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Friday, 18th November

Finishing off the week in style is always a good feeling, and if you have started to adopt some of the habits i suggest, then you should be improving quite a lot by now.

Its usually this session, the last one of the week, that usually defines the way we feel about ourselves going into the weekend. If we have a big productive session on a friday, we usually feel good about ourselves and end up on a big high.

Like a football match, we feel we are only as good as our last session!! If we have been consistent for weeks and months, our last session is likely to be first class unless we have felt ill or something that hinders our performance.

I feel exactly the same way when i’m giving out the session and instructing it.

If i don’t give value for money, and i don’t produce quality sessions, then i would be out of business straight away. Unfortunately, in the fitness industry there are a lot people who rely on marketing and telling you in the media how “good they are and how they can change your life”. Some people do believe them but are often let down when they find out there is little substance to their claims. These people often then go to another job or industry peddling their outlandish and false claims!

I always laugh at the charlatans who claim they train so called famous people. I remember jenifer lopez’s trainer telling all the world’s media how he “created her famous bum”, WHAT RUBBISH AND PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to create that shape without her genetics!

Then 6 months later there was another trainer claiming the success, and last year i saw yet another trainer trying to claim the same success! The facts are that these trainers only usually work with these people a couple of months, and these people or so called celebrities and go off to do their own thing. You cannot sustain a business on such short term ventures.

I try to value my everyday people who have given back a lot to me emotionally and physically for many, many years, and any trainer who has been in the game with a sustainable clientele for many, many years will tell you the same thing! If i mentioned so called famous people i trained or other media/TV ventures, i would consider myself detracting from my every day, every week, every year, every ten years individuals i have been training, some have been training for over 15 years straight now which is all credit to them!

So back to your training, judge yourself by your last session or week’s training. Unless you have been ill, this shows exactly where you are RIGHT now and what you need to do to improve from here. There has never been a more important workout than today so lets get out there and really give it your best. I feel exactly the same because i will be giving out many before the weekend starts and i want to make them of huge quality!!!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 17th November

So we have talked about how to feed your body to maximise muscle gains for the young rugby player, we have talked about how to employ the most successful training strategies from beginner to a more developed athlete.

We talked about why we do all of these things.

Then it comes to a big factor that we haven’t mentioned yet-WATER.

Most people don’t realise that water is far more important than food.

For example, you can usually last 5-8 days before you die without water.

You can lost without food for approximately 7-8 weeks as hunger strikers have proven, with often fatal results.

Another huge fact for you is that if you DON’T drink enough water throughout the day, your performance is likely to be down 33% or even as low as 40%!!

Not only your training and game day performance but your concentration too. They have done numerous studies on schoolkids when they supplied one lots of kids in a school environment water for 3 months and im talking regularly every day. The most startling part was that their educational tests result success went up an incredible 100%, and their concentration levels were proven to be 40% up!!!

So the bottom line is that you eat well all day, you can sleep well and you can train hard, but if you’re NOT drinking enough water, your performance levels and ultimately your results are likely to be down between 33% and 40%, which is an incredible figure.

If you drink water regularly too, you will burn off more body fat than if you don’t, this has been scientifically proven too.

So if you are looking to become a better athlete, as well as a better student, water should be a big part of your every day life!!

Twitt
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Wednesday, 15th November

On from yesterday means more about the importance of proper nutrition for sports.

So we assuming the client is 14 years of age again and looking to get bigger for rugby.

Then we explained how important it was still important to eat good quality food, and in bigger portions gradually over time.

Now we have to explain why you need to eat every 3 hours ideally, and its importance in rugby and sports in general.

When you play rugby usually on a saturday, its a tough sport and you will naturally break down muscle tissue in all the mauling, ripping of the ball and wrestling and big hits all over the field for 80 minutes! You need to recover from this on the saturday night and sunday and this is done by showing great interest in the power of food in recuperation terms.

Whenever you break down muscle tissue, you need to replace it again through the power of food and the power of good sleep.

So putting a meal together of good protein and good carbs, along with vegetables will replace a lot of the broken down muscle tissue and help you not only recover, but make fresh gains.

This same principle applies to weight training too, as we have talked about in the last few days.

Whenever you do a weights session, you naturally break down muscle tissue. So guess what? Yes, its the good quality protein, good carbs and vegetables you need to put back into your system again within an hour of finishing weight training and throughout the day.

You need your porridge for breakfast, wholemeal bread, wholegrain pasta throughout the day packed with lean proteins such as white meats and fish, and try to pack in a meal with veggies included in it at least once a day. This will make sure your body is in fine shape inside and out!

Tomorrow we have an insight on how important water is in your diet and how it affects your performance and health overall.

Twitt
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Tuesday, 15th November

Going back to last week and the 14 year old’s question about how to get bigger and stronger for rugby, we talked about the necesssary weight training programme and the big do’s and don’ts of the programme.

Now we move on to eating and to explode the myths on why kids don’t seem to be able to put on the muscle and weight they need for rugby. Eating is at least 50% of the equation and if you ignore this side of things, then there’s absolutely NO WAY you can hope to reach your goals!

The important start is to make sure you and your family shop for good foods. For years, rugby players thought they could eat almost anything as long as it was long in calories, and “any weight” was “good weight”!! This right there is probably the biggest mistake most rugby players used to do and still do.

You have to consume good foods such as white meats, fish, red meat once a week, cottage cheese, milk for protein, you need wholegrain pasta, brown rice, jacket new and sweet potatoes for good carbs, plenty of fruit and vegetables as you need your internal functions working smoothly and properly and you still need to keep your energy levels very high of course.

You need good fats for your body such as oily fish including salmon, trout, mackerel etc, a handful of nuts would be good each day and these essential fatty acids will support everything you try and do in your physique building programme for rugby.

The difference between a rugby player looking for size and the average healthy person in the street is that the rugby player needs bigger portion sizes in his training, not too much for starters but building up over time. This way the quality of muscle built will be long lasting and all the extra food won’t deposit as fat, so slowly increasing portion size and meal frequency is the shape of things to come.

More of proper nutrition for rugby and sport in general tomorrow!!

Twitt
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Monday, 14th November

Some more grim news on the health front for wales and the UK today.

Never has there been so many diseases been brought on by poor diets in the country.

It seems as if there has been an even further deterioration in the nation’s health, and lots of different factors have been blamed.

From lack of money, more people in the poverty trap than ever, more people eating fast food than ever, more people not exercising, a lack of activities and sport in schools, a lack of activities in the community and a poor participation rate in just about anything linked to moving around and being active.

It seems as if all the government initiativeshave mostly failed despite the high visibility, and “ticking all the right boxes” or so they claim.

Personal responsibility takes a big part too, you cannot make someone exercise if they clearly do not want to.

You cannot make someone eat well and healthy if they do now want  to on their supermarket shops.

What we CAN do is offer every opportunity to those who want the chance to be fit and healthy, and therefore be far more likely to  AVOID serious disease and early death in some cases.

There should be more incentives to those at work to exercise and eat well, its getting bigger in america but still not so big here although i am developing a couple of organsiations as i speak.

There should be far more visibility to those sections in supermarket that are healthier than others.

There should be tax relief to those organisation such as gyms, fitness centres, fitness providers to contribute as much as possible to those who think they cant afford the gym.

There should be even more educational programmes starting earlier in schools, and more money put into school canteens so they can offer healthy options, instead of the rubbish they offer now.

They should offer cookery courses to parents, all parents not only the ones that are obviously struggling, we are all learning and it wouldnt hurt to learn more.

There are endless things we can do, we are not short of options, all we need is the government to work with all of us who know whats really going on!!!

Twitt