Month: December 2015

While enjoying the beautiful weather that Wellington has to offer, the last thing you want to be worrying about when heading to the beach is cellulite.

Cellulite is the fat beneath the skin, making the skin look dimply and soft. Unfortunately women tend to suffer more from this than men do, we especially get it around our bums, thighs and hamstrings. Men don’t tend to get cellulite that often due to the fact that they have thicker skin which makes it harder to actually see the cellulite. The most common place a man gets cellulite tends to be their abdomens.    

What causes cellulite?

• Poor diet
• Fad dieting
• Slow metabolism
• Lack of physical activity
• Hormone changes
• Dehydration
• Total body fat

Tips to Fight Cellulite

Avoid Too Much Salt and Sugar
By eating a healthy diet, you can help reduce cellulite. Sugary foods gets stored in fat cells and causes them to expand. Limit your salt intake since sodium causes fluid retention, making cellulite appear even worse. Consume no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar each day, and stay away from foods containing more than 200 mg of sodium.

Drink Plenty of Water
Water helps flush out toxins that hide in the fat layers beneath the skin. Drink 8-10 glasses of water every day. Hydration also works to plump the skin and make it look less lumpy.

Regular Exercise
Ensure you are doing both cardio and weight training.  Cardio will help to strip the extra body fat off, and weight training will help to tone and tighten up the softer areas on your body.

Best Exercises to Fight Cellulite

1. Cardio
   Running is not only an awesome form of calorie-burning, heart-pumping cardio, it also doubles as a strength training workout for your lower body.

   Top Ride – this will help you build muscle and tone. The workout will focus on your glutes, hamstrings, thighs and calves. A 45min Top Ride class will also help you burn up to 500 calories!

2. Walking Lunges
   Targets your glutes, quads and hamstrings all at the same time
3. Plyometric Training 
   Fat burning workout and tones your body 

Squat jumps

Lunge jumps

Frog hops

Box jumps

4. Stiff Leg Deadlifts with Dumbbells/Barbell.
   Best exercise for your “butt smile” – the line where your glutes meet your hamstring

These are all tips and exercises that I follow myself and with great results!

For improved gains and faster results contact me for more advanced exercises such as Barbell Squats. Or if you would like some help and advice on reducing overall body fat please get in touch with me for a FREE consultation.

Email: sashatemaru@hotmail.com
Phone: 027 222 7660

Shoulders (deltoids) are often overlooked in training, especially by females.

Before I got started with a proper strength training plan, I only did cardio so I had very little muscle definition. But once I got started and saw the changes to my body I really began to enjoy training my shoulders. Not only for the overall look it gave me, but also because it helped with everyday tasks as I got stronger.

 Here are some benefits of shoulder training:

• Prehab

Growing and developing your strength and the muscles in your shoulders will prevent future injuries as you are improving the stabilising muscles whilst training them.

• Aesthetics

Growing your shoulders will make your waist look smaller – without doing 100 crunches!

Make sure to focus on endurance (high reps/low weight) deltoid exercises in the beginning months of your shoulder development as the deltoids are made up of many fibres, most of which are slow twitch fibres.

Training Tips

• Do not do fast or uncontrolled movements – our shoulder joints are delicate (weak at the start, but once you build up the strength the movements should feel a bit more stable). Support comes from regular exercises that help train those shoulder muscles.
• Make sure not to shrug your shoulders when doing any of these exercises and keep your neck relaxed.

Here are my top shoulder exercises to target the deltoids:

1. Lateral raises

Isolating the lateral deltoids – make sure the movement is originating in the shoulder. Keep your torso solid. Using a dumbbell in each hand raise them out to the sides, no higher than shoulder height. Have a slight bend in your elbow. Keep the weight light.

2. Shoulder press

Make sure your back is kept straight, if you have an arch in your back you will start to use other muscles, e.g. pectorals (chest). Best to start with a seated shoulder press – use the support of the seat to help balance you whilst pressing the weight above your head. Try the shoulder press machines or dumbbells.

3. Front raises

This can be done with a barbell weight plate, hold the plate at the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions. Slowly raise the plate from your “thighs to your eyes”. You don’t want to go too much higher than shoulder level. Do not swing the weight or have more than a slight bend in your elbows.

4. Rear delt flys / Reverse flys

These are important for good posture (more for males – as they tend to train chest more than females so it will pull them back instead of rounding shoulders) and for a full rounded deltoid workout. Sitting with your chest against the vertical pad (facing the Pectoral Fly machine) place your arms at shoulder height out front, pull the handles (with arms remaining straight – with a slight bend in the elbow) outward and back – working the rear part of your shoulder.

If you haven’t already got a strength training plan then get in touch with one of our Fitness Consultants for a FREE workout programme, or contact our Personal Trainers for 1-on-1 training.