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The chin up is a tough exercise. First of all it directly relates your strength to your body weight. To improve your number of chin ups you need to improve your strength and decrease your body weight or at least not increase it or your strength gains will be lost.

Vancouver Personal Trainer Taunya Loeppky does a chin up

So how do I improve my total number of chin ups? Practice , practice , practice. Also, chin ups is one of those exercises where avoiding failure will help you improve your total numbers.

First start with a test. do as many dead hang chin ups as you can in a row. Your chest should touch the bar and your elbows come behind you. No kipping for these pull ups (using your body to generate extra momentum making the chin up easier).

Now divide that number in 1/2 and do that number of reps 6 times throughout the day, 3 x a week  for two weeks. I suggest getting a doorway chin up bar. They have them at winners for $25.  At the end of the day attempt a set of 75% of your max. Its OK if you do not make 75% on the first couple times.

Week 3 you will preform60% of your max 7 times and  one set 90% at the end of the day, do this 2 x per week.

After week 3 , rest a couple days and retest your max.  Then repeat the 3 week program again.

I would remove vertical pulling (pulling from overhead)from your other workouts. Low volume (one or two sets)  horizontal pulling is ok.

Example: Keith can do 12 chin ups with good form. He will do six sets of six reps 3 x a week. He will also try to do one set of 9 at the end of the day. After two weeks he will do 7 sets of 7 reps and one set of 10, 2 days per week.

If you post your max in the next week and your results at the end of February and  March and you will be eligible to win a prize – A precision athletics Dry -fit training shirt. Post a picture and I will throw in a pair of training sessions with me or a month of classes 2 x a week, your choice.

This program was originally posted on John Roman’s fitness blog http://romanfitnesssystems.com/blog/how-to-double-your-pullups-in-6-weeks

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, boot camp instructors, CrossFit coaches and Nutrition coaches. Craig enjoys coaching people of all levels of fitness that want to improve. His company websites are www.precisionathletics.ca and www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com .  Feel free to email him your questions at Craig@precisionathletics.ca

I drew the winnners today for our month long contest. Everyone who entered and set a goal had a chance to win. Overall, everyone was a winner as we all did better by having a goal to shoot for then “I’ll do my best….”

Body Energy Club Prize Pack- Kristie T

$100 GC to the Fish House in Stanley Park - Kim C

$75 GC to Canberries Spa- Janice B

$50 GC to the Fish House in Stanley Park-  Jenn T

$50 GC to Cranberries Spa- Bobby C

If you enjoyed the contest and want to support Precision Athletics we are hoping to win best in the City in the WestEnder Readers choice Poll for “Fitness Facility”. You can vote here:

http://contest.westender.com/best_of_the_city/entry_form.php

Feel free to throw a vote in for our sponsors Fish House -” best Seafood” and Cranberries Spa – “Spa”

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, boot camp, and CrossFit  instructors. Check out his websites http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com

November has come and gone. With it some of us set some goals and met them. Some set goals but  fell short. The question is, even if you fell short of your goal did you accomplish more than you would have with no goal at all? I know I did. I fell short on my no drinking goal by 3 days so got 27/30 on that one.

As far as the cardio goal I did well on the first half of the month 15/15 , second half of the month I got injured playing soccer and we had our baby so was a bit of a write off (total 20/30).

Definitely worth missing some workouts for

I will be testing to see how I did on the physical challenge goals and posting that here later this week.

Please post in the comments how you did on your goals so we can choose winners. Everyone loves prizes……

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, boot camp, and CrossFit  instructors. Check out his websites http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com

As a person o full time in the fitness industry, I get to see some strange stuff in the gym. I cannot post it all. However, a recent phenomenon has swept the gym I train out of. This applies to people who use the gym not my Vancouver personal training clients. I have been noticing an alarming increase in the number of workouts that center around the bicep curl.

You can summarize that most guys who workout want to have athletic looking arms. However, the amount of time and focus these guys are putting into bicep curls is pretty sad (for the results they will see). Not that the bicep curl is necessarily a bad exercise. However, basing an entire workout on an isolation movement is counter productive.

The bicep is a small muscle group and cannot move allot of weight relatively speaking. So if you are trying to increase the size of your arm by doing multiple sets of  an isolation movement (such as any of a variety of types of curls) you are not going to build allot of muscle.

What should I do to increase the size of my arms? Start with exercises that move allot of weight squats dead lifts, heavy pressing, chin ups (and weighted chin ups) and finish with isolation movements such as curls (if you have energy left). Skipping the movements where you can move heavy weight will produce very little muscle gains.

Think of your bodies capacity for exercise as a big hole in the ground. You are trying to fill the hole up. You can use big rocks, small rocks and sand. Squats and dead lifts are big rocks, pull ups, heavy pressing and rows are small rocks and bicep curls are sand. You are going to fill the hole better and faster by combining the big and small rocks and adding the sand on top. It is more efficient than trying to pack down all that sand.

Stay tuned next time for  the best bicep exercise (if you do need to do isolation work).

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, boot camp, and CrossFit  instructors. Check out his websites http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://www.precision-bootcampvancouver.com/

Every November I do a personal challenge with my Vancouver  personal training and boot camp clients. What we do is choose one thing to give up for the month or add something in for the whole month. For myself I am doing no alcohol for the month and adding  20 minutes of cardio every day. Last month with only cutting alcohol I dropped 7 lbs and felt great.  

Would you like to join? Please add a comment with what you will be adding or dropping for the next 30 days. I am gathering prizes. Everyone who completes the challenge will be entered to win. If you only do cardio 28/30 days  you may still have a chance , let me know your totals. Prizes will be announced here next week.

Print this calendar and put you goal down and mark it off as you go.

My Goals 30 days no drinking, do 20 minutes of cardio 30 days (min 2 rows per week), 1 leg squat increase from10-25, overhead squat body weight x 1 current max 135 lbs, 10 full range handstand push ups current max 2, improve 500m row time from 1:37- 1:30 or below, L-sit 1:30 hold form :45s.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, CrossFit and boot camp instructors. His company websites are http://www.precisionathletics.ca/  and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/

So you signed up for next years Ironman Canada or another Ironman race, what next? here are my top training tips for preparing for an Ironman event. (many of these will apply to other big competitions)

Top 5 tips to prepare for Ironman:

#5 Get to know the course. I started by riding the course on my  compu-trainer in the winter. That way I had an idea how I would feel at each point (how will my legs feel at the first big climb etc). I would recommend attending a training camp where they familiarize you with the course if you can get to one.  For IMC try www.tri.netfor a week long or weekend supported training camp in Penticton, B.C. At the very least research the elevation profiles on-line and find terrain close to home to simulate it. I trained for Richter’s pass on the Canada Ironman course by riding mount Seymour. Mt. Seymour has a much tougher elevation profile. That way when I got to Richter’s I knew I would be fine.

#4 Start training and racing early. After signing up for IMC, I immediately got serious on my swimming and got into some masters programs. As for racing we signed up for the first 1/2 Iron offered close to here Shawnigan lake 1/2 Iron. It is good to get some feedback on how your winter training went early in the season.

#3 Acclimatize. Get used to the racing conditions. I did the Osooyos 1/2 ironman to get used to racing in the heat (was 36+that day). I also stayed in Osoyoos the following week and trained for even more punishment. However, that made the day of the Ironman seem not that hot.

#2 Rest and recovery. As your volumes of training increase so should your recovery and sleep. If you are adding 5 more hours of volume then make sure your recovery (massage, ice baths, etc.) and sleep increase as well.

#1 Nutrition. I know everyone thinks they eat healthy. To complete a race like this you have to know your body what it needs and what it does not like while exercising. I found out that the bars I was eating on the bike were not digesting , so had to switch to liquid calories (I used carbo-pro liquid it has calories and electrolytes). The result was zero cramping at IMC , even though I cramped at all three races previously in year. I would also recommend Brendan Braziers book the thrive diet. he does a good job of explaining nutritional stress. Basically foods that are causing nutritional stress add to your total stress. When you add in stress form job, training, life the last place you need to be adding stress is your diet. He is a vegan, I did not switch to no meat, but I did use allot of his recipes. Especially good was the home-made electrolyte drink (coconut water, lemon,lime and ginger) and recovery pudding (banana, dates, and hemp protein). The meals and snacks in the book are extremely easy to digest and you can feel the effect especially after a hard training session.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, crossfit and boot camp instructors. His company websites are http://www.precisionathletics.ca/  and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/

Great article at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857-1,00.html that proves exercising makes you fat. Actually, the article says that you use up all your willpower forcing yourself to exercise so that you overeat afterwards. Therefore exercising makes you fat.

The article should have mentioned that 99% of the population eat too many refined carbs which spike the blood sugar and cause an insulin release. Insulin causes you to store fat and prevents you form burning fat while exercising. That is why drinking a gatorade before or after a 20 minute run is a bad isea, it’s all sugar (the research for gatorade was done on 90+ minutes of activity in Florida where its crazy hot). Unless you are doing a major endurance event you do not need the electrolytes or sugar that a sports drink contains.

How can you exercise and lose weight? Here are the top three things….

#1- Eat a balanced diet (of healthy fat , protein and carbs) devoid of sugar and grains (that is right no grain not even Ezekiel bread or sprouted ancient Kamut) at every meal. This will keep blood sugar level and avoid insulin spikes. No one has ever gotten fat eating fruits, vegetables, meat fish nuts and seeds.

#2- Do high intensity weights and cardio mixed- you need to push yourself in order to see results. Doing a 30 min run at 6 mph 4x a week will burn some calories but not make a major change in your physique (once you have adapted to the initial shock to the system). High intensity circuit  training has been proven to get the best results and the variety will keep you training longer.

#3- Alcohol- It’s not just the calories and the fact its all sugar. The alcohol get processed in your liver. Unfortunately, that is where fat gets broken down as well. Bad news is if you go out on the town then try to make up for it by training hard your body cannot burn any fat, its to busy detoxifying your blood. Cut down the total number of drinks  weekly as well as eliminate all alcohol Sun – Thurs (or another 5 consecutive days). That way your body will be able to de-toxify and be able to burn fat during/ after your exercise. 

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, crossfit and boot camp instructors. His company websites are http://www.precisionathletics.ca/  and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/

Want faster recovery? Try this…..Right after your workout take an alternate hot and cold shower (as hot and cold as you can stand). Ideally if you have a shower with a Handel you can focus the cold on the areas you have just trained. Alternate at least twice and always finish on cold. I did this yesterday after a 3 hour ride and 30 minute run where my quads were cramping. No soreness today and the cramping stopped during the shower. Right after your next workout and leave a post here in comments with what you think.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top personal trainers, crossfit and boot camp instructors. His company websites are http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/ .

I had the opportunity to attend a fantastic seminar on the weekend at the Richmond Olympic Speed Skating Oval. It is a world class facility and I would recommend stopping by and checking it out. http://richmondoval.ca/default.htm 

The seminar was put on by Mark Verstegen the founder of Athletes Performance http://www.athletesperformance.com/ , they are the premier athlete training facility in the United States. The seminar was half lecture and half practical. They covered movement prep and core activation (they call it Pillar Strength instead of core strength). They also covered weighttraining focusing on athletic power and speed development. Notably, Athletes Performance is highly focused on recovery (nutrition, ART, hydro-therapy etc.). It was very informative.

It was an amazing facility and great presenters. I came out with some great new exercises that my clients are enjoying and some new information on athletic power and speed development. Looking forward to the next continuing education moment.

Craig Boyd is one of Vancouver’s top  personal trainers, crossfit  and boot camp instructors. His company websites are http://www.precisionathletics.ca/ and http://precision-bootcampvancouver.com/ .