The Biggest Loser has been airing on ITV now for a few weeks and Escape Fitness has been working closely with celebrity personal trainer Richard Callender to ensure the contestants are using all of the best kit. Now obviously we weren’t allowed on set during the actual filming (despite our most concerted efforts) so we askd Richard to keep a workout diary……and we want to share it with you!!
For those of you who don’t know Richard Callender has been in the fitness industry for 18 years and as a personal trainer for over 24! Also add on his considerable expertise in choreography, the fact that he’s sold close to 500,000 fitness DVDs including Katie Price’s, Vicki Entwistles’, Dancing on Ice and 3 Biggest Loser editions and you’re starting to get the picture.
Richard has a gorgeous gym and PT studio in West London that houses some of Escape Fitness’ latest equipment, but at the moment he’s locked firmly away on set training these Biggest Loser hopefuls, so we’ve had to make do with e-mail contact with him for now AND twitter, @richardcallender.
Check out Richard’s latest entry:
So, it is Week 1 on the Biggest Loser, and with the new recruits having already completed and survived the 5km run to the Biggest Loser House I know they are primed and ready for the intensity of the workouts to come. I mean, how can you start with a 5km run on your first day (with many of the contestants weighing in excess of 20 stone), complete it successfully in sub 60 minutes and then expect us to lower the already raised bar? It’s not going to happen.
This first week we split into various training groups so we can see for ourselves who has what level of ability, strength and mental focus. Rob Edmond, Charlotte Ord and myself are all pleasantly surprised with the attitude of most of the contestants and as a result we have some amazingly, eye-opening workouts. Already there are some ‘star’ performers and as time goes on we’ll look closely at what makes them this way.
For many of my workouts this week I based it around the ViPR because it is a great tool for increasing the levels of many of the key factors needed in fitness, conditioning and weight loss; strength, speed, agility, balance, cardiovascular conditioning and psychologically it moved away from the expectation of simply ‘hitting the weights’ from the contestants. Now the term ViPR stands for Vitality, Performance & Reconditioning and these are exactly what the contestants on The Biggest Loser are after because they lack vitality, possess very little performance attributes initially and with the effect of their lifestyles they are massively out of condition. The ViPR is perfect for them at this stage.
My workouts were varied but they all involved lifts, twists, carries and movement through various planes of motion which meant the contestants burned calories significantly through both cardiovascular and resistance training as well as learning how to carry and mobilise their significant weight disadvantage. Most of the workouts were completed using the 4- 6kg ViPRs to ensure that the guys had full control over their movement patterns and were able to use the correct techniques for maximum benefit. To be honest after the first few workouts the guys developed a strong love/hate relationship with the ViPR. It made them work at a threshold way above their comfort zone (the hate), but they could see their technique and ability increase exponentially (the love) and they all suffered from DOMS (the love/hate mix) so knew something was changing. Workouts were often split into strength, cardio, functional movements and mixed phases with the emphasis on completing the movements within time constraints starting from as little as 30 seconds to as much a 1minute drills in the first week.
Week one on the Biggest Loser is always about setting the bar high to achieve great results because the contestants need that psychological boost from great weight loss to establish a confidence in you, the trainer, and your methods and thankfully after week one Rob, Charlotte and myself had hopefully gone a way to concreting that. Correct nutrition, effective training, exercise selection, adequate rest and huge amounts of confidence strengthening are some of the key elements that create big changes in anyone’s health, fitness and well being and The Biggest Loser is an example of what happens when all these elements can be used in a controlled environment.
