Category: motivation

Piano lessons have always been popular, and have you heard of new “how to play the piano” business that is VERY popular?

You go to a room, and there stands a piano, no teacher, nobody to check if you are doing it right, nobody to progress you, you can take some friends there too, they have learned their “piano skills” on YouTube so they must be good yes?

This is the new accepted way for so many people tell me.

I am teasing you of course, but it’s the way many people approach getting fit. No teacher/instructor/trainer at the gym.

If you “just watch others”, success may soon be yours.

No science, no scientific testing, nobody knowing what you are REALLY capable of, and nobody watching you if you get injured or not.

No progressions, no rehab when you things get muscles hurt through daily life, and no motivation, purpose or direction.

I consider it an honour, a privilege, an amazing situation to continually refine my craft, always trying to get better, teach things the SCIENTIFIC way that will bring results not for just right now, but for the long term too.

If you don’t think exercise is science then you must teleport yourself back to the 50’s when doctor’s told you weight training was “bad for your heart”, would “raise your blood pressure”-avoid gyms many would tell you, now science proves those doctor’s claims were laughable.

Then in the 70’s and 80’s when getting fitter and increasing your speed was just doing endless laps around a field, no sprint technique, no measuring if you are getting better, “more was simply better”, no real strategy.

Training should be about improving and a good coach will always improve you, take you to the next level, teach you new skills, let you know where you are right now and where you can possibly go to with hard work and dedication.

Exercise is a real science, it should be exciting to teach, it should make you feel incredible, when you exercise right, it can heal the body better than any pharmaceutical drug and is the true secret/fountain of youth to living a high quality of life deep into what they call “old age”. 

Demand more to of your fitness and expect to learn new things regularly and surpass your initial expectations.

Or settle for the “piano lessons” with just a piano in the room with the no teacher analogy-life is a choice.

The way you got “SOMEWHERE” is always sweeter when you had to work really hard for it, and that achievement wasn’t landed in your lap.Getting somewhere with your health is harder than you thought, especially when you have had a few weeks/months or even years off, you realise that you need to keep showing up, you need to be more diligent with your food and drink, and despite all the stresses you may have in life, you need to exercise to really take back control of your life again,

instead of thinking life was always a case of good and bad luck, and bad luck always happened to you.

You NEED to get your self-belief back.Being healthy is something we all want and we are all shocked when we hear that someone close to us are ill, and it’s always very uspetting, so we need to start controlling what we can control, and it’s much more than we ever thought so realise you can control your own ship..

As we age, we have even more responsibility to look after ourselves, because we realise that life is very precious, and we start to appreciate the good stuff even more, plus all the people who rely on us too.

Expect life to be a challenge, to occasionally throw curveballs, which makes it even more important for you to.stay in your health routine, because its much more difficult to get through life’s challenges when you have your health to worry about it on top too.

The bottom line is if you health isn’t right, there’s nothing else you CAN do or get done, so fixing your foundational health has never been so important but it needs you to keep showing up, keep doing your best, you keep showing good leadership and see the GOOD in your life, your opportunities and how much better off you are than a lot of people who struggle with their health.

There’s heck of a lot of people in the hospital who would swap places with you right now, appreciate you have a great chance to keep getting it right.

Being optimistic is a competitive advantage, because your the amount of times you are prepared to accept failure become much higher. Your potential, your “ceiling” of what you can REALLY do becomes staggering.

Most of us will have experience of quitting after we fail something once, or even worse many will be too scared to try something at all, especially as we age.

History and experience has taught me that failure is only a lesson, and we only really fail if we keep trying the exact same thing every time.

Once we fail, we should take out the positives, and try to eliminate the things that are holding us back.

For example, we can hit the gym regularly, and have success, we feel better and our bodies and minds begin to change. But that approach will only take us so far if we don’t change what we eat and drink.

So we have a choice, we either get frustrated at the declining amount of results, or we say “can you imagine how well I would do if I ate right too, if I didn’t have takeaways more than once a week, If I didn’t drink in the week, and if I got to bed earlier can you imagine the energy I would have to train even harder”?

This is why we NEED optimism in our lives instead of quitting at the first hurdle and the first time it starts getting tough, all we need is to keep changing our approach, what we KNOW to be true but we’ve always been afraid to have a good go at, because the truth will not actually change.

It’s often difficult for most people to knuckle down and do it right, fads and gimmicks are initially FAR more attractive but soon get found out when they reveal their lack of results and even dangers, and that feeling of betrayal that we have “been had” again can destroy our confidence, and make us want to never try to get healthy again.

The healthiest, most productive path is clear but it also requires a bit of grit and determination, requires you to keep showing up, and stay within the vital state of optimism that although you wont be perfect all the time, you won’t always be as fit as the person training next to you, but as long as YOU are improving every week, then THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS!

Looking for the good in a workout is vital to me as a trainer. When your confidence is low, and you are in pain, you focus on what you CANNOT do, instead of what is really possible (that thinking needs to change).

If you have a bad back/hips, then there is plenty you CAN do to heal it, loosen it and strengthen it.

If you have a bad knee and ankles, then the same, and there’s a ton of upper body work you can do too.

Bad shoulder? Then you need to give it some rehab with us, and again there’s plenty you can do to make it better, feel good and boost your wellbeing dramatically.

Life is never going to be perfect, there will never be the “perfect time or circumstance”.

There are always good things to do when you LOOK for the good, instead of accepting your fate as “Why does it always happen to me?”-The evidence says you can change that scenario by taking action and improving on your weakness and pain in your body.

Most of us have experienced a state of “flow”, especially when we workout regularly, eat right, hit the sack early, get plenty of fresh air, have a treat the weekend to balance it out, and everything starts to feel better we move better and less pain in our bodies, its the closest thing we have to being “at one” with ourselves emotionally too, things have rarely been been calmer and happier once we achieve this state.

We have a higher state of mind and we have mostly positive thoughts.

Then “separation” threatens that peace and feeling of well-being. Temptations of all kinds are always all around us.

We start to miss our workouts, then when miss the workouts, we don’t feel so motivated to eat well, we stay up later because we aren’t so tired, and we usually sleep not so well.

Then doubt starts entering our minds.

After all, often the people you work with often discuss their lives, they often eat much more poorly than you, often have a drink a few times in the week and may call you “boring” if you exercise.

Soon enough the pride, satisfaction, and emotional uplift we experienced through our regular gym visits, gets replaced with a lower state of thinking.

Frustration, doubt, unhappiness,  anxiety, depression, a sense of what could have been if we stuck at it, will soon come once we realise eating rubbish most night didn’t make us “happier” or “more fun”, the same thing will drinking more in the week, it didn’t really make us more “fun” that was promised (only one life we have they told us?!), and the severe come down’s after a a few drinks in the week often did nothing for our moods, irritability, emotional health and often our relationships over time too with everyone around us suffering, i’ve seen it happen too many times in too many families, that’s no FUN for everyone involved picking up the pieces.

Temptations are always around us, and its up to us to take responsibility and their consequences.

We can either stay in the “flow” which keeps our lives on an even keel, living in good health without pain or medication and still have a balance with treats fun etc on the weekend, or we give into everything that will take us away from our true peace in life that can ultimately make us happy and healthy which makes us enjoy life for longer, without making endless hospital visits in our later years which are almost always caused by some people’s version of “FUN” (getting the balance all wrong) that turned out to be a massive lie by society and all the advertising you have been bombarded with your whole life.

Everyone has a choice, we are meant to be happy and fulfilled, we deserve that, not insecure, anxious, and feeling disconnected from everything making our lives a miserable one.

Stay in the flow and beware what separation from that lifestyle from that can lead to.