Category: motivation

The individual who joins the gym, like most people only being able to lift the bar and light dumbbells, then a year later is beginning to lift the big plates on each side and suddenly see the big dumbbells as a good option.

The member who couldn’t walk the way up the hill, and 3 months later is now able to run up several times without a break.

The member who seeks out the hardest and toughest exercises, or the one who doesn’t train as often as they should and therefore never seems to get any traction with their progress.

The individual who has a very stressful day but takes it out on the weights and feels better, or the individual who orders a big takeaway and a few beers/wines to “handle it better”.

These are all choices, and whilst good things and bad things can hit us for six at times, the gym is the most tried and tested way to get through it all and come out the other side stronger.

When you joined the gym, you found out which times you had to get your workout in, that time can change of course over the months and years as your circumstances change, but that time is YOU time and you still make sure it’s fitted into your week.

When that time doesn’t become as important anymore, it can slip pretty quickly indeed. When your workout starts not to happen, it’s somehow “easier” in your life not to do it, and fill that time with other “more important things” like increasing your screen time and getting really updates with all the latest boxsets-VERY important and VERY “easy”..

Here’s what “easier’ leads to.

1. Increased joint pain because you aren’t moving so much anymore.
2. Decreased strength and bone density, because you aren’t lifting weights anymore
3. Decreased mood and increased irritability because you aren’t training anymore.
4. Worse eating habits, because when you don’t train, your motivation to eat well plummets.
5. Your mental health takes a dive, not being around like minded people who will lift you up will always take a big toll.

I could go on and on here but I urge you to appreciate how fit you are now, and if you have let it go somewhat, realise that “easy” NEVER WORKS in life, and feeling and looking good takes HARD WORK, so you MUST make the time to achieve anything worthwhile in life.

Refusing the lure of a warm bed on cooler, darker, wetter days seems like madness…but it’s the only we remain in a growth state and we can make time for getting better, feeling better and mastering the feelings that slow us down, make us feel sorry for ourselves and make it “okay” to have the winter months “off”, because “one day” we will do “great things”.

Seeing all you great members of the gym this morning working so hard when it was easier top skip a session, means you “get it”.

You don’t have to be some kind of fanatic to take real, meaningful action  every day. BUT you do OWE it to yourself to be healthy, strong and fit giving your chances of avoiding illness, both physical and mental, a huge massive boost better than ANY medical intervention.

You hear many of the older generation tell you how tough it was growing up, the stories of going without but somehow they muddled through.

BUT modern life has made ALL generations too easy including the older generation now too, too comfortable and too reliant on our devices and technology as a whole.

These devices don’t give us good health though, they don’t give us a strong immune system and sitting on our behinds all day moaning how “life used to be” gets us quickly nowhere and feeling sorry for ourselves as if we are hopeless cases now in a cruel world.

Get off your behinds, get OUT of that warm bed, take CHARGE of how great your life COULD and CAN be with a little bout of daily action and feeding yourself with good nutritious food. And the world will be your oyster!!!!!

Monday means action, get out of any negative mindset yo have been tricked into and let’s smash it out of the park!!!!

The news is usually always bleak to TV. But you will remember that in 2008 we were supposed to be going into the worst recession since 1930.

From a personal perspective, a lot of things happened to us as a gym since then. From doing personal training non stop for many years, I had taken over the gym as my dad got ill and was intent on making it better, by investing in it out of profits made. 

There was no profits to start with, and purchasing new stuff was slow and confined to smaller items. 

As the gym grew, we started making more money and the discipline stayed as we continued to invest the profits directly into the gym, and we started buying more expensive highest quality equipment.

We became so busy training people and developing the gym, I didn’t think too much of the recession and 13 years of austerity to come, as my mind was working at 2000 miles an hour.

We hit bigger and bigger milestones through the incredible support of our loyal members. 

Based on surface area after the purchase of the land to the back of us, the footprint of the gym area including outside grew massively incorporating outside sports, a great surface in any weather and a permanent outside area for classes which was a game changer-Dan Smith was incredible making it happen, and brother Martin, as well as Star Forge making custom made incredible equipment for outside.

Our online training with the help of Coleg Sir gar (Steven Morgan big thanks and Louis Dare) became a reality on a professional platform after 18 months of studying with them in the IT one to one business training.

Politically we had Brexit in 2016, and then we hit a different world in March 2020. Little did I know we would be closed inside the gym for 49 out of 61 weeks, but our outside investment became a life saver and we got going finding a way to make it happen outside. 

Nobody thought we could make it work but we had great classes every morning and evening in great weather, plus monsoons and even snow on occasions, but our amazing members kept on coming, and we developed togetherness on a level that was incredible and emotional to live through.

Our online training was already in place so we could hit the ground running, and really took off when we started doing live sessions that could be watched anytime, that has continued as we currently have 1650 videos available to watch on our gym site, new one still goes on daily.

The point of this is to remind you that if you focus on what you can control, and don’t worry so much about what you can’t, you have a fighting chance in any recession. There are many great businesses I know in Burry Port, Llanelli and Swansea as well as businesses I train online like On Track expanding building bike courses all over Europe even in tough times, quality and devotion to serving your customer will always do well and I am deeply inspired by these businesses daily.

My recession advice that will help you immediately? Get up much earlier, turn off the news, put that time you used to spend scrolling your phone and the internet INTO your business instead, and watch what you thought you were capable of grow like crazy with the time and effort you put into it and keep investing into it, then your horizons and hopes for the future will soon shock you and everyone else around you.

You can’t do any of this without great health so start training regularly, look after yourself with as much natural food as possible, make sure you have positive supportive friends around you and ditch the energy vampires who tell you that you can never achieve anything,  and hit the sack early most night, especially in the week so you have the energy to outwork anyone.

P.S. I had three football mad kids from 2008 on and got married to Nicola (who has been a tremendous help in our business and gym) in New York in 2015 and have had tremendous support from all of them to get us through all of this which I am forever grateful for, keep working hard and make it happen, believe in yourself and smash this recession out of the park.

We have a bell that I often ring at the gym because it shakes things up and gets people quickly into action, a sense of alarm should be felt that makes us take action and do our best.

Most of us show a sense of urgency in life ONLY when we have to get something done or something bad may happen if we don’t.

We pretend as if we have all the time in the world, when we have all the ability to do good to great things TODAY and get it done out of the way. 

We take for granted that we will have the same opportunities tomorrow, next week and even next year, but the reality is that we have no time like today. Time is our most valuable commodity as we cannot make more of it or ever get it back.

You may kid yourself that you are “working on something, or have a plan for the future”.

The best question is to ask yourself what proof you have that you have improved or moved forward with that plan? Talking about something sounds great but it’s always the “doing” that counts.

In the gym, things are easily measurable. Can you lift more weights, can you run, cycle or ski faster or further? Can you push something you never thought you could, and now do it with much more pace and power?

You are always capable of great things, but you must show urgency every day to get what you need to do actually done no matter what.

The more urgency you show, the further you are going to go in all areas of your life. Tomorrow offers no guarantees, take your opportunities today.