Coach Tom Reardon

Coach Tom Reardon Personal Trainer & Behaviour Change Coach with an evidence based approach to fitness, health and nut

“And when posture goes, a lot of things breakdown. It starts to create so many other ailments. Not that you just have ba...
12/02/2021

“And when posture goes, a lot of things breakdown. It starts to create so many other ailments. Not that you just have bad posture, it just starts to create all those joint problems aswell.” - AthleanX.
“Musculoskeletal pain always has a mechanical reason for starting.” - Squat University.
“Fix yo sh*t.” - MoveU
The personalities mentioned above have two distinct similarities. 1; they are all biomechanical reductionists, deducing that pain is either caused by structural damage/abnormalities, or that any structural damage/abnormalities will eventually lead to pain. 2; they all have massive platforms with a large following. Because of this, they are seen as authorities on the subject matter.
However pain is complicated and there is a plethora of scientific literature that suggests pain doesn’t always boil down to just mechanical/biological factors. There are many, many factors that influence pain (Biopsychosocial model) including our environment, perception, experiences, fear, stress, hyper vigilance and many others including education. Remember that last factor when you consider the reductionist information that the above social media superstars put out on a regular basis.
“Musculoskeletal pain in athletes is common, but not always associated with injury (ie, tissue damage).” - Caneiro et al 2020.
We also have data to show that even with structural damage, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are destined to live in pain. For example Stadnik et al 1998 showed that amongst 36 subjects with bulging & protruded discs, 81% of them were pain free.
We need to stop assuming people are broken and need to be fixed. Biomechanical factors are a jigsaw piece, not the whole puzzle.

Above is a very basic scaled template for strength training. What I mean by scaled is that the amount of reps, sets and ...
11/02/2021

Above is a very basic scaled template for strength training. What I mean by scaled is that the amount of reps, sets and training days is adjustable depending on your preference. This infographic may be slightly controversial for experienced strength based lifters due to the higher rep ranges and mention of training from failure, however it’s important to understand the context of this post. The advice is aimed at people absolutely new to strength training and there is evidence to show that novices can still progress their strength in the higher rep ranges (Glass et al 2020).
With that said, I believe the advice above is pretty simple for beginners, however I’ll make the following points based on my experience as a coach and the research I have seen.
🔹I recommend starting with the higher rep ranges at first. This is because the repeated movement will improve motor patterns. This is a geeky way of saying you’ll get better at learning the actual movement of the exercise.
🔹I mentioned stopping each set at roughly 3 reps before failure, what do I mean by this? If for example you were doing 3 sets of 10 reps, you should select a weight heavy enough that getting to 10 reps is a challenge and stopping knowing that if you really tried, you could do 3 more reps at most. This is because evidence shows that you can still make strength gains as a novice far from training to failure and prevents over training. It may also possibly stop you from doing too much too soon, which risks a chance of injury.
Eventually as you become more experienced and build capacity, that’s when periodisation and set/rep specificity becomes more important.

With lockdowns and furloughs creating barriers to physical activity, it’s important that we consider other methods of ex...
07/02/2021

With lockdowns and furloughs creating barriers to physical activity, it’s important that we consider other methods of exercise. One of those methods is running.

Running can be an enjoyable and sustainable activity for many people and has a plethora of Heath related benefits associated with it including calorie expenditure if weight loss/maintenance is your goal. One meta analysis from the British Journal Of Sports Medicine (Pedisic 2020) showed that running participation is associated with 27%, 30% and 23% lower risk of all cause mortality when compared with no running.

10,000 steps a day is a common goal for people to aim for, whether it’s prescribed by their trainer or the default setti...
07/02/2021

10,000 steps a day is a common goal for people to aim for, whether it’s prescribed by their trainer or the default setting on their step counter. There’s nothing wrong with aiming for 10,000 steps a day and I say fair play to you if it’s a target you hit more often than not 👍🏻.
The issue is that it can create an “all or nothing” approach. 10,000 is an arbitrary number that has stuck with the population (it was originally a marketing campaign in Japan), that some people assume is the minimum number we need to aim for if we want to reap the health benefits of walking. If we can’t hit the minimum of 10,000 steps, then what’s the point of doing anything below that?
But this simply isn’t the case. As mentioned in the infographic above, continuously walking for 20 minutes (which for the average person is 2000 steps) on a daily basis is enough to bring us very close to the recommended amount of moderate activity per week set by the NHS. Just adding 2000 steps a day to your current activity reduces your risk of CV events (such as strokes) by 10% and elevatedblood sugars (symptoms of diabetes) by 25%. So the smallest steps, excuse the pun, still make a big difference! And the best part is that studies show that each additional 2000 steps from baseline to 12 months was associated with an additional 8% difference in the cardiovascular event rate (Yates 2014, Ponsonby 2011).
In summary, walking is a highly underrated form of activity that can be performed by most people and can be combined with everyday tasks such as going to work or the school run. Increasing your steps as little as 2000 a day from baseline provides noticeable health benefits, which will stack up if we add more steps. So if you want to do aim for 10,000 steps or exceed that number, then go for it!

I think it goes without saying that sleep is important. But what is it actually important for? Sleep has been linked to ...
07/02/2021

I think it goes without saying that sleep is important. But what is it actually important for? Sleep has been linked to many things health related, including athletic performance and injury rates, but did you know that sleep also has an impact on efforts for fat loss?

The study mentioned in the infographic above is just one piece of the evidence showing this, with other studies as recent as 2020 (Jabekk et al) supporting the conclusion that good quality sleep (8+ hours) can help us drop body fat and maintain our lean mass when in a calorie deficit. There are many reasons as to “why” more sleep seems to have a beneficial effect, ranging from decreasing/increasing metabolic hormones as well as affecting our mood.

Energy balance is the main component for weight loss, weight gain and weight maintenance. We use calories as a measureme...
06/02/2021

Energy balance is the main component for weight loss, weight gain and weight maintenance. We use calories as a measurement of energy, which we consume through food, fuelling not just our activity, but human life in general. We are constantly burning calories to survive (such as to keep our organs functioning), including when we are sleeping or sitting on the sofa watching TV.

Similar to a car, the amount of calories burned depends on the effort of activity currently taking place. For example let’s say you get in a car and switch the engine on but leave it on the driveway without actually going anywhere. The car still burns fuel, but does so at a much slower pace than what it would do driving at a fast pace on the motorway. The similarity is that I can be laying on the couch watching Netflix and still be burning calories, but at a much slower pace than if I was walking or running.

This is where the similarity ends however, since a car is limited to a specific amount of fuel it can take on board. You can’t overfill a petrol tank with fuel (it just spills out, wouldn’t recommend). However humans can store excess calories for future use in our “reserves”, which becomes bodyfat when we eat more energy than what we burn off. If we find ourselves eating in a calorie deficit (burning more than what we eat) then we tap into those extra fat stores for energy, which is how weight/fat loss occurs.

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