If you want to be lean, fit and healthy you must eat fruit. There is no two ways about it. Fruit is what humans were designed to eat and the nutrients that fruit provide are perfectly suited for our bodies.

11 Ways You Can Eat More Fruit

I believe that fruit is the most important part of any athletes diet. I try to eat as much as I can. Here are some ways you can eat more fruit if you are having trouble eating enough.

1. Eat fruit for breakfast
A fruit salad is the perfect way to start the day. It is light and makes you feel amazing. I have also found that the energy lasts a lot longer than traditional breakfasts like toast and cereal despite what many people say.

2. Snack on fruit
When you are hungry try having a banana or an apple. Don’t always think about a can of Coke or some hot chips. Think fruit.

3. Add it to your protein shake
Adding fruit to your protein shake is a great way to get more vitamins after a workout as well as to help fill you up. Banana is the best but other sweet fruits like passion fruit, strawberries, etc. also go down well.

4. Add it to salads
The amount of fruit salads I have seen in Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks is great! There are so many ways to spice up your salad with a nice helping of fruit. You can add apple, sultanas, grapes, tomato, etc. Depending on the style of salad you make fruit can work really well.

5. Add it to curry
I know you probably will think this is a little weird but my mother always adds banana and cucumber to curry. You just eat it on a sideplate and when you feel a little overwhelmed by the heat of the curry you mix in a bit of fruit. It is perfect.

6. Smoothies
Whenever I am late for work or a meeting and I need to eat I grab a fruit and yoghurt smoothy from the city cafe I go to. They make it right in front of you from fresh ingredients and it tastes amazing. These type of smoothies are so popular in my town - everyone gets one for breakfast. It’s great!

7. Fresh fruit juice
When I say fruit juice I do not mean the stuff you but at the supermarket that comes in a bottle. That juice is dead juice. It has been heated to temperatures that kill all the goodness and then it has had preservative after preservative added to it so it can stay on the shelf longer. Continue Reading

The lower abs are usually a lot less visible than the upper abs. Usually there is more fat and less muscle there. This post will look at some top tips for developing better lower abs.

Top Tips for Developing Better Lower Abs

The lower abs are a strange creature. You need to work them out in a certain way to get results. Most people don’t know what they need to do and as such have some pretty soft and flabby lower abs.

1. Work the lower abs first

This is by far the most important rule for working with the lower abs. You need to work them first in your workout because they are not as strong as the upper abs. If you work them after the upper abs they will be too tired to handle the weight and resistance you need to put them under in order to progress. Make sure you always do your lower abs first.

2. Lose some weight

As always with the abs you will not see those nice sexy muscle unless you lose the weight on your belly. Ripped abs are created by getting lean not by adding more muscle. If you want your lower abs to shine through then clean up your diet and start doing some intense cardio to burn off the fat.

3. Hanging exercises are best

Hanging leg raises and hanging knee raises are much more powerful than the ones where you lay on a bench. If you start working with the hanging exercises you will have much more success and in a much shorter time span. At first it will feel like they aren’t working well but if you stick with it you will soon see the results.

Does anyone have any other tips?

The chin up is one of the best exercises there is. It builds real strength, power and awesome muscle growth. However, many people struggle with the chin up as it can be quite hard to do. This post will show you how to improve your chin ups and take them to all new heights.

How to intensify your chin ups and pull ups

Improving your chin ups is about doing a few things differently. It is a combination of techniques and tricks that will get you over the line and help you move towards new muscle gain. The most important things you need to do are:

1. Learn the correct technique
2. Learn how to “cheat” correctly
3. Learn how to add intensity

This post will look at all three of these crucial elements.

1. The correct chin up technique

As I always say, if you have poor weight lifting technique you will have poor muscle gain results. The chin up is no different.

Quite often at the gym I see people pumping out chin ups so fast I wonder whether they feel the burn at all. They have no idea which muscle it is working and are obviously missing the point.

When you do the chin up you need to have a shoulder width grip with your palms facing towards you. The repetition needs to be done at a snails-pace; super slow and very controlled. Make sure you pull yourself up as if your elbows were doing the work. This helps you to isolate your lats.

Finally, make sure your have a full range of motion; letting yourself stretch all the way down and pulling yourself all the way up.

2. How to “cheat” correctly with the chin up

Cheat reps are quite famous in bodybuilding circles. Many professional bodybuilders use cheat reps to help them fire over a plateau. This is quite a good technique but it is not without its dangers. Continue Reading