I’ve had this request on multiple occasions. It’s not something I’ve made up for this post. 

People want to feel sore from their workouts and to wear that as a badge of honor in the following days that some quality work has been put in. But soreness really isn’t the one. 

Soreness definitely isn’t a reliable indicator for a good hypertrophy workout.

I’ve got an example for you (albeit a painful memory).

I went to a muay thai class once.

You can probably already see where this is going. 

I was kicked in the leg many times over the course of the hour class, and even with holding a pad up against my thigh, it hurts. The next morning I was incredibly sore in the thighs, the same spot I was kicked into by someone a few weight classes above. 

This was probably only partly the reason there was soreness/muscle damage, another reason would be that I had taken part in an activity I wasn’t used to. One which involved many eccentric contractions (lengthening muscle actions) and raising my leg to kick many times.

Needless to say I didn’t proudly wear this soreness the same way, but my point remains the same. I didn’t judge the quality of that training session on the basis of how sore I was the next day. I judged it based on what I learnt, the time I got to spend developing kicking skill (in this case), as well as the people and coaches I interacted with.

Bringing it back…

Let’s bring this back to gym workouts with a focus on building muscle as that’s likely why you’re here.

Is soreness the primary sign of a good workout? No.
Is soreness a sign of a good workout? Again, not really, no.

Soreness can just be an indicator you’ve had some new stimulus, new workload you’re not yet adapted to, or in my case you’ve been kicked in the leg a lot. 

Being excessively sore though, is actually a hindrance. It means you’ve done too much, especially if it lasts longer than 3 days. In my experience, It can turn beginners off returning to the gym completely. It can also mean working on a muscle less frequently, less motivation and less movement outside of the gym.

If you do find yourself in this situation, where you’re super sore, getting in some movements like walking or getting in a repeated session with much lower intensity can be helpful. But more importantly, take it a bit easier.

So what can you use as a better indicator?

Progressive overload is a much better sign of a good workout. Have you done more than last time? Have you made progress? 

This can be in the form of completing another set on a given exercise, another rep, increasing the weight, decreasing rest time, improving technique at the same weight etc. There are many forms of progressive overload. But the idea is simple, be better than last time.

This is how the effectiveness of sessions should be judged, not the level of soreness. 

It doesn’t take much to get sore (if that’s the primary aim of a workout). You can get to a muay thai class and get kicked in the legs for an hour, you’ll get incredibly sore. Don’t recommend it.

In the case of working legs, You could also do some crazy things like superset barbell squats with dumbbell lunges for 15 minutes. Especially if those sets are fairly heavy and intense. 

But again, this should never be your primary intention of a workout.

A properly structured program, which allows you to progress slowly and steadily weekly shouldn’t really have you with any unbearable soreness. Feeling your sessions slightly, absolutely, but never the kind of soreness you get where you’re struggling to walk for 5 days. 

That’s a good sign you’ve pushed it too hard.

So keep this in mind moving forwards. 

Progression is a sign of a good strength and hypertrophy workout, soreness isn’t.

The post Soreness Isn’t the One appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

Today I want to talk about your activity outside of the gym.

If you prefer video to written content you can watch the video at the bottom of this post instead.

You see, we have multiple ways we burn calories throughout the day. Of those, we have EAT and NEAT. EAT is exercise activity thermogenesis which is just a fancy way of saying the calories we burn during intentional exercise. NEAT is non exercise activity, which is unintentional exercise through things like fidgeting, walking and cleaning.

As you can see we burn far more calories through NEAT than we do with EAT. In other words the activity you have outside of the gym makes up a larger chunk of daily calorie expenditure than the efforts in the gym. This is probably surprising as you’re likely not even considering it.

Now, just to be clear I’m not trying to discourage you from going to the gym. I’m simply trying to highlight the importance of your efforts outside of the gym. We are all looking for the optimal training and nutrition plans but we should also be looking at our NEAT.

The easiest way we can do this is to have a daily step count goal.

NEAT makes up a larger chunk than EAT remember. So improving your step count will contribute to your fat loss goals. But I’d like to point you to some great new research to highlight the other benefits to our health and longevity from improving step counts.

This 2021 meta analysis by Jayedi et al. found a dose response association between the amount of steps done daily and the protective health benefits. What this means in simple terms is the higher the step count, the lower the risk of death (by all causes). 

Researchers found a 12% lower rate of all cause mortality per 1000 steps done. This is huge! To put this into perspective resistance training offers a 21% lower all cause mortality rate vs no exercise at all. For more context smoking and alcohol consumption increase our risk of all cause mortality, so does being obese.

“Walk away from an early grave”

– Greg Nuckols

Another review from 2015 found increasing step count through a walking intervention reduced depression, blood pressure, resting heart rate, body fat, BMI and total cholesterol whilst increasing VO2 max.

My own progress

I started to prioritise my own step count once I saw this research.

I’m currently aiming for 7.5k a day which is achievable and sustainable for me and a significant improvement on my average for 2021. This is something I began at the beginning of the year and I’ve already noticed a much clearer head and a reduced resting heart rate. 

We can improve step counts by taking the stairs instead of a lift, playing with your kids or parking further away from work. Getting up regularly in the office can have a big impact too. Remember all movement and steps add up across the day. It doesn’t need to be a dedicated 90 min walk to reach the goal, this is hard for most people to schedule. Having a treadmill at home massively helps too, especially for those days I’m 1000 or 2000 under my goal.

Think about accumulation throughout the day. If you’ve read my small change, big impact post, you’ll know I love the accumulation mindset. Small actions can seem insignificant alone but when tallied up can definitely be substantial.

To summarize, it’s great spending an hour in the gym multiple times per week, strength training does have longevity benefits, but there really is no comparison to moving more across the day.

The post Why You Should Focus on Your NEAT appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

If you can find a way to decrease caloric intake without feeling like crap, your chances of success are greater because it’ll be easier to stick with it over the long run.

Let’s suppose someone eats 3 Rotiya every night as part of their family meal and they have a few pounds to lose. The go to strategy is usually a restrictive diet and some intense cardio based training.

It’s very easy to do too much. It’s one of the reasons people feel overwhelmed quickly and give up.

There are small things we can do which can have a big impact, although very unsexy and much slower in pace, you’ll be surprised how the small efforts can accumulate. Reducing daily Roti intake by 1 can be one of these things, let’s break it down. 

1 Roti = 120 calories (average size)
3 Rotiya per day = 360 calories
3 Rotiya per day for a week = 2520 calories

But remember we want to reduce by 1 a day.

2 Rotiya per day for a week = 1680 calories. So just by reducing 1 Roti per day there is a saving of 840 calories a week (2520 – 1680). 

Just so you know there is 3500 calories in a pound of fat. 

3500 / 840 = 4.166

This means with all else kept the same, no additional steps, no additional exercise, no diet, simply by reducing 1 roti per day we can lose a pound of fat in just over 4 weeks. 

This is significant. A pound every month is 12 pounds a year (5.4kg).

The important thing here is highlighted in the quote at the beginning of this post. You will not feel like crap choosing a method like this, it’s simple to do and stick to and doesn’t restrict you from eating Roti. 

I like to think of this sort of method as accumulating impact. It isn’t a big impact intervention by any means, but it accumulates over time to have a sustained and meaningful impact. The maths shows this. 

Another example

One of my goals is to bring up my back muscles and pulling strength. My chosen method is to work on pull-ups daily.

Rather than doing 3-6 sets once or twice a week which is fairly typical in most programs I do. I’m going to be doing 20 every single day.

For the record the most I’ve ever done in one go is 26, just so you’ve got some reference to my pull-up strength. So doing 20 across a day, broken up into as many sets as I wish really isn’t difficult at all. I could do two sets of 10, one in the morning and another in the evening or as I prefer I could break it down into much smaller sets every time I walk past my garage which has the pull-up bar. 

Doing things this way means I’m active throughout the day and my fatigue is managed really well.

20 pull-ups daily = 140 reps weekly
20 pull-ups daily = 606 reps monthly
20 pull-ups daily = 7280 reps yearly

Usually in the gym I will do pull-ups on two days (upper body days) and might do 50 total reps a week. 

50 pull-ups weekly = 2600 reps yearly

7280 reps is just under triple the amount of pull-ups I would normally do in my gym programs (based on 50 reps a week). See how they accumulate? 

In other words I would need nearly 3 years of pull-ups in my gym program (50 a week) to make up the amount of pull-ups I can accumulate in 1 year by doing 20 daily at home, broken up into easy to manage sets. 

What to takeaway

There are some easy pickings, small changes we barely notice which can have a meaningful impact over the long term if we ignore the immediate result.

Hopefully you can apply this method to an area where you feel you’re lacking. Maybe it’s removing that 1 Roti if you want to control some weight gain you’ve been noticing, maybe it’s working on pull-ups if like me, pulling strength needs work or maybe you want to read more. 

10 pages a day is something I’ve been doing for a long time successfully. That equates to 3650 pages a year! Or just over twelve 300 page books.

10 pages, 1 less Roti, 20 pull-ups (in my case) are such small changes, but they have such a big impact.

I hope this helps you get some accumulative gains.

The post Eat 1 Less Roti a Day – Small Change, Big Impact appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

Some definitions to begin with

• Reps (repetitions) – One complete motion of an exercise
• Sets – A group of consecutive reps
• Top Set – The last and heaviest set for an exercise
• Failure – reaching the stage you’re unable to complete another complete motion or rep
• RPE – Rate of perceived exertion on a scale of 1-10 (more in depth definition below)

3 x 8 

Or

3 x 20

You may have seen these on a workout plan at some point.

Three sets of eight is going to be a very different intensity and weight to three sets of twenty reps.

But how do we select the weight? Should it be light or heavy? Do we use heavy weight for sets of eight and light weight for sets of twenty or keep it light on both setups?

The answer is you always use a weight that’s challenging for the rep range to get maximum benefits. We want to be close to failure, having to struggle a little towards the end of the set in order to optimise muscle fiber recruitment and our gains. Doing a set of eight reps with something you can do thirty with won’t be very helpful as it won’t be intense enough.

Too often I see people unhappy with their results in the gym but when I request videos of them performing some key compound exercises the intensity is far too low. I see females doing goblet squats and kettlebell swings with 10kg kettlebells when they are clearly able to push the same rep range with 25kg.

This leads me onto another point and the real reason I think people use light weights for really non-intense sets – they believe light weights tone or tighten the body. This isn’t true. 

Muscles either hypertrophy (get bigger) or atrophy (get smaller). They can stay the same size too, but that’s about as fun as them getting smaller. There is no such thing as toning muscles. You can get a ‘toned’ effect by increasing muscle size and reducing body fat percentage. That is certainly possible (and usually what people are referring to).

The intention when lifting weights should always be to help us increase muscle mass, trying to create a hypertrophy response. This is done with close to failure sets, intense enough sets for the given rep range.

So if you see 3 x 8 written on a plan. Ensure each set (or the top set – depending on how your program works) you’re going close to failure. Maybe a rep or two short of failure to avoid too much fatigue.

The same goes if you see 3 x 20 written. Each set (or the top set) you should be going close to failure. The set should be challenging enough for you to nearly fail at the 20th rep. When you get off the set, you want the sensation that if you tried to dig real deep you’d be able to complete one or two more reps maximum. For those of you that know the RPE scale, this would be RPE 8 or 9. Read below if you aren’t familiar with RPE.

RPE is rate of perceived exertion. The scale is 1 – 10. 1 being practically a pointless set, no real stimulus. 10 being I couldn’t do anymore reps with a gun to my head (complete failure). 8 represents two more reps in the tank and 9 represents 1 more rep in the tank.

I want to conclude by saying don’t be afraid of heavy weights. Sometimes it can be a bit of a mental hurdle to jump over to pick up something you’ve never attempted before but so long as you’ve taken the steps to progress there and not put a random weight on, I’m sure you’ll be fine. Usually you want to increment up slowly, like adding 2.5kg per session to the top set.

Don’t be afraid to push the intensity (so long as your technique is down).

You’ll get better gains.

The post Should You Lift with Light Weights or Heavy Weights? appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

Adherence is essentially your ability to stick to something. So dietary adherence is your ability to stick to your diet and it’s highly important. I would rank it second to being in a calorie deficit.

There are many things which can play a role in your ability to stick to your diet, the taste, the restriction, the satisfaction and many more. This is why I love the following quote:

The most successful diet is the one that allows you to adhere to and sustain being in a deficit. 

Let’s break this down, what does it mean? Well let’s suppose someone is trying out a keto warrior diet with one meal a day of very high fat intake. They may have real trouble staying away from food during the day and then may be confused about what to eat on their single meal. This means they aren’t very likely to adhere to this type of protocol. Someone who loves bacon, cheese, bulletproof coffees and avocados however will probably love this approach, making them far more likely to adhere to and sustain this approach.

This is where we may differ as individuals.

Person A may really enjoy intermittent fasting as it allows them to be in a calorie deficit without them really withdrawing from the foods they enjoy.

Person B however may get headaches from being fasted and really enjoys eating breakfast with family. The difference here is that person A may be able to manage IF for an entire lifetime, a lifestyle change, but person B may not last a month. So for them another approach is needed.

The reason this is important to discuss  is because we need to think lifestyle change when discussing big results and long term meaningful change. 

It doesn’t need to be 100%

The 80:20 rule

I want to start with the 80:20 rule for dieting.

If you can enjoy 20% of what you eat from ‘bad’ or ‘cheat’ foods then you’ll actually do so much better long term as opposed to restricting yourself too much and trying to go 100% ‘clean’. 

*I don’t like the words clean, good, bad or cheat too much. But for the sake of my point the words clean or good are used to describe whole, unprocessed foods and the words bad or cheat are used to describe highly processed foods. You know which ones. 

This rule, although it probably seems super simple is quite important. If you can feel like you’re not dieting and still getting to enjoy 20% of your calories everyday, you’re helping set yourself up for success.

As a secondary tip to the above rule if you love gobi (cauliflower) but hate broccoli, don’t make your dieting journey a misery by forcing yourself to eat broccoli just because a fitness guru said so. Fitness gurus tend to have a thing for chicken breast and broccoli, nobody needs to eat in a boring way to lose fat. You need to be in a calorie deficit, sure, and we’ll do so much better making the process as fun as possible.

An extra serving of patience 

The second thing I want to go into is unrealistic goals and equally extreme approaches to get there. Unfortunately people’s expectations of results and timelines have been largely skewed. They may then opt for a really extreme deficit in order to reach said goal in 12 weeks. This is usually a recipe for disaster as the more restrictive the approach the less sustainable (usually).

It’s important to have a realistic expectation from the get go, this is where a trainer or coach can be useful. They’ll be able to tell you whether your goal is realistic or not. Aiming to lose 0.5% – 1% bodyweight per week is a great place to start.

Tips for adherence: 

• Get a partner, sibling or friend on the journey with you (you’ll hold each other accountable) 
• Enjoy 20% of your daily calories (it’ll be so much more enjoyable)
• Keep problem foods away from home (this will prevent temptations and keep you in check)
• Track weekly calories instead of daily (knowing you can fix things the next day and over the course of the week is important for you to not feel like a failure and give up)
• Make roti work (it’s super easy as it is made at home daily)
• Get creative with sides, salads and spices (making boring things tasty)

The post The Most Important Dieting Word Nobody Mentions – Adherence appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

Some Context

I’m sharing these because it’s important for you to understand what’s in your hands and what isn’t. You hitting 10,000 steps today or 120g protein is totally in your hands. Losing 5kg fat in a month isn’t necessarily. It’s really important you are able to check your efforts against a list so you can be honest with yourself about your reactions to your results.

Didn’t check everything off the list? Maybe you can do some more, maybe you shouldn’t be too upset with your results.

Did check everything off the list? Cool, then chill, you’re doing all you can, the rest is out of your hands. This is where things like genetics come into play.

With my own training, I’d love to add 10kg to my bench press ASAP. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like to speed up their results. But it’s important to note it doesn’t matter how well person X is doing or how quickly they put 25kg on their bench press. Comparison is the thief of joy.

So long as I show up, hit bench press often and meet the list on the ‘looking to get jacked quicker’ graphic, I’ll get there soon enough.

Some conversations I’ve had with clients

I’ve had some interesting questions in the past from dedicated clients interested in fat loss that go like this: 

So Azad, week 1 done. It’s been great! I’ve hit my step count 4 days of the week and protein goals daily, not missed a workout either which took me longer than 60 minutes as I needed to get used to the techniques. I’ve lost 0.8kg, happy with this start. Was wondering if I could do more? Was hoping to lose over 1kg a week to get to my goal in 3 months. 

I would consider this a reasonable question. They’ve clearly made an effort in the gym, are mindful of technique before progressing, have hit protein goals (key) and are improving with step count. 

So sure, there is slightly more we can do, we can take that step count success from 4 days to 7 days. Plus the weekly progressions made in the gym will have some impact. But past that I would ask them to keep in mind up to 1% of body weight loss per week is safe and recommended. We don’t really want to go beyond this.

Another email I’ve had has looked like this: 

Hi Azad, so I just concluded the 8 week phase and I’m not too happy. Was expecting to have lost more since I’ve done most workouts and kept calories in check during the week. I’m now 79kg which is 3kg down and I’ve finally been able to hit my protein goal consistently in the last few weeks. To be honest work has been pretty manic and my stress and sleep levels have been affected. I’ve seen this fat burner, was thinking of getting it, how much quicker can I see results?

We dove a little deeper in some emails and I saw some images too, I was very happy with progress considering the circumstances, the client (who shall remain nameless) didn’t see it that way though. I can’t blame him for having unreasonable expectations, it’s my job to make them clear and explain the rate of progress and what we can do to maximise results safely and sustainably based on the science. 

This guy was on the path to getting leaner than ever, despite his view of it going slowly, he was moving forwards and that’s what’s important. 

Slow progress is better than no progress.

He had only just found his feet with protein intake, this is something that is a big factor for someone’s success with their progress. Also a lot more could have been done to maximise results. Step count could have been improved massively, we could have swapped a high intensity weights session for an hours walk outdoors to help with stress and we could have managed weekly calories in a way to ensure extra food consumed on weekends with family would keep him in a deficit across the week.

The fat burner wouldn’t have had any effect and would have simply been a knock to the wallet. It was an unreasonable suggestion when some of the fundamentals could still improve significantly.

Unfortunately due to perceived slow results, he gave up.

After this point I realised expectations need to be made clear from the get go.

So what should I expect? 

0.5% – 1% bodyweight loss per week is fat loss is your goal. Anything more will probably mean you’re really hungry, pushing to an unsustainable level and/or not appreciating that it’s a marathon not a sprint. Going more than this range can start to affect hormones too. 

1% weight gain a month if muscle building is your goal. Anything more will probably mean excessive body fat gain which will have to be worked off in future. 

So what can I celebrate? 

Most of the time the small wins are ignored. 

In the case of the second client example I gave above, he managed to get to grips with protein intake goals, hit almost every single gym session despite a stressed period of work, he tracked nutrition intake for a record number of days and his jeans fit better. 

It is also a massive win to have not given up and actually gained weight (gone backwards). This is not uncommon when people face a lot of work stress and have as many family gatherings as he did. These are both situations commonly linked to excessive calorie consumption.

Here are a list of small wins you should celebrate: 

• Your trouser belt fastening one notch tighter 
• Your RHR (resting heart rate) improving (getting lower)
• Getting less tired climbing up stairs 
• Having better understanding and intake of protein 
• Having better understanding and intake of fiber
• Being more mindful about nutrition through tracking
• Lifting the same weight without as much fatigue as previously
• Having better day to day mood 
• Being able to handle stress better 
• Being more energetic throughout the day
• Noticing your joints don’t have as many niggles and pains
• Noticing your strength improve weekly 
• Noticing the bag of groceries feels lighter
• Having better sleep 
• Having more regular digestion
• Having people notice some progress 
• You stuck to a program for longer than ever 
• Completing more reps with the same weight as last week 
• Feeling less tired and sore from the same workout 

There are so many things we should celebrate, add to that the bigger wins of actually moving in the right direction towards your goals and you really have nothing to be upset about. 

If you ever find yourself in that situation feeling things should be happening quicker look back at these images as a checklist. Can you honestly say you’ve managed to hit each point? If you can then chill, you’re doing all you can. 

Focus on the small wins. 

The post Checklists for Optimal Results & Celebrating Small Wins appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

Gyms are one of the key places where people destress as well as work on self improvement. Many of these spaces are now shut around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s never been more important to practice self care through exercise from home. It acts as a nice distraction from all the headlines too. 

There are many home workout ideas going around social media right now. Everyone seems to be doing star jumps and finding some use of their sofa. What I’ve created is a little different. You don’t need to put your muscle and strength goals on the backstep.

I have created what I think is the most thorough and complete home workout routine for building muscle at home. There’s an accompanying video too. You can find it at the bottom of this page. I recommend going through the routine here first though.

What you’ll need:

• A mindset for self improvement
• Some resistance bands (super cheap and lightweight way to workout anywhere)
• A TRX suspension trainer (you can use a rolled towel hooked around a door too)
• Pullup bar (ideal for back training and a great place to hook up your TRX)
• A slider (you can use a magazine, a shoe cover, or a bag around your feet too)

Keep in mind most of the exercises are bodyweight-based (only 7 out of 24 exercises require the equipment above). However, having a pull-up bar and a TRX really take things to the next level, especially for back muscles. These are cheap relative to normal home-gym setups. Total investment is around £70-£80.

Home workouts tend to be cardio and circuit based with an emphasis on just maintaining your gains that you built up in the gym. Not this one though. This routine will build muscle and strength across every muscle you can think of.

The Routine

I have split exercises into 4 different categories:

• Push muscles (chest, shoulders, and triceps)
• Pull muscles (traps, lats, rear delts, and biceps)
• Leg muscles (quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves)
• Abs (upper, lower, and obliques)

1 workout will consist of 1 push exercise, 1 pull exercise, 1 leg exercise and an abs exercise to finish.

There are 6 exercises in each category, giving you plenty of variety and allowing you to work on different areas too.

You could just simply choose which exercises you wanted to do from each category, but you’ll probably be paralysed by choice, or you’ll just stick to what you like and are comfortable with.

The Fun

I have a better way.

Roll a dice (or download an app if you don’t have dice). Roll once for each category. Each exercise has a number and whatever you roll is the move you do that day. This will remove choice, give you a fun way to generate a random exercise for the day, and give you 1200+ possible workout combinations.

For example, if you roll a 1, four times in a row you will be doing pushups, chinups, bulgarian split squats, and bicycle crunches for that session. An incredible full body workout.

You should aim for 3 sets of 8-20 reps for each exercise. That rep range is important because the exercise needs to be intense enough for you to gain muscle. Keep in mind you should get close to failure (but not actual failure) on each set. Think of keeping 2 reps in the tank (2 RIR – reps in reserve).

Exercise intensity must be adjusted for you to get within this range. Normal push-ups are easy for some people. If this is you, you can do clap push-ups or decline push-ups. Likewise if you struggle with normal push-ups, the intensity is too difficult meaning you should do knee push-ups or incline push-ups to get within 8-20 reps.

There’s nothing magical about that rep range, it just allows us to manage the intensity. I go more in depth on adjusting the intensity for each exercise on the video.

You should focus on just getting close to failure on the abs exercises. You’ll probably do more than 20 reps on some of them, that’s fine.

Because a workout will only be 4 exercises, you can be done within 30 minutes (including warm-up time if we have 60 seconds rest between sets).

The Frequency

This workout can be done 6 times per week.

Alternatively if you only have 3 available days per week and don’t mind longer sessions (around an hour), you can roll twice for each category giving you 2 push exercises, 2 pull exercises, 2 leg exercises and 2 abs exercises per session. This setup will be 3 x longer full body workouts a week.

Check out the accompanying video. Here you will find techniques of all 24 exercises, cues you should be thinking about, and how to adjust the intensity for all too.

I hope you enjoy this workout.

The post The Only Home Workout Routine You’ll Ever Need appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

It probably falls within the 1.6g – 2.2g per KG bodyweight range daily but isn’t where it should be at the upper end of that range. That’s how you should be looking at these ranges if you don’t eat animal products, you should be aiming for the higher number.

My bodyweight is around 82kg at the time of writing this. That means I need 131g (1.6 x 82) – 180g (2.2 x 82) protein daily. 

As someone who doesn’t eat animal products, I should be shooting for the upper end, 180g daily, and it wouldn’t hurt to get some extra protein to cover protein quality issues. Let’s round up to a nice and even 200g a day.

Well, going back to my original point, I’m eating much less than this on most days.

Expense is a possible reason. I mean it’s not cheap to keep pounding meat alternatives and soya products in order to get 40g protein per meal. Another reason is always limiting myself to 1 protein shake a day, I’m unsure why I did this, but I digress.

The tofu pieces I really enjoy eating cost £2.50 a box and serve up 28g protein. I only usually eat half a box at a time to go with my chol and daal (rice and lentils).

Quorn vegan pieces or strips cost £2.50 a pack (280g) and serve up around 40g protein. These are excellent for curries, wraps and stir frys!

Seitan, lentils and even soya milk are more cost effective ways of getting protein in however there is a protein quality issue with the first two mentioned. With lentils you’re also dealing with lots of calories in order to get 30g protein. 

This is where protein powders come in. Whether you’re vegetarian and consume whey protein or whether you’re vegan and consume plant based powder/blends you’ll be looking at paying around 40-60p per 30g protein hit.

There’s not just the fact that it’s super cost effective. It’s a high quality protein which is super cost effective. Protein powders are also the most calorie efficient way of getting protein in.

Over the last 4 or 5 years I’ve been closer to the idea of whole foods providing micronutritients and protein, and my protein intake had taken a knock because of it, if I reflect honestly. I thought I didn’t need shakes, and that I was doing fine with foods.

The reality is that it’s an easy addition to meals, it’s a cheap way of getting 30g protein and it’s high quality protein for muscle building (high in leucine).

Also if consuming a few more shakes a day will consistently get me in the 180-200g range daily, I’ll see much more gains.

You will see more gains too, if you ensure your protein intake is within the range it needs to be. Don’t forget you can use protein shakes as a cost effective and high quality way to get there.

The post A Case for Protein Shakes appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

It feels like the second we get a gym membership we forget about the humble pushup. I started off my whole fitness journey with home workout and doing pushups until I crashed nose first into the floor with failure. As soon as I joined a gym it goodbye to the exercise that got me there.

I switched it for the bench press and added a chest press machine, flys, pec dec and more to my chest building arsenal.

This was a mistake.

I’m now convinced the pushup, especially when we go weighted is a great accessory for the bench press. There’s a few reasons for this including natural movement of the scapula, being shoulder friendly and mimicking the same muscles used in the bench press because of the same flat angle.

Well, what about for those not interested in improving their bench press?

• The pushup can be done absolutely anywhere, just get down!
  
• It’s a great core exercise too, everything from top to toe needs to be tight and braced in order to maintain a straight position.
  
• It’s a fantastic chest, shoulder and tricep builder (let’s not forget these are the T-shirt muscles).
  
• It has amazing scalability for complete beginners who are overweight to elite bodyweight strength athletes.
  
• There are so many pushup variations you’ll never get bored in a lifetime!
  

Pushups ranked in order of difficulty (starting with easier and getting harder)

Wall pushups

Incline pushups

Knee pushups

Pushups

Decline pushups

Clap pushups

One arm pushups

Weighted pushups

Can’t manage normal pushups just yet? Scale back to knee pushups, still can’t do them? Scale back as necessary. If you can do knee pushups work on them until you’re comfortable and can do normal pushups.

Likewise, if normal pushups are so easy you’re not getting a training effect on them scale up to find a challenging variation.

There’s not a single person on this planet that can’t be challenged by some variation of the pushup.

Although this post has been heavily focused on the pushups, the ideas also extend out to other bodyweight exercises. For example the air squat (which everyone should be able to do), the pullup (which should never leave your back routine), the plank (another brilliant scalable exercise). 

Bodyweight exercises can be a part of anyone’s routine regardless of how advanced one gets. Don’t be fooled by their simplicity.

The post Don’t Forget Bodyweight Exercises appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.

This is something I actually picked up from my personal trainer course when I got certified and it is something that has only recently been reviewed in some solid research. 

The research actually shows this range is much larger than previously thought. We can actually do anywhere from 3 reps all the way up to 30 reps for hypertrophy (muscle-building) providing volume is equal and the sets are close to failure. In simple terms you can do very low reps (with a really heavy load) or very high reps of 30 or so (with a much lighter load) and still get similar results. Strength gains will not be the same, we’re just talking about hypertrophy here.

To sum up there really isn’t a hypertrophy rep range per se. Gains can be achieved through a wide variety of reps and loads. So you can go heavy if you enjoy that (and want strength gains) or keep it light if you wish to, but the best benefits probably come from mixing rep ranges. Just ensure technique and muscle tension is on point across all rep ranges and intensities. 

No difference between high repetitions and low repetitions – https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00154.2016 

No difference between varied and constant loading – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27042999 

2) I need to consume my protein shake within 30 mins post-workout

I used to run home, literally! I mean it makes sense, kickstart the recovery process by taking a protein shake with some urgency after a session. In reality though it’s almost meaningless. It’s worth mentioning the only case where some urgency is warranted is if you’ve trained fasted. If not, don’t worry about it. You have time to get home, shower, and you can just eat a meal. 

It is more important to focus on a calorie and protein target for the day depending on your goals. So as long as the protein target is broken up into 3 or 4 chunks across the day, you’ll probably max out your gains. Whether one of these comes directly post-workout or not is irrelevant. Don’t stress it.

Another thing worth mentioning is research has shown pre-exercise protein shakes (even less than a serving) can keep muscle amino acid levels elevated for 2 hours post-workout.

Your window of opportunity is a lot bigger and more flexible than you probably thought.

Far from definitive – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3577439/ 

3) I shouldn’t eat roti 

Yes, I’ve been there myself too. At one stage I would skip roti, daal, a side salad, and cottage cheese for a weight gainer shake. Silly really. Especially the terrible weight gainers I used to buy.

I even used to make pasta to go with my tuna bhurji as a carb source as opposed to roti, despite it being from the same source and having the same nutrition.

There really is no reason to skip eating roti as part of your diet on your fitness journeys. In fact there are some benefits. Let me get into them:

• A good source of fiber, manganese and selenium.
• Low in cholesterol and saturated fat (if you skip the butter)
• It’s usually made at home daily (if you’re South Asian)
• The process of dieting becomes easier if you can sit with family and have a traditional meal every night 
• The versatility of macros that can be achieved is great 

If you want to read more into roti and incorporating it into your fitness lifestyles you can here.

I want to close by saying the world of fitness and nutrition is vast and I truly love to learn. I like to think I’m taking in some information every single day whether listening to a podcast during workouts, reading articles for research, or flicking through the books I have. 

I keep absolutely every plan I’ve designed and all of my own training logs since day 1 too. It’s only when I scroll back into my old documents from the beginning of the decade that I realise just how much my own knowledge has advanced. That’s what inspired this post. 

It was a word document of my own diet, filled with meat, 260g protein a day (bro mode) and a pointer at the top encouraging myself to eat every 2-3 hours for ‘metabolism’. 

Call it a transformation post of my knowledge in the field.

The post 3 Dumb Things I Used to Believe appeared first on Azad Singh Fitness.