Bringing Sexy Back

A sexy toned back is an area that girls often neglect in favour of legs, bums and tums, but I think it’s just as important. Here’s one of my favourite exercises to hit that area and help you get rid of that pesky fat around your bra strap.

The Upper Back Row

This will hit your back, biceps, lats and shoulders, so it’s a great compound movement. If in doubt, start with a lower weight and work your way up, making sure you are comfortably with what you’re lifting and not at risk of injuring yourself.

Holding a barbell with a pronated grip (palms facing down), assume a bent over position. Keep your chest up, a soft curve in your spine and a slight bend in your knees. Drop the barbell slowly down until it almost touches the floor. Keep your head up and facing forward. Keeping your elbows tucked in tightly, bring the barbell up to your navel. At the top of this position, contract your back muscles and hold for a second. Release the bar with a 3 second negative (lowering phase).

Sets: 3

Reps: 12

Acanteen

Last week I found myself with half an hour to kill before a meeting, so I wandered into a nearby café for a drink. I must have walked past it a hundred times over the years and I don’t know why I’ve never been inside. It’s an independent, family run business, with an emphasis on using fresh, local produce. It’s gorgeous inside, with bare wooden floors and cosy tables. There’s a handwritten juice menu on an enormous chalkboard, and I was happy to see fruit and vegetable juices, and optional shots of wheatgrass and ginger. I went for a delicious apple and carrot blend, with a double shot of ginger. Fresh juices are a great addition to a healthy diet, and a much better alternative than shop-bought ones, which lose a lot of their nutrients over the duration of their shelf life.

As you may know, I’m a sucker for a sweet treat, and I was pleasantly surprised to see several of the gorgeous cakes and brownies displayed on the counter were made without added sugar. I chose a raw cacao and nut brownie which was delicious. It was really rich, and the small square fit in the palm of my hand, which was the perfect size. Portion sizes are almost as important as what we’re eating.

I’ve been back several times for lunch, when there’s a colourful array of salads to choose from. It’s open for breakfast during the week, so it’s the perfect place to stop off for post-gym poached eggs before work.

www.acanteen.co.uk

Apple and Rhubarb Granola Breakfast Pots

Vegan Lentil Burgers

Although it’s often a subject of debate, I firmly believe that it is possible to get plenty of protein and from a vegetarian or vegan diet. There have been several successful vegetarian athletes, such as Joe Namath, the NFL quarterback and Martina Navratilova, the tennis legend. I like to aim to make every Monday a meat-free day. I eat a lot of plant-based protein day to day, and usually end up having a couple of other meat-free days during the week, but I like to pencil in one specific day every week and stick to that.

You will need:

serves 6

300g red lentils
½ cup flour
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 carrots, grated
1 tsp tomato puree
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
2 tsp dried or fresh herbs
2 tsp coconut oil

1. Bring a pan of water up to the boil and let the lentils simmer until soft.
2. While the lentils are cooking, heat a frying pan in a teaspoon of oil and sauté the onion, garlic and carrot until tender. Add the tomato puree and herbs and stir in gently.
3. Remove from the hob and transfer to a mixing bowl.
4. Add the lentils and flour and mix together. If you find that your mixture is slightly dry, add a little water.
5. Transfer the mixture to the fridge and leave to cool for about half an hour.
6. Mould the mixture into 6 burgers and fry in the rest of the oil until the outside is golden.

I love these burgers with sweet potato wedges and a big leafy green salad.

Drink Your Greens

You might have heard people talk about that ‘vegetable glow’, so I thought I would share a very simple green juice recipe. This is really good for beautifying properties, so knock some up if your skin is looking a bit worse for wear. The spinach adds a powerful kick of Vitamin A, which aids in cell turnover, and is essential for the production of new skin cells. This recipe is enough for one large glass, so adapt it depending on how many people you’re making it for.

1 apple
2 large handfuls of spinach
2 stalks of celery
½ a cucumber
1 inch of ginger
½ a lemon
a few cubes of ice

Juice everything except the spinach. Put the spinach and ice in your blender and add the juice from the other ingredients. Whizz it all together for about a minute until smooth.

This juice is best served immediately while it’s nice and cold. It’s lovely and refreshing, and the ginger adds a nice kick. If I’m going to be a proper blogger I should probably take some photos of my juice in a quirky glass jar with a stripy straw poking out at a jaunty angle, and it would all be very retro and cool. I don’t have a jar or a straw, apologies for not being retro and/or cool.

Leg Day 2

Day 2

Split squats

Find a low bench or a step to put behind you. Raise one leg and … …

4 sets of 12 reps.

Ouch.

Weight used: 20kg.

Leg press

4 or 5 sets of 12.

Leg extensions

These target your … … …

Plyometric lunges

Jumping lunges are something that feature in many of my Tabata circuits.

Leg Day 1

If you were wondering why leg day is notorious for leaving you with painful DOMS, it’s pretty simple. Our legs encompass our biggest muscle groups. If you work hard, you’ll burn more calories on leg day than when training any other muscle group, because stimulating so many large muscles uses more energy than, for example, training arms. There are four muscles in our quads alone (hence the name), another three in our hamstrings, two in our calves, and our glutes are our single biggest muscle. For this reason, legs can cope with massive volume, so go heavy and add more sets. But once the DOMS set in, every day tasks like climbing a flight of stairs seem daunting. Having said that, you should be able to find the right balance for your workout so that you’re able to train legs at a reasonable intensity twice a week. If you’re hobbling around for days afterwards, you’re overtraining.

I’ll be posting the two routines I used this week, split into Day 1 and Day 2.

Day 1

Barbell back squats

I started off with what is undoubtedly one of the most effective moves for leg training. I like to use a pyramid structure, starting off with 12 reps of a relatively light weight to warm up, and adding on more weight each set, dropping the reps down as I go. On my last set, usually set 4 or 5, I’ll be working at my max but will only be able to complete 4-6 reps. Remember to drive up through the heels to engage your hamstrings and glutes. If you’re not getting deep enough in your squat, drop the weight down until your form is correct. Your thighs must be at least parallel to the ground, and if you can get your ‘ass to grass’ then even better.

Weighted lunges with dumbells

I hit 4 sets of 12 on each leg. You can do these standing or walking, depending on how much room you have. You can use a barbell, dumbells, kettlebells or a Bulgarian bag.

Kettlebell swings

4 x 12 reps with the highest weight you can manage. This will target your glutes and help you build a bigger butt. Because nobody ever wrote a song about a flat ass.

Kick back

>>>

Plyometric box squats

Find a plyometric box …

The Sweet Life

We should all be aware by now that as a nation, we eat too much sugar. It seems obvious that an increased consumption in sugar will necessarily reduce the consumption of nutritionally dense foods, as well as increase our total calorie intake and weight gain, which has associated risk factors such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer. Worryingly, the average intake for children is currently higher than it is for adults.

Current guidelines recommend that less than 10% of our total energy intake should come from sugars. This includes all glucose, fructose, sucrose, any hidden sugars added to foods by manufacturers, and natural sugars found in fruit, etc. However this guideline was published by the World Health Organisation over a decade ago, and was based on the best evidence available at the time (2002). Earlier this year, the WHO provisionally suggested that we should aim to halve this to 5%. That would amount to around 25g of sugar for a healthy adult. Be aware that a single can of soft drink can contain up to 40g of sugar.

Guidelines published by the WHO act as a benchmark for health officials to develop measures to reduce our sugar intake, but some experts have said that aiming for 5% would be very ambitious, and undoubtedly amongst many it would be an unpopular move. Dame Sally Davies, England’s Chief Medical Officer, has reportedly suggested taxing sugar to combat rising levels of obesity. If this is what it takes to get Britain as a nation to address our consumption of sugar, then that may be a step in the right direction. Many campaigners in the UK have said it’s a shame that it’s taken the WHO so long to think about amending the original guideline. Some health experts believe that food and drinks companies have a role to play in this.

Good health makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t make a lot of dollars.
-Dr Andrew Saul, health educator and author

The amount of sugar we consume, although far higher than is good for us, is totally normalised in our society. Moreover, girls are envious of their friends who seem to indulge in a lot of treats without putting on weight. We need to readdress this and focus on what we’re putting IN our bodies, not just what they look like on the outside.

There was a time when sugar (‘white gold’) was a treat only afforded by the very rich, and it came in bars rather than granules. However now it’s in almost everything we eat and the amount of sugar we consume in the western world is becoming an increasing concern for health professionals. Many of us are unaware of the amount of sugar we’re consuming because it’s hidden in foods which we don’t think of as being sweet. For example, a tablespoon of ketchup contains about 4g of sugar, which is approaching one fifth of our current recommended daily sugar intake. Always look at the ingredient list on the back of packaged food. If sugar is one of the first few ingredients listed, that’s a big problem. It can sometimes be found under a variety of other names, such as agave. It’s also good to check the ‘total carbohydrates which sugars’. If it’s 30g or more per 100g, that means almost one third of the product is made of sugar. Visualise that! We need to see vastly increased levels of awareness about hidden amounts of sugar in our food.

All the Gear

If you’ve ever felt your leggings slipping down while you were on a run, or worried that you were exposing yourself to the gym during a squat, you’ll know how important it is that you wear the right type of clothes for training. With sports luxe showing no signs of going anywhere, it seems that recently every fitness wear label has collaborated with a different high end designer and signed a beautiful supermodel as the face (and body) of their brand. We’ve seen Stella McCartney for Adidas and Richard Nicholl for Sweaty Betty, while Heidi Klum has teamed up with New Balance to design a line of transition pieces to take you from the gym to street style, and Gisele Bundchen recently signed a $25m multi-year contract with Under Armour, fronting their campaign #IWillWhatIWant. There have been fantastic advances in sports technology over the last decade and it’s great to have so many sartorial options for women who workout, but buying gym clothes can quickly become a very expensive habit. Especially if you happen to stumble across a Lucas Hugh pop up shop… I absolutely love the sky blues and orchid colours across their collection this season, but can’t quite justify spending upwards of £100 on a sports bra. Luckily, you don’t necessarily have to fork out a lot to look good in the gym. If you invest in good quality staples and build up your gym wardrobe around these key pieces, you will save yourself money in the long run.

My leggings of choice are these Sweaty Betty capris. I loved my first pair so much I soon realised I needed to purchase another. They’re comfortable to move in and incredibly flattering, with a high waist, drawstring tie and a three-quarter length cut. I’m 5’3 and I wear a UK size 6-8, so I went for the XS, which was a perfect fit. I’m praying Sweaty Betty will never discontinue them. At £45, I think they’re really good value for money. The material is totally opaque, so you don’t have to worry about what people can see when you’re squatting. Unlike some leggings, they don’t slip down over your hips, so you don’t find yourself readjusting them every few minutes. I train 4-5 times a week so my gym clothes spend a lot of time in the wash, and I haven’t noticed any wear in mine after six months. These have the ‘repurchase’ seal of approval, which is a massive thumbs up from me. I love Sweaty Betty because not only do the sell amazing quality sportswear, they encourage their customers to lead active lifestyles by providing free fitness classes across their stores.

Frustratingly, a lot of sports bra designs seem to place form over function. As much as I love the strappy crop tops from Lorna Jane, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they will never be practical for me. Instead, I swear by Shock Absorber for sports bras. They offer plenty of support for high impact workouts, even for girls with larger chests. Their Active D+ Classic Support bra comes in a range of sizes between a 30-40 D-F cup, all the way up to a 32-38 H cup. I wore these bras under my leotards for years, and I’ve never been disappointed. They’re made from high quality moisture-wicking fabrics and certain designs come with removable lightweight padding, which helps to create a natural, flattering silhouette, and means you don’t have to worry about standing under the air con in the gym. We’ve all been there.

I’m a diehard Nike fan when it comes to trainers. I went through two pairs of the Nike Free 5.0 model while I was training for the London Marathon (I still won’t throw them out), and at the moment I’m loving the Nike Free TR 5 for training indoors because of the weightless feel. You can count on Nike to combine aesthetics with function. If you’re looking for a sexy pair of shoes, there’s no better place to start.

7 Gym Bag Essentials

1. Spare hairbands. Hairbands have a habit of losing themselves and I simply can’t workout without one. Not only is it virtually impossible to do cardio with your hair down, I lose enough hairs from my ponytail to the squat rack as it is. More importantly, you don’t want to look like the girl who thinks she’s in a Herbal Essences advert. Because you probably didn’t look like Nicole Scherzinger when you came in and unless you definitely won’t look like her after you’ve finished. I love these Invisibobbles for kink-free hair, available here in different colours.

2. Face wash. If you’ve ever experienced ‘gym skin’ then you’ll be religious about cleansing properly after a sweaty workout. I keep this gentle face scrub from Lush in my gym bag so I’m never without it. I also never touch my face during a workout or until I’ve washed my hands afterwards. All that grime from using the same equipment as those sweaty men… nasty.

3. Baby wipes. See above but for areas like your back and chest as a quick fix until you can have a proper shower. In an ideal world we’d jump straight in the shower after a workout, but it’s such a faff to lug around a towel and all your toiletries, on top of all your other crap. And make sure you get those sweaty gym clothes off as soon as possible, as tempting as it is to lounge around in your leggings.

4. Gloves. You’re only two workouts away from those nasty callouses that develop on your hands and make you look like you’ve been out farming in the fields your whole life.

5. A good post-workout snack. I like to throw a couple of protein balls in my bag so they’re there when I need them. This means you don’t pay over the odds for a protein shake at the gym. £4.95 sorry, what now?!

6. A water bottle. You’ll need to replace those lost fluids. The good news is the more you sweat and the more water you drink, the clearer your skin will be. Be kind to the environment and reuse a sports bottle instead of buying a bottle of Evian every time you’re at the gym.

7. Headphones. Noise cancelling ‘don’t talk to me’ headphones. In case you don’t want to listen to the same 10 song playlist every time you’re in the gym for the next three weeks.