Category: motivation

Physical literacy

Education is ultra-important, but physical education is just is important, because without your health, not much is possible.

You will see from each programme we do, movement is ultra-important, and your ability to do those movements will lead to your own level of physical literacy.

It does not matter if you can’t do one particular movement, but in time you WILL LEARN IT, every programme we do proves exactly that!!!

The more you learn depends on how often you show up SIMPLE as that. No box set on TV or social media scrolling sessions are more important than your physical literacy so getting your behind down the gym is way more important than you ever thought.

NOBODY wants to be in pain as you get older, and there’s always a ton of things you can do to avoid that outcome, or get yourself out of that hole if you find yourself in it right now.

We engage our brains at our gym, we don’t rely on machines that only dull our brains and restrict us to a non-life relevant range of motion.

Our exercises reflect real life movements that give you good practice to excel at life whatever choices you make and whatever path you are on, that will always be the philosophy.

You are NOT awkward, NOT too big, NOT too old, NOT badly coordinated, you are human and you ARE capable of AMAZING things.

Thank you for all of you who have adopted the new programme with open arms, and your intelligence in starting to learn it so quickly, I mean that in all seriousness.

There is a lot of detail in there, a lot of science why we do certain things a number of times, a lot of exercises that complement the other, and you are all embracing it and it’s a pleasure to coach that to such eager and great members.

It comes down THIS.

We go ALL IN on coaching great programmes, and then changing those great programmes with new and contrasting new schedules.

This is what makes us tick.

I NEVER want to be a place where you put a piano in a warehouse and send my kids to that place and NOBODY to teach it, I wouldn’t tolerate it and hopefully you wouldn’t sink to that low standard either in anything you do if you get what I mean.

I never want to be a gym where people walk in and have to push a button and hope for the best on a machine and make wild guesses on how to get the most of their bodies and health or get hurt doing the wrong thing endlessly..

“Exercising is not rocket science” is exactly that if you are relying on a piano in warehouse with no teacher type of place, exercise IS the LATEST SCIENCE when you DO IT RIGHT END OF STORY!!!

We all chase something, but we have to realise that disappointment, sadness, frustration make our life victories so much more meaningful and special, and are an important part of the whole process, especially at the times when we are only given 1% chance of succeeding..

Sadness in our lives makes our happier times feel more special.

When we finally achieve something we have been after for a long time, we can often relay the endless disappointments along the way, and appreciate they very much shaped our successes.

We all get frustrated, but the question will always remain for us, do we throw our toys out the pram or do we react by working harder than ever before, refining our approach and accept we may have made mistakes along the way, that through using our heads we can put right again, even making us overall better.

I have trained plenty of talented people in all walks of life over the years. Some people’s talent is so great that they have little problem succeeding in their chosen field, and they have always found that-UNTIL suddenly they fail, or reach a standard where they need to work a lot harder and keep refining their approach.

I will tell you a large percentage of the most talented people often lack the resilience to really make it, they lack the work ethic often, they lack the grit to carry on especially when they are told they “aren’t good enough” anymore.

They don’t realise it’s ONLY one person’s opinion usually.

Then the most resilient people I have trained fail ALL THE TIME, countless times and they have became very good at not taking one person’s opinion of them.

They usually take onboard good advice, where they are going wrong and work on the skills that are letting them down right now, THIS is really how they become ultimately successful, because of the PROCESS and journey they have been on, it’s made them tougher, make that MUCH tougher than the most talented, because they will always out-work them.

So sadness, disappointment, frustration and failure is all VITAL in us eventually reaching where we want to be. 

And I really believe it’s the process that’s the special part and makes us be able to come back from anything, the times when life throws curveballs at us and we end up under big load of of rubble, and wonder whether we can ever get out of it again and poke our heads up out of it and say “that was tough but what’s next?!!!!!”.

The 1% chance we are given when most people think we could never do something special with our lives, that 1% should motivate us, should keep us hungry, should make us look deeper within ourselves to bring out all the stops to get the stuff done we really NEED.

Finding out the truth 

When I was 7 years old and first started going down the gym, it was often very cold in winter, and you had these iron and steel bars and dumbbells everywhere, but amongst the cold and grey days, you always had members who were glad to be there, some seemed ecstatic to be there and most were always smiling-i swear to God that is true!!

This went on year to year as I struggled to get warm and do my own small exercise programme, and if I was idling around, I was told to DO SOMETHING and I would indeed GET WARM.

I saw these days as like a church in my mind too, where you arrive and meet like-minded people all aiming to make themselves better in some way, or many ways.

People who arrived with characters that were maybe questionable, would come would to sort themselves out once they learnt the discipline of lifting weights and exercising right. 

They started mixing with people who had strong character, didn’t put up with any nonsense and soon learnt there was a better way in life if you exercised, ate a lot better and hard work would eventually make you into a better person all round even if it was tough at first, and often change your life.

Fast forward many years later when I took over the gym, I did introduce a new form of heating which was actually warm. BUT despite the expense of installing it, I was told to turn it off after 5 minutes because it was too warm and ”uncomfortable”. I didn’t turn it on again ever.

Right now when it is cold as winter’s usually get with us, everyone knows the way it is. Since we are an all in coaching gym, if you are cold in our place, then indeed you are not training hard enough, and that I believe is a great culture to have.

I find the people who are doing a ton of stuff outside with us are working so hard that they have to take their hoodies off, and even on the coldest of mornings or evenings, are in a t-shirt sweating from all the challenges we choose to push them through.

I find at that exact moment, they have found more about themselves than any more “comfortable” moment in the rest of their days, they are finding about the REAL TRUTH about themselves, about what it takes to make it in life and what it takes to overcome any challenge that life decides to throw at them.

“I don’t have time to do that much exercise”, “I don’t have time to make food from scratch”, “I could never go to bed that early in the week”, are all based on the list of priorities in your life being upside down and the wrong way around.

Do I need to mention how much TV you watch without coming across as highly judgemental? I really don’t want to!

Do I need to point you in the direction of your screen time on your phone? Did it ever lead to anything productive in your life?

How about social media scrolling alone? Need I say more?

All of these things are fun ONCE you get your priorities done.

You tell your kids often to get your homework done first, you tell your kids to not rely on food from the local convenience store and ‘get a good meal in you’.

You tell your kids get off that Xbox, off the PS4/5 off the cartoons/trash tv etc, and you do it for a reason, because they NEED TO GET STUFF DONE!!

You can’t preach to them unless you lead from the front, you can’t be the one who sits on the settee moaning about your life all day, moaning on social media as if that will somehow make it better, moan about your health when you don’t do nothing about it, moan about how little energy you have when you don’t do the things that will the tried and tested to change that situation.

Getting stuff done means for you having good health, having great energy, having way less irritability and bad moods so people around you don’t have to avoid you either, getting stuff done means getting your house in order and getting your priorities straight full stop.

Time to work and get at it!!!