THE FIRST IN A NEW SERIES IN WHICH WE GET KEEP FIT ADVICE FROM EXPERTS
Professor Greg Whyte, OBE, 52, is a sports scientist, former Olympian and one of Britain’s best known fitness coaches, training celebrities including David Walliams and Davina Mccall for Comic and Sport Relief challenges. He is director of performance at the Centre For Health and Human Performance, has written six books and lives in Marlow with his wife Penny and their three children Maya, 13, Elise, 11, and Mitch, eight.
Workout week
intervals of cycling, swimming and strength
I work out at least six times a week with one rest day. Two to three workouts will be cycling, to increase endurance and help me get in shape for the next Sport Relief challenge. Typically it would involve a 10-minute warm-up, then pedalling at two-minute maximum effort, two minutes recovery, then intervals of 30 seconds going the hardest I can with ten seconds recovery repeated six times. That continues with intervals in various forms for the entire hour – it’s vomitinducingly brutal.
If you’re only starting, this could be intervals of power walking or light jogging done for just
10 minutes rather than an hour, then building up over time.
Three workouts will be swimming at 6am, which I love. I’ve been a member of Wickham Masters Swim Squad for 10 years and doing it in a group is sociable and takes the edge off the pain. I do an hour of circuit training once a week, working quickly through resistance moves such as step jumps, box jumps, hurdles and squats interspersed with short periods of recovery. Finally, I do one session of strength training where I work my whole body from calves to shoulders, doing three sets of 10 repetitions of each move.
My daily diet
As I have got older, nutrition has become more important because my body doesn’t recover as quickly as it used to. If I am training in the morning I won’t eat before, but I will have a protein shake after to replenish my muscles, made with milk and Elivar protein (which I am an ambassador for). It’s low in sugar and made for active people over 35. Other than that, a typical day’s eating might be:
Breakfast – cereal with full-fat milk and fresh fruit. Coffee with milk.
Lunch – Egg, cheese or ham sandwiches or sushi or boiled eggs and spinach pot from Pret a Manger.
Mid-afternoon – piece of one of my wife’s homemade cakes and a coffee with the children after school.
Dinner – high carb, high fat, high protein: maybe chicken curry and rice, salmon and potatoes or my speciality, carbonara with lots of butter and cream – I’m not afraid of fat – each served with at least two vegetables.