Team FNC Physical Challenge

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We are all about progressing and making the most of our ability here at FNC, we thought why not give you a chance to progress with something that good nutrition gives us the ability to do regularly - exercise..

Using spare time as a chance to refine or work towards a skill that may elude you currently is a great way to add some progression into your daily/weekly routine.

How to use this

Step 1- SELECT THE SKILL 

Step 2- SELECT THE APPROPRIATE SCALING

PISTOL: 

1. Squat - with feet flat, about shoulder width apart, sit down as if you were going to sit in a chair. When you can’t squat any further, rise up to the starting point. 

2. Close footed squat - with feet flat, bring your feet as close as you can together to perform an air-squat with a close stance.

3. Single leg box squat - Stand on one foot with a stable box positioned just behind you, your free foot should be bent and raised a few inches off the floor. Hold your hands out in front of you, using them for balance as necessary. This will be your starting position. Keeping your hips as square as possible, descend into a deep knee bend and momentarily sit on the box.

Stand back up by extending at the hip and knee and repeat for reps before switching to the opposite side.

1. Ballerina squat - with one foot flat and the other on the point of the toe (to be used for balance) start with feet in a shoulder width stance and progress down into an assisted pistol, then stand to full extension. 

2. Elevated single leg squat - using a small book, or an elevated ledge place one heel on the elevated surface. Using your arms for balance sit down into a full squat on one leg with the heel raised as an assistance method for maintaining a neutral spine and balance. 

SIT-UP: 

1. Crunch - Hands behind your head, gently lift your head and shoulders, hold briefly and relax back down.

2. Roll up - with feet slide your hands up to your knees, then lower back down. 

3. Top down - start at the top of the sit up and slowly lower yourself down to the floor. 

4. Fixed foot - keeping the feet flat to the floor, anchor them under a bench or around a pole, hands behind your head lift the shoulders from the floor up to the knees and back down. 

PUSH-UP

1. Wall - Face a wall, standing a little farther than arm’s length away, feet shoulder-width apart. Lean your body forward and put your palms flat against the wall at shoulder height and shoulder-width apart, bending the elbows and moving your chest towards the wall, then locking the arms back out to finish the rep.

2. Incline - Bend your elbows to slowly lower your chest to the edge of a table/bench/desk. Keep a straight body throughout the movement. Push your body away from the bench until your elbows are extended.

3. Knee - Begin in a hands and knees position. Place your hands on the ground on either side of your shoulders. Your knees should be at a comfortable distance apart. Slowly lower your elbows to bring your chest toward the ground. Touch the chest to the ground in the lowered position. Push up from the ground to your starting position.

4. Elevated floor push-up- using a pillow or something of a similar size under the chest, perform a pushup to the pillow as the target, this decreases the deficit in which we need to descend for the pushup to be completed.

5. Wide feet - start in a plank position with feet at shoulder width or wider distance, descend chest down towards the floor and then lock the arms back out to complete the rep.

Step 3- INCORPORATE 2-3 TIMES WEEKLY

Using progressions to help you work towards or work on a skill that interests you is a great way to build your skill repertoire, and the ability to incorporate a small portion of exercise a few times a week.

This article was based on our weekly Webinar in the TeamFNC Community. We are a growing community of like minded people with an interest in improving nutrition for fat loss, muscle gain, athletic performance and overall health. We often compare nutrition to learning a new skill. It’s often easier to look at skill progression with physical activity. Look again at these progressions to skill - think about areas of nutrition you want to improve. The skill is your end goal but don’t expect to nail it straight away, just like physical skills, it takes time and progressions are a great way to get you to the end point. 

To access our online community that is full of education and support for anyone with any goal, follow the link. PLUS it’s only $5 per week

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Pre-Exercise Nutrition Tip

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If your guts are often upset during exercise, take a look at your pre-exercise meal.

For obvious reasons, discomfort can and will impact your ability to perform in sport and exercise training.

One of the most common causes of discomfort for athletes during exercise is gastrointestinal stress. [1]

If you feel 'heavy', bloated, gassy, and maybe feel like you're going to throw up, there can be a number of potential causes. It's certainly worth an audit of any foods/meals you typically consume in the hours prior to exercise. Your guts ability to deal with food is impaired during hard exercise.

In laymans terms, when you're exercising hard, the body is preoccupied with providing fuel and resources to the working muscles. Digestion isn't a big priority, so gut function is 'put to the side' and therefore becomes impaired. Your guts can't deal with much of a workload so in the hours before exercise it's a good idea to only burden it with nutrients that will actually provide fuel for the upcoming work.

Anything that isn't that, or 'fluff' that'll get in the way, should be eliminated.

Fats, fibre and solid protein-dense foods provide the gut with a pretty big burden to deal with, and if it's in an exercise-induced impaired state, it simply might not be able to deal with it.

So what can you do about it?

Reduce and even eliminate fibre, fats and solid proteins from any meals consumed in the hours prior to exercise [2].

Fibre, micronutrients and all that 'health stuff' can wait. The primary role of pre-exercise nutrition is to fuel the machine and nothing else.

It's worth mentioning that the above is only really a consideration, and cause for potential concern for athletes who have really high fueling needs, who do a lot of very hard exercise.

For more information and nutritional strategies to improve your exercise performance, we have an online community that you can access for $5 per week. In our Team FNC Online Community, you’ll have access to our video lesson library that includes athlete and exercise specific videos. You’ll also have a chance to ask questions to our team, be inspired by nearly 100 meals that have been shared and tune in to a weekly webinar.

For more information on how you can sign up to improve your knowledge and understanding of nutrition for the price of 1 coffee a week, follow this link

[1]Training the Gut for Athletes

[2] ‘I think I’m gonna hurl’: A Narrative Review of the Causes of Nausea and Vomiting in Sport

Shifting Away from "Burning Calories"

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'BURNING CALORIES/FAT' IS NOT A GREAT PURPOSE OF TRAINING.

SHIFT YOUR TRAINING MINDSET AWAY FROM FAT LOSS.

Fundamentally fat loss or weight maintenance is a game of energy consumed through food and drink versus the energy expended through living, lifestyle, and activity. 

Training with weights has it's benefits and plays an integral part of fat loss for health, human function and muscle retention with a strong argument, and reasoning behind why it should be prioritised (not exclusively) over cardio style training...

But you won't burn a whole lot more Calories doing it...

Therefore there is a strong argument that weight training to 'burn fat or Calories' is not an efficient approach, as the amount of extra energy you'll expend isn't anything requiring great attention at least ahead of diet and general activity levels. [1] 

If you had to unblock a river, it would make sense to worry about removing the big boulders before the little pebbles right. If we apply this mindset towards fat loss, it's not the say weight training deserves less thought and that it's effects aren't worthwhile or vitally important. It's just to say that diet and general activity deserve more emphasis, and the why behind training for a fat loss goal should be shifted away from 'burning Calories', and focused towards muscle retention, health, mood, stress-relief and function.