Keri McKibbin Personal Training

As it’s holiday time for most of you, it’s important to realise what a week off means, what a month off means and what 6 months off training really means.

Studies have shown that a pro athlete having a week off means that they will take 1-2 weeks to get back to normal after the initial week off. A week off can often you feeling sluggish, lacking in energy and you don’t feel so strong mentally too, often putting things off you would normally do.

What happens if you have a month off? You will definitely feel far more sluggish, you will get a little more stiff in general in life, you won’t usually feel as much urgency to do things like you normally do, you wont have the same ambitions because your energy levels have dropped and generally you don’t feel so good. Your clothes starting feeling al little higher but you pass it off as not really happening and a couple of weeks in the gym would “sort it”.

Also, the month off usually means that you struggle to get back in flow of training. When you don’t exercise, you are not usually motivated to eat so well too. This is a double whammy to your energy levels and inner drive within. Your chances of making an immediate return to regular exercise decrease sharply with each month you take off.

Six months off may be unimaginable to most of you training with us right now, but the six month usually started from the first month off, and telling yourself you will “get back into it” next week or the week after.

Six months of no training compared to six months of constant challenging training are light years away in terms of performance at the gym, your health in every single category, your energy levels, your strength and endurance, your muscle tone, just about everything you can think of, your mental alertness, your inner drive to approach and complete new projects and goals, and simply FEELING better and good about yourself.

Endless medical science supports exercise and its physical AND mental benefits in every area of your life, always good to keep a perspective on what you are doing.

Exercise makes you fell better full stop!!

If you don’t exercise, then you won’t feel so good full stop.

I hear these two things each and every day.

How many of you don’t feel so energetic, so positive, so strong and healthy if you stop exercising? I would guess not many. Remember those moments when you feel amazing when you are exercising and especially right after.

Everyone i have spoke to feels better after exercising. There’s always a way around obstacles to getting you fit too. We all have challenges and life throws a lot at us at times, but it’s how you respond in vital moments that shapes your destiny.

The paralympians in september are going to be another huge inspirational games. Imagine not having use of your legs but still becoming a champion? Can you imagine what they went through to even get the mindset to exercise in the first place? AND then never look back?!!! AND then become a champion and international athlete!!!

We all have to realise there’s someone worse off than us, plenty of people in hospital would swap places with us in a moment so they could get the OPPORTUNITY to exercise!!!

Most of us have two arms, two legs so most of us can give this thing heck of a good crack if we really set our minds to it!!!

Life is all about overcoming challenges, overcoming our fears to become just a little bit better each and every day-that’s true success!!

Many people think the idea of getting fit and healthy is some kind of 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, with many different parts that seem to take forever to put in the right place.

If you want to cut to the chase, then you need to get organised.

I know some people when they do a jigsaw, they look for certain parts and gather all of them in one go and put them to one side.

Others look for the straight edge parts, knowing that they will soon develop the outline of the puzzle if they start fitting them together.

With your health and fitness, you need to put in place your cornerstones, your foundations, the stuff that’s going to make sure you have a solid base to push forward and reach your big goals.

You can’t create greatness if you don’t eat right, you can never out-train a bad diet after all. Your eating is a massive cornerstone, ignore it and your whole plan collapses in the dust!

You had better plan on sleeping better, if you don’t rest properly, you wont recover from exercise properly and you wont have any appetite to train harder. This is very under-rated as a cornerstone.

Stay positive and keep positive company. Staying in the company of those with low ambitions and those intent of destroying your much higher goals, will eventually destroy where you want to go. Remember to pick the people you spend the most time with very wisely, they will have a huge influence on your success.

We make sure your training is multi-layered, hitting every area of your body and looking after it for the long term. All our programmes are given to you and taught to you, all you need to show up. Follow these and you are developing ultra-strong foundations.

A lot of time goes into your programme, making sure you are setting strong foundations to create real long time change in your body. Please don’t leave anything to chance, eat well, train smart, stay positive, sleep well-all will take you a very long way indeed.

Those who take the biggest leap usually get the biggest reward, and the time to play it safe has never been so dangerous.

As a business, we are always looking to push forward and break new boundaries. We know that if we stay still, others will likely pass us by. We are positively paranoid about improving every week.

So your programme is changing again next wednesday, so be prepared for another big shock to your body for the next 3 weeks! It’s only by pushing yourself will you ever get to where you want to go.

“Playing it safe” is maybe doing a bit of bike, a bit of treadmill at low intensity and showing up now and again. The truth is that this isn’t playing it safe at all, its more like stagnating and going backwards in fitness terms.

The play it safe programme may give some fitness gains but will will come nowhere near where you should be going and what your capability says you should be doing. Not only that, but those play it safe programmes will never engage you, you will get bored easily and usually quit altogether.

I’ve never been so determined to dig deeper than ever for next week, to look for greater and more demanding challenges and get the very maximum we can out of you.

Let’s finish this hugely demanding programme of with fresh enthusiasm and drive, aim higher than ever and see how you can improve on what you’ve done so far.

No “play it safe”, let’s live in the real world and aim to be outstanding every day!!!