By Juice 107.3 Network Sunday 18 Jul 2021Health and WellbeingReading Time: 4 minutes

By: Taffy Francis

TLDR: Online fitness and wellness coach Anthony Calligeros answers all sorts of health questions while on the road with his morning exercise routine.

Unlike usual, Elerrina was unable to sit across online fitness and wellness coach Anthony Calligeros as he was so swamped with work that he had to do this week’s Up and At Em while doing his own routine! Like a true professional however, Anthony didn’t slow down his pace at all and was able to explain everything with just as much detail and passion as usual.

The first question was a basic on, how many reps should you do? A rep (repetition) being a full movement of one exercise, a certain amount of reps making up a set.

“Depending on what your goal is, there’s always going to be a different rep target you’re going to want to be hitting and aiming for. For example, if your goal is to pack on a lot of mass and more power lifting and you just wanna get super strong, well then more of a power program, you’re gonna be looking at anywhere between 2 to 6 reps. Then over that course of 4, 8, 12 weeks of the program you would alternate between those reps,” Anthony said.

“Whereas if you’re looking for more of hypertrophy, so muscle toning and building lean muscle tissue, like what I do with bodybuilding, we work more between an 8 to 12 to 15 rep target.”

Do you get bored doing 8 to 15 reps while just sitting in the same position?

“It depends on the exercise. For example, I did a push workout so chest and shoulders, and depending on the exercise and depending on where I was in the workout, like the start, middle, finish, my reps altered. So, I started off with a big compound heavy movement, which was around the 8 reps, and I only did 2 max sets on that. And then my next one went to 10 reps, which was more pushing blood into the muscle, and by the end of the workout I was finishing on 12 to 15 just really burning it out and pushing blood in the muscle.”

Do you add cardio into that as well?

“Not when I’m doing my weights. I always say to my clients cardio is either done first thing in the morning fasted, because due to your blood sugar levels your body will tap into fat stores and use that as energy. Or post workout, you never want to do cardio before training, and the reason is because you think about your glycogen, which is like carbohydrates and what fuels your muscles, fuels your workouts, fuels your body, so if you do cardio before your weights you’re gonna use that glycogen, you’re gonna use that fuel. When you get to your workout, your tank’s gonna be empty, so what’s it gonna start using? It’s gonna start using muscle, as your fuel.

If you’re a woman, will doing weights make you bulky?

“The answer is no. Girls don’t have testosterone flowing through their blood like males, so that’s one massive factor to take into consideration. It’s not as simple as just pushing weights makes you big and bulky, it’s probably more of a feeling. So, when you train, you’re pushing glycogen into the muscle, pushing blood into the muscle, and you get a pump. So, that feeling might make you feel like you’re bulky like you’re big, but in reality it’s just muscles filling up with blood and glycogen which in half an hour will deflate and go back down. Weights will actually burn more fat than cardio, and will help to define and tone your muscles.”

If you work out your biceps, when do you do that again? What are the rules on breaking your days up?

“In short it depends on number 1 how many days a week you’re training. Let’s just say you’re doing 3 days a week of training, if I was going to give you a program I’d go okay, what do we need to work on most with your body. You might say you want to work on your upper body more than your lower body, then let’s do one upper body day on say Monday, and then on a Wednesday we’d go a legs day, and back to a Friday you could hit that upper body again.

So if you wanted to work one muscle in particular, say your biceps, I would hit them no closer together than maybe every third or fourth day. You want to let the muscle recover so you can hit it hard again in say three days time. I would never do it back to back, because you’re just asking for DOMS, which is delayed onset muscle soreness, and you can also hurt yourself, you can tear a muscle that’s not fully recovered.”

If you have any questions for Anthony you can get in touch with him on Instagram or you can check out a crazy range of the Alien Supps nutrient supplements by checking out their website.

About the Author: Taffy is a Griffith University Journalism and Communications student and volunteer at Juice 107.3.