Sunday, 6th April

Shaking things up with your training means that you shake things up with your internal body too. Your body can react very positively to change in all sorts of ways, shaping your body’s destiny and take you to new levels of wellbeing and athleticism.

Results happen quicker when you challenge yourself in different ways, try things that you really thought you wouldn’t be good at, re-discover the movements that you may not have tried since you were in school, actually increase your speed as you get older, learn to move much more efficiently and without so much effort-yet still move quicker, learn that weight training is definitely not the enemy and won’t make you big if you are a female-just make you leaner, harder, re-shape your body and lose any annoying areas of body fat that keep on concerning you.

If you have limited yourself to certain forms of training, and don’t think you can change, then you are really underestimating yourself and not realizing anywhere near your short or long term potential.

I have seen people who have never been runners, become runners and move with real speed and agility.

There are girls who have become some our best athletes, and regularly beats the guys-WITHOUT getting too much out of breath anymore.

Our variety of training has never been greater, and my best bit of advice is to try them all and see where you come out the other side, you will definitely be extremely pleased with the overwhelmingly superior results!

Wednesday, 2nd April

The recovery of our members/athletes depends on a number of factors.

First of all, if you are beginning your exercise journey, then its always advisable to start gently. If you begin with more gentle training sessions, then you will need less recovery as you are breaking down less muscle tissue.

Once you begin training harder, you will be giving much more of an effort, so your recovery and how you handle it becomes much more important.

A really tough session will require you to put much more emphasis on eating really highly quality nutritious food. This will serious help you to replenish your energy levels and the broken down muscle tissue from your exercise session.

Then don’t forget, you will need to exercise a few times a week so you need to get ready for the next one.

This is why sleeping really well in the week becomes paramount.

Most people don’t realise that your body actually improves and repairs itself in your sleep. Its in your deep sleep that you really develop your biggest gains.

You can see a massive difference between those who eat and sleep well, compared to those who don’t pay attention to their food and always keep late nights.

I see a big difference between those who travel a lot for a living because eating on the road often means eating hotel food, petrol stations snacks etc which will do absolutely nothing for your performance in training (because you wont have the energy and wont feel up to it), and usually lead to weight gain.

This can become a vicious circle.

The equation to success is food and drink, training and eating, sounds simple but not many people get it right all the time.

This is what we are here for.

Monday, 31st March

Training with purpose is the most important state of mind you need to get into when you enter the gym.

If you are half-hearted, not know what you are doing, feel lost when you are in the exercise environment, then its worth you spending time with me and let me develop your programme from start to finish again.

Most if not all people, I go through it time and time again with them.

We all get stuck, we all feel as if we could go to another level but really don’t know how at times how to pull it off.

We all remember great workouts we have had recently, but we may have lost our mojo on how to get those great feelings back of exercising so well. We all have “purple patches” of exercise, its important not to let them slide into a distant memory.

Regular good periods of exercise and food will guarantee you success every time, and self-monitoring, as well as me doing it will only help you continue to succeed ALL of the time.

This is why exercise diaries can be so valuable and record how well we have progressed, and quite often exactly why we have done so well. A small little notebook is often kept by the most productive of athletes, because they want to keep their roadmap of success fresh in their minds!

You may train harder when you workout with your favourite training partner, you probably work quite a bit harder when you train with me, so its always productive when you create the right training environment.

Not knowing what you are doing, going through the motions, just watching the clock when you exercise is not acceptable to me and it should definitely not be acceptable for you! Keep changing your programme and continually consult me about it, because that’s what I do full stop!

Monday, 24th March

A little known fact is that women recover quicker from their training than men.

The same with weight training or any other type of training.

Women produce more of the chemical that provides the energy to allow your muscles to work better, faster than men do.

Women also will experience less muscle soreness in the day after your workout, women will feel the soreness quicker but the pain and soreness will last more in the man.

This is what I have found over the years, in my experience a lot of men have had to have more time and rest in between workouts, while many of the women keep on coming back for more and recover quicker.

Another technical issue that separates men versus women reaction to exercise is that women will have a little more inflammation than men from a tough workout.

Your body then has to repair the broken down muscle tissue to build lean muscle tissue, and this is a great reason for your body to speed up its metabolism because it has to work hard in recovery.

This means your body will eventually burn more calories just resting 24 hours a day. When people talking about raising your metabolism, this would be a very good example so you are likely to stay leaner without working so hard for it in the future.

This is why strength training is so important for all of us to do, it sets us up to leaner, harder and strengthens our bones too.

Once your body does repair inside, the chances are that the same workout will not cause the same level of soreness again, and your body will become to crave strength work as the results start coming in fast.

Sunday, 23rd March

A lot of the workouts I design are so productive because everyone CAN DO THEM.

I never ask anyone to do an exercise or a programme I do not think they can do.

Everyone knows now that in our gym, the females and the males train through the same movements and they train hard, there is absolutely NO “you are a woman so you had better use the treadmill and bike only, and the rower now and again, and maybe a couple of light weights if you are lucky!”.

THIS IS THE ULTIMATE INSULT and shows a complete lack of knowledge by whoever is telling you that! Tucked away in the corner is not an option for anyone who trains with us.

In every area of life now, women are doing things few thought they could handle a generation ago due to blinkered insulting thinking by the establishment. Everyone knows we train hard with weighs and against resistance and we are proud to do the best for our members.

When you go to work, your job description now applies to everyone, a generation ago that used to apply to only men.

As a woman in today’s society, you have much more responsibilities now than a generation ago. Juggling life, work and family now is harder than a generation ago when you wouldn’t have had so many pressures going back then during every single day.

So WHY should you be in an exercise programme that assumes you are not so mentally strong and less capable than the average man in the gym environment?!!! We are not back in the 1950’s!!!

Most of our girls are better than the men, anyone can see that?!!!

Whatever limitations you think you had, they are about to go out the window. Women are not “supposed to do ONLY this and that”, that statement is rubbish and has no scientific or practical foundation.

We treat everyone equally no matter what and put no limits on the results you can get, so start looking to get a lot more out of your programme from the exercises that REALLY work and start working to your potential!