Char­maine Dais­ley

Here's a harsh re­al­i­ty. Wish­ing you could lose those ex­cess pounds or tone up your body is on­ly, well, a wish. Here's an­oth­er harsh truth. You can­not lose weight con­sum­ing large bags of cheesy snacks and bot­tles of red soft drink while watch­ing a fit­ness pro­gramme on tele­vi­sion. This might come as a sur­prise but you ac­tu­al­ly have to do some work to get fit – some hard, gru­el­ing, trou­ble­some, chal­leng­ing, wor­ri­some, work, cou­pled with dis­ci­pline.

Think you don't have it in you? Adri­an Cord­ner, fit­ness train­er for over 15 years, says you do. And to prove it, he's cre­at­ed a boot camp to get you go­ing. Adri­an is not shy about keep­ing his body in tip-top health and shape. He is al­so a body builder and has com­pet­ed in the in­dus­try for the last 22 years. He has won sev­er­al cham­pi­onships in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Body Build­ing and Fit­ness Fed­er­a­tion's ju­nior over­all in 1991 and the se­nior over­all in 2004. He has al­so com­pet­ed in body build­ing re­gion­al­ly and placed third in the South­ern Cham­pi­onships in St. Croix in 2000.

Now he's turn­ing his at­ten­tion on you. Adri­an's boot camp is card­ed to be­gin in mid-Jan­u­ary and will be held out­doors with in­door fa­cil­i­ties kept on­ly as an al­ter­na­tive dur­ing in­clement weath­er. It will tar­get peo­ple of all ages and fit­ness lev­els in a nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment that helps cre­ate the dri­ve and fu­el for ex­er­cise.

"This boot camp has been de­signed to break mo­not­o­ny and add dy­namism to the weight loss work­out. Most peo­ple who em­bark on a weight loss pro­gramme reach a point where they plateau and re­sults come much slow­er or not at all and at that point of stag­na­tion they will need to change their strat­e­gy. In many cas­es it's noth­ing more than the need to change the dy­nam­ics of the work­out ses­sions," says Adri­an.

"Al­so, with the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son, gyms are go­ing to be packed, and for many peo­ple who want to em­bark on a fit­ness pro­gramme the health ben­e­fits to be de­rived from train­ing in a very packed en­vi­ron­ment is next to noth­ing. Hav­ing a boot camp of­fers the flex­i­bil­i­ty where even if you are the mem­ber of a gym and you go to this gym on one spe­cif­ic day and it's too packed, you have the al­ter­na­tive of com­ing out­doors," he ex­plains. Just in case you're scared or turned off by the term boot camp, don't be. This boot camp is not the drill Sergeant kind of drop-and-give-me-twen­ty-push-ups kind of sce­nario. It will be fit­ness with fun, it's not a drill for en­trance in­to the mil­i­tary. "It's no walk in the park ei­ther," warns Adri­an, "but it is a chal­leng­ing pro­gramme with spe­cif­ic phys­i­cal needs and lim­i­ta­tions in mind.

"The boot camp is a holis­tic work­out pro­gramme that con­sists of car­dio, strength, core - all wrapped in­to one. A lot of the move­ments you can see be­ing done in a yo­ga class, some you can see be­ing done in an ac­tu­al mil­i­tary base, some you can ac­tu­al­ly see in a gym. The idea here is that with the amal­ga­ma­tion of all these things the work­out hits al­most every­where on the body," he stressed. Be­cause it is a group train­ing pro­gramme, the fit­ness ex­pert has planned his ses­sions to in­clude spe­cial at­ten­tion for those with low­er fit­ness lev­els.

"I am tak­ing every par­tic­i­pant's fit­ness lev­el in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, al­so the vary­ing age groups and gen­der. All these fac­tors have a defin­ing im­pact on whether a per­son can per­form at a high lev­el or not. The dy­nam­ic of it is to keep the group con­stant­ly go­ing, un­der­stand­ing that not every­body is go­ing to be at the same fit­ness lev­el. For in­stance, you can't ex­pect Jane to drop and give you 30 push-ups when she's nev­er done that sort of ex­er­cise in her life. The oth­er fac­tor is age; a 25 year old ver­sus a 50 year old will have its own dy­nam­ics so it's not just about let's all do this ex­er­cise at the same in­ten­si­ty, there has to be a mid­dle ground."

Di­et will al­so be a fo­cus at the boot camp. "I've been in the in­dus­try for a while and be­ing in body build­ing gives me some in­sight in­to eat­ing pat­terns," he says. "For ex­am­ple, when you're train­ing for a com­pe­ti­tion you have to change your di­et to achieve a cer­tain look, and it does come with ba­sics that can be ap­plied to every physique. Stay away from ex­cess sug­ar, don't con­sume too much fried foods, stay away from soft drinks, con­sume more wa­ter and fiber. Of course these are all broad based ban­ners and they are sub­ject to small­er is­sues so there will be re­fer­rals to a nu­tri­tion­ist if the par­tic­i­pants de­sire."

Adri­an sends out a word of ad­vice for every­one. "Good health is an as­set, it im­pacts on every­thing else you have hap­pen­ing in your life – from your abil­i­ty to pro­duce in or­der to earn, to your abil­i­ty to en­joy what you've worked hard for. If you are not well, these things are null and void. Al­so stop let­ting the mir­ror tell you it's time to do some­thing about your phys­i­cal health. Lis­ten to your body in­stead. For in­stance, if per­sons are hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing, or ul­cers, or loss of sex dri­ve, these should be in­di­ca­tors to be­come fit rather than mak­ing the de­ci­sion sole­ly on how they look."

Boot camp sched­ule:

Tues­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day

5:00pm to 6:30 pm.

Con­tact Adri­an at ad­cottt@ya­hoo.ca

Phone: 752-9393