are a new client or a past client - pay for 12 sessions and get the 13th session absolutely FREE!

Get That New Body In 2010!

If you are a current client, you know are high level of customer service. If you are new to Get Fit At Home then our taster/tester, no obligation session is for you and we are offering 10% off on all taster/tester sessions which are 90 minutes and consist of a 30 minute consultation and healthcheck , followed immediately by a 60 minute workout. It's a great way to get to know your personal trainer, get to know Get Fit At Home.

Either way, once you have had our taster/tester session as a new client, you can still take advantage of our Baker's Dozen and save the cost of a full workout and session by paying for 12 before the end of January!

Email us at post@get-fit-at-home.com or call us anytime! In the USA call TOLL FREE 1-866-439-2928 and in the UK call us on 0845 217 7566

You have nothing to lose... but weight!

Keep Your 2010 Weight Loss Goals Achievable

Why We Maintain Safe Weight Loss For 1,400 Clients

At this time of year, one of the biggest problems we face with our clients, both old and new, is that their New Year’s Resolutions are completely unfeasible. For example, I had a phone call this week from a perspective client who wanted online training in Florida. She wanted to lose 40 lbs by her birthday at the end of January – her boyfriend was coming home from Iraq and she had put on 40 lbs during his assignment.

Each and every one of us, both clients and trainers, must put health and fitness and weight loss in a context. I asked the caller if she felt that the nervous energy and worry over having her boyfriend in Iraq may have attributed to her weight gain. She didn’t give a definitive answer. Then I asked her how long he had been away – 18 months. I asked her when she started gaining weight and she answered just over a year ago.

I can’t help but notice the timing and I would think going into a consultation and first training session with this young Florida woman that her weight gain could be attributed to her life’s status – her waiting for her man to return from a dangerous job in a far-off part of the world.

And, if it takes 14 to 18 months to put on 40 lbs, it is going to take almost as long to take the weight off safely. A realistic goal is to lose 2 lbs a week, or 8 lbs a month which would mean 4 to 5 months for my inquirer.

Our Get Fit At Home Taster Session

The reason we offer a 90 minute, no-obligation session to introduce our trainers to our clients is three-fold:
1. To go through the client’s past health and fitness history, take measurements if required (body fat percentage, weight, BMI, blood pressure, etc) and to find out if there are any injuries or hindrances to full personal training and weight training.
2. To allow the client to understand how we operate here at Get Fit At Home and to find out about the trainer we have selected and to ensure we have matched the appropriate trainer with the client.
3. To outline the client’s goals and objectives and create a program and environment to gain those goals.

The third reason is perhaps the most important to keeping a client motivated. As trainers we need to show improvement and to show the client that they are achieving a safe, and manageable weight loss. Too often, due to marketing and advertising recruitment, we are shown unrealistic goals for weight loss through dangerous supplements, crash diets and poor weight management. Here at Get Fit At Home, we watch carefully each and every one of our current 1,400 clients across the globe in the UK and the USA. Through email, online communication and training, one-to-one personal training and weight management, we have over 1,000 satisfied former clients who call us every once in a while to show their further improvements after having worked with us and learning how fitness can be part of their daily routine in a safe and pleasurable way.

The Anaerobic Threshold - When Do We Burn Fat?

When do we burn fat is the age old question and one of our trainers in San Diego, Tina, and I had a long discussion on the phone over the weekend about how to measure when a client is actually at the anaerobic threshold. First of all, let's discuss this term.

Muscles can burn glucose in two ways - one via oxygen delivered by the blood, and, secondly, anaerobically, or without oxygen. Therefore, the importance of the maximum of oxygen (VO2) a client can generate (based on the level of fitness through training) is quite important to when the body reaches an anaerobic threshold.

For example, if unfit, the anaerobic - or quick method - of muscles burning the glucose required during a run, is reached quickly and lactose builds up in the muscles. This is what you feel when your legs get rubbery and tired and, in the end, just plain painful.

When the body switches over to aerobic exercise is difficult to quantify, however, slower and less intense exercise over a long period of time is likely to kick the body into this gear and over the threshold which is also known as the Lactate Threshold.

The key to all this: Muscles trained using anaerobic exercise develop differently as compared to muscles trained during aerobic exercise. If one is looking for muscle mass, they would want to train for less than two minutes in short spurts and maintain mainly an anaerobic level. If looking to burn more fat, then one would concentrate on going into the fat stores of the body and using those stores over a longer period of exercise. When the initial stores of ready-to-hand glucose are burned by the body to create energy, the body then turns to metabolising fat. Performance weakens - similar to the wall in marathon running - and fat is burned for energy and hence fat burning as it is known is at its highest levels.

So, Tina (who is smiling here on the right!) I hope we finally got some closure on this! Keep those clients happy!

Target Those Love Handles Through The Holidays!

Almost everyone ignores obliques, the muscles located under the traps to the side of the front abdominals. Crunches, sit ups, and straight Roman Chair leg lifts do not really attack the "love handles" as they are more commonly known.

We worked this morning with just the stability ball - a simple tool that is fabulous for working with obliques.




Firstly, the above exercise targets just the obliques. Be sure to get your feet planted firmly against a sturdy foundation. The need to balance the ball under your side works your lower obliques as you crunch up to work the upper obliques. A perfectly simple exercise to do at home.

Another great workout exercise for obliques is from a hanging position. Either with hanging straps under your triceps or simply hanging from a bar, rather than pulling your legs straight up, contract to the side and rotate side to side from the elongated rested position, as shown below.


If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us here at Facebook or post@get-fit-at-home.com

Injury Prevention

When we attended our last fitness convention over in the States, SCW Fitness Mania, in Orlando, Florida, we were intrigued to see how they handled injury prevention.

Any good personal trainer knows that injury prevention and safety is paramount in any fitness program. The most prevalent injury in working with weights is a hyper extension, or a rip or tear of a tendon or muscle due to too much weight combined with over extensions.

For example, leg extensions. At the fitness mania, they were advocating going no further than 45 degrees downward and not to let your feet get below you too far on the seat - in fact they should stay below just the hamstring on the negative. Also, note that one should not ever lock a knee out in any exercise. We see far too much locking of the knees with squats and lunges. Keep that knee slightly bent.

With lunges, the knee should never go ahead of the toe - this again is a hyperextension. We see far too much pressure put on the knee joint with the knee over-extended out over the toe. Notice the two pictures here show the correct form on both the lunge and the leg extension.

But SCW Fitness was also noting that it is dangerous to go heavy on shoulder lateral side raises siting that it really puts too much pressure on your rotator cuff. We agree and we thought we would never see the day that this was mentioned as a dangerous exercise.

The answer to keep away from all injuries is to always train with a certified personal trainer and to never push the limit with weights, both free weights and machines. These are the best ways to avoid injury!

Isometric Exercises At Home

I remember the first time I was introduced to isometric exercises. It was with my then girlfriend at university. She was a gymnast and cheerleader and I was a tennis player. We were always running the stadium and one day she just said, lift yourself to the next step, Ed and hold it with one foot frozen for 10 seconds before you move to the next step.

The movement isolated the quadricep and the burn was intense. It really helped to define and tone my legs. We did it with calves too at the top of the stairs, holding our weights up on just the toes - not wavering.

Isometric exercises are for building strength, muscle tone and definition. The best know isometric exercise is perhaps the plank - resting on your triceps and elbows, elevating your glutes to a straight line from back all the way down to your feet with your toes on the floor. Hold for as long as possible. A killer core workout.

A great website for help with isometric exercises - and they can all be done just as easily at home for your home fitness with a home personal trainer - is here at howtodothings.com

We here at Get Fit At Home really work on core strengthening with all of our clients and we make isometric exercise a component of all our in-home fitness programmes.

Heading For The Holidays - Resistance Bands Secrets

I was walking around shopping yesterday and I saw something that might work for a Christmas present for one of my long-term clients this year - a dynaband. It's a great way to work almost the entire body. And bands are relatively inexpensive compared to home weights and dumbbell sets.

Most bands are colour coded: green for easy resistance, yellow for medium resistance and red for hard resistance. Of course, elongating the band, for example, on bicep curls makes it easier. Let the band have more length between your foot holding down the band and your upright palm. If you want to make it harder, shorten the length of the band between your foot and hand.

Here is a good video showing various ideas with the band. They are endless. YouTube Band Video!

Why I thought the band would be good for my client is that it would be her second band. With a second band, you can add partner training, or as I call it, Partner Play! Try pulling your partner to the side with two bands, one around their waist and one around yours. Pull away. Tug of war with bands.

If you have any questions on training with resistance bands - and you should - please contact me to ask at anytime. We have a 24-hour service center for inquiries and our clients to help them get them through their next home workout!