Let’s face it, the thought of stripping off the layers and revealing, pale, bare flesh is enough to make most of us a little anxious.

Scrubbing, buffing and a little fake tanning will help with the summer body of course. But what about if you could go on your hola a good few pounds lighter? Most of us would feel better and have a bit more confidence on the beach.

So we asked our favorite dietitian Juliette Kellow for a plan to make the most of those last few weeks before the holiday, here’s the plan.

Three Weeks to Summer Shorts is an easy-to-follow three-week diet that’s designed to help you lose half a stone (7lbs / 3.5kg). Better still, it’s suitable for most people.

You can add the Summer Shorts Plan straight into your Food Diary in WLR (take a free trial if you want to try this), once it’s where you can easily change bits of it to suit your tastes whilst still keeping on track to lose the weight.

How to Lose the Most Weight in 3 Weeks

How much it’s possible to lose will depend on your starting weight. Heavier people will lose weight more quickly on this plan because of the relatively low number of calories in comparison to what’s needed for maintenance.

You can maximize weight loss by burning up some extra calories through exercise, or simply moving more. (Think to pace around the kitchen while you’re waiting for the kettle, or always using the upstairs loo, etc.)

Whether you’ve come to WLR to lose weight for your summer holiday or want to kick start a longer-term eating plan to help you shift several stones, this 3-week diet plan provides an easy way to get started.

The plan will also be useful if you’re already on the road to losing weight, but feel your motivation beginning to slip. The 3 weeks of focus will help you get back on track and leave you feeling inspired, as well as half a stone lighter!

How to Lose a Stone

If you want to use this easy diet plan to lose a stone, most people will need to follow it for 6 or 7 weeks. It’s very healthy and has plenty of variety to help you stick to it.

Heavier people may find it only takes a month or so, for the reason stated above.

So forget about hiding those bulges under long baggy clothes. Instead, start following our plan today and in just three weeks you’ll feel cool, comfortable and more confident in shorts, t-shirts, and swimsuits.

Here’s what to do…

• It couldn’t be easier! Over the next three weeks, simply follow the daily menu plans. It’s fine to swap the order around to fit in with your lifestyle – for example, you may prefer to start your diet with the meals given for day 3, followed by day 6 and so on.
• You may repeat your favorite daily menu in place of one of the others or swap individual meals from one daily menu to the next if you don’t like some of the choices given.
• In addition to the daily meal plans, choose ONE snack every day. You may choose from either the SAVE (100 calories) or SPLURGE (250 calories) snacks – remember though, the more times you choose the SAVE option, the more weight you’ll lose!
• Each day, have 275ml/½pint skimmed milk to use in tea and coffee, to drink on its own or to make into a smoothie using fruit from the menu plans. Milk is packed with calcium, needed for strong, healthy bones so it’s important to have this every day.
• Remember, portion size matters! All teaspoon and tablespoon measurements should be level, one small can is equivalent to around 200g, and jacket potatoes should weigh around 175g/6oz.
• Add plenty of vegetables or salad to meals. You should eat five different servings of fruit and veg every day to boost your intake of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. It’s fine to sweeten fruit with a little artificial sweetener if liked.
• Drink eight glasses of water each day, water really helps with weight loss. It’s also fine to drink tea, coffee, herbal tea, and sugar-free squashes.
• For even more focus on eating to get your body ready for the beach, see my holiday body diet tips.

How many calories does the diet provide?

Each daily menu, together with the milk allowance, adds up to 1,150 calories. Choosing a SAVE (100 calorie) snack takes this up to 1,250 calories; choosing a SPLURGE (250 calories) snack takes it up to 1,400 calories.

It’s up to you whether you choose SAVE or SPLURGE, but as a general guideline, if you have less than 1st to lose you should opt for the SAVE snack, while if you have more than 1st to lose, you should choose the SPLURGE snack.

Finally, as this is a short-term three-week plan, you may find it contains fewer calories than you’ve been having each day. Once you’ve completed the diet, you should go back to your usual daily calorie allowance recommended by WLR.

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Stronger, fitter legs come with a number of advantages including increased coordination, agility, strength for everyday tasks such as lifting heavy objects, weight loss and of course, they look good. If you’re looking to develop your thighs and hips then you’re in the right place; we will show you four exercise moves to give your legs and tush a firm push in the right direction. Read on to learn more about these effective shaping exercises:

Single leg squats

Stand with your feet together and your arms by your side, and shift your weight on to the right foot. Recline your left foot on a surface behind you, such as a chair or table, then lower your body until your butt is parallel with your knees and return to starting position. This is an excellent move for building strength and definition in your thighs in particular.

Standing abduction

To execute this move, you should stand next to a wall, resting your palm on it for balance. Keeping both legs fully straightened, extend your outer leg to the side till it forms a 45 degree angle with your torso. The key to performing this exercise with proper technique is making sure you never have to move your upper body or lean back in order to fully extend your leg. This exercise is very effective for working the glutes (butt) and hip muscles.

Double –leg lift

The double leg leglift is a good move for working all the muscles in the thigh area, but with the iliopsoas muscle of the hip. To perform this exercise, lie on your back, hands straightened out by your sides and your feet together. Keeping both legs fully stretched out in front of you; lift both legs in the air till they form a 90 degree angle with your pelvis and then reverse the motion. Always keep in mind that the motion should be executed slowly.

Lunges

Stand with your feet together and hold a dumbbell down at your sides with your palms facing in towards your thighs. Take a big step forward with your right leg, and plant your right foot and slowly lower your knee towards the floor. Keep your back straight and your right knee inclined at a 90 degree angle, and then return to starting position to the starting position and repeat with your left leg.

Conclusion

In isolation, these moves will develop specific muscles in your thigh area more than others but you can combine two or more of these moves to achieve the desired effect of slimmer hips and thighs.

A professional fitness instructor might be able to help you achieve your fitness goals by offering more in depth advice and customized guidance.

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Knee injuries are among the worst things that could happen to any active person as they often take quite a long time to heal, and may never even get completely healed. Even worse, most serious knee injuries will continue to have a detrimental effect, later on in life, particularly as people grow older.

So if you haven’t yet had a serious knee injury, you’re in luck and you need to insure yourself by proactively protecting your knees against potential injuries. One of the best ways to do this is to strengthen the muscles that surround the knee joint through exercise. In fact, depending on the nature of the injury, strong surrounding muscles may take over much of the function of the knee and make physical activity easier in people who have already suffered knee injuries. The muscles you will have to target, specifically, are the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus maximus and gluteus medius, adductor and abductor muscles.

Squats (Front & Back)

Squats are probably the single most effective and easy to perform exercise particularly for people with healthy knees. Most squat techniques effectively target all the major muscles in the upper leg but you can vary the technique to place more emphasis on certain muscles:

Front Squat- Quadriceps

To place greater emphasis and tension on the quadriceps, you should do the front squat. You may perform the front squat by standing with your feet, shoulder width apart, head upright and chest puffed out. You may place your hands on your waist, or clasped beneath your chin. Push your butt out and lower your body until your butt is on a slightly lower level than your knees and return to starting position.

Back Squat- Hamstrings and glutes

To strengthen and develop the hamstrings and glutes, you could use back squats. These are performed using a technique which is similar to the front squat. You might want to use a rod to assist you at finding the right form. Balance this rod on your shoulders and then go down making a similar motion to the front squat. Ensure you keep your back upright. This will work your hamstrings and glutes.

Adductors

Back squats will work the most important hip abductor, the gluteus medius, but to work the adductors which are generally found along the interior of the hips and are responsible for drawing the legs inward, adjust your squat by placing your feet at a greater distance away from each other.

One Legged Deadlift- (Calves, hamstrings and glutes)

One-legged deadlifts are very effective because they work all the muscles found in the rear of the legs including calves, hamstrings and glutes. To perform them, bend over as if to pick an object off the ground and raise your leg, on the same side as the arm you reach over with, till it forms a 90-degree angle with your body.

Conclusion

These three exercises will help you build all the muscles surrounding your knees. Fortunately, most of these muscles have the potential to be really powerful so you if they’re properly developed, your lower body will be much stronger.

Having a fitness instructor to guide you might help you get the most out your workouts and if you would like to meet with one, we would be glad to connect you with someone you can trust. Please contact us at:

WhatsApp number: +971 56 58 30067 (Just send us code 2721 and we will get back to you ASAP)
Contact Us: Click here to send us your details or fill in the form below.

You can get in touch with us 24/7 and one of our experts will not only give you a free consultation but also help you pick out an appropriate male or female personal trainer to meet your needs. One-on-one personal training lessons are available in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman and RAK.
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Knee injuries are any active person’s worst nightmare and many an athlete or sportsperson has had their career ended by an unexpected serious injury. From ACL’s to runner’s knee, knee injuries will at the very least mean some discomfort or, possibly, a lengthy lay-off and in the worst case, a total halt to intense physical activity. You should always seek medical attention when you suffer even a moderately serious knee injury as sometimes improperly rehabilitated injuries can be a strong pre-disposing factor for subsequent serious injuries. Depending on the assessment of your doctor, you will probably be asked to do some physical exercise to rehabilitate your knees after a period of rest.

A lot of people also suffer some serious knee pain and discomfort without actually having incurred a specific injury and in such cases, certain exercises for rehab are highly recommended.

Here are some of the most common exercises you can do to get back on your feet after suffering a knee injury.

1. Overhead Squat- Assess Knee Strength

Often, weakness in any of the tissues that are found in the knee or around the knee, will result in some form of compensation by the knee joint. Essentially, this means you will carry out regular physical activities using unnatural and poor form which will eventually, itself, be a pre-disposing factor to injury.

To assess the extent to which your knees might be compensating for any weakness, the overhead squat is a well recommended and popular technique. To do the overhead squat, you start off by performing a regular squat—stand with your feet, shoulder width apart, push your butt out and lower your back until your bum is slightly lower than your knees—but with both hands fully extended over your head. If your knees are compensating for some weakness, they will either subtly buckle inward or cave outward. Either motion will indicate some weakness in the surrounding muscles but when knees cave inwards, it indicates a need for the strengthening of the glutes (butt) and shin, and in the reverse scenario, it might indicate a weakness in the inner thighs and hamstrings. Read on for more details on how to strengthen weak leg muscles.

2. One-legged deadlift- Calf & hamstring

This is a really simple exercise to strengthen all the muscles along the back of your leg and you can do it, literally, anywhere. You bend over and touch the ground/your toes with one hand as if you were picking something up, and raise your opposing leg behind you till it forms a 90-degree angle with your standing leg, then return to starting position and repeat. The key to performing this exercise, with good form, is keeping your back straight and your core tucked in. To add some difficulty to this move, hold an appropriately heavy/light dumbell in your hand when you reach forward.

3. Isometric Squat- Quadriceps/Hamstrings & Glutes

These are squats without any dynamic movements. You simply squat and hold the position for some time, get back up, and repeat the process. Isometric squats have a strengthening effect on the knee joint and on the muscles around it so you should definitely be doing them for increased knee strength.

When you do squats, make sure that your knees do not extend beyond your toes, to limit the amount of strain being placed on the knees.

4. Calve Raises

Do calve raises to strengthen and develop your calves to make running, and other dynamic physical exercises, easier. To perform calve raises, lean with your palms resting against a wall and elevate your body till you’re standing on your toes. Go back down and repeat. Calve raises should be done in a slow and steady movement as opposed to faster jerky movements.

5. Swim

Swimming involves a lot of non-weight bearing knee motion and, for that reason, is an excellent activity for people with bad knees. You should swim to aid joint flexibility and .

Exercise tip

Avoid running on hard or uneven surfaces, while recovering from a knee injury. In fact, running on such surfaces is not recommended for anyone, even fit and healthy athletes.

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When it comes to fitness and developing a stronger body, most people focus much more on their upper body because, of course, a strong upper body is much more visible and impressive. But having a strong lower body is just as important for general fitness and health. If you’ve ever played a contact sport, you might remember having lost a duel to seemingly, scrawny looking guy who you totally expected to dominate. That guy probably had a very strong core and strong lower body muscles. Stronger legs give more balance and power for upper body muscles which is transmitted better by a strong core. Get the picture?

Generally, most squat techniques will work your major muscles such as the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and the abdominal muscles, and the variations shown below will only serve to target some of these muscles more specifically but without cutting the other muscle groups out of the workout completely. Read on to find out which squats you can do to strengthen all the very important muscles in your core and lower body.

1. Front Squat

This is probably the most popular squat technique and is widely used by body builders, professional athletes and fitness buffs all over the world.  The front squat focuses majorly on the quadriceps, which are the major muscle that run along the front of your thigh. Having stronger “quads” will make you faster and give you more power for kicking or leaping.

To perform a front squat, you stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your wrists clasped beneath your chin, and squat until your elbows touch your knees.

One thing to note about all squat techniques is, you should not arch or “round out” your back as you lower your body into position.

2. Back Squat

Similarly to the front squat, you start with your feet shoulder width apart; but the back squat is, literally, designed to place tension on the muscles that at the back of the lower limbs—hamstrings & glutes–and on the back itself. You might need to use a rod or pole, of any kind, to aid in getting the technique right; a lot of people will use a barbell to intensify the exercise but for a beginner this is not advised, at least until you’ve mastered the basic technique.

Hold the rod across the back of your neck, balanced on your shoulders; then squat in the same motion as before but this time your elbows won’t be able to touch your knees so stop when your butt is either parallel or just below your knees. You should feel your hamstrings and butt muscles working a bit harder than when you do a front squat.

3. Isometric Back Squat

Isometric squats are squats that do not have the dynamic element of the traditional squat movement. In isometric squats, you squat and stay in the hole position (the bottom point of a squat when your butt is fully declined) for a longer period, with a longer rest period as well.

Isometric squats are good for improving the strength of individual muscles in the lower body but there is a disadvantage to this: isometric squats place tension exclusively on the particular muscle that is being targeted, unlike other squat techniques that activate multiple muscle groups. The isometric back squat is great for specifically working your hamstrings and the gluteus maximus—the body’s single largest muscle.

4. Isometric Front Squat

Like the isometric back squat, the benefits of the isometric front squat will be limited to increasing strength in the quadriceps. The technique is similar: maintain the “hole” position for an extended period of time.

5. Isometric Wall Squat

The isometric wall squat is significantly easier than both the isometric front and back squats and is recommended for beginners and women trying to lose weight or get into shape. The reason is simple: with wall squats, like the name implies, you lean your back against a wall while you squat. Unlike the other squat techniques we have described so far, your butt should be parallel with your knees, not lower. While the average beginner may struggle to hold an isometric front or back squat for more than 20-30 seconds, you might find it relatively easy to hold an isometric wall squat for up to 90 seconds.

6. Wide Stance

The wide stance is a technique that may be applied to almost any squat, to allow it to target the adductor muscles which run along the inside of the thighs. Adductors are an inside muscle, the type of muscles actually responsible for generating power; so to improve your real leg strength, strengthening the adductors is a good idea.

To do this, place your feet at a much wider distance when you go down on a squat.

7. Plyometric Squat

The term, plyometric, is reserved for exercises which involve some significant jumping or leaping motion, which explains why they are also known as jump training. To perform plyometric squats, do a regular front or back squat but when coming up from the “hole” position, jump off the ground. The extra effort of jumping off the ground activates more muscles including the calves and develops the fast twitch muscle fibers which generate explosive power. Jump squats will also help build endurance.

Plyometric squats are a good idea for a challenging exercise to graduate to once you’ve mastered the easier squat techniques listed here.

8. Squats With Toe Raise

An alternative squat technique that will also place some emphasis on your calves, is squats with toe raises. What you do is: squat using either the front or back squat and then, when you return to starting position, stand on your toes. Do this in one smooth motion.

Squats with the toe raise variation are a very clever way to work all the major muscles in the lower body.

Conclusion

For fitter and stronger leg muscles, and stronger knees, you should probably find a way to work in a number of these squat techniques into your workout routine. For beginners, you may start by doing 3 sets of 15 front or back squats on alternate days.

Having a personal trainer might help speed up the process of getting fit. If you would like to hire one, we would be glad to connect you with someone you can trust. Please get in touch with us at:

WhatsApp number: +971 56 58 30067  (Just send us code 2747 and we will get back to you ASAP)
Contact Us: Click here to send us your details or fill in the form below.

You can get in touch with us 24/7 and one of our experts will not only give you a free consultation but also help you pick out an appropriate male or female personal trainer to meet your needs. One-on-one personal training lessons are available in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman and RAK.
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Squat is a type of strength training that pertains to full body training, focusing primarily on the hip muscles, thigh muscles and buttocks. As well as strengthening the bones. There are various types of squats, but these five are among the most basic and easy ones.

PILE SQUAT.

When doing the pile squat, stand with your legs a little wider than shoulder-width apart. Hold something that has weight, like a dumbbell with both hands. Make sure to keep your head and back straight. Then start lowering yourself slowly into a sitting position with your thighs parallel to the ground. Your weight should be on your heels as you stand back up. Repeat this for 20-25 times. And as you get more familiar with the exercise, you can hold heavier weights.

SINGLE-LEGGED SQUAT.

The single- legged squat, otherwise known as the “pistol” is a type of squat where you balance yourself with one leg whilst the other one is extended away from your body. This is how you do it; extend your arms out in front of your body. Extend one straight leg in front of you as high as you can whilst balancing on the other leg. With your back straight and your head up, make sure the knee of the balancing foot is behind its toes as you squat down as far as you can go with the extended leg. Stand up straight and repeat the exercise for about 20-25 times.

GOBLET SQUAT.

Because of the position in which the weight is held during this type of squat, it is dubbed ‘goblet’ squat. You hold the weight against your chest, under your chin. Make sure your feet are shoulder-width apart. Go down in a sitting position with your back straight and your chest up. Your knees should be out. Shoot back up and repeat 20-25 times.

BARBELL SQUAT.

Just like all the other types of squats, you need to plant your feet about shoulder-width apart. Get below the bar and bend your knees slightly. Your feet should point outward to give you a better grip on the ground. Your knees should be behind your toes. Place the bar over you trapezius muscles, not your neck. Hold the bar with your hands at a comfortable distance and lift from the rack. Take a step away from the rack and go down in a sitting position with your back straight. Contract your abs and keep this position for about 3-5 seconds. Lift yourself back up and repeat about 20-25 times.

PLYOMETRIC SQUAT.

The plyometric squat doesn’t require any weight. Make sure to not add any weight to your body when doing it. Stand straight with your legs together and squat to the ground with your hands stretched out behind you, then quickly jump from your squatting position with your hands extended upwards. Jump as high as you can then come back down to your previous standing position. Repeat two more times, then take a rest for about 3mins. Begin again.

If you find it difficult to do these squats on your own, you can always go to a gym and get the help of a gym instructor.

WhatsApp number: +971 56 58 30067 (Just send us code 2519 and we will get back to you ASAP)
Contact Us: Click here to send us your details or fill in the form below.

You can get in touch with us 24/7 and one of our experts will not only give you a free consultation but also help you pick out an appropriate male or female personal trainer to meet your needs. One-on-one personal training lessons are available in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman and RAK.
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