Today we will talk about healthy breakfast and the benefits of various types of training. Trainers will also share with you recommendations on how to chose the right weights for strength training.

1. What should a healthy breakfast include? Please share your breakfast recipe with us.

Svetlana Kulikova, CrossFit instructor



A healthy breakfast of a healthy person shall start with healthy foods. Breakfast should give your body the energy you need! Breakfast should be solid and nutritious!

Thus, the conclusion is we need cabrs in the morning! All carbs that our body gets with the breakfast will turn into energy. So go for oatmeals! But noway it should instant oatmeal! They are totally not worth eating! I start my morning with oatmeal with fruit. I add a banana to it to add an extra kick of sweetness. Sometimes, if i feel like it I add to banana some cherries or blackcurrant to break the sweetness and have an unusual sweet and sour taste!

Yuriy Shevchuk, AtletiCo Fitness Club trainer

 


Firstly, I want to draw attention that eating breakfast is a must. Because our body was staying hungry for the past 7-8 hours during sleep and ad to this few hours before bedtime. By skipping breakfast, our body gets into a state of stress, as a result, our metabolism starts slowing down and using our muscles as a source of energy, which brings nothing good for us. To avoid this, we must eat breakfast. Breakfast should be rich in carbs with some protein added. What does a health breakfast look like? Make sure you drink half glass of still water half an hour before breakfast. Soak 50-100 grams of dry oats in boiled water depending on your goals (weight loss or muscle gain), add 10-15 grams of nuts + scrambled eggs (no oil, of course): 1 whole egg + 2-3 egg whites, and some vegetables. Half an hour later after your breakfast, you can eat one fruit, an apple, for example.

Yaroslav Babych, Master of Sport of International grade in powerlifting, finalist of the Ukrainian bodybuilding championship



After a sleep, first we need to restore energy used during sleep, and supply our body with all essential vitamins and nutrients. Drink a glass of water as soon as you wake up. This will help to start your metabolism, and after 15-20 minutes you can have you breakfast. Breakfast should include slow digestible carbs, protein, healthy fats and vitamins. Such as, oats with some added flaxseed oil, 2-3 boiled eggs and fresh-squeezed juice. Those who ‘can’t’ eat in the morning, I recommend having a protein shake with some dry oats and 1-2 capsules of vitamins and minerals added. A regular breakfast is the key to sustainable and guaranteed weight loss.

Valeria Ivashchenko, fitness director, VIP-Instructor at BodyArt fitness



A regular breakfast is the key to sustainable and guaranteed weight loss. First, your metabolism is faster in the morning than in the afternoon or at night, so all calories you get in the morning will be burnt during your daily activity. Make sure you have both slow and fast carbs for breakfast, with the ratio 70% of slow carbs and 30% of fast carbs Your breakfast should include such foods as

  • Dairy products – they contain calcium, B vitamins, enhance your digestive and immune systems.
  • Oatmeal or buckwheat are useful because they contain vitamins, especially B-group vitamins, minerals (magnesium, potassium, iron, phosphorus), and they have the best nutritional composition compared to other grains.
  • Cottage cheese is rich in protein, essential amino acids, vitamins, calcium and phosphorus. Cottage cheese is also well assimilated by our body.
  • Cheese is a source of calcium and protein. It energizes and boosts mood.
  • Fruits are a source of carbs, vitamins, minerals and microelements. Seek eating at least 3 fruits a day starting with breakfast. Fiber and protein rich foods for breakfast will help you keep you feeling full until lunchtime without snacking. By neglecting breakfast you miss out on a wide range of nutrients – fiber, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and folic acid.


Here are few healthy breakfast ideas:

  • Oatmeal with fruit;
  • Low-fat cottage cheese, fruit.

Many people think by skipping breakfast they reduce their daily calorie intake and this is good for their health and helps to lose weight. But this is not the case! Moreover, skipping breakfast will make you eating later at nigh, thus causing your metabolism to slow down. People who skip breakfast are more likely to be obese, probably because they tend to eat much more than usual on the same day. Remember that a healthy breakfast is very important.

2. What are the most efficient workouts?

Svetlana Kulikova, CrossFit instructor

 


Effective training… I think everyone would have different expectations from their workouts. If you want to increase endurance, then light weight and circuit workouts for the maximum amount of reps would help you. If you want to lose weight and you don’t care about building muscles, you can torture yourself with exhaustive cardio. Do you want to lose some fat but keep muscles? Then opt for a combination of strength and cardio training. Yet through it all, clean eating would always be a good thing to do! Without it, none of your training efforts would bring result!

There is only one conclusion – result would always depend on your goals. As an instructor, I believe that any person should strive for full and coherent development! And training is effective only then when my client is living a full life, feels great and looks attractive. And this means, he or she must get rid of excess weight and be able to do correct pull ups, push ups, running and squats! To have strong core, beautiful posture and great mood. In simple words, to perform better, to teach your body to function properly and keep it in great shape for many years!

Yuriy Shevchuk, AtletiCo Fitness Club trainer

 


In fact, everything depends on your goals – why do you need a certain type of training, for example: cardio improves endurance and increases energy expenditure to the maximum which helps to lose weight, strength training builds muscle mass, increases strength performance, strength volume training to make your body leaner, increase caloric expenditure, etc. Each type of training is effective if you have set clear goals – what exactly you want to achieve. The key to success is setting clear and specific goal, only then a type of training is chosen for a person, and training and meal plan are designed. If all what is listed above was picked in view of the person’s goals, and if the person follows all recommendations not only in the gym but outside of it (keeping diet), then he or she will definitely have the results and his or her training will be effective (efficient).

Yaroslav Babych, Master of Sports of International grade in powerlifting, finalist of the Ukrainian bodybuilding championship

 


So far, there is nothing better than gym workouts if someone wants to build muscles. A huge variety of gym machines will engage even the most stubborn problem areas, and varying training load will help to avoid muscular adaptation. So, if we talk about changing muscle proportions and tone, then gym is an undoubted leader. If we talk about weight loss, then adding cardio should be considered, since it speeds up your metabolism, improves your heart health and vigour, and helps to lose weight. However, as I said in the last issue, no training will be effective without a strict control of your diet. And finally, group training. I consider them the least effective type of training, since there is no individualized approach in choosing loads, there is no visible progress in weights, and nobody controls your diet and makes necessary adjustments. For me, it is the same cardio just a bit more varied. Another thing is stretching or yoga group classes to complement your main gym and cardio routine. Such exercises help release tight muscles, improve your flexibility and help to clear your mind of problems.

3. How to choose the right weight for strength training? (Women have many fears and myths about lifting heavy. They don’t want to have large soccer legs, big neck etc. When should you increase weights?)

Svetlana Kulikova, CrossFit instructor

 


To pick up right weight for your strength training, first decide on what do you want. Do you want to build muscles? Do you want to strengthen your muscles and build up stamina? Or do you want explosive training? In each of these cases, different criteria will be followed when choosing weights for strength exercises.

If we talk about shaping up your buttock, pick the weights where you can do five sets of 8-10 reps with the last reps being challenging and close to failure. You must be able to complete the exercise. If you increase weights, then reduce the number of reps. For stamina-increasing exercises, go for average weights and increase the number of reps to 15. Alternate between muscle growth and stamina-increasing exercises. Your muscles should not only look good but do good in everyday uses! Also, don’t forget to warm up and cool down after a workout! Follow a linear progression with weights! Firstly, perform any exercise using your own weight. Increase weights with each warm up set until you reach your work weight.

Yuriy Shevchuk, AtletiCo Fitness Club trainer

 


Each training program will have various approaches to choosing the right amount of work weight for strength workouts, but most of them follow roughly the same scheme which we show below using an actual example: According to the program, an athlete must do 12 reps of bench press to failure (it means when you struggle to complete the last rep). And, say, he benches presses 20 kg x 15 reps and this is not to failure. We stop and add another 10 kg. He presses 30 kg x 15 reps and now this is challenging for him. After a rest we add another 5 kg, press 15 reps and feeling muscle failure. But our goal is 12 repetitions, so we need to increase our work weight, because the lower repetitions we do, the heavier work weight should be. We add another 2.5 kg and press 47.5 kg x 12 reps, we feel a muscular failure on the 12th rep. By trial, we’ve learnt that our work weight for 12 reps of this exercise and with this technique is 47.5 kg.

The same scheme applies to other exercises. Weights should be increased when we feel we can perform a certain exercise, without compromising our technique, for a given amount of reps and with a given amount of weight, rather easily, and instead of, say, 12 reps we can press 3-4 reps more, this is when we can increase our work weight by 1 to 5 kg (or more, depending on the exercise), so that we could do our planned 12 reps to failure (where we train to failure). The most important here is to keep proper technique.

Talking about women’s fears and myths – nature created female body so that she (a woman. – Ed.) cannot build big muscles and bulk up. However, using men-specific training programs a woman has a risk to getting a slightly masculine body since she will be growing those muscles which shall not be targeted during training. That is why some exercise, such as leg press, squats have variations for women, as well as there are totally female exercises, such as machine glute kickbacks. Also, a proper exercise technique is something that also matters to ensure that the targeting muscle is engaged at all times during a set.

Yaroslav Babych, Master of Sports of International grade in powerlifting, finalist of the Ukrainian bodybuilding championship

 


First thing you need to do is master all exercise techniques, and only having done that you can start thinking of weight progressing. The weight should be heavy enough to allow you to perform a planned amount of repetitions with good form. For the upper body, this is usually 12-15 repetitions, for the lower body – 3-4 sets of 15-20 reps.

Women should not be afraid to lift weights since their hormonal profile does allow build muscle mass in excess of what they need, only pro athletes can do that by using muscle-building drugs. Some ladies complain that only looking at weights makes them feel pumped up, but trust me, the truth is something else. The thing is that usually after the first workouts muscles may swell due to rapidly improved muscle tone, but this will go away after a month of good training. There is also another common reason why body mass increases during early stages. Having started going to the gym, a person allows regular food indulgences justifying this by the fact that he or she trains now and can allow a little more than usual. But keep in mind that strength training burns somewhat 300-500 calories at a max, and this energy is compensated rather easily, while a doughnut or a chocolate you’ve eaten is more likely to settle on your hips, and this has nothing to do with training. A well-designed training plan and strict adherence to the diet will help you get the desired result in the shortest possible time.

The conclusion is simple – always eat your breakfast. Not a snack, but a breakfast made of healthy and high-carb foods. Because breakfast is responsible that your body properly functions throughout the day. As for strength exercises in the gym – remember that proper form always comes first in order to avoid injuries and get the desired result.

Source: Obozrevatel