Dear Paul, I need some help with toning up my triceps, which are the best exercises for doing that? Thanks! 

Close grip push-ups are good, bench dips are good, overhead dumbbell extensions are good. All of those exercises will help you tone up your triceps.

Dear Paul, I have been stuck at the same weight now for over 6 weeks, I have gone down in size but, the weight is the same. What are some ideas for breaking through this plateau. I have lost 139lbs does your body reach a point where it takes a break to shrink up and stuff?

Your body can keep losing weight and making improvements, it doesn’t really get stuck, the thing is that it becomes harder and harder to push to another level. So you need to make a plan just like an athlete does to meet your long-term goal.

You need to look at what you’re doing now and make a plan week to week as to where you’re going to add in more activity, more intense activity or just different activity to allow the body to be progressively overloaded so that it is being forced to adapt to different levels of stress.

The key is to come up with a long-term plan that is progressive in intensity as you get fitter and fitter, just like an athlete would do when they are preparing for a major competition. They’ll start off nice and easy but as they get closer to the competition they will train harder and harder.

Dear Paul, I know that you think crunches are useless, what are some great ab and core strengthening exercises?

If you want good abs that have good function in your daily life, you need to do ab exercises in an upright position. You only need to do one crunch in the day, and that’s when you get up out of bed in the morning.

If you want strong abs, you need to train when you’re up on your feet. What I would like people to do would be a squat woodchop, either with a dumbbell or using cable machine apparatus, that will be a fantastic exercise for your abs. Or lunging twisting exercises with a medicine ball.

Those are the exercises I would do for the abdominals. You don’t need to isolate your abdominals, laying on the ground with the ground supporting all your bodyweight.

Dear Paul, I would like to know what a good at home strength training program would be, to alternate with running. I am running between 5-10 k every other day (weather permitting, I have no treadmill and live in Newfoundland LOL), and would like something equally challenging for the off days. 

To be honest, I couldn’t give you all this information in this brief space. Go to my website, complete our questionnaire and sign up for a personalized exercise program.

Dear Paul, I don't have access to a gym, there isn't one within an hour's drive of me which is why I'd like to know what would be good for me to do at home, and what weights/equipment I would need.

Buy yourself a series of dumbbells and a stability ball, maybe a bench and some tubing, and you could literally do hundreds of exercises using these four pieces of equipment and your bodyweight. You can re-create pretty well any exercise you can do in the gym with these pieces of equipment.

Drive out to the gym and see a trainer for one or two sessions so that they can design a routine specific for you that you can do at home using equipment you have. You need to learn what to do with this stuff, because a lot of people get stuck because they don’t know what to do with the equipment that they have.

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