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Very funny fitness quote in relation to inactivity and the difficulties faced with performing everyday tasks.

A new fitmate, Clair C, who at the sprightly age of 24, found it difficult to carry the groceries home due to her lack of strength in her shoulders. While it may seem comical that she said I’II have to “lift more weights or starve” as she would be limited in the amount of food that she could carry, there is a more serious side to muscle atrophy (muscle loss).

While there is a saying “use it or lose it“, there have been numerous studies that support endurance resistance training earlier on in life determines how your body will hold up later in life.

The Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University that found that a the long-term benefits of regular endurance exercise found they had increased muscle stem cells which in turn help maintains muscles.

Prof. Dafna Benayahu found that the density of stem cells per muscle fibres increased sinificantly for a group of rats that were placed on a tread mill for 20 minutes per day.

Towards the end of the experiment, the older rats had a massive 33% to 47% increase in stem cell density in their muscle fibres versus the younger rats of 20% to 35%. increase.

This was the first time that research supported by people who exercise regularly throughout their life aged more gracefully versus those who lead a sedentary lifestyle.

We have had numerous requests from our Fitmates regarding a take home DIY (do it yourself) Boot Camp program.

You can use water bottles to mark the exercise stations or bananas if you have a fruit shop handy:))

Just remember when undertaking any form of rigorous exercise to get medical clearance first, high blood pressure, age, cholesterol levels and other key indicators must be taken into consideration.

This program is designed around the principles of interval training whereby you undertake high intensity cardiovascular based exercise for short periods of time followed by a resistance based exercise.

This keeps the heart elevated for short periods of time which really challenges the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

While I was filming our latest hard core urban boot camp workout, Michael Klim and four others literally ran behind the camera to another location along the beach to continue their interval based sprint work training.

Without paying much attention, I noticed a small group doing maximal sprint efforts to the end of the pier and back while we kept re shooting our L sit iron beam chin ups.

For those not familiar with Michael, he is a multi Olympic and World Championship Gold medal winner and world 100 meters freestyle and butterfly record holder.

It’s awesome to see Michael embracing the interval based training technique of high intensity cardio based 100 – 150m sprint efforts followed by a dumbbell shoulder work and dips.

Great for keeping the heart elevated at the upper levels for short periods of time with a short burst of resistance training from in.

Unfortunately Michael was sprinting back to the starting point of the workout, an awesome very down to earth guy who still graciously managed a quick chat during this extreme work out session