Keri McKibbin Personal Training

The swimmer who trains for 3 months and expects to be a champion and beat her friends who have been at t for years, the pianist who starts learning how to play the piano and expects to play for packed audiences within 6 months, the person who has golf lessons and then expects to be on the golf team within a few months, the cook who attends cooking school and expects to work as a very well paid chef as soon as they qualify.

All examples of things that will never happen.

With more practice, hard work, highs and lows, heartbreak and victories, yet more hard work, plenty of grinding away even when they didn’t feel like it, being let down, overcoming disappointment and losses, thoughts of quitting, thoughts they weren’t good enough in the first place, others telling them they shouldn’t bother even.

This is often the process everyone has to go through to become really good at something, yes it’s a long way to the top (if you want rock n roll!).

With the gym, if you want great success in one month, it’s not going to happen, yes you will feel better, stronger, fitter and you will have a greater sense of wellbeing, in six months those feelings will go up times ten.

But you have to realise you have to keep showing up, you have to grind it out, do the programmes, do the work, face things you may not think possible until you DO get the impossible done through practice, through perseverance, through application and determination.

Don’t fancy that? The question should be, when it comes to your health, can you afford not to have great health, great balance, be fit and strong, have a very good lung capacity, a strong heart and a very good sense of well-being, which all leads to great mental health.

I tell the exact same to the multi millionaires I train, the kids I train, the 90 year olds I train and literally everyone in between I will tell you the truth too.

Doing hard things makes you better in every area of your life and I back you all the way to do great things, so its YOUR choice how great you want to be!!!

Winter must be cold with those with no memories”-Anne Bradstreet

.The snow comes, the ice comes-we can all relate stories of when this happened, where we were, what we did, how cold it was, the times we had no gloves or couldn’t afford them anyway but we still went out, the times we went up the mountain, slid down and generally had a LOT of fun, we built snowmen, we threw snowballs, all those things.

The common denominator for all of us was we were all FIT and energetic enough to last all day and have a lot of fun.

Not being fit and healthy enough to have fun COSTS us a lot emotionally, confidence wise and MEMORY wise, we need to be fit enough to participate in life full stop, instead of sitting on the sidelines in life.

FIVE weeks today is Christmas, you NEED to be in great health to fully create the memories you really want with no barriers to enjoyment so there’s nothing you can’t do.

Your daily health habits will have endless pay offs in all areas of your life.

The coldest day of the Autumn is your very most important reminder to keep on going physically and keep your blood flow pumping around your body.

Your immediate reaction could be to “stay safe” and stay inside on the settee scrolling the TV channels or scrolling through online on your computer.

This version of ‘“staying safe” is a fool’s paradise,  and we need to remember how we evolved into this thinking.

When we are born, we learn to crawl, walk, run and generally have a lot of fun moving through playing outside as often as possible. These are the genuine great times we all remember so well for our own lives, our children’s lives and you may be of the age to enjoy your grandchildren’s lives right now.

The thought then of us slowing down, hiding from the cold, doing less and less simply because its cold, wet and dark should go deeply against our own principles.

The full life cycle could be described as staying active and being in motion every single day, we were not meant to be inactive, sitting down for much of the day and we definitely were not meant to be eating ultra-processed food and not exercising which is costing the UK £268 BILLION per year in sickness, time off from work, the cost of dealing with so many people ill from poor lifestyle choices which can be so destructive physically.

Also, the cost of us not moving so much weighs on us very heavily in mental health terms too, if we don’t move, our brain doesn’t want to move either, and we tend to stay in a state of helplessness eventually believing we cannot do anything about it.

This is the coldest day so NEVER fall into the trap of feeling sorry for yourself or even worse comparing yourself to others you know who don’t do a thing most days.

 Anyway, don’t set the bar so low that you can brag yourself up by simply saying “at least I’m not so bad as so and so”, keep your standards high and try hanging out with people who do exercise, who do eat healthy because they don’t want to fall sick from eating badly continuously, and they want to keep their mental health in top shape too because they don’t moan about their lives, they look FORWARD to great days ahead of them still, it’s true who you hang out with most you tend to shape your lifestyle habits around.

Yes it’s cold again but see it as the ideal opportunity to move, feel great and keep great health in your life every day, physically and mentally.