Your Questions Part 1
Hello my Lovies,
The other day I posted on my Facebook that I would like for you to ask me any questions you may have for me, on any subject. I wrote down all the questions with your name and I wanted to answer all of them with more details. I decided to split all these questions into few different posts, that way the posts don’t come out too long. I am posting the questions in the order which they were asked, I also wrote down your name next to them, that way you know which question was yours and you can easily find the answer. This is first part of the questions post:
- Lish R.- What made you love fitness & who sort of captured your heart in this atmosphere initially?
I was literally born into fitness. My mom was a gymnast and her and my grandma dreamed for me to become an athlete. I started skating sports school when I was 3 years old.
After I quit skating I was always working out, it was something I’ve always loved. I remember, after we moved to US I used to get up each morning before school at 5 am, go for a long run, then do Cindy Crawford workouts, and other bodyweight exercises that I’ve learned from my skating days.
When I met my now husband Miguel, he was the one who got me into the more intense kind of training such as trapeze and aerial tissue. When I started performing in his troupe, I needed to always be in top shape, that’s when I really fell in love with working out. I was a bit crazy with it and on top of training trapeze and tissue every night, I worked out in the gym every morning for 1.5 hours or more, because I loved it, not because I had to.
The first person who captured my fitness heart was a tennis player Anna Kournikova, she had always been and is still is my biggest inspiration. Before each of my workouts I used to always look at a picture of Ana for motivation. It was not only about her body, but it was her story of success, she was a little girl with a big dream, who moved from Russia to US and became one of the most famous athletes. I never cared that she never had a big win of her own, to me it wasn’t about that, you don’t always have to be the top winner or winner of any kind in other’s people’s eyes, her story is inspirational and that’s all that matters. Anna made a workout video called Fitness Elements and It’s still my favorite workout video ever!
As far as the fitness trainers go, the person who captured me first was Jakie Warner. I love her training approach, I think she is one of the best trainers out there, she has a lot of knowledge not only in training, nutrition, motivation but she is a smart business woman. To me she is the whole package and an inspiration.
- Jos K.- How does your family and relatives view on your fitness and healthy lifestyle? Supportive or Cynical?
My family completely supports me. My mom always comes to me for fitness advice, and she her self works out and eats freakishly healthy. She has actually always been on my butt about staying in shape since I was a child. If I were to gain a kg my mom would be the first one to let me know ( in my family we are very honest with each other, I would say sometimes to an extreme ). But everyone in my family is very supportive, I feel so lucky to have them.
- Norely S. – What do you think about drinking or taking BCAA’s before and after a workout? Cuz I’ve been drinking it and it has helped me with being sore after a workout but I don’t know if it can be addictive or have a side effect.
- Do you use that kind of supplement?
I personally don’t take BCAA’s, I’ve tried it and found it quite useless, because I believe that most supplements on the market are just marketing, but it’s only me, and what works for one person might not always work for another. I am aware that a lot of trainers recommend it for muscle recovery, but I believe you can recover from eating real food just as much if not better.
My advice to you is if it works for you and you are seeing a difference, then you should take it. You definitely cannot get addicted to it, it’s not a drug of any kind, you can stop taking it at any time if you like. There is no physical side effects except for the money spent.
- Carla F. – I train all of my body equally, but I’m developing more muscle on my lower body than the upper body. What should I do to develop more on the upper body, and at the same time lose a little more fat ( so my lower body don’t become too large )?
I recommend to increase the work on your upper body by adding more weight. If you are not using weight, then you would need to add more difficult exercises such as pull-ups and more variations of push-ups. Do each exercise slowly in good form, it needs to feel difficult to complete 12-14 reps ( that is the variations you need to use so it feels difficult to complete that many reps ).
But for the lower body reduce the weight and add HIIT strength cardio. You can get your lower body in pretty good shape without adding the size when you do intense bodyweight only workouts. But definitely add more weight to the upper body workouts. Also make sure you are not overtraining, and do not do more than 2 upper body workouts a week, you need time to recover if you want to build muscle. After your lower body workouts add more cardio, light cardio at least 25-30 minutes.
As far as nutrition goes, after your upper body workouts make sure to eat some protein and good source of carbs such as banana to replenish glycogen and allow the muscle to recover and grow. But after your lower body workouts wait at least 1 hour before eating anything, that way your body will keep burning fat, since you have that fat burning window after your training.
- Marusa S. – I’m wondering about the thing that makes you like that – your love of life, motivation to lead a healthy life and self discipline which comes from love for your self?
What makes me love life so much is my connection to deeper layers of life such as spirituality. Spirit, Mind and Body in that exact order is what we need to have an equal connection with, then we can fully appreciate our existence.
I think of my body as a vehicle for my soul, and I want my soul to enjoy it’s time on earth and ride in a nice vehicle, healthy and well taken care of vehicle. If we have a healthy body, we develop a healthy attitude towards life, we become naturally more happy as a person. If you are a happy and healthy person, it inspires others around you to lead a similar life style. If we can impact as many people as we can while we are here, we are making a world a better place and that’s what I believe life is all about. So as you can see I motivate my self by always looking at the bigger picture.
- Milda J. – How important are the rest days, and what impact they’re having to seeing results ( muscle development and definition ). I workout every day, and few days ago a thought came up that if muscles ( for example core muscles, on which I’m concentrating right now ) do not have a proper rest time, they cannot develop quick and properly, because of micro damage and that they don’t have time to rebuild and prepare for further work. Am I right at some point? And if the rest time for different muscle groups is also different?
Rest days are crucial for muscle development. Because when we workout our muscle develops micro damage as you said, if you keep torturing the muscle over and over you will keep tearing it more and more, so it cannot possible develop and grow. Larger muscle groups such as leg muscles take longer to recover than smaller muscle groups. I have a very detailed article about this called ” How To Train For Best Results “, I definitely suggest you checking out that article.
- Jenny L. – Are there elements, ideas, movements or something else in your style that are especially Russian and/or more Eastern than western oriented so to speak?
As far as the creative movements I come up with, most of them are inspired by my skating and acrobatics days, they are not specifically Russian or Easter European, but the way I come up with my workouts are inspired by the way I was taught by my trainers. I try to come up with moves that mimic acrobatic or skating movements because it makes the workout much more fun and much more effective. The reason why acrobats and skaters are in such a great shapes ( besides the fact that they train and eat healthy all the time ) it’s because they way they move and the way they keep a good form. Good form and creative moves, create a healthy, strong and well developed physiques.
Hugs,
Tati
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