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Tuesday, 25th September

Good comment from jean last night about my piece yesterday on training.

Yes, you should (if fitness allows) aim  to work more in a non-stop fashion, and jean certainly knows the value of this!! This level of conditioning can be only achieved though after a lot of training and a lot of efforts already in the bank, in other words you only move on to this more advanced form of training when you feel ready, and this usually involves more traditional forms of training first, which will be slower in nature with much more rest.

Then there is the question, what happens if the session gets easy? It only becomes easy if you do the same thing all the time with the same amount of weight and reps. You can EASILY change this around and make things far harder for yourself, and that means far more beneficial too!!!

You change it in a couple of different ways. If you are doing a set of exercises, and its usually 6 with a maximum of 8, then how about substituting some or all of those exercises with viable alternative. Tricep pushdowns could become arm dips on a bench or vice versa.

Press ups could be substituted for bench presses, lateral raises could become front raises or upright rows even, so you can see the choices are bigger than you thought!

This will create an immediate effect for the good!

Then there is the rep rane, i always love 8 as a rep number, but nothing wrong with changing that to 10 or 12 now and again, to get a different stimulus that will only benefit your body.

Then when you need to change again, and your weights become very light, how about increasing your weight slightly, this will create an immediate difference in intensity levels, as long as you can do 8 reps minimum per exercise, if you go under this rep range, then the exercise doesn’t become anywhere near as effective!

Always aim for good intensity levels and never let your workouts become run of the mill!!!

Twitt
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Monday, 3rd September

The school term is about to start, and with all of this comes a lot of rushing around chasing your tail.

The word “workout” may not happen for you this week, and if you expect me to agree with that statement, then you’re totally and absolutely wrong and making far too many excuses to yourself!

You need to schedule your workouts when it is possible for you to do them, there are 168 hours in every week, and 7 days, we have all have that time available to us, nobody gets more time than others!

Its how you use this time!

This is why morning workouts can be so valuable to you.

When you train early, the exercise part of your day is over, done, completed and taken care of! You may not like getting up early to start with, but the individuals who i do train and have done for many years, wouldn’t train any other time of day now, they now PREFER TO TRAIN EARLY, and often say that early is the best part of the day!

If you think you cannot get up that early to train, there is a simple solution, try getting to bed earlier the night before, that may help! I could never get up as early as i do if i didn’t get to bed early the night before, it simply couldn’t happen!!!

The people who schedule in their workouts NO MATTER WHAT are the ones i have greatest respect for. These are the people who without fail have the best results too! Not missing workouts will have a dramatic effect on your body, and its all good!

If you train most days, then this difficult school week will become far more tolerable too. Exercise is proven to effectively deal with stress very well so its a no brainer to include workouts most days of your week.

Less stress, less body fat, a stronger heart and leaner stronger body are all huge benefits impossible to ignore!! Schedule your workouts in today for the rest of the week!

Twitt
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Friday, 13th July

Making the commitment to be fit, stay fit and always be fit is totally overwhelming for almost all of us.

This is why i encourage everyone to take one day at a time, and just do your best that particular day.

Chances are you will improve much quicker like this rather than somehow trying to plan your year!

I can totally see how you can plan your week,  but your month or next couple of months is extremely difficult for all of us.

If you focused on one day then, you can see from the following how it can work very well for you.

For example, if you concentrated on eating a good energy filled breakfast every morning, full of slow-release energy, then you’re not going to go too far wrong.

This can be fairly easy if you only buy good quality cereals with only natural ingredients.

If you go for the likes of porridge, shredded wheat and weetabix and stick to the basic versions of these fine cereals, then you’re not going to be taking excess sugars into your sytem, meaning you will be energised and still lose body fat.

Lunch from monday to friday for most people is again fairly simple, make sure you eat some vegetables, good carbs of wholegrain variety where possible and a good quality protein source.

Your evening meal will be fairly similar, and trying to make sure you get some fruit in the day along with plenty of water, at least 1.5 litres.

On the exercise side, try and commit to being active most days, there is a huge variety on offer and we talk about exercise all the time.

Sleep is often underrated, so make this a priority.

Get these things right and you will taking one day at a time very well indeed!

Twitt
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Thursday, 12th July

A good measure of how well you are doing is your attitude to work. An individual’s work ethic often dictates his/her achievements in life.

One client I have who has shown this over many years is Olly Jenkins, who has just had the role of Robin in the world famous Batman stage show which will be touring the united states over the next 12 months.

This is an example of how hard work pays off, and how an attitude of continuously trying to improve one’s self is of paramount importance.

If you want to be an actor or actress at the highest level, you had better make sure your immune system is very strong for a year long production.

The gruelling schedule of a stage production, all the travelling and  performance standards dictate that these days you need to be in incredible physical condition.

These are pre-requisites of most jobs these days, especially if you want to work at a very high standard. I train people from all walk’s of life, and each and every one of them reports a marked improvement in their work performance after an extended period of training.

The consistent practice of eating well, drinking enough water, training sensibly and regular will pay enormous dividends over a sustained period of time.

If you study some of the most successful people, you will find that many of them will run first thing in the morning, most of them will do weight training of some kind, you will find that also the days of a heavy drinking lifestyle are over too.

You simply CANNOT work under pressure and perform well with a hangover or a headache!! This simply cannot happen.

More and more working lunches and evening meals are supported by plenty of water and good quality food, not only is this much better for one’s concentration, but this will enable you to perform much later into the day, instead of collapsing into a heap at the end of it!!

Life is continuously getting about longer days performing at an elevated performance level, your lifestyle will dictate if you are going to get to the highest level or not!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 10th July

Talking about elite athletes yesterday, its important to take some vital lessons from how they train.

Perhaps most people wont be able to show the extreme dedication they show to training, diet and basically living like a monk, but reaching our own personal best can be just as important for our own needs.

This is why we talk about constant improvement on here, and how to achieve exactly that and the processes involved.

It all starts with the monthly measuring and it follows from there. Its all about accountability and this is what you will have in common with these elite athletes, they are constantly being measured and constantly analysing their performances.

Nothing can make up for results and you need to make yourself accountable as much as possible.

If an elite athlete loses a race, or performs really badly in the race, there will be a lot of reprecussions, usually resulting in losing money or sponsorship or both.

There won’t be any such penalties if you don’t lose two inches off your waist in a month for example, but you can usually tell if you have had a good month of training and eating-or not!

There aren’t many good reasons to just go through the motions in your training, if you do then you need to find some motivation from somewhere and re-assess what you are doing.

If its lack of intensity, then change it and get much more fired up about your training.

If you have been in  the same exact routine for 6 weeks or more, then change it now and you will see an immediate result for the better!!!

If you wonder why you still train, then remember why you first started, why you are doing it now and what you really want to achieve, deep down, from your training and eating efforts!

This is what we can learn from the star athletes, and the accountability they constantly have to go through, use it in a positive way and you will automatically get better results!

Twitt