Check us out to see what it is like to train with an Atlanta trainer from Brad Kolowich Jr’s personal training studio! Our private Westside personal training studio is now featured on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mYr5BKiz3s. Brad Kolowich Jr. recently had a chance to film a short video trailer for his personal training studio with an old high school friend, Brian Hall. Brain has spent his career behind a camera. Some of his career highlights have been FOX’s “COPS” , ABC’s “Wife Swap”, MTV’s “The Real World”, and most recently HGTV’s “Property Virgins”. Brian also recently had the opportunity to be a photographer at Kim Kardashian’s wedding. To check out his other projects go to http://www.brianwhall.com/.
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The Importance of Pre and Post Workout Nutrition
Athletes must plan and time their meals and snack very carefully to reach their performance goals. But what about those of us who just participate in 30-60 minutes of exercise most days of the week?Maybe to your surprise, you too have to be careful about what you eat before and after workouts. At the best personal training studio in Atlanta, Brad Kolowich Jr Fitness, we encourage each of our clients to put these nutritional guidelines into place.
Usually, if you are eating a healthy diet and getting enough calories to support your activity level, you can rely on your own intuition, appetite, energy levels and experience to tell you what and when to eat before exercise. For optimal energy levels and metabolism it is recommended that your eat every 3-4 hours. Make sure your workout falls into that time window. Never come into a workout with Brad, Andy, or myself (Mandy) hungry or not only will you be counter productive in the results you are trying to achieve but you definitely won’t have the energy required to sustain the workout. The body works to build muscle (and recover) 24 hours a day, not just during that one-hour session at the gym. Luckily, smartly timed snacks can give the body the fuel it needs to gain muscle, burn fat, and recover as best it can.
After a tough gym session, post-workout snacks are an important way to restore energy and rebuild muscle too. Downed within 30 minutes after exercise, protein-packed shakes and snacks are a great way to rebuild tissue that breaks down during exercise. Refraining from eating a post workout meal OR indulging in high calorie/low nutrient foods can too be counter productive in seeing the results you are aiming for by exercising. After working out you need a protein and carbohydrate rich meal. Exercising depletes your body of stored muscle glycogen (carbohydrates), so post workout is the time to replenish this depleted muscle fuel. If you have a favorite high-carb food this is a good time to have them. Your body can digest refined carbs faster during your “refueling window”. However, don’t force yourself to indulge if you generally don’t eat processed foods.
Pictured above is one of our house specialty shakes, the Protein Frappaccino. In order to help our clients get that super important protein rich meal after their workout, we offer a variety of post-workout options for them. At Brad Kolowich Jr Fitness, we have weekly in-house protein shake specials. These shake specials change frequently, are generally inspired from the season or various special events occurring in the lives of our staff or clients, and ALWAYS deliciously packed with all the vital post-workout nutrients you need. For our “on the go” clients we also carry pre-packaged protein shakes, sports recovery drinks, in-house protein bars (frozen and great post-workout snack), and a variety of other beverages.
Brad Kolowich Jr and his staff of certified personal trainers provide their clients with the education, motivation and inspiration through training and nutritional advice to help their clients reach their full potential!
~Mandy Malool
ISSA-CFT, SFN
The Fit Persons’ Comfort Food
At the Brad Kolowich Jr. Personal Training Studio in Atlanta, our personal trainers encourage and motivate all of our clients to follow a sound nutrition program that helps them to get the most “bang for their buck” in personal training results. We hold high regards to the fact that your must put in 100% in the gym and 100% into your nutrition plan. With slack in one area or the other you will never see your full fitness and health potential.
However, even as personal trainers, we too have cravings, desires and the need to have some traditional comfort foods (especially this time of year as the weather cools, family gathers and we are allotted a couple of mornings off to lie around in pajamas a little longer than normal). A Saturday morning favorite of mine growing up was indulging in a stack of warm fluffy pancakes! The typical boxed pancake mix is loaded with highly processed flours, sugar, sodium, and even hydrogenated oils (a.k.a. Trans fats). All of these ingredients add up to a whole lot of empty calories. So, this Christmas, in lieu of Christmas breakfast casseroles and stacks of boxed pancakes, we are encouraging our clients to try ramping up the nutritional content of their lazy morning breakfast and try our healthy alternative to traditional pancakes!
This jar contains all the makings you need to create a delicious, mouth watering batch of protein packed pancakes. This pancake combo is gluten-free, high in fiber, sugar free, and guaranteed to fuel your body for all your busy holiday festivities ahead. Each jar contains 1 cup of rolled oat flour, 1 scoop of all natural vanilla whey protein, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/8 cup of carob chips. All you do is pour the contents of the jar into a bowl, add three egg whites, 1/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk and ½ of a smashed banana (optional). Pour the batter over a medium heated skillet and cook until brown on each side. We’ve attached all natural maple almond nut butter as a special topping for our clients. For other toppings try:
1 tbsp peanut butter + ½ sliced banana
½ chopped apple + 2 tbsp sugar free syrup
¼ cup unsweetened shredded coconut + 2 tsp honey
¼ cup berries + ¼ nonfat Greek yogurt
1 poached egg + ¼ avocado
Get creative with various combos! The nutrient and flavor combinations are endless!
Written by,
Mandy Malool, ISSA-CFT, SFN
Atlanta Personal Trainer, Andy Keller, Helps Client Drop 5% Body Fat
Dale, 48, began working with nationally certified personal trainer Andy in January of 2012. He currently maintains a strict training schedule at Brad Kolowich Jr Atlanta personal training studio getting workouts in with Andy 5 days a week while staying dedicated to his cardio sessions post-workout and on his off days. Since beginning personal training with Andy, Dale has lost a total of 5% body fat, and with a focus of building muscle mass put on 3 inches in his chest, and 2 inches in his arms and legs. In October, Dale, with Andy’s great coaching, decided to take on the ultimate challenge of carb cycling to help reach his fitness goals.
Carb cycling is a strategy in which you (as the term insinuates) vary the amounts of carbohydrates you intake on a day to day basis, which doesn’t allow the body to find homeostasis. This strategy can be used to obtain various results such as for muscle gain or rapid fat loss. Reducing calories and carbohydrates can cause the dieter to experience low energy, decrease in metabolic rate, thyroid hormone output, and reproductive hormone output and more. In other words, following a low carb, low calorie diet for too long means the fat loss will reach a plateau. So, you can trick the body by giving it higher calorie, higher carbohydrate intakes frequently enough so that is won’t ever get too close to starvation mode, but infrequently enough so that fat loss (and muscle growth) can continue on. This is the strategy Andy used to coach Dale to lose 2 ½ inches in his waist in one month. While loosing inches in his waist, Dale also lost overall body weight and gained muscle mass and overall strength. Dale is proof that with dedication to your workouts in and out of training sessions, trusting and abiding by the strategies your trainer is helping you too implement, and by being consistent with a nutritional and training program you can quickly reach fitness goals you never imagined possible. Congrats Dale AND Andy!