Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Af­ter spend­ing most of last year eat­ing junk food and per­form­ing lit­tle or no ex­er­cise, you are now faced with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you may look like crap in your Car­ni­val cos­tume. With on­ly a cou­ple of weeks re­main­ing be­fore the big event, your brain is op­er­at­ing at full throt­tle–should I do on­ly car­dio? Should I crash di­et? Should I on­ly pump iron? Of all your shoulds; you should be ashamed of your­self! You knew that you would be play­ing mas in 2010 and you should have start­ed spe­cif­ic train­ing since Sep­tem­ber, 2009. Any­way, it's the same old sto­ry of spilt milk and we are now go­ing to have a look at what can be done to save the day.

Dam­age con­trol

Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, I al­ways rec­om­mend a fit­ness pro­gramme that in­cludes at least three car­dio ses­sions per week; it (car­dio) is the best form of ex­er­cise for keep­ing your heart and ar­ter­ies healthy and clean. How­ev­er, we are deal­ing with the im­me­di­ate is­sue of Car­ni­val, and the sad fact of the mat­ter is that even if you en­gage in car­dio six days a week, at this point it will do lit­tle or noth­ing to change your shape. As a mat­ter of fact, you will prob­a­bly look flab­by with no mus­cle tone; you will prob­a­bly re­sem­ble a bal­loon that was de­flat­ed.

Okay, so I have con­vinced you to hit the weights; your ba­sic strat­e­gy, be­cause of time con­straints, will be to con­cen­trate on com­pound ex­er­cis­es. These are ex­er­cis­es that re­cruit sev­er­al mus­cle groups dur­ing their ex­e­cu­tion. They in­clude: clean and press, free squats, dead lifts and bench press. Every time you work­out, be­tween now and Car­ni­val, per­form these ex­er­cis­es. These move­ments will en­sure that you use most of your body mus­cles, chest, arms, legs, core etc, in every work­out. Al­ways en­sure that you have warmed up prop­er­ly be­cause many of the above men­tioned ex­er­cis­es re­quire ex­plo­sive body move­ment. Of course it is un­der­stood that, in ad­di­tion to the above men­tioned ex­er­cis­es, you can al­so per­form spe­cif­ic ex­er­cis­es for your more trou­ble­some body parts.

Di­et

You have got to be se­lec­tive in your car­bo­hy­drate in­take; stick to carbs that car­ry a low glycemic in­dex rat­ing, such as sweet pota­to and most ground pro­vi­sions. Stay away from flour prod­ucts like white bread and pas­ta. Avoid fruit at night and stick to fruits, like gala ap­ples, that car­ry a low glycemic in­dex rat­ing. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, most foods that car­ry a high fiber con­tent will have a low glycemic in­dex rat­ing. Weight train hard, watch your di­et, and you may just look re­al hot for Car­ni­val. Keep train­ing.