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Friday, 26th november

Whether the snow has reached you or not, your workouts should absolutely not be affected!!

Unlike a tennis coach who relies on outside work only (unless he/she is involved with inside courts), i never lose work to the weather. I realise that inside workouts are just as important as outside work. Accept the fact that in this country it rains around 9 months a year and you will be adequately prepared!! Your workouts are only limited by your imagination so let’s take the excuses right out of the equation right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, you should be adequately prepared to switch workouts when you have to. For example, if you were supposed to cycling today and the cyle path is snowed over, then it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you could skip the cycling and workout tremendously hard inside?!!! There’s a million things to do inside so lets pick up the pace, pick your attitude up off the floor and aggressively attack your strength work just because of the amazing results its capable of bringing you!!

See this situation as a positive too! Have you noticed if you exclusively run or cycle and thats all you do, when you do an inside workout or do any other activity out of the ordinary, sometimes you are stiff for days!!

This will be telling your body that you need to be more diverse in your approach if you are serious about being a well-rounded athlete. Your muscles need to be worked from different angles if you want to feel and look your best. Variety is the spice of life so lets make it your priority and start thinking about the many ways you can be fit and healthy!!

Four weeks tomorrow is christmas day and hopefully you have and are making the big push to a tremendous christmas body. Quitting now before christmas is the easy way out and nobody ever achieved ANYTHING like that. Let’s think and grow your mindset into something very strong thats going to support your physical efforts very well!!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 25th November 2010

As debbie has just posted, you shouldn’t take for granted good health, and when you’re ill, you obviously have a new appreciation for being fit and healthy. Thanks for posting that debs!

I also hear stories about people who drink every night down the pub, and they suddenly get into a healthy lifestyle of exercising and eating properly. Within a month, the drinking down the pub soon disappears and they soon appreciate what it feels like to have much better health. The pub in the week and good workouts definitely don’t work and anyone who has ever tried will tell you that!

If you went to the supermarket right now and filled your shopping trolley up with doughnuts, white bread, cans of lager, bottles of wine, biscuits, multi-pack bags of crisps, chocolate bars etc etc and then tried to exercise every day, then something would have to give!!! All of these foods are what we call “empty calories” meaning they don’t have much to offer us nutritionally, other than putting more body fat ON us, which is the opposite of what we are trying to do!!!

Add on to the fact that we will get lousy workouts from this fuel (the fatty supermarket trolley) and we will be on a one way course to an expanding waistline and no energy in our lives.

Debbie will take some time to return to her former levels, but she will get there as long as she takes her tried and tested approach of solid workouts inside 3 times a week and any other activity she decides to undertake. She also knows that good food, full of essential nutrients are just as important toget her back to normal, or her progress will be bumpy at best.

Say point A is being ill and feeling terrible, and point B is feeling great and energetic, debbie has been bad for 5 weeks so far and is on her way back. It should take 5-10 weeks to get back to normal based on scientific studies. The exact time it takes will depend on how good she is in her lifestyle and daily habits with food. It will be interesting to see how she gets on so come on debs, keep us updated on your progress!!!

Twitt
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Wednesday 24th November 2010

If you remember your best ever week of training, you will remember you will have probably been very tired at the end of the week from the huge effort you would have put in. You will have also noticed that your body will have felt a whole lot tighter at the end of the week. This will have brought you a huge amount of satisfaction because you would have signifcantly improved yourself.

I don’t know about you but i find the week AFTER very tough sometimes. Your best ever week is unlikely to be followed by another mind-blowing week of training straight away, so this is why a proper programme is important to follow. Getting into shape and staying in shape is very much a matter of following routine and progressively OVER A PERIOD OF TIME. You won’t improve every week in a big way, but even tiny improvements will matter big time in the end as long as your nutritional needs are being met.

So if you look at a 10 week period, your first week may have been unbelievably good, the next may have been tough to get through, the next after that i guarantee will have been easier, and if you manage to keep these good weeks up for 10 weeks, you WILL SIGNIFICANTLY trasnform your body. I repeat, you will change your body in a way you thought not possible!!!

Let’s talk this through again, you need to be HUGELY CONSISTENT if you want this amazing progress and it is totally possible!! You don’t have to have these super person genetics, you don’t have to have any money, you don’t have to “know the right people”, there are no catches in this and im totally confident that anyone can pull this one off.

So when cyril posts regularly how well he is doing, or even if he is having a down week, he is still interested in improving himself and usually VERY consistent. This is such a more powerful secret to success than any fat loss pill, faddy diet, faddy piece of exercise equipment etc. Showing up as i keep saying is such a strong way to make sure you are improving all the time, and in my mind the most powerful get in shape tool you could ever use.

Being consistent means being successful full stop!!!

Twitt
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Monday 22nd, November 2010

Think of your proudest physical achivement and it could be anything.

It could be the sprint you won in school when you were 10 years of age, it could be the first time you swum a length, it could be the first time you completed a triathlon, it could be the first time you scored a goal or a try, it could be the time you got picked in the first team at school, it could be the first time you did a 5k after recovering from a heart attack, it  could be anything!!!

Like we talked about last week and the way you think and perform at certain ages, the WAY you think is often the problem and NOT your actual physical ability, whatever your age right now maybe.

There is a hill in pembrey that i know if i can’t get up in one go, i have lost a significant amount of fitness and have somehow let myself go! The remedy will not be to try and try again over that particular week to get up there in one go, it won’t work that way. I will analyse my food intake and work out how badly my eating was going.

Have i been taking in too many takeaways, too much chocolate, too many pastries and how about alcohol, have i been drinking a lot more than normal? These are all valid questions to be asking if im not performing!!!

How about my workouts in general? Have i got lazy on a sunday morning? Am i not running or cycling as much?

If all of that is worked out and i’m still not getting up the same hill in say, a month’s time, am i lacking drive? Don’t i want it anymore? Am i telling myself i’m getting old and can’t hack it anymore?

These are all valid questions i ask myself from time to time and you should be asking yourself too!! What exactly is the litmus test for you in terms of physical effort, and the one test you KNOW will tell you exactly what kind of shape you’re really in!! Come on, be honest with yourself and those great feats from yesteryear REALLY are possible again!! Ask yourself the questions i ask myself, then work a plan so that you can get to your best.

The ability to perform at your best levels will keep you in great shape, both in mind and body. To do this, you need WELL-DEFINED goals so dig deep, have a good think and really remember what level you want to get back to. Be ambitious, aim high and dont you dare be embarrassed to think big!!!

Twitt
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Friday 19th November 2010

The colder weather to come for the next week (as cyril says) is actually a wonderful training tool and you should definitely celebrate it!!

The reason?

Your  body has to work harder to get up to its core temperature. What this means is that your body likes and even needs to be at a certain temperature to maintain balance. If your body’s temperature goes up even slightly, there will be health issues. It’s like when you were a child, you often had your temperature measured and were prescribed medicine if it was too high. You would even be taken to hospital if your temperature was really high!! Your body cannot function properly unless it has a balanced core temperature full stop.

So your body has to burn more calories in colder weather just to maintain itself at proper levels. This will not happen of course if you just stay indoors in front of the fire!! You need to get outside and DO SOMETHING if you really want to benefit so plenty of fresh air should definitely be on the agenda for you not only in the summer but colder winters too. I wouldn’t recommend you go out in the ice of course as that would be dangerous. As long as you’re sensible and use some solid routes with good footing, you shouldn’t have a problem.

The effect the cold has on your body is called a “thermogenic” effect. You may have heard of this word when it comes to “Fat-burning” tablets often sold in health shops etc, even supermarkets.

They claim to strip fat off you, but the reality is often an accelerated heart rate which in turn burns more calories. This is in my view dangerous and many of these tablets have been taken off the market. I could name you at least two big companies in the states that have been sued for hundreds of millions of dollars. The negatives can be extremely worrying and nobody wants to be putting extra strain on their hearts, thats for sure so beware these bogus companies and their claims!!!!

So in summing up, you need to get out there and have some fresh air, this will be your own thermogenic effect on your body in a NATURAL WAY. If you ever needed another reason to get outside, this is just another one of many so lets not just talk about it, lets get out there and do it!!!!

Twitt