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by Ben Hackney-Williams on Sunday, 4 August 2024
Team Myzone member and the boss of burpees, Zaid has spent years taking boutique fitness classes and nailing compound lifts.
Below, he explains how working with his heart rate zones using a Myzone fitness tracker complements his competitive spirit.
Here’s how you balance your nutrition and fitness to max out on endorphins from workouts.
From the classroom to compound lifts
“I’m Zaid. I’ve been working with Team Myzone on different sporting events since 2019. I’ve enjoyed fitness for most of my life.
“I played sports at school; went to university and did a technical-based degree, and I’d do the more traditional stuff like compound lifts.
“That got a bit boring so I started to do classes before getting into more functional workouts, and then I found OCR and the competitions through Myzone.”
Endorphins from morning workouts
“Fitness is not just an escape from the stress of normal day life, but it’s habitual. It’s part of me. It’s like breathing. My day isn’t complete if I haven’t planned my fitness.
“I love to work out in the morning. The endorphins you get from it – you can’t buy those; you have to earn them.
“Nutrition, fitness, the drive, and that’s just with the physical. The mental side… A lot of successful people such as CEOs, they all have the same mindset.
“Get up early, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Just enjoy the process. One week might be hard, and one week might not be. That’s all fine.”
That feeling of achievement and accomplishment
“My journey getting into fitness… Part of it was to prove things to myself, but part of it was to prove things to other people. You know, I’m barely five-foot. A lot of people think that just because you’re short, you can’t achieve some things. But I’ve always enjoyed that feeling of achievement and accomplishment, whether it’s a jog in the park or an event win.
“Lifestyle choice motivates me to keep going, but also longevity. Just being able to do what I can and stay injury free – I want to enjoy it.”
Functional workouts and weighted circuit training
“I always prefer short and sharp, so any sort of boutique-based class that uses sprint work and dumbbell or barbell work. I work to my strengths, and I’m very good at burpees.
“I love dumbbell complexes or shifting a barbell above my head at volume for reps, before hitting a treadmill and coming back to the weights. Weighted circuit training. I love that. That’s my thing.”
Garbage in, garbage out nutrition
“I work in software and there’s a saying: ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ It’s the same for nutrition. You only get one body and one chance.
“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life, but you can seriously feel the difference between a good quality and high nutritional lifestyle, compared with high sugar products and not sleeping well.
“I try most of the time to avoid processed food because it affects my performance and recovery to a remarkable level.”
Measurable fitness goals
“My ambition is just about slowly working on myself more and more. Whether it’s fitness or strength, that portfolio is like sculpting. You can add bits here and there; you can carve here or you can chip things off.
“For me, there are certain things that I’ve neglected. I very rarely do pure strength training now, where I’m going for a three-rep max or a one-rep max.
“If I can add that into my schedule then that will definitely complement a lot of things. It’s very easy to do things for the fun of it, or the calories, or the burn, or the endorphins. That’s great, but it’s also good to have structure. It takes time. You’ve got to have a plan and it’s got to be measurable.
The importance of recovery
“If I have something measurable, like using Myzone, if I can see my heart rate then I can understand across the day how hard I’m going and how much recovery I need. If I see a lot of red in my workouts, I know that I need to take longer to recover.
“They say the true testament of fitness is knowing how hard you can go and how easy you can recover from it. If you take lactic threshold training, as in something that’s based in the yellow zone, can you go hard and recover, repeating that process over time?
“Recovery is the true test.”
Myzone fitness tracking and accountability
“Myzone keeps me accountable. I use it every day. There’s the adage that if you didn’t wear your Myzone, did you even workout at all?
“I take it with me everywhere. I like to also use it after the workout – I keep it on for quite a while – to see how my body reacts to cooling down. I also use it to see the effect of going up and down the stairs, which can actually put you back in the blue zone because your heart rate’s elevated from a high-level workout.
“I really enjoy it. I’m just going to keep moving and going up the statuses.
“Whatever you do, don’t put pressure on yourself. Life is hard. Just do the little things. Try to be better tomorrow than what you were last week.”