Category: motivation

Getting healthy is only MUCH EASIER when you do it as a family.

If one partner is trying to eat healthy, and the other partner is bringing rubbish into the house, then battles start happening, and the healthy one versus the unhealthy one is never a good situation, resentment only builds and staying on a healthy diet often becomes impossible.

Also, this will always send a confusing message to your kids, is it ok to eat junk? Hang on, I thought it wasn’t? Should I eat better or can I get away with anything as long as I train? 

The reality is your kids and grandkids even will often secretly watch your habits. If you’re trying to get them to eat healthier, and you’re doing it yourself, then you will have a problem and don’t expect compliance.

If you’re trying to get your kids to stay active and be fit, and you spend your life on the settee being an expert on the plot lines of the latest TV series, then they aren’t so likely to follow suit long term.

A HEALTHY HOUSEHOLD can be an amazing thing when you are ALL onboard. No more cupboards of junk, no more low nutrients meals after training-everyone will be active, everyone will feel better and everyone will not have a problem eating well within the household, and the long term health and wellbeing of your family will be drastically more positive. 

URGENT MESSAGE OF HONESTY

Once a week working out with us is a toe in the water, twice a week with us is getting into it and you will feel a lot better, three times a week and you WILL get very decent results-I MUST tell you the truth as I’m asked it MANY times. You do see many members with us 4-5 times a week, but that takes time to work up to, and yes they are capable of GREAT things.

HEALTH MUST BE YOUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.

Obesity is the number one cost on the NHS and 11 of the top diseases people die from all directly linked to obesity-it’s a fact even if you hate me saying that-it’s my job to tell people the truth and not to sugar coat it.

I’ve seen many people at the gym reverse their diabetes, come back from hell in terms of mental health, and take a lot of the pain out of their body-but it DOES TAKE WORK and does take you showing up at least 3 times a week.

A walk is great but it should supplement what you do, gardening is great and tough sometimes but it should supplement your workouts, swimming is fantastic but doing your gym workouts works your body completely different too-nothing wrong with doing all of these, your body wlll thank you for all of your activities. 

Experience has taught me that I need to be straight with everyone, never promise results unless people keep showing up and always be honest with them.

You have to be READY to change though because MANY people will back up by encouraging you to be inactive, encouraging you to eat more takeaways than you should, encouraging you to drink more than you should.

These are called ENABLER’S and they are NO GOOD FOR YOU.

We all have choices, but I’ve just given you the HONEST TRUTH before its too late as you should never take your health for granted,

It’s too much, it’s too far, it’s impossible, I have fallen back too much, I can’t even see the end in sight, I am too overwhelmed, I’m not strong enough anymore, I can’t leave the house anymore, I can’t even put my trainers on anymore, I am in too much pain, nobody understands, and it always happens to me.

These are all examples that most of us have experienced in our lives at least once. 

There has only been ONE solution to get us OUT of these situations.

Put one foot in front of each other, take a step every day no matter what, do a little better today than yesterday, get ourselves closer to our goals, however far away our goals seem right now.

SHOWING up means you become better. 

Leaving your old self behind that never took action is enough to re-invigorate you. 

DO NOT accept that you are slowing down in life, because that is a DANGEROUS mindset and you need to keep fighting the dying of the light, because that’s exactly what it is once you start doing less and eventually giving up on yourself.

Putting one foot in front of the other starts today, and your life will only change for the better. 

One of the favourites sayings I adopted was after someone asking how my days was, is “I only get good days and great days”!!. Today however was a rare bad day.

First of all I discovered my energy bill threatened to go up exponentially.

Second, I had a £100 parking charge (everywhere has cameras these days) and it’s not the first one!!!

Third of all, I heard a good friend hasn’t got long to live.

Fourth of all, I learned the story of a family who’s son trains at the gym having their house go on fire and losing everything.

Talk about life putting everything in perspective!!!  My first two apparent problems were suddenly completely forgotten, and my thoughts swiftly went to those great people suffering in life right now.

When we have problems in life, it’s the easiest thing in the world for us to feel sorry for ourselves, to think bad things only happen to us and put off looking after ourselves health wise to “another day”.

The gentleman who had the house fire rationalised it perfectly “we have our health and we are all safe, that’s all that matters”. The fact that his son is still training at the gym with his team meant a lot to me, and showed their resilience as a family despite the amazing adversity that would break most people.

Then I thought of my friend who would give anything to be at the gym just one more time, and how great it would be for all of us to have a laugh together again.

As we age, we tend to hear of more people dying, more people getting really sick and not recovering. BUT daily I also see at the gym recovering form major illness/adversity and going on to do incredible things, I see both sides.

It’s taught me that workouts not only help us get fit and healthy, they help us emotionally in times of high stress and adversity, and keep our mental health on an even keel.

As another saying goes “As long as we have our health, we have a thousand dreams, if we don’t, we only have one dream-to get our health back.

Wednesday is done, we learn lessons daily, and we all need to come out fighting tomorrow and not waste another day making excuses what we can and cannot do..

Culture is highly important to any organisation, club or any group of people. Apple have been quoted as saying that “culture beats strategy every time”.

We work on it hard at the gym, we work hard on our programmes to make sure everyone gets good results, to make sure nobody loses focus on what they are trying to achieve, and give a continuous roadmap on how to keep improving no matter what, we all get lost sometimes, it’s our job to keep re-creating the fire, re-creating the energy and doing it whilst still having a lot of fun.

We can’t allow negativity to affect the morale, performance and success of your time at the gym, so we try to take out energy vampires out of the equation at every opportunity.

Our strategy is always keep challenging everyone at the gym, keep moving them forward, keep working around potential challenges and when doubt, frustration, negativity threatens to intervene, we put it all in a big pile and throw it out of the gym creating an even more positive environment where NOTHING can stop us.

We have just introduced a massively challenging new programme, we know there be parts of it you think you may not be able to do, but through encouragement, guidance and a culture of everyone doing great things, we WILL get through this and not only be able to do all of this new stuff, but EXCEL at all the new stuff!!!! 

Let’s go!!!!