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Wednesday, 19th September

Not falling over in your programme can be the thing that differentiates you from most people who try to get into great shape.

By falling over I mean just keeping on training and eating well, and sometimes when you don’t even feel like it.

How many times have you got home from work, and its been freezing and wet outside, and you haven’t even got out of the chair because the thought of getting out and training in that weather seems so uninviting.

If you had only made that effort, then within 5 minutes of actually exercising, you would have been glad you did.

This is an example of not falling over!

If you are fully intending to eat well, especially in the week, then sometimes you can let a pizza night on a Tuesday throw you off good eating for the rest of the week.

There is no reason to do this, and getting back to good eating immediately on Wednesday morning would be the best thing to do, so many people though fall over and just write off the rest of the week!

A pizza occasionally can be good for you, helps keep your sanity and helps make you feel that you are not on some kind of ultra-strict diet, but you can still have a bit of what you fancy, its just that these days you are a bit more sensible when it comes to overdoing it in terms of portion size!

Another way to “fall over” in terms of progress is letting others put you off. You will always have comments off other people deriding what you are doing, and why don’t you be lazy and overeat/over drink instead?

Not falling over would involve you sticking to your guns, knowing that the path that you are on is the right one, no matter what negative people say, and you are going to see it through no matter what!!

These situations can happen any time and on multiple occasions, staying strong when you have a supposed reason to quit is the difference between successful and failing.

Twitt
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Tuesday, 18th September

We talk all the time about making huge performance gains, and how you can enable yourself to reach impressive levels of fitness, but sometimes its all too easy to forget where we first started.

It is usually a nervous time when you first start exercising, and we all remember that particular period of our lives.

You may or not be surprised that there is an increasing number of individuals who start training who have blood pressure problems, heart disease, diabetes and bone/joint problems, i personally have seen this trend go up sharply over the last 17 years.

This shows that the starting point for everyone can be remarkably different.

So if you are just nervous about beginning to exercise, imagine how hard it is to start the health and fitness journey with a known disease?!!! Some people never overcome this mental hurdle of actually making a start, and this is a shame. I call it a shame because i have so many people who have started with various ailments, and have gone on to achieve some pretty special things.

If you think its impossible for someone in her fifties to do triathlons after high blood pressure worries when she first started, then think again!

If you think its impossible for someone classed as physically disabled to learn how to run for the first time, then guess again.

If you think its not just possible for someone with deep breathing problems to run a full marathon in 8 months, then you’re going to be wrong because with the right training, the right eating and right guidance, it can be done!!

So you can see that the so called “starting point” is very much different for everybody, and wherever you are right now, there is absolutely nothing that should put you off!!!

Twitt
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Monday, 17th September

First of all, a big shout out to all of those cyclists who took part in the Gower bike ride on sunday, some found it harder than others and the overall feeling was that it went very well. Another message of support to the lady who has knocked down by a car on the Mayals Road, let’s hope she is okay after being airlifted from the scene. This hammers home the dangers of road cycling and how aware we need to be.

Cycling in general is matter of simply “doing it” !

When you first start learning to ride a bike, you simply do that, you learn how to handle your bike, the ups and downs, the fall offs, the twists and turns, and eventually you move on to using gears, and you finally discover how to go up hills, as well as the fun part of going downhills!

Then when we cut a very long story short, and you can do all of the things necessary to have full confidence to ride on your own, we then move on how to actually improve your performance, to get stronger and faster on a bike and how to last for longer.

This is a journey that can last a lifetime, and one thing you learn for sure as you get older is to ride “smarter!”.

Selecting the appropriate gears, hitting the right revolutions per minute (i always like 80 rpm), and learning how to use “drafting” to benefit in terms of work you have to do, using the wind to your advantage and benefitting from other cyclists in front of you, or even cars sometimes!

We can talk about all of these techniques and ins and outs of cycling, but the actual DOING IT is how you really develop, how you really learn how to handle a bike, and how you can end up doing such fulfilling charity rides such as the Gower bike ride yesterday, move on to triathlons maybe, or just set your own individual goals, such as your first century as one of my clients did the other day, all for his own personal satisfaction.

Don’t waste a moment and enjoy your ride, it’s all a matter of getting out there!!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 13th September

We talk all the time on here about constantly changing your workouts to bring you fresh results, and many of you have judging by some of the transformations you have been through.

We also talk about not letting yourself down in times of stress and doing the usual that most people do of “emotional” eating. In plain English, that means eating and drinking badly when stress comes into your life.

I have seen occasional drinkers become every night drinkers simply by having a month of stress, and finding that a bottle or two of wine has suddenly become the “best” solution somehow.

This is when we need re-evaluate what we are doing, to rediscover why we got into exercising and eating well in the first place.

Everyone should do this because its easy getting “caught up” into all the busy areas of our lives (work, relationships, family etc), often so much so that we never change our exercise programmes, never seek help on what we may be doing wrong, and this is when we can totally lose direction and suddenly we put on weight, lose our fitness through missed workouts, and our ambition vanishes without trace!!

This is because again we forget why we are doing this whole thing. Missing workouts we never once missed is a sign. Allowing a lot more fast food and processed food into our shopping trolleys is another sign we are “giving up” on ourselves!

This can be solved to a degree by the measurements being taken regularly, every 4 weeks, and discussing why your measurements has gone up or down.

None of us are perfect and this is why we need to assess often exactly what we are doing, or our dreams of outstanding health and have a strong fit lean body can go up in smoke without us even noticing!!!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 11th September

The overwhelming story overnight was the huge Andy Murray win in Flushing Meadows, New York.

A lot of people wrote andy murray off, as a “choker”, a “bottler” or someone couldn’t handle the pressure at the highest level.

This assertion has now been thrown in the rubbish bin, because murray defeated his most difficult opponent, who has previously crushed him in past matches and a final, and racked up 5 grand slams in double quick time.

Murray’s story is about perserverence, sticking to a plan when most people questioned whether it would work out, his supporting team believing in him despite the sport’s highest prize seemingly out of reach forever.

How things can change overnight!!!

Now there is a raft of people coming forward saying “i told you so”, and they never doubted him all along!!

This is a prime example of sticking to your beliefs, sticking to what you know is right, and following it through.

Not many people have had so many knocks, and come back from each and every one of them.

This happens every day, every week, and every year of our quest to be in shape, to get into shape and to create huge energy levels in our lives. This is a constant challenge and anyone who tells you otherwise is surely lying to you, or probably trying to seel you some kind of dodgy diet that is doomed to failure.

The message on here is always about trying to do the right thing, eat well and with some common sense, train hard but in a proper way, rest properly and have a bit of what you fancy, keeping your sanity is very important after all!!!

Twitt