Simon Chang - Fitness Trainer

If the scale is stable, it means your food choices, hydration habits, meals, and sleep schedule are stable.

If you’re seeing chaotic weight fluctuations, it means those things are chaotic.

If I had a $ for every time I heard someone say that free weights are better than machines or that machines aren’t “functional”.

It shouldn’t be a question of which is “better” but “what are the benefits of each?”

Free Weights: The path of motion isn’t fixed meaning your muscles have to work harder to provide stability (antagonist coactivation is increased) and maintain the desired path of motion.

Machines: The path of motion is fixed meaning your muscles don’t have to work as hard to provide stability which can make it easier to maintain your form and allow you to increase the load being lifted.

There can also be differences in the resistance profile (where the thing gets hard and where it gets easy). This is one of the most important factors for adaptation, exercise stimulus and experience.

You can see that they are BOTH mechanically different and provide different opportunities to the human body to be stimulated to be changed. They also provide different limitations but it doesn’t mean that one is “better” or that it has to be a choice of doing one or the other.

And knowing the benefits of each, you can ask “better” questions such as “what is the goal of the exercise?” and “what is appropriate for the individual?

The traditional Bro will say that you need to do higher reps to build muscle. And while that’s not necessarily bad advice, the totality of research suggests that you can build the SAME amount of muscle using higher or lower reps (30-85% of 1RM) if you’re taking each set to failure.

But, there are some differences between high (lower reps) and low loads (higher reps) and it’s more than puking your brains out and lying on the floor in crippling pain.

A higher load (>60%) is needed to maximize strength. This doesn’t mean that low loads (

You don’t have to eat the SAME thing or amount every day.

A strategy a lot of my clients find helpful is eating a bit less during the weekday so they can eat a bit more (within reason) on the weekend.

You know what’s underrated for losing body fat and keeping it off? Walking.

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy expended during ‘non-exercise’ movements (e.g. fidgeting). It is considered the most adaptive component of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) and can decrease while being in a calorie deficit.

NEAT can be as little as 6-10% of TDEE in individuals with a sedentary lifestyle and 50% or more in highly active subjects - to give you a better idea, NEAT can vary by as much as 2,000 calories per day when comparing two adults of similar body size, lean body mass, age and gender.

It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to lose body fat, it means there will be some challenges along the way - walking is a great way to account for reductions in NEAT.

There’s no “bad” foods but there can be “bad” diets - improving your relationship with food can significantly improve your health.

“If you’re fit, read books. If you’re smart, get fit.”

I was neither.

Before I started working out I was a VERY shy kid. If you weren’t close to me, I didn’t talk much. This made it hard to ask for help in classes I didn’t enjoy or struggled with - it was uncomfortable and I avoided doing any work for those classes. And because of this, I was close to failing a few classes.

Fortunately, I started working out with a group of friends but it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The first day I trained with them we started to Bench Press (of course). I was given an instruction then gave it a go. It was 55lbs and it dropped on my chest and I had to get it picked off.

I was embarrassed BUT no one laughed. They were all supportive and dropped the weight every time it was my turn to go.

And even though I still felt embarrassed and was much weaker than all of them, I continued to train with them and slowly fell in love with the gym.

I put on about 15lbs of muscle in my first year of training and felt a lot more confident. I wasn’t as shy and started to notice improvements in the sports I was playing and my grades improved every year.

I learned that if you work hard at something … you can make a lot of progress and even excel. And as an ignorant, shy kid who wasn’t “smart” in school, this was special.

I started working hard in other areas of my life knowing that if I put in the work, I can see improvements.

I went from a SMALL town shy kid (in the Northwest Territories) to playing University football and eventually moving to the States to work in the fitness industry.

What if I was laughed at after weight dropped on my chest? I could’ve given up that day and my life could be entirely different …

I became “fit” and then read books. It changed my life for the better … and now I’m helping busy professionals get “fit”. My client who’s job (surgeon) is “stressful and extremely time-intensive” said it best here, “getting stronger has made living in my body a pleasure instead of a chore” and her “body is much better prepared for that work now.”