Friday, 20th January

It can seem very difficult to be positive when your environment is seemingly negative.

It always takes work to be positive and motivated.

Bad things don’t always go away, but there’s a lot you can do to turn your negatives into the positive!

The people who end up being successful in getting into shape, and more importantly, stay there tend to be positive in their focus no matter what is going on around them.

From talking to them and using it as research, they tend to always mention their past successes, and don’t usually mention or certainly DO NOT dwell on their past failures. Their focus tends to be on the steps they can take to achieve their goals, rather than their distractions and negatives that life can bring more or less every day.

Being proactive in what you need to do is massive if you really want to get leaner, stronger and develop huge amounts of energy. You will find that these actions build on top of each other and you can reach optimum health levels with less work than you initially thought!

To increase your focus, try this game in your mind when you go to bed.

Review your day, recognise your successes, still focus on what’s to come in your future and make real detailed plans for you want to achieve the very next day.

If you don’t have a plan for the next day, it can drift and sometimes you won’t be able to get anything done. If you get used to achieving every day, then it will become normal everyday life for you and you will start becoming very successful without thinking it’s hard work at all!

If you do this at the end of the day, its been proven to stay in your unconcious mind up to 6 times more than in any other part of the day. Its like reading a child a book before bedtime, they not only fall asleep but often the lessons from the story and morals often become part of the child’s consciousness.

Programming yourself for success is all in the mind, and every bit of valuable information is handy to be taken onboard.

Thursday, 19th January

Educating individuals on how to eat well and maximise their potential is always difficult, depending of course on how much they know already, some people know a lot already and some know absolutely nothing.

It’s worth sticking at it though because of the enormous benefits that will come with a proper eating plan. Hopefully you are reading this every day for a no nonsense way to improve your health, so I have to lay it down to you as straight as possible!

I have met so many people who have transformed their lives by switching their fast food diet over to fresh natural foods. If you want better skin instantly, a stronger leaner tighter body, a much stronger immune system and an amazing level of energy, then make the move now!

I cannot overstate the results you are likely to get from throwing away your past life of eating empty calories which can lead to ill health and low energy levels, to one full of rich nutrients that will energise you to a much higher quality of life. This is no gimmick and there are no faddy diet clubs in sight, this is real and WILL work!!!

People always say that its hard to eat healthy all the time, but that statement is totally false. This pack of lies is usually told by people who are not really committed to turning their lives around.

The hardest part is the first week when you make the initial switch, there can be headaches, irritability, light headedness etc all in the first few days, but give yourself a few weeks of eating right and how can you go back to feeling the way you did before?!!!

You will be in the fast lane of development, I have met some people who only ate crisps and chocolate all day for whatever reason, then they changed to white meats and fish, wholegrain and whole wheat pasta, new, sweet and jacket potatoes, brown rice, lots of fruit and vegetables and a steady supply of water, and they made a transition of such magnitude, that people thought it was scarcely possible!!

People all the time will tell you theres a million ways to do things, but if why not keep it to the most sensible, tried and tested and as it happens, the most SCIENTIFIC way of getting it right with your body.

January 19th and still not too late to get into great shape by spring, only you can decide to do it!!!

Wednesday, 18th January

With the weather a bit up and down, or mostly down this time of year, you have may have been faced with inside options most of the time this winter!!!

This is not always a bad thing and it will help hammer home the importance of strength training, using resistance works full stop for a million and one reasons.

I was dealing with an individual today who has had a snowboarding accident and badly damaged his shoulder.

You may think that strength training is out of the question in this case, but its never been more important for him.

We can still work the legs very hard, and this often helps bring a weak area up for most people because you can give it much more of a concentrated effort.

The shoulder has calmed down a lot now, so i have introduced some fantastic shoulder exercises. This gentleman can normally use 30 pound dumbbells for his shoulder work, i have stripped it down now right to 5 pound dumbbells! This allows me to concentrate on building up the strength of the tendons and ligaments around the shoulder, and very gradually build his strength up again.

You can never be over cautious in this type of situation, but its imperitive to get back the strength and integrity of that shoulder joint!

Contrast this with an elderly lady i train who is looking at the same five pound dumbbells, but using them in a lot of different exercises to develop her strength, and she is well into here 70’s. She is getting tremendous benefits in every area of her life now from being fitter, stronger and healthier!!!

I am not going to put an exclamation mark after that because i find these days my clients in the 70’s are usually stronger than most 40 year old’s i know, and thats no exaggeration!!!

I try to treat each and every person on their individual abilities, and not discriminate against anyone on their age in particular!!!

Whatever their age, strength training will remain paramount in my plans for them!!!

Tuesday, 17th January

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise”.

Robert Fritz, author of The path of least resistance.

Most of you who have achieved something in life will have experienced someone trying to talk you out of it in the first place. I know i certainly have. It’s fantastic to prove people wrong, and i’m sure many of you have done that, and it’s always been a result of keeping your head down and working hard in the end, and deflecting negativity and doubt that others will try to inflict on you along the way.

Not only do people talk you out of doing things that are important to you, they will sometimes call you crazy for even thinking about it!!! This is the point you know that you are onto something really special and others are envious about your upcoming possible big success in life.

There will also be those who laugh at you and will try to bring you down to their level. I don’t have to tell you by now surely that these types of people are exactly the ones you should be IGNORING and whatever they tell you, i would advise the exact opposite!

The greatest danger for most of us is not that we will aim too high in our ambitions and come a cropper, but by far the biggest danger is AIMING TOO LOW and reaching those levels!

It takes guts to have lofty goals, and deep determination to carry out the necessary things to get there. This is why not many people reach where they want to be.

Once you set your goals, however high they may be, start expecting them to happen and start practicing the habits to get there. If you want great health, then you had better be eating as much natural fresh food as possible, as well as sleeping well, and in addition to proper well thought out training of course!

It all starts with belief, without it you will aiming too low and unfortunately likely to get there!

Change course now and shoot high!

Monday, January 16th

James Cameron, who directed one of my favourite series of films, the Terminator series and Titanic, has a great saying and it sums up what most people are trying to achieve in life, and i certainly take a lot from it.

“People call me a perfectionist, but i’m not. I’m a “rightist”, i do something until it’s right, and then i move on to the next thing”.

If you follow this advice you are unlikely ever to go wrong.

How many have started an exercise programme and gone about it the wrong way? Thinking there must be a short-cut every time and you could really eat”whatever you want”, and somehow cheat the system!!

 I have been there myself and it took me a while to figure out that you couldn’t cheat the system, that it really did take hard work and consistency, and you had to be very mindful of what you were eating every day.

Then i discovered that you couldn’t really drink every weekend, all weekend. I found out for the best results, that once a week in moderation was really the maximum i could do if i wanted to lose body fat. People will try and beat this system too, usually without much success.

I thought too that i could do without sleep, that i could somehow do without it and still have unbelievable energy levels. Guess what? That didn’t work either!! Now sleep is paramount to me, for my performance and my general health, if i don’t i suffer full stop!!!

The secret is that i encourage everyone to work at all these CONSTANTLY.

In certain cultures, they strive for constant and never-ending improvement, successful people in all walks of life tend to use this mantra, and have figured out long ago that if you don’t try to keep on improving that you will get left behind.

Whichever way you are eating and drinking, what methods you choose for training, promise yourself that you will do IT RIGHT, and you will keep on even if you don’t get it right to start with. Focus on self-improvement and see this week as a fresh opportunity to get better once again!