Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Every week, I am bom­bard­ed with quite an as­sort­ment of ques­tions from read­ers. To­day I have de­cid­ed to an­swer some of the more pop­u­lar ques­tions and I hope this clears up some of the myths in the fit­ness world.

Q: Is there an op­ti­mum time of the day to do car­dio?

A: Per­son­al­ly, I go along with the opin­ion of some ex­perts, who ad­vo­cate per­form­ing car­dio as soon as you awake, on an emp­ty stom­ach. How­ev­er, I think that what is even more im­por­tant is to do car­dio when­ev­er you feel to do car­dio. Of course, if you plan to do run out­doors when it's ex­treme­ly hot, you should take the fol­low­ing pre­cau­tions:

• En­sure that you al­ready have a fair­ly high lev­el of over­all fit­ness.

• Hy­drate prop­er­ly be­fore and af­ter the ac­tiv­i­ty. For every pound lost, 16 ounces of flu­id must be re­placed.

• Wear light-coloured clothes.

• Don't take salt tablets, un­less pre­scribed by your doc­tor.

Tak­ing these pre­cau­tions will help you avoid un­pleas­ant, heat-re­lat­ed dis­or­ders such as heat cramps, heat ex­haus­tion and heat stroke.

I am a woman; if I start­ed lift­ing weights, will I look like my hus­band/boyfriend?

Not un­less your hus­band/ boyfriend looks very fem­i­nine! In all se­ri­ous­ness, women should em­brace weight train­ing and not wor­ry about ap­pear­ing too mas­cu­line. Women just don't have enough testos­terone to de­vel­op the mus­cu­lar­i­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with the male of the species. Nine out of ten times, women who ap­pear very mas­cu­line al­so have deep voic­es and bad cas­es of ac­ne, which is a fair­ly good in­di­ca­tion of steroid abuse.

I am a man, what are the best ex­er­cis­es for putting on mus­cle fast?

You can put on over­all mus­cle mass fair­ly quick­ly, if you stick to com­pound move­ments like the free squat, clean and press, dead lift and bench press. These ex­er­cis­es re­cruit sev­er­al mus­cle groups dur­ing their ex­e­cu­tion; this al­so en­ables you to han­dle heav­ier poundage and un­der these con­di­tions your body is more like­ly to re­lease a con­sid­er­able amount of growth hor­mone in­to your blood­stream that will help with over­all growth. So there is some truth to the say­ing, "If you want big bi­ceps, you have to squat."

Do you be­lieve in tak­ing vi­t­a­mins and oth­er sup­ple­ments?

Ab­solute­ly! Your body will ex­pe­ri­ence a free-rad­i­cal build-up, even when you ex­er­cise. Free rad­i­cals can be very harm­ful to the body, and some vi­t­a­mins and sup­ple­ments con­tain an­ti-ox­i­dants which have the abil­i­ty to help ex­pel free rad­i­cals from the body.

Should I stop eat­ing red meat?

Why, do you want to start eat­ing green meat? There is no con­clu­sive sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that red meat is any more harm­ful than chick­en. As a mat­ter of fact, most cen­te­nar­i­ans when in­ter­viewed said they ate all pop­u­lar foods, such as steak, chick­en and fish, in mod­er­a­tion. I be­lieve that when it comes to meat se­lec­tion, the op­er­a­tive word is mod­er­a­tion. It may be wise to con­sid­er choos­ing two days in the week and mak­ing them your "fish days," as op­posed to the oth­er days, which could be your "steak and chick­en days." In the health and fit­ness in­dus­try, al­ways get the prop­er ad­vice be­fore em­bark­ing on your fit­ness quest. Keep train­ing.

-Bri­an Chin Le­ung is

cer­ti­fied per­son­al train­er