Tag Archives: fitness in barcelona

Pilates classes in the centre of Barcelona

Pilates in Barcelona Grasso New Pilates classes in the centre of Barcelona

Join us every Monday evening at 7.30 pm for an exclusive Pilates session in Grasso, a beautiful space in El Born.

Pilates is the world-famous exercise system that can rehabilitate you from injury and make you fitter, stronger, change your body shape and improve your life and your ability to do sports. Our classes are in English so you can practise your language skills as well.

We provide the mats and other equipment. All levels are welcome from beginners to advanced.

These sesssions are for only a maximum of 6 people, so they are exclusive, small and intimate to make sure you get the best possible attention and experience.

We encourage regular clients, or if you are on holiday then you are vwey welcome to join us as well.

The address for Grasso Barcelona is:

Carrer de Verdaguer i Callís, 6
08003 Barcelona

Chris is an international presenter of Pilates and a teacher-trainer. He travels the world teaching Pilates teachers and he is the creator of Pilates EVO, a system which is used all over the world from the US to Russia.

Julia is the current Miss Ireland Bikini Sports Model and she is fully qualified in Pilates, personal training and Sport Management.

So you can be sure of a professional and expert session. Please also ask us about nutrition and tell us your goals. We are here to help.

We also offer personal training (Pilates and fitness) at Grasso, on the beach or at your home, and you can also join other fitness classes and the many social events we run in and around Barcelona. We also offer massage (sports and Thai) and beauty treatments such as eye lash extensions and gel nails. Everything you need to look and feel healthy!

Find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/healthybeachbarcelona or click on our website www.healthybeachbarcelona.com

We are a community, a family. So come join, you are very welcome.

Mila Kunis Pregnancy Pilates again

Mila Kunis Pilates Chris Hunt Pilates Mila Kunis Pregnancy Pilates again

www.chrishuntwellness.com

Another week nears an end. It’s been a hot one here in Barcelona which pleases the sun worshippers and the ice-cream sellers, but maybe not so much the exercisers.

After a week of serious blog posts, I have that Celebrity Friday feeling again, my compromise afte a week of serious blogs. I have explained before (but I will again), I am not obsessed with celebrity. I have never bought Hello Magazine. What I am obsessed with is Pilates. And whilst not every one agrees, it’s my opinion that if someone starts Pilates because their friend, neighbour, sporting hero or favourite celebrity does Pilates, then why not?

I’ve had comments about glamorising Pilates, about how privileged celebrities are, about creating false hope, about living on a different planet… Whilst I respect the opinion of everyone, it is my humble opinion that these people are missing the point of my posts and they are taking everything way to seriously. All I am doing is raising the awareness of Pilates. Plain and simple. If you do not or can not understand that, then I am sorry for wasting your time and please do not read my blog on a Friday! 🙂

So today I am talking about Mila Kunis (again). The 31 year-old Hollywood actress, has been doing Pilates throughout her pregnancy, even before she announced she was pregnant with fiancé Ashton Kutcher’s baby. See my previous post “Mila Kunis Pregnancy Pilates”.

She can clearly no longer hide the fact, and she was photographed outside Hunt Pilates in California this week following a class. She is also reported to be having prenatal yoga classes as well, and she admits to cravings for sauerkraut, pickles, guacamole and fish tacos.

It’s celebrity Friday so I allow myself this day to blatantly flaunt celebrities who do Pilates, and pregnant celebrities I think are a great example to show the general public how beneficial Pilates can be and to help raise awareness.

The personal training pregnant clients that I teach in Barcelona are always blooming and more than happy to show off their “baby bumps” (their name not mine). As one of my Russian clients said to me this week, “life doesn’t have to be put on hold whilst I’m pregnant, I’m having a great time doing Pilates, exercising and enjoying all the Barcelona has to offer!”

Do you have any quotes or stories about your pregnant clients that you can share that might help us to inspire current and potential future clients? Also, I am getting conflicting comments from Pilates teachers about their training and what they have been told is safe/not safe to teach, and for how long Pilates can be taught during pregnancy and how soon after birth.

I  hope Mila’s example will convince more women to try Pilates.

Have a great weekend where ever you are in the world. If you are ever in Barcelona, then please come say hello!

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway? You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays 50% of any money made from this BLOG to his charity partners. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.

 

Lose weight, not performance


Barcelona bienestar: Exercise in barcelona

www.barcelonabienestar.com

Lose weight, not performance

Working as a fitness exercise trainer in Barcelona, I am often asked the same type of questions. In my blog I will try to answer some of these questions. Today I talk about losing weight without losing performance.

Many athletes and fitness participants wish to lose weight, either for health or performance reasons.

However, rapid weight loss can have serious health consequences leading to a reduction in performance.

Since 95% of dieters fail to maintain their weight loss within a five-year period, lifestyle management is the key to long-term weight management. Two methods that should not be entertained are crash dieting and dehydration.

It has been proven that rapid weight loss results in diminished aerobic capacity. Fat is more fattening calorie for calorie than carbohydrate. This is supported by a number of well-controlled studies. It is the over- consumption of fat, rather than carbohydrate or protein, that results in body fat gain. To lose body fat, you simply have to expand more energy (calories) than you consume.

Research has shown that a combination of diet and activity is more likely to result in long-term success than diet or exercise alone. There are no miracle solutions or short cuts. The objectives of a healthy diet and exercise programme are to:

Expand more energy than you consume

Maintain (or increase) lean tissue

Gradually reduce body fat percentage

Avoid a significant reduction in resting metabolic rate (this is the number of calories your body burns if you did nothing all day).

Obtain energy requirements from a high percentage of carbohydrate (60%) and a low percentage of fat (15-20%)

Achieve an optimal intake of vitamins and minerals

The key to successful fat loss is to cut your calories mostly from fat and to reduce carbohydrates by only a modest amount. If you reduce carbohydrate intake below the daily average requirement, glycogen stores become depleted which results in lean tissue loss, so is not a good idea.

Keys points for permanent fat loss are:

Set realistic goals, and write them down.

Monitor body composition changes by measuring chest, waist, hips, arms and legs, and obtain skin-fold thickness measurements by using callipers.

Aim to lose no more than 0.5 kg each week.

Keep a food diary. Most people eat far more than they realise or admit to.

Trim the saturated fat by using less butter, deep-fried foods, fatty meats, pastry, cakes, biscuits and chocolate.

 

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength. He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway? You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays all the profits made from this BLOG to his charity partners. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.

Exercise and fitness in Barcelona


Personal training in Barcelona

www.barcelonabienestar.com

Exercise and fitness in Barcelona

OK, so you live in Barcelona or you are visiting Barcelona on your holiday or vacation. You want to keep fit or you want to get fit. Where do you start?

Google “exercise in Barcelona” and you will get a long list. There are many options here in this vibrant and diverse city, but who can you trust?

Since living here in Barcelona, I have noticed that the control of qualifications in the fitness and exercise industry is much more relaxed than in the UK and other European countries such as Germany.  That is a problem for someone looking to find a trainer because you have no idea what quality of qualification they have, or even if they have a qualification at all!

This does not just apply to individual trainers. I know of clubs and fitness centres here who use unqualified staff. So you can not simply join a club and think you will get professional treatment.

You should always ask for qualifications before you start to work with a personal trainer or in a group fitness exercise session.

If you choose Barcelona Bienestar, you can relax. We only use fully qualified trainers who we have personally checked out. Our main personal trainers and group exercise trainers are Julia and Chris. Julia is from Russia. She is fully qualified in fitness, exercise, Pilates, Pilates EVO and group training. She is the current Miss Ireland Bikini Fitness Model so you know that she can train hard! Chris is from London, England. He is an international trainer of fitness teachers. He travels the world (Russia, Brazil, America, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Italy, France, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland, Switzerland, China, Japan, Holland). He is also the creator of Pilates EVO and bodyFUNC training systems.

So if you are looking for professional, qualified fitness exercise trainers in Barcelona, then you can trust Barcelona Bienestar.

We work in Spanish, English and Russian.

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength. He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway? You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays all the profits made from this BLOG to his charity partners. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.

Personal Training versus Group Training: Social Loafing or group highs?

Group Fitness Chris Hunt Pilates

www.chrishuntwellness.com

Today you will learn what horses have to do with Group X. My blog today is really just an excuse to use a picture from the Eric Prydz video Call On Me which certainly got a few more men to go to the gym.

But I digress. Back to the horses. In 1913 an experiment was carried out by a French engineer called Maximilian Ringelmann on the performance of horses (please bear with me, this is going somewhere relevant to fitness I promise). He discovered that the power of two animals pulling a coach did not equal twice the power of a single horse. This surprised him so he extended his study to humans pulling a rope, and found that on average if two people were pulling together, each invested only 93% of their individual strength, when three pulled it was 85%, and when eight people pulled it was just 49%.

This is what science calls the Social Loafing Effect. Basically, when individual performance is not directly visible, it blends into the group effort. Whilst quite rational (why invest all your energy when only half will do?) it is a form of unconscious cheating. It doesn’t only apply to physical exertion but also mental exertion in meetings. If we are not directly accountable for our actions, we slack off.

Now you can see where Ringelmann’s horses are taking us. In a group exercise environment, the scientific evidence is that a large percentage (perhaps the majority) of people will not work as hard as they would if they were being trained on a one-to-one basis. At the extreme, I have seen people in the group sessions I watch at conventions taking the opportunity to stop and rest when the teacher is not watching them, only to launch back into the activity as soon as they are seen. But even the people who appear to be working might not be applying maximum effort.

So then why is group exercise so prevalent and so championed by certain commercial brands? There’s no doubt that people behave differently in groups than when alone, otherwise there would be no groups. The sense of belonging that all of us humans require no doubt makes some people exercise with others when they would not exercise alone. Also of course the cost of personal training is a major and understandable issue for many (the argument here is that a lot of money spent effectively is better than spending smaller amounts of money ineffectively).

There are the obvious benefits of PT including individual attention, goal-setting/controlled progression and programs tailored for body type/injury etc. So my question is today is what is your opinion about PT versus Group training? Is it as simple as personal accountability? What is your experience of the progress of clients in different training environments?

Oh, and one last point I’d like to make. I heard the claims from certain group exercise companies that they can “prove” that people who use their methods get better results. To these claims I say the two words “false causality”. Let me explain. Take the claim “Fact: Women who use ABC brand of shampoo every day have stronger hair”. This may have been scientifically proven, but such a statement means very little. It certainly does not prove that ABC shampoo makes your hair stronger. In fact it could be the other way around. Maybe women with strong hair tend to use ABC perhaps because it says on the bottle “especially for people with strong hair”. So when you read that ABC fitness system is proven to make people fitter, you now know to think again. Correlation is not causality. If we look closer then sometimes what is presented as the cause turns out to be the effect and vice versa.

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway? You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays all the profits made from this BLOG to his charity partners. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.

 

Pilates and fitness sessions in Barcelona

Healthy Beach Barcelona Chris Hunt Pilates

www.healthybeachbarcelona.com

There is a wonderful culture in Barcelona for exercising outside, and I love it. I had only really seen regular exercise classes outside on the TV, as in the UK it is difficult to do more than the odd class in the fresh air.

But here the weather allows outdoor exercising most of the year, and the locals make the most of this and the great venues here in the City. Both group exercise sessions and personal training sessions are very popular. Why join a gym?

I have Pilates and fitness classes on the beach and in the parks under the name Healthy Beach Barcelona. There is lots of room for Pilates and sheltered places from the hot sun. For fitness exercise in Barcelona, there is lots of urban architecture that is perfect to hang a TRX from or use for many different exercises.

For me, laying on a Pilates mat and looking up to the sky above is much nicer than looking at a ceiling! And to run and exercise in fresh air is just nicer than an air conditioned studio any day.

I am now running Pilates and fitness exercise group sessions and personal training sessions on the beach and in the park in Barcelona everyday of the week. You can find out more by clicking on www.healthybeachbarcelona.com.

You can train with me the traditional way inside in your home if you prefer. Everything is possible!

Chris is an international Pilates presenter and educator based in Barcelona, Spain. He is the creator of Pilates EVO©, bodyFUNC©, and CEO of Pilates Rehab Limited and Sport Core Strength.  He also organises Pilates Carnival and Fitness Carnival, conventions where all profits go to local children’s charities. For more information about Pilates with Chris in Barcelona, please click on Barcelona Bienestar. To learn more about Chris, please read Just who is Chris Hunt anyway? You can also subscribe by completing the form on the this BLOG to receive articles and special offers straight to your inbox.

Chris pays 50% of any money made from this BLOG to his charity partners. More details can be found by clicking on www.chrishuntwellness.com and selecting the “charity partners” tab.