Posted on

Thursday, 29th May

Confidence can be a two-way thing and can either work for you or against you.

You develop positivity and confidence usually by overcoming challenges, and discovering you can actually achieve more in your training and with your body than you ever thought.

You develop momentum by putting a string of workouts together, lose body fat, look better, feel so much better and soon enough it becomes an important part of your daily life.

You start lifting more, you become more agile, you become quicker and in general you start to move very well, sometimes better than ever before. Your confidence can quickly develop to an all-time high.

On the other side of the coin, events can conspire to make you lose your confidence.

An injury of some kind in daily life can happen out of the blue.

Work commitment can hinder your ability to make your sessions.

You may develop a short illness.

You may have negative people around you who don’t support your training and nutritional efforts.

All of these things can stop you hitting the gym as often as you would like. This leads to your gym sessions becoming harder because you become a little out of practice and you try to do the same things as when you were hitting regular good quality sessions. This is when motivation can suffer.

This is why a proper routine and programme becomes vital. You need to train regular and this is the only way to see consistently good results. Coming back strong after you recover from any setback can be tough, but regular sessions even when you don’t feel like some of them will make a dramatic difference to you mentally.

The other benefits are that the fitter you are and if you take your nutrition seriously, the stronger your immune system becomes and the more likely you are to have a strong sense of wellbeing.

This leads to a great sense of confidence because your body will be in a regular routine of looking after itself.

Living a daily healthy lifestyle makes everything work better for you, and gives your self-belief a massive boost at usually the times you need it most.

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 28th May

If you don’t work against resistance in your workouts, then there’s absolutely no way you are going to look and feel your best full stop.

It’s not only your muscle tone, it’s your bone density, it’s your metabolic rate (how fast your body burns calories), it’s your overall strength, it’s how you perform in daily life that will get better, it’s your steadiness on your feet (as old age approaches its usually your legs are first to go), it’s your ability to burn body fat, it’s your sporting performance (there’s no sport now that doesn’t use strength training) etc etc.

Bottom line is everything in your life will improve IF you do strength training on a regular basis, and you become skilled in very important movements for your body.

For all of those of you who visit a doctor on a regular basis, then strength training will only enhance your sense of wellbeing, and with proper care and attention, will significantly improve your overall health and the way you feel each and every day.

I’m not talking about lifting tons and tons of weight, you don’t need to do that.

What you do need to do though is having a plan to get progressively stronger, no matter what your age, the benefits are going to be that huge!

The days of men doing heavy weights and women doing light funny coloured weights should have disappeared many years ago.

Some of our best lifters now are women, and it’s no coincidence that they are having incredible results through their constant battle to get stronger. It’s not about working yourself until you’re blue in the face either, it’s about constant development of your programme.

It’s not only strength, it’s learning new exercises and developing new skills to allow your body to move in different ways.

These skills will translate to daily life too, what good is it to be strong and not be able to be strong in everyday movements too?

Allowing yourself to embrace strength as a valuable and key part of your programme is vital if you really want to fulfil your potential in all areas of your life.

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday 27th May

Analyzing how you move is one of the very first thing we do when you start training and with good reason.

If you are having a pain in any movement, or moving in a limited way, then there is an issue you must sort out. If you don’t address movement issues, then you are certain to encounter problems sooner rather than later.

The pain of lack of movement can only be known by those who experience it, and those who become pain-free only know the elation that this feeling brings.

The journey from learning to walk, to run and then going through a school system, then into adult life can throw up all sorts of challenges, and I see all sorts of abilities coming out through the other side.

Most people by the time they get to us have developed some kind of back problem, hip problem or tightness, mobility problem, balance issues and in general they don’t really move around like they used to when they were 18 years of age.

Unwinding those problems can take some time, but you have to sort them out no matter what. I find I spend a lot more of my time on rehab with individuals than ever before.

This is due to kids becoming less and less active and growing up to be less able to move well, also i see more and more adults who either never exercised before, or when they did they were never shown the importance of movement in their life, and now need to re-learn the fundamentals of movement and the benefits that brings.

The best investment you can ever make is learning how your body really moves, what can cause it problems, and how to avoid and overcome pain through moving the right way on a consistent basis.

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, 26th May

The case for movement as medicine gets stronger especially over a bank holiday weekend.

Every time I start back after a bank holiday Monday, the Tuesday is filled with familiar comments.

“Why am I so tired today”

“I am so tired today from having four days off!”

“I feel terrible from lazing around all weekend”.

“I wished I trained the weekend and I feel so stiff and horrible”

“That’s the last time I’m having a few days off”.

So these are comments usually by individuals who train regularly, who take care of themselves, make a conscious effort to eat well, and their health is very high on their list of priorities in life.

What about all the people who never do any meaningful exercise?

If you exercise now, can you remember how you USED to feel? How much better do you feel now? I think it’s the one question where you are going to get a 100% positive reply. Nobody I have ever met has failed to feel a million times better once they start exercise properly.

If you didn’t feel better, then you had better examine what exercise programme you were on, you were REALLY NOT doing it right or simply overdoing it which is a big mistake.

The greatest moments are when people in their 50, 60’s and 70’s start exercising for the first time in 40 years, and realise that they can actually move better again, they can get a lot stronger and most importantly they can feel a MASSIVE amount better again.

On the other end of the scale, all those kids who feel that they don’t get what they want through their school programme, realising that they can become good athletes after all, all they need is encouragement and a very positive environment, along with a programme that’s going to get them moving in a different and natural way, just like they are supposed to move as kids so they can develop quickly.

Movement is always very powerful medicine, and we need much more of it to help everyone.

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 22nd May

Judging your progress just on the weighing scale can be very destructive in terms of how it destroys self-confidence.

Everyone knows now we regularly have individuals who lose 2, 3, 4 even 5 inches off the waist in a month.

Most people would be and should be thrilled with that progress, because you usually look and feel heck of a lot better too.

The ones that aren’t have been conditioned to think of the scale as the ONLY measure of success. This is simply untrue but the media has told us that weight off the scale is the one thing we should worry about!

The medical profession will tell you that 1-2 pounds a week is the recommended weight loss, and this is the sustainable way to do it and keep it off.

When you hear of people losing 5 or more pounds in a week, this is usually due to drastic cuts in calorie intakes (usually faddy diets/shake and bar diets), and this may carry on for a couple of weeks until it eventually reaches a screeching halt.

When the individual gets frustrated and starts eating properly again, the weight piles back on quicker than ever before and usually leads to that person ending up at their all-time heaviest weight, and this can lead to low self-esteem and confidence.

What would you rather look and feel like? Clothes feeling really loose, changing sizes at regular intervals (perhaps down to sizes you haven’t been since you were in your early twenties), everyone complimenting you on how great you look, you start feeling full of energy and your workouts step up to your best ever levels,

OR

Just losing weight on the scales, feeling hungry all the time and even when you lose weight, you still have saggy skin left?

Then inevitably put the weight back on and 5% more-numerous In depth research of the diet industry says this is true.

Forget about the scales, your clothes and how you feel will always be a better guide. Your waist and hip measurements will be vital.

We test body fat professionally too, so this test will always confirm your progress.

Be realistic, and always look to lose weight and body fat sensibly.

Twitt