Is Exercise Always The Best Option?

Today I wanted to share a little story with you about exercise and how it may not always be the best option. My wife said to me the other day that she can't keep on going to her regular bootcamp sessions as she is going to put weight on due to her poor diet and drinking.

When she said this I smiled and thought to myself – wow she really gets it. I have tried teaching her stuff over the years but never knew if it was sinking in. By this statement I knew it had.

What she meant by saying this is that going to bootcamp or any circuit type training class and doing high rep high intensity training, which may include 100+ press ups and various other things which work the muscles in this way.

This training COMBINED with her current diet, which was crisps and wine – will make her "bulk up”.

The science behind it, for those interested, involves processes called anabolism and catabolism Anabolism or anabolic means growth, catabolism or catabolic means wastage.

This above combination of training and nutrition makes an anabolic environment - making you gain weight. You may of heard people say weight training doesn’t put weight on ladies, no need to be afraid etc which is true if your diet is spot on, BUT if its not, you WILL gain weight in the form of muscle/body fat.

WHY?

If you do high rep muscle work THREE times or more a week whether it be cross fit, bootcamp, circuits, kettlebells or similar it's likely you will have muscle soreness for a couple of days.

Then lets say you eat too many carbohydrates and drink some wine while you have said muscle soreness, you are creating the perfect environment for gaining weight.

If you do high volume weight training, 2-3 times a week, combined with a bad diet - you will put on weight. (when I say bad diet, for most people I probably mean only a little bit off plan, like a bit too much carbohydrates and a drop of wine will mess it up - basically you need to eat near perfect if you don’t want to gain weight when training like this - unless your naturally lean)

However if you eat clean and lean and do this type of work once a week and maybe do some strength work, of about 3-5 reps type stuff, bit of cardio exercise you can get into a great shape. Obviously its a bit more complicate than that but that’s the gist of it.

Cheers and thanks for reading,

Richard Clarke