Health24 caught up with Tracy and asked her about her exercise programme.

H24: What type of exercise do you prefer?
Tracy: I like doing weights rather than cardio. With cardio, I prefer swimming to running and I enjoy doing yoga.

H24: How often do you exercise?
Tracy: I haven't for a while, and need to get back into the swing of things.

H24: Do you like/hate it?
Tracy: It's not my favourite thing to do.

H24: What is you typical exercise regime? How many cardio sessions do you do per week?
Tracy: When I do get my act together, then twice a week.

H24: How fit are you?
Tracy: Not very.

H24: Would you like to be fitter?
Tracy: Most definitely.

And over to Tracy's new fitness trainer, Tom Liebenberg from BLANK
This is a combined program summary for both Kim (Tracy's mom) and Tracy, as Pieter, Tom and Neal (their trainers) will be involved with both of them and we all make use of similar training techniques and methods.

Our program summary will not include a typical breakdown of what we will be doing on each day, for example, Day 1 we do chest with five sets of this and four sets of that. Our training is dynamic in nature and no two workouts are ever the same. We don’t break days down into different muscle groups (except in the case of weight gainers) and some of our exercises are difficuilt to name or describe as they can consist of multiple exercises in one movement. Here, however, is a breakdown of how we approach the different stages of a workout:

The warm–up
With warm-ups we move beyond the traditional 10 – 20 minutes at a low intensity on some cardio machine. Instead we use our warm–ups to challenge the cardiovascular system in an intense and short period of time. A warm–up can consist of a circuit, including some or all of the following exercises and movements:

Running (forwards/backwards)
Lateral running (sideways)
On the spot running (on floor or BOSU)
Skipping (with and without rope)
Boxing (with or without bags)
Star jumps
Burpees
Skiers (mimicking ski movements)

We do however make use of traditional cardio machines, but this won’t form the bulk of our training.

Resistance training
When deciding which muscles to train, we move away from the bodybuilder’s way of thinking, which is, today we do chest and biceps and tomorrow we do back and triceps, and so forth. Instead, we classify muscles into the following groups:
Opposites: Chest and back, biceps and triceps, quadriceps and hamstrings, abs and lower back
Anterior (meaning front) muscles: Shoulders, chest, abs, quadriceps.
Posterior (meaning at the back) muscles: Upper back, lower back, glutes, hamstrings and calves.

Muscles can also be classified into diagonals or cross sections, an example of that would be, lats, abs and quads. As you can see the possibilities are huge and these muscle groups are more in sync with the way our bodies actually move, instead of just sitting on a bench and doing one movement at a time.

Our repetitions are high and can range from 15 to 30 and even 50, depending on the exercise and fatigue levels. Sets are also varied but at least three sets are done for every exercise. Most of our workouts comprise of circuits consisting of at least two, and as many as five exercises. Rest periods are kept short, if any, but rest is definitely given after at least three continuous sets.

Resistance methods can include the following:
Body weight resistance
Free weights
Fixed machines
Resistance bands
Medicine balls
Resistance applied by trainer

Our training aids include the following:
Resistance bands
Medicine balls
Physio balls
BOSU
Paper plates (for sliding movements)

The cool down
Our cool downs are kept simple and include one of the following:
Low intensity cardio (heart rate not higher than 65% of maximum)
Stretching of trained muscles and problem areas.

Tom Liebenberg