Nick Grantham has become recognised as a specialist in athletic preparation and has helped athletes at all levels achieve their personal goals and ambitions. He has kindly agreed to give me an interview on why he believes everyone should train like an athlete.

MK: Hi Nick, I really appreciate you taking out some time for this interview.

NG: No problem Marc, it’s always a pleasure to be asked to do things like this. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas and I promise I’ll try not to go off on any rants!

MK: Could you start by telling the readers a little about your current coaching commitments? (I borrowed that from your interview with Mike Boyle)

NG: I currently run my own facility in Newcastle upon Tyne, Smart Fitness. I have a wide range of clients from general population through to professional athletes, so I have a great mix. I am also the strength and conditioning coach for the GB Women’s Basketball Team, helping them prepare for 2012.

MK: Can you tell the reader a little about your coaching background?

NG: After finishing my MSc I started working with British Gymnastics as a sport scientist/physiologist but I wasn’t particularly excited by running VO2 max tests and taking bloods, in fact I was much more interested in the training that went on between the testing.  I decided to take a bit of gamble and sat the first NSCA strength and conditioning accreditation to take place in the UK. Soon after that I took up a position with England Netball which was one of the first posts in the UK specifically for strength and conditioning. Around the same time British Gymnastics asked me back as a consultant in a similar capacity where I worked with the Mens Artisitic team as they prepared for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Following this I took up the position of lead strength and conditioning coach in the West Midlands for the English Institute of Sport. This was a great job and my team looked after athletes competing in a wide range of sports. We had a great support team and I was lucky to work with some of the best athletes in the country. I held that post for 4 and a half years before leaving to open up my own business in the Newcastle Upon Tyne, Smart Fitness. I now look after a range of clients, from general population through to professional athletes and teams. I’m very lucky to be doing something I really enjoy, it’s brilliant.

MK: I recently attended a seminar where you where one of the guest speakers. In the seminar you talked about the need to train like an athlete, could you explain why?

NG: Now, I did say I wouldn’t rant but I’m really passionate about this and I reckon I’m in danger of going off on one.

Why should everyone train like an athlete. Well, the simple answer is it gets RESULTS! Most commercial facilities fail to mention anything in their marketing material about results, usually because their members don’t get any!

In my opinion a lot of what takes place in commercial gyms is simply selling the clients short. The path to improved fitness, health and sporting performances is not through slow steady state cardio, followed by a machine based resistance training session. The reason this has become the ‘norm’ in so many facilities is because it is an easy option for most gym owners and personal trainers.

We need to train in a manner that will support our day to day lifestyle. You don’t need to be an athlete to train like one. Think of a 45 year that has to sprint to catch the bus, or the young mum of two trying to carry the kids and put them in the car whilst loading the car up with shopping. Initially you may not consider what they are doing as ‘athletic’ but think about the movements and loads and stresses that are being placed on the body. Now ask yourself if sitting on a pec deck or repping out on the thigh master is really challenging the body and helping it develop the capacity to cope with everyday ‘athletic’ situations.

I come from a performance background and I figured that everyone should be able to access the level of care and attention that I gave to my high performance athletes. For the past 3 years I’ve been successfully putting my training principles into practice with the clients that train with me at Smart Fitness. The response I get from my clients when they adopt an ‘athletic’ approach to training is amazing. For many of them this is the first time in their lives that they have worked out with any real intensity. For the vast majority it is the first time that they have combined the powerful benefits of resistance training, high-intensity cardiovascular training and a clean diet. It doesn’t take long for them to start seeing and feeling the benefits of a more ‘athletic’ approach to training and enjoying the RESULTS of their hard work

MK:  Could you give some examples of the types of clients you train?

NG: Sure, we are a broad church at Smart Fitness! You met Ken in my presentation. Ken is 65 years old, had a brain tumour removed and came to me to help regain some confidence, balance and fitness. Marc, you saw the video, Ken kicks arse, 18 months down the line and he is proof as to why everyone should adopt an athletic approach to training.

At the other end of the spectrum I have professional athletes that come to train with me, usually pre-season work when they are away from their clubs and need some expert guidance at a local facility.

The beauty is that we work on a semi-private basis so we have several clients training at a time. This is, in my opinion, the perfect training environment; we have the pro’s in with the fat loss clients. What is great is that rather than being an intimidating environment, it’s a place where everyone can find motivation and inspiration. Imagine the fat loss clients face when they realise they have a better technique on an exercise than a pro-athelte! The fat loss clients realises they rock and the pro athlete realises they need to up their game. It’s a win win situation!

MK:  Athletic training would involve lots of functional exercise, could you explain to the readers what functional training is and more importantly what it is not?

NG: Marc, you are doing your best to wind me up! Functional training is not wobbling around on a stability ball doing bicep curls – save that for the circus! Vern Gambetta provides a great overview on what he considers to be functional training is in his book Athletic Development: The Art and Science of Functional Sports Conditioning. Vern says that functional training “employees an integrated (as opposed to isolated) approach. It involves movement of multiple body parts, and the move involves multiple planes”. In the seminar that I deliver on the EXF-Perform Better Learn By Doing Workshops I go into more detail about exactly what I feel functional training is, but Vern pretty much hits the nail on the head.

MK: You also talked about multi directional movements. Could you explain why this is important?

NG: It comes back to how we move in real life. Our body moves through a wide range of movements in multiple directions. I can’t think of one activity that we perform in our day-to-day lives that require true isolation of any single muscle, so why do we insist on training in this manner? Machines pretty much lock you into a single plane of movement, but that is not how the body actually moves and performs day to day functions.

MK: What type of equipment would you use to achieve this?

NG: I use whatever it takes to get the job done! There are currently a lot of coaches out there that market themselves as the ‘kettlebell guy’ or the ‘olympic lifting guy’ which seems a bit odd to me. What they are basically saying is that they only have one approach to getting people in shape! It’s my way or the highway and this is the best training method for fat loss, injury prevention, body building etc etc. I would argue that if you come across this type of coach that their locker is probably pretty empty, and here’s why. Lets say I had to put together a bookshelf from Ikea. The bookshelf had 50 screws that held it together. Now I’m a ‘hammer guy’ and I’m going to knock the crap out of each screw and make sure they go into the wood! This approach may work in the short term, it’s probably going to look a bit messy and chances are it would have been hard work! Wouldn’t it be so much easier if I chose the appropriate tool for the job. A good coach will get the screwdriver out!

Coaches need to stop attaching themselves to pieces of equipment and develop a wide coaching skill set. I will use bodyweight, weighted vests, dumbbells, barbells, bands, chains, kettlebells, suspension trainers, cable machines, medicine balls etc etc. If you want to develop functionality through multidimensional movement you need a range of ‘tools’ that will let you get the job done. Match the skill with the appropriate tool and you are onto a winner.

MK: So barbells, dumbbells, bodyweight exercises are the key. What about exercise machines that you would find in most commercial gyms?

NG: Marc, Marc, Marc…..you are determined to make me rant! Let’s face facts, exercise machines appeal to the general population because they are ‘high-tech’, and anything with a button, TV screen or LED display must be fantastic, right? They appeal to gym instructors and some personal trainers, because they don’t require a discernable level of skill to operate them! Coaching is not standing next to machine, adjusting the seat height and selecting the weight and then counting backwards, from 10 down to 1!

You’ve seen photos of my facility, and I can safely say that my training is not focused on the use of machines. Resistance machines have several fundamental flaws:

1. They are designed for the average Joe – what if you are not average, what if you are tall or short or maybe a bit on the heavy side?
2. Most machines have you sitting down. We spent millions of years, evolving so that we can walk round up right but now we seem hell bent on sitting down on our arse all day. We sit on the sofa at home, we sit in our car on the way to work, and we sit at our desk all day at work. Guess what, we go to the gym, and once again, you are encouraged to sit on your arse!
3. Most machines only allow movement in one plane. Daily activity takes place in all three lanes of movement.
4. Most machines at tempt to isolate individual muscle groups. Once again, this has very little bearing on the movements that we carry out on a day-to-day basis.

My primary goal with the clients I work with is to improve their ‘functional’ strength. I strongly believe that an over reliance on resistance machines, compromises, the overall development of an individual’s ability to perform day-to-day functions.

The exception to the rule are cable machines (see I’m not 100% against machines…just 99.9%!). If you can get your hands on a good cable system then you will have an effective tool for developing strength through a wide range of movement patterns.

MK: High Intensity Interval Training is superior to clients looking for fat loss could you explain to the reader what it is and why it is preferable to steady state cardio?

NG: Not all cardio is created equal. If you can read your magazine/book or hold a conversation with your friend whilst performing your cardio workout then you need to have a rethink!

For me HIIT is simply switching from a high intensity work effort to a low intensity work effort and repeating for a set period of time. For a new client It may simply be walking fast for one minute and then walking slow for one minute (if you are out of shape walking fast is high intensity), repeating that sequence for 15 to 20 minutes. For someone that has been training for some time, the intensity level of each work effort will be higher, but the principle remains the same, alternate, periods of high intensity with periods of low intensity efforts.

Give me 20 minutes and I will give you a fat melting cardio session which will have you incinerating calories even when you have stopped training! We squeeze every last drop out of our cardio sessions by working at high intensities. There is a heap of research that clearly shows that HIIT is far superior for increasing lean body mass. HIIT promotes EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption) and research has shown it can elevate metabolisms for up to 36 hours post-exercise! If this results in even only a 1 calorie per minute increase, this comes out to an excess 2,160 calories burned over the next day and half!! This is not even counting the cumulative effect of  your next workout!

Clients have a choice, plod along for ages hardly breaking a sweat, or increase the intensity for a shorter period of time to maximise the training benefit.

MK: Could you outline a typical fat loss training program?

NG: A typical fat loss program consists of three components.

1. Strength – 1-2 whole body movements (5 minutes)
2. Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) – a series of 4-5 strength-based movements completed in a circuit (20-25 minutes)
3. HIIT – cardio intervals (10-20 minutes)

I would be looking for this session to be completed at least three times per week and combined with a healthy nutrition plan.

MK: Thanks Nick, you have given us some great information so far. Moving on to nutrition, with regards to fat loss, what should the readers be doing to get incredible results?

NG: Table push aways! Most people eat way too much and would probably benefit from pushing the table away halfway through the meal! (I got that one from Mike Boyle – he should go into stand up!)

MK: What would you say to someone who was training hard but still not seeing the results you would expect from the effort they were putting in at the gym?

NG: You need to consider your clients as a ‘24 hour client’. What are they doing outside of the gym that is preventing them from getting the results? I know that my programs work. So when a client is training with me and I’m not seeing the level of improvement that I would expect, we need to take a look at what is going on outside of their training sessions with me.

I usually ask some simple questions. I ask the clients tell me three things that went well this week with their training and nutrition. I then ask the client to tell me three things that they think didn’t go so well this week. It’s at this point that you usually find out that something has happened during the week that is counter-productive to their goals! It may be that they are freestyling their nutrition, not training enough or possibly not getting enough recovery. The key is to have a conversation with your client and start to understand what is actually happening when they are not with you.

MK: With regards to calories, obviously eating too much is going to hinder fat loss, would you say eating too little will have an adverse effect on results? Could you explain why?

NG: Starvation is not the way to go for fat loss! Rachel Cosgrove sums it up nicely in her book, The Female Body Breakthrough. “Eat more often, not less. Becoming fit and fabulous is not about starving yourself and feeling deprived. The key is to get your metabolism revving, fuel your body throughout the day with healthy foods, and learn how to enjoy a guilt free splurge that fits into your healthy lifestyle… instead of starving your body and letting your metabolism stall out, creating an ideal situation to gain the weight back, the goal is to fuel your body and boost your metabolism to the point where your body burns through the food you eat and you have to continue fuelling to keep your metabolism leading”.

The body is very clever, when you start to reduce your calorie intake the body will work overtime to save energy. The first thing that will happen is your metabolism will start to drop. This is the exact opposite of what you actually want to happen!

MK: What are your opinions on these diets that say “drink two shakes & one meal per day” or the cereal based diets?

NG: Marc, here’s what I think

Quick fix – short term results – long-term failure – yo-yo weight loss weight gain constantly frustrated!

This is not, in my opinion, a healthy approach to long-term sustained fat loss. The cereal based diets really make me laugh. Cereals are traditionally eaten at breakfast. That’s one meal out of a potential three (if we adopt a typical Western meal plan). So let’s think why they may want you to eat two bowls of cereal each day. Any thoughts? Maybe it’s because if you start to eat two bowls of cereal and you are going to need to buy twice as much cereal! I reckon it has less to do with adopting a balanced and healthy lifestyle, and more to do with sales! Just my opinion.

MK: I believe that supplements should be just that. They should be an addition to a healthy balanced nutrition plan made up of whole foods and not replace them. Would you agree?

NG: Marc, I think you have hit the mail on the head. Supplements are like the icing on the cake. The problem is, most people don’t have a cake in the first place! I think it is really important for people to adopt a healthy balanced diet and work hard to get their vitamins, minerals and nutrients from natural sources. However, it’s important that we should also recognise that some populations (athletes, students etc) may not have the healthiest and most balanced diet! These people may actually benefit from supplementation. But lets not get carried away, if you are constantly popping pills and drinking shakes then I think you need to get a grip of yourself and start eating some real food.

MK: What would be your top three “must do” things with regards to nutrition for fat loss?

NG:

1.       Eat clean  – if you can’t pronounce it then chances are you don’t want it in your stomach! Avoid overly processed foods and go natural.

2.       Drink more – reduce the amount of calorie containing beverages and drink more water at least 2 litres a day.

3.       Eat 5-6 times a day – provide your body with a constant stream of nutrients.

MK: Before we close Nick, what would be your 5 top things to do regarding training and nutrition to help the readers to cut body fat

NG:

1. Consistency of effort is the key to success. Develop a good programme, and repeat it consistently over an extended period of time. One session a week for a couple of weeks just doesn’t cut it. The same goes for nutrition, you need to be consistent with your efforts.
2. Ditch steady state cardio – it’s boring as hell and takes far too long. HIIT is tough but you can be done in as little as 10 minutes and you can let EPOC take care of things whilst you are doing something more interesting than training!
3. Lift weights – studies have compared weight lifting to aerobics and found that whilst both groups lost the same amount of weight, the group that lifted weights lost only fat. The aerobics group lost 8% of their weight from muscle! Remeber losing muscle, slows metabolism. We want to elevate metabolisms so lift heavy, you’ll love it!
4. Get Functional – ditch the machines (cables can stay!) and start to train how you need to move. Yes it’s more challenging but it’s a lot more fun and interesting than sitting on a pec deck watching TV!
5. Invisible Training – we need to take time for recovery and regeneration. If you are stressed all the time your body is going to pump out cortisol. Research has linked high cortisol levels with increased belly fat. Take some time to relax and you may just drop those muffin tops. You’ll probably be a nicer person to be around as well!

MK: It was great speaking to you today Nick, you’ve shared some incredible information which I hope the readers have found helpful. Where can the readers go to find out more about you and your training programs?

NG: Thanks for having me today Marc, it’s been fun and I hope I didn’t go off into too many rants! Your readers can keep in touch by following me on www.nickgrantham.com where I have a heap of free information, reviews, special offers, Q&A’s and the occasional rant! If they fancy seeing me in person then they can catch me at the EXF-Perform Better Learn By Doing Seminar in Oxford on July 10^th.

It’s the season finale and there is a great line up of world class speakers so even if they don’t want to see me it’s worth getting along to!

I’ve even embraced the social media side of things so you can catch me on twitter (http://twitter.com/coachnickg) and facebook (http://www.facebook.com/coachnickgrantham)!

MK: Thanks again Nick

NG: Absolute pleasure Marc, all the very best.

Nick has become recognised as a specialist in athletic preparation and has helped athletes at all levels achieve their personal goals and ambitions. Nick has worked in high performance sport for more than 10 years and has extensive experience of long term athlete development. As lead strength and conditioning coach to National Governing Body’s and Home Institutes Nick has been responsible for the management, development and delivery of integrated physical preparation strategies for a wide range of sports.

Nick has developed and delivered physical preparation strategies, incorporating other disciplines such as sport science, physiotherapy, nutrition, performance analysis and biomechanics. He has also worked closely with medical teams assisting in the management, monitoring and implementation of injury management programmes.

Nick continues to develop his knowledge of advanced training concepts and evidence based training principles, and has observed best practice at leading training establishments around the world including; the Australian Institute of Sport, International Rugby Academy New Zealand, US Olympic Training Centre, Cirque du Soleil and Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Nick has a proven record of coach and athlete education, having developed resources, practices and applied research that has enhanced the delivery of both sport specific and strength and conditioning support.

A sought after ‘expert’ Nick has presented seminars and practical demonstrations on strength and conditioning for the Football Association, the National Sports Medicine Institute, the British Olympic Association and the UK Strength and Conditioning Association.  Nick has articles published in leading sports publications such as Triathlete’s World, Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness including monthly columns in Sports Injury Bulletin and Maxim magazine.