Gary Prime PT

Have you thought about trying the keto diet for weight loss? Here are some of the basics to understand! 🥑🥑

I believe in making an informed decision and the drawbacks/considerations slide at the end is probably the most important!

I use to be against a lot of methods of dieting such as keto, but I’ve grown to understand that there is a time and place for everything (except meal replacement shakes & detox teas, they ain’t s**t 🤣) and at the end of the day - the best diet is one that’s sustainable for the individual. Not the one your coach imposes on you or the one that your fitfluencer is promoting.

The keto diet can be a preference or for someone who may have health concerns such as a diabetic.

Are you struggling to achieve your weight loss, muscle gain or body transformation goals? Comment below your road blocks and I’ll try my best to help you overcome them! Alternatively, don’t hesitate to DM me and see how I can help. ☺️

Which deadlift is best suited for your goals?! 🧠🤔 (Strength vs. Hypertrophy)

Deadlifts are undoubtedly one of the most famous exercises that a lot of people love to do. I love deadlifting but I’ve also realised that I don’t need to do it for my own goals (muscular development) as there are better options out there.

For people who powerlift or people who just want to lift as much as possible, the conventional and sumo deadlift can be an excellent choice. This is because it recruits a lot of muscle fibers in an efficient manner to move a lot of weight, the synchronisation of prime movers & stability muscles also work really well to move a heavy weight. The sumo deadlift is also great because of its reduced range of motion and both options can be used depending on which suits you best preferentially or based on your anatomical leverages.

However, for muscular development, it’s not always about weight. In fact, weight is relative because the body doesn’t care about whether you’re lifting 1 or 100kg. It only cares about intramuscular tension which can be created over a large spectrum of weights & volume.

What’s also important is RANGE OF MOTION, active range of motion of the muscle you’re trying to grow to be exact. So if you’re trying to build your glutes & hamstrings, the RDL is a no brainer. It allows for full hip flexion & extension just like a conventional deadlift WITHOUT the steep fatigue:stimulus ratio.

Bonus points on RDLs:
✅ Easier to set up when it’s on a rack
✅ Greater eccentric stimuli
✅ Less overall fatigue compared to conventional
✅ Can accumulate more volume compared to conventional (volume is the main driver to hypertrophy based on a dose response relationship)
✅ Constant tension in the glutes & hams

A conventional deadlift can still grow your glutes & hamstrings, however, you’re likely to fatigue your lower back before anything else while accumulating more fatigue.

What’s your favourite deadlift to perform in the gym and why? Comment below! ☺️

Couple things about fitness journeys & social media 🔥

1️⃣ People don’t often share enough of their losses & mishaps. It’s not always as perfect as it seems in most people’s fitness journeys. 🎖

2️⃣ Abs can be hard to come by for some and even harder to want to maintain for others. Weigh out the pros and cons to how it may affect your lifestyle and is it even worth it. Not having abs, big glutes or muscle definition doesn’t define you as a person. 👏🏻☺️

3️⃣ Quick progress isn’t always best. Somethings usually got to give and it’ll either be our adherence to the process or result, either way, they’ll affect one another. 🙅🏻‍♂️

4️⃣ It’s hard not to compare, but remember point #1 and we don’t actually know how long that person we’re comparing ourselves to has been doing this for. We also don’t know the things they’ve sacrificed or had to do in order to get to where they are today. ✅

5️⃣ You can’t escape the basics. Proper programming, nutrition, progressive overload and training hard, solid sleep schedules, stress management, hydration and many other smaller details that also play a role to transforming into your best self. 🧠

Finally, this pic was just for attention but I’m honestly happy in both pictures and I think that’s what it’s all about. Finding that balance and giving things your all. On the left, I was probably looking my best in my entire 22 years of life (at the time). While on the right, I definitely felt my best with gym PBs, absolutely dominating my lifts and my plates of food.

The guy on the right no longer needed washboard abs to validate himself, the vanity and superficial aesthetics were a thing of the past. Bulking is hard, but it’s also very rewarding. I went from consistently tracking as if my life depended on it to taking a break that I know I deserved. I’m confident in both pictures except I’m not shackled down to the idea of needing to look a certain way to be accepted, and neither should you!

Super excited to beat the guy on the left, mentally and physically. YEA THE FU***NG BOYSSSSSSSSSSSSS, oh and happy hump day. 🤪

❗️TOUGH LOVE ALERT❗️

If you’re overly concerned about the time it’ll take to achieve your result, you might be approaching fitness from the wrong angle…

People often get shocked when I tell them it could potentially take 3 months - 1 year to achieve their desired goal, but people also tend to forget that fitness isn’t just about achieving their result. It’s about creating a better quality of life but also about maintaining it after and potentially improving from there… It’s a lifetime gig.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being excited for your outcome, but I definitely believe wholeheartedly that we should also fall in love with the process.

Why? Because when s**t hits the fan (AND IT WILL), we need to be ready to tenaciously slog on through and it can be hard to do so when we’re always focusing on external goals with external values. Having a strong sense of self while understanding the “why’s” in which you do things will completely change the game for the player.

External values with superficial goals can be a great place to start, but what about when you put on a bit of fat during your bulk or crave the foods you shouldn’t have during your cut?

Without some intrinsic values, it could become easy to fall off track.

The amount of times people would ask me “when can I expect to see results?” or “how long will it take to achieve results?” is quite high. To which I usually respond with “how long is a piece of string?”. It really depends.

But one thing I’ve learnt on the job is that those who fall in love with the process typically end up yielding the best results.

I also don’t think having a deadline is wrong because it is important, but understand that if you want to FEEL or LOOK a certain way, you have the LITERALLY BECOME THAT PERSON. The person who probably:
✅ Sleeps 8 hours
✅ Eats well
✅ Trains hard and consistently
✅ Manages stress
✅ Drinks enough water
✅ Doesn’t party so much
✅ Doesn’t play Jedi mind tricks on themselves

It’s not going to take 3 months, it’s not a temporary gig, in order to have ever lasting results or to consistently improve - we need to actually BECOME the person we’ve dreamt of.

✨Client Progress✨

has been a PT client of mine for the last 5 months and originally came to me wanting to lose weight. Sujin’s a super hard worker having trained with me 2x/week and twice on her own all while working and studying (to become a doctor 👀😱) so her schedule is pretty full on. We started on 1200 calories as she was 54kg at the time and quite sedentary.

However, we noticed about 1.5 months in that her heart wasn’t really in it.

We sat down and had a conversation face to face to further break down her goals, what she enjoys as well as how we can best adapt her fitness endeavours to her current lifestyle. We eventually came to the conclusion that bulking may be a more suitable strategy despite her original goal being weight loss, this is primarily due to the fact that she really enjoyed training right from the start. Weight loss is hard, without a strong sense of intrinsic values or having a strong “why,” it can be hard to push through tough times. Ive found that weight loss can be a lot of people’s go to goal when it’s not what they really want, but rather, society has just programmed us into thinking that weight loss is always the way to go. It’s not.

So to compliment Sujin’s liking for training as well as her crazy schedule with late nights around studying + immense stress, I suggested we started bulking. Not only would she see better results, have her fitness compliment her lifestyle (rather than the other way around), have better flexibility in terms of her diet but she would also enjoy the process more and we took off from there. We started bulking at 1500 calories and quickly climbed to 2100.

So over the last 3.5 months we started bulking and put on 5kg bulking up to 59kg during this time. We’ve seen significant growth in her glutes (that was her primary focus) but also arms and her back/shoulders (photos not shown).

NOW we’ve started our cut and not only are we dieting on higher calories (1600), but we’ve got a stronger reason to diet after actually accumulating some mass, built some muscle along the way and our mindset/drive is much higher than what it was previously.

Don’t fear the bulk, sometimes it’s the way to go! ☺️

Fitness myths & more on transforming the body… 🤯

This seems to be a conversation I find myself having a lot with clients & people so I felt it was worth debunking some myths.

The quickest & easiest one are carbs being the enemy. They’re not. Take my word for it and go eat your pasta lol.

There have been studies that show it DOESNT matter whether you have a high carb/low fat or high fat/low carb diet for weight loss. As long as calories are equated and youre in a deficit, you will lose weight. (Naude et al, 2014)

Second myth I find myself having to convince others is the fact that FAT DOES NOT TURN INTO MUSCLE. You can lose fat and build muscle at the same time (it’s slow af trying to do both, would not recommend), but one does not turn into the other.

✅ FAT is your body’s way of storing excess energy (calories from food & beverages) for later usage when energy becomes restricted. I.e. during a calorie deficit. When you’re dieting down and restricting calories, your body requires energy to survive & perform tasks. Therefore it’ll break down your fat cells and convert that into energy.
✅ MUSCLES are an organ/cell form structure that connect to your bones in order to create locomotion at the joint by shortening and lengthening on demand.

One is a fuel source and the other helps the body move its limbs, maintain posture etc… Not really interchangeable cell structures.

Then we have “toning up”, I’ve made a video on this before. But what does toning up really mean to most people?

Typical answers:
✅ Defined muscles
✅ Smaller waist
✅ Less jiggly

All of these answers actually tie back to one thing - dropping body fat. Which means losing weight and actually doesn’t have much to do with muscles themselves because muscles only grow, shrink or maintain.

So putting all this together, to achieve your dream physique, we need periods of bulks & cuts. They balance each other out, compliment each other and restore order in your fitness journey without having to sacrifice progress or quality of life.

Share this with a friend who still believes these myths! Got a question? Comment below. 👇🏻

✨Client spotlight/more on PCOS✨

Meet Phebe () she’s an online nutrition only client of mine who came to me wanting to lose weight. Phebe had initially told me that she does have PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) which has been stated that it could make it difficult for females to “lose weight” or make it easy for them to “gain weight” due to the nature of a few things:
- Irregular periods
- Hormonal imbalances
- Potential insulin resistance (though not always the case - Kauffman et al, 2002)

Phebe handles her own training with her own liking around CrossFit and prior to lockdown would wake up at 4am to train nice and early. She initially trained fasted which is great for taking glucose out of the blood and participated in frequent bouts of HIIT + resistance training which is great for improving metabolism over time.

We started conservatively dieting at first and dropped 4kg over 10 weeks as we didn’t have too big of a weight loss goal. However, half way through we started experimenting and went a bit more aggressive (see last slide).

Some considerations made were to keep fats as high as possible (above the recommended minimum of 0.6g/KG) as Phebe was concerned about losing her period. Though given the nature of her training being quite demanding/glycolytic, we started off conservative with the diet. That was until we began to start experimenting with a lower carb approach with a higher fat approach to minimize any hormonal imbalances.

Some considerations for females with PCOS:
- Engage in bouts of HIIT & resistance training
- A high protein diet (this was always the case with Phebe) as it helps with metabolism & satiety
- Low GI diet for better quality of life & insulin sensitivity
- Increase menstrual regularity
- Weight loss/management has been shown to help PCOS (Kataoka et al, 2017) while weight gain & obesity may worsen features of PCOS (Moran et al, 2010)

Supplement considerations for females with PCOS:
✅ Myo Inositol
- Improve insulin levels/sensitivity
- Menstrual regulation
- Improve blood lipid profile
- Decrease in hyperandrogenism (common amongst females with PCOS) (Unfer et al, 2017)

Extension in comments👇🏻

Monday giveaway 🙌🏻

Happy Monday everyone, understandably lockdowns been giving most people a bit of a hard time so I wanted to give back to everyone and help where I can especially with your fitness side of things!

So I’ve got a cookbook with recipes for the next 30 days to at least help you with your nutrition with your home workouts with over 30 recipes. ☺️ In the cookbook you’ll find meal ideas, ingredients as well their servings with directions on how to prep each meal.

‼️This will all come to you FREE OF CHARGE‼️

All you have to do is:
✅ Like this post
✅ Share this post & tag me
✅ Comment on this post and I will DM you for your email to send the cookbook to you via email

Hope everyone’s staying safe during times of uncertainty and keeping at their fitness in whatever way possible. 💪🏻

Feeling unmotivated during lockdown? This ones for you.

I’m finding myself having this conversation quite often with clients feeling unmotivated and you know what? It’s ok to feel unmotivated at times, you’re not alone and everyone is more or less in the same boat.

What’s most important is what you do during times like this because this isn’t going to be the last time you feel unmotivated or not in the mood to train, I can almost guarantee you that. Life gets in the way, relationships get in the way, work gets in the way, family gets in the way and social network will also get in the way.

What will you do then?

‼️One thing I’ve been reminding clients is to ask themselves what their future self would want once everything is all said and done. Once lockdown ends; do you want to come out on top, do you want to have at least maintained your gains compared to pre lockdown or do you want to be 3 steps behind and playing catch ups?‼️

Everyone feels unmotivated during this time and it’s ok. But ask yourself this, if you had indulged in this feeling of demotivation and do nothing, once lockdown is over and you lose your gains - How are you going to feel then? I dare say probably worse. If not, that’s fine too. So be it.

However, if you feel like you are going to regret it, pick yourself up. If not for yourself in the present moment, do it for your future self. Work to at least maintain your gains.

Hit your protein daily, train at least once or twice a week then have a cuppa and sit back. If you at least do the bare minimum, you probably won’t lose very much if at all and you can still feel pretty good.

Here’s a system that I stick to and recommend to clients, think:
✅ Good - trains once, hits calories
✅ Better - trains once or more, hits calories & protein
✅ Best - do everything right
✅ Not so good - do nothing. (This option is fine too, but don’t be upset about your results or losing gains if you didn’t put in any effort. Fair game? Fair game.)