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How to get lean at home

January 28, 2016July 22, 2017 Alex CoombesLeave a comment

What is the secret to losing weight and toning up? Is there a big secret that you might be missing?!

As the title suggest, there is no secret!. We believe that you need to stop relying on the gym and start exercising at home! Realistically the 4 gym sessions you planned to do at the start of the week turns into 2 maybe 3 sessions.

To lose excess body fat you need to have a daily calorie deficit. This means that you need to use more calories than you consume every day. In order to make a difference over the week you then need to have this deficit at least 5 days a week.

Getting to the gym for an hour long session 5 times a week takes up a lot of time. By the time you’ve got to the gym got changed and got home it can be more like an hour and a half to 2 hours out of your day.

However these workouts don’t all have to be hour long sessions. You can burn around 300 calories during a 20 minute HIIT workout done in your own home. This could be all you need to create your daily caloric deficit and you don’t have to waste time packing your kit, traveling to and from the gym, with your own private shower and changing room at hand.

Try this 10 minute HIIT workout and see for yourself what can be done from your own living room.

Let us know how you get on with your HIIT workout!

Download our app and book a session with one of our highly rated trainers. Sessions are only £25, for a limited time only!

Functional strength training – without the gym

October 28, 2015November 1, 2018 Alex CoombesLeave a comment

What is your max deadlift/bench/squat/bicep curl….??

As a trainer and sportsman I’m often expected to meet these questions with responses of mammoth figures. Seriously, my max bicep curl?? Um I don’t know… how much does my cup of coffee weigh in the morning?

My max deadlift could completely vary from around 150-180kg, squat 120-160kg and my bench from 85-100kg all dependant on circumstances. What variation of the lift I use, my mood, daily food intake, hours of sleep and sometimes even what music I listen to.

The truth is I really don’t know and to be honest I don’t care much either.

How often in a day are you expected to push hundreds of kilos away from your chest or pick up an unnecessarily heavy weight from the floor and put it down repeatedly? I bet this happens very few times in a day, year or even a lifetime.

Now I’m not saying that conventional strength training and weight lifting isn’t beneficial at all and by no means am I saying that sportsmen should leave this out of their programming. I just want to talk about what we at TruBe believe true functional strength is.

While training with good form (neutral spine, perfect joint alignment etc) is highly important when grooving basic movement patterns, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that our bodies still have the ability to perform exercises outside of these perfect movements. They can extend, flex and rotate at many joints in many different planes and positions.

In daily life your joints will be required to leave their ‘neutral’ positions many times and also during sporting situations whilst taking in large amounts of force. This is why it is not only important to train your neutral positions but to also get comfortable performing multidirectional exercises to help you to improve your strength, power, stability and therefore overall athleticism and functional ability.

You’d be kicking yourself if you picked up an injury in a position that your body should be able to deal with, but you didn’t train it because deadlifting is much more fun and your buddies said ‘do you even lift’ when you tried to include it in your bro workout. Seriously, leave your ego way behind when it comes to training. You will find you excel much more this way.

Try this quick functional legs workout using only your bodyweight:

10 reps on each exercise on each leg, take a 1 min rest then repeat 2 more times.

Side Lunges

Split Squat

Raised Single Leg Squats

Let us know how your legs are feeling after this circuit.

Ben Howard – London Personal Trainer

Book a session with me by downloading the app.

Is Ballet Barre For Me?

October 1, 2015July 22, 2017 Alex CoombesLeave a comment

As a ballet barre trainer there is one question that I regularly get asked, “Is ballet barre for me?”

In my opinion ballet barre and any form of ballet training is beneficial for everyone regardless of your fitness goal. Well of course I would say that, I am a former professional ballet dancer and I helped design TruBe’s ballet barre workout.

But let’s think about it objectively. Why do we train? The reasons why we train and engage in physical activity are wide and varied. But all of them can be enhanced or achieved through ballet barre training. There is a reason why ballet dancers are often touted as some of the fittest athletes alongside boxers.

One of the largest barriers we face at the moment when we exercise is poor range of motion. The way the modern westerner lives their life promotes poor posture and tight muscles. Ballet barre is a great way to improve your posture and promote greater coordination between different areas of your body simultaneously. How often do you hear about dancers with poor posture and limited range of motion? This applies to everyone, most men could add 10kgs to their three big lifts with improved movement patterns.

Let’s talk about some other fitness goals such as weight loss, tone, core strength, cardiovascular fitness, strength and power. All of these can be drastically improved through ballet barre training. When you think about all of these facets of fitness, ballet dancers display all of them. The beauty of the TruBe ballet barre is that you can achieve these results in the comfort of your own living room, ballet is about moving your body not heavy weights.

To celebrate world ballet day today, why not download the app and try one of our ballet barre sessions using this £10 off promo code:

BALLET10

Matt – @mattino22

Should kickboxing be part of your workout routine?

September 14, 2015April 25, 2018 Alex CoombesLeave a comment

Kickboxing is a sport that has a multitude of benefits ranging from improvements in overall fitness to stress relief and self defence. During a TruBe kickboxing session you will experience a total body workout using all three of your bodies energy systems. This will help to rapidly develop your cardiovascular fitness and muscular strength.

Burn some serious calories

This takes us into the realms of metabolic conditioning which has been proven to have a high calorie afterburn. This means that not only could you burn between 500-750 calories in a one hour intense kickboxing session, you’ll also have a raised BMR, (Basal Metabolic Rate- calories you burn at rest to keep your body functioning), after the training has finished. This varies between males and females but can last up to 7-12 hours. So the gross calorific burn from the hours kickboxing session could be as high as 900-1000 calories.

Whole body workout

Kickboxing works out the entire body and not just isolated muscle groups. The punching and kicking techniques obviously work the arms and legs, but it’s the effect they have on the core that stands out. Working through all the planes of motion with rapid movements and the multitude of plank drills that accompany any workout puts a varied and high workload on the core.

It does everything

It also helps to stretch and tone the muscles and is proven to reduce body fat. Throw into that improvements in flexibility and mobility, coordination, timing and rhythm and you have a complete training system.

Hitting things is fun

On top of the many physical benefits the mental benefits are possibly what separates kickboxing from other sporting activities. Like most sporting pursuits, kickboxing releases the ‘happy hormone’ endorphins, but the act of striking pads can be a great way to relieve the buildup of stress and frustration that living in London can cause. It has a primal effect that allows you to generate focus within the session as they have to concentrate on the techniques and combinations.

Protect yourself

Having the ability to throw kicks and punches along with the evasive movements can be a genuine plus when you consider self defence situations too.

Trube boast highly trained kickboxing instructors with decades of teaching and fighting experience. This is the real sport taught in a safe and accessible format that will keep you motivated and invigorated.

So why don’t you download the app and try a kickboxing session to see for yourself!!!

Alex – 2013 ICO light welterweight World kickboxing champion