• Introduction
• E is for Elongate
• Chest cold that won't go away?
• Good News - Bad News
• Client Archive
• The Science of Exercise
• Press Archive

News Archive 05

This training program is designed to be equally effective for men and women of all ages and levels of fitness (or lack of fitness). It is the foundation on which all other exercises will be built. The body is like a tree. For it to be healthy you have to have a strong trunk before you can start putting pressure on the branches. All of the exercises in this program are chosen to make your trunk strong, yet still flexible. These are called core exercises. From this strong healthy and fit core of a body you can go on to better things. When you exercise your body will talk to you. Listen to it. Understanding what your body says to you is part of working with your body.

Getting slimmer is a by-product of this program, the benefits are all equal i.e. Structure, Strength, Flexibility, Low Body Fat and Cardiovascular fitness. If you follow the program diligently in its entirety without any improvisations of your own you can achieve dramatic results. This is simply because you are working with your body not against it. When your body co-operates with you it will respond to all of the effort and energy you put in as opposed to just a 30% response. order the programme

E is for Elongate

Breathing deeply is part of stretching. When you stretch to relieve fatigue, you tend to yawn at her same time, taking a deep breath in followed by an out-breath at her end of the stretch. This link between the movement of your body and your breath is developed when you stretch regularly. Take care not to hold your breath and to breathe out slowly and evenly. After a while breathing as you stretch will come naturally.

Therapeutic yoga
There is a growing movement toward developing methods of healing using subtle energy. While scientific research is still in its infancy with energetic healing. I feel strongly that these methods have much to offer us. Chronic conditions from old injuries and acute sports injuries can be helped enormously by physic healing. You may wish to use these practitioners to augment your conventional treatment.

The Bodydoctor Fitness Programme is based on having a fully, flexible, usable body including yoga exercises order the programme

Good News - Bad News

Science of exercise

Bending your torso to the side is one of those fundamental patterns. We inherit side-bending from our vertebrate ancestors, the fish. Bending to the side involves the external and internal oblique muscles of the abdomen. As I pointed out last week these muscles are, from an embryological perspective, the same muscle layers as the external and internal intercostal muscles of the chest wall.

So far we have a bi-laminar grouping of muscles that spans the iliac crest up to the first rib. From the first and second rib 3 muscles course upwards to the neck vertebrae. They are called the scalenes. Again from an embryological perspective these are the same muscles as the abdominals and intercostals. When you lie on your side and try to lift your head and legs upwards it is these muscles that act as an integrated pattern.

At the other end of the body the external and internal abdominals insert on the iliac crest, that massive bone that is commonly called the hip bone. from here the muscles can be carried down to the pelvic floor via a muscle called the levator ani. The pelvic floor is the root of the body.

So again we have a ring of muscle that runs from the upper neck around the lateral side of the body to meet at the pelvic floor. Next week I'll suggest the ears are a sense organ embedded in this ring of contractile tissue.
Phillip Beach D.O. D.Ac

Client Archive

But then I discovered 'The Bodydoctor'. On beginning your initial programme and making changed to my diet (i.e. reducing fat content, I have not got as far as starch and protein meals) and going on summer holidays and not training for three weeks. I have to say that the difference I have seen has been nothing short of amazing.

My all too familiar pear shape has gone and my upper body particularly had been quite simply transformed - impressive stuff! After reading through your programme I discovered that I was training too hard so I invested in a heart monitor, initially I felt like I had exchanged being a hare for a tortoise but soon got used to it as I actually started training within zone for the first time. What a contrast to the sessions my gym instructor had put me on, which seemed to be more about running around like a beetroot coloured lunatic than thinking how the body actually works!

Training with free weights was a novelty idea too. I had to overcome my fear of being 'in that room' with all of those big grunting men who heaved huge weights around and sweated everywhere! Nevertheless I persevered (they now make space for me) and frequently re-read the beginners manual to make sure that my technique is right and that I have not developed any bad habits. But now I'm ready to move on to bigger things and in view of these amazing results would like to order another programme. What I'd like to do is develop a pair of thighs that I can crush walnuts between! No but seriously, I'd like to reduce the all too familiar female thigh 'wobble factor'. Not that I want to loose my female curves, far from it, I just want firmer curves as opposed to over running, wobbling curves. Basically I would like to develop the kind of impressive tone on my upper legs that I have achieved on my upper body.

With this in mind will you please send me either the Circuit Training programme or the Half Time Workout Whichever you think will be the most effective in helping me achieve this mammoth task!
Kind Regards,
Jo Hemley

Chest cold that won't go away?

A chemical analysis shows the presence of trace elements, enzymes and a glycoside - aucubin - which merits special attention as an antibiotic. The latter is fully preserved in the stabilized cellular ribwort juice. Plantain, like the dandelion, assimilates traces of zinc from the soil. It also contains organic acids, saccharides and tannins. Probably the combination of these various substances in their natural proportion accounts for plantain juice's therapeutic effect. And analysis of minerals found in the ashes of this plant reveals the presence of potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, sulphur and silicones, with a marked preponderance of potassium and silica.

Modern application of plantain juice is essentially based on its outstanding anti-inflammatory qualities in acute as well as chronic mucus congestion of the respiratory tract. It also yields excellent results with persistent catarrhs of the bronchial tube.

As part of the spring cleansing and blood rejuvenating juice therapy, plantain juice is successfully combined with nettle, dandelion and celery juice. Together they effect a general purification and energizing of the whole system.

Press Archive

Last year, I wrote about a new fitness phenomenon sweeping London's smart set and drastically reducing the figures of celebrities, most memorably Sophie Dahl. This phenomenon, Bodydoctor Fitness, was pioneered by David Marshall, who achieves fat reduction in record time using his own programme, which he adapts to suit his clients' individual needs.

Marshall describes this as "made-to-measure fitness". Relying on instinct and 25 years of experience, the Bodydoctor diagnoses imbalance in the body, prescribes three doses of training a week over a six-week course, offers sound nutritional and lifestyle advice and aims to restore the body to its optimum level of fitness.

Marshall's approach is ruthless, but works time and time again. Amanda Ross almost turned down a job as presenter for a new television series because she felt she wasn't slim enough. "I had five-and-a-half weeks to go from a size 14 to a 10. David convinced me I could do it," says Ross. "When I turned up at the studio six weeks later, they barely recognised me. I'd lost 4in off my waist, 2in off my hips and 2in off each thigh."

Marshall, whose clients have also included Robbie Williams and David Ginola, has recently moved into secluded premises in London's Primrose Hill, where he has installed state-of-the-art equipment as well as a treatment room for Thai massage or acupuncture after a workout. Although there is room for 20 people, Marshall will only train one-on-one. "In order to get the best out of someone, people need to know they have your undivided attention," he insists.

This is all well and good for those who live in London and are prepared to spend £75 on a private session, but what about those of us who would like to change our body shape but live elsewhere, or don't have the cash for the recommended three sessions a week?

Marshall has responded to nationwide calls from people wanting more details about his fitness philosophy by publishing a laminated full-colour workout (available by mail order) with precise instructions on how and how not to do it. "My aim is to teach everyone in this country the correct techniques, so they can take this guide into any gym and get it right. Too many people buy fitness club memberships and then are left to their own devices," he explains.

I initially turned down Marshall's offer to train me because I had become sceptical of the fitness trainers at whose hands I had sustained injuries. It was only when I saw his clients - the girl who went from a size 24 to 16 in time for her wedding, and the woman who regained her washboard stomach within weeks of having her first child - that I changed my mind.

Marshall's techniques are different from conventional methods of training. He combines yoga principles with cardiovascular and weights work. Where most of us have been taught to exercise in three sets of 10 repetitions, Marshall's method includes 25 nonstop repetitions.

"Exercise is only effective if you work to muscular exhaustion - that is, reaching the stage where you are unable to perform another repetition. If you do 10 reps, then stop, you're not creating enough heat to burn fat. With my way you get flat, long, lean muscles," he explains.

The other surprise is the absence of stretching between each exercise. His workout is a programme to stretch as you exercise, or "clean as you go".

"Each exercise causes a positive and a negative reaction," he explains. "On the pec deck, you develop the chest, but as you also create tightness in the upper body, the logical next step is an adapted, full-range pull-down that opens out everything from the waist upwards.

"Cleaning as you go avoids an overtight body that you have to spend 20 minutes stretching out. Instead you have a body with, at the very least, the same flexibility it had prior to the session."

Marshall's key words are breath and heat. In the past I've always skimped on cardiovascular activity, but with him I spent 20 minutes each of hill climbing, rowing, running and then - the most gruelling workout of all - the Stairmaster cross aerobic.

Marshall will push you to levels further than you dreamt you could reach, but he won't push you beyond your limits. I was amazed that, although I was working harder than ever before, my muscles didn't ache and the pain in my knee and back was alleviated. "There's a difference between exercising hard and exercising clever," Marshall explains. "If you bombard the body with a stress factor it can't cope with, it will go into rebellion. Ninety per cent of people who go into gyms get injured at some time and put it down as an occupational hazard. It is not a contact sport and there is no reason why people should get injured."

One of the most effective parts of his workout is the abflow (clearly depicted in his mail-order workout), a sequence of stomach exercises designed to target all the abdominal muscles. Just two weeks of Marshall's abflow shed inches from my waist and tightened up my stomach muscles. According to Marshall, it is not uncommon for someone to lose 5in off their waist after six weeks of these exercises, which are performed 25 times and gradually increased. "Seventy per cent of effort that people put in at gyms is wasted. If you work systematically and correctly, 90% is channelled into positive results."

Despite initial scepticism, I appear to be another of Marshall's success stories. He reckons my strength and fitness have improved by 250%. My body has tightened up considerably. I have gone down a dress size, my clothes fit much better and I have muscle definition. So encouraging is my progress that the Bodydoctor has decided to make my body his flagship for the new millennium. Now that really is a miracle.

The Bodydoctor can be contacted on 0171- 586 6222. To order his new mail-order workout, send a cheque for £35 (including p&p) made payable to Bodydoctor Fitness Ltd, to PO Box 20641, London NW6 4ZA (0171-625 6222) click here for press archive