Keri McKibbin Personal Training

So what are your activities going to be the bank holiday weekend?

Are you going to cycling down mumbles promenade, are you going to be walking down pembrey country park, are you going to be mountain walking up in brecon, are you going to be doing a yoga session on your own in the house, are you going to the national pool to swim????

Whatever of these you choose, you know these are going to make you feel better, and will not let you slob the entire weekend!

Bank holiday weekends are always weekends when you can take your foot off the gas, and really kick back and enjoy yourself a little more than usual.

Personally, with two small children, the weekends look pretty much the same to me and the idea of a lie in is something from a distant past! However, i am very likely to go for a run on sunday and monday, i like the routine of that. It really is no struggle as its actually enjoyable to me. Most people would feel the same way if they get endless benefits out of it. If you really find this a hardship, then perhaps you need to re-look at your programme and see what you’re enjoying and what’s a problem to you. Its important to find activities you really enjoy, as thats half the battle!!

What about your food? Is it going to be a blow-out weekend? Or is it going to be a weekend having a bit of what you fancy?

Having a bit of what you fancy is great and doesn’t destroy the next week. What i mean by that is that if you do have a blow out weekend, and really go for it drinking and eating to excess right through until monday evening, the rest of next week will be made up of feeling awful and lacking in energy, an outcome none of us wants. So the odd meal or snack here and there that is not always on your eating plan is a nice treat, and keeps your mind fresh too. Also, eating sugary or fatty food sometimes reminds you how bad you actually feel afterwards, which will give you fresh momentum to avoid this food on a regular basis in the immediate future!

Whatever you get up to, enjoy it and enjoy all that fresh air!!

Taking the more popular way in your training and eating will always make you happy………………………for a time!

Doing things the right way can sometimes be like being put on the the right path as a child, you don’t like it sometimes or parts of it, and sometimes you will rebel against it, but secretly you will know its the “right thing to do”.

So this way will always never be the most popular way of doing things as it requires some effort, a little bit of sacrifice now and again and will constantly challenge and encourage you to get better and better.

The idea of improving one’s life is not always popular too. How many times in this country have we built someone up only to batter them down on the first sign of weakness, this can be the british way can’t it?

We all watch soap opera’s partly because they usually display a life that is usually worse than our own. This makes us feel better and keeps us in our comfort zone. Doing nothing is the easiest thing to do when confronted with improving our health, many of you of course have and are taking the opposite approach, you ARE TAKING ACTION NOW and improving your lot in life. Some of you have made dramtic progress, and those of you who haven’t have still managed greater awareness on health in general, and you have at least started an exercise programme which is fantastic!

So following the herd will never really work for you, as the herd will often change their minds, and shift from programme to programme, adopting practices that are often destined to fail.

When i start training with anyone, i tell the person concerned that if they want to show the programme to the doctor, then please go ahead and do that. I have full confidence in this because i know the doctor will agree, and be enthused that so much common sense is being spoken and hopefully being practised!

So your choice is always going to be to either follow the faddy way of the herd, which changes often, or use a lot of common sense and analyse what you’re really doing. Look how well jean posted this week, she has literally been through every programme in history, but now she knows what works for her and its not rocket science.

Now she does her best to encourage and motivate others, which is great because she has the experience and ups and downs of probably 100 people! She doesn’t think like others anymore and theres heck of a lot to be said for individual thinking these days!!!

Whatever your choice, as long as you do your best, you’re going to do well!!

Sometimes your best efforts don’t seem to be as good as normal, they leave you disappointed about your day sometimes as you know you could have done better. We all have them and there are a variety of reasons for them.

Sometimes your back may be a little sore, your knee may be twingeing, you may be feeling under the weather, you may be suffering from a lack of sleep, you may be under the weather, you may just be  having just one of those days! Whatever your issues, you have to accept that today may have received your best effort, and thats ok.

Any time you do your best at anything, you may not always win but you can look at yourself in the mirror and be honest with yourself. You can tell yourself that every time you go out there and do your workout that simply being out there is the biggest thing sometimes.

You won’t always feel like marathon efforts, or herculean and monumental feats, that simply is not possible.

You can try your best and if you do, you’re going to end up in SIGNIFICANTLY better shape than you were at the start 0f 2009. It may be even better than this, you may actually get in the best shape of your life, this can really happen!

“Making it happen” is the biggest thing sometimes, we have discussed it at length in previous posts, that IF YOU REALLY WANT SOMETHING, you CAN make it happen, all you have to do is want it bad enough!!

Im a victim of one of those days sometimes myself, and i am pretty honest about it on here. I will tell you when im feeling fantastic and luckily that is most of the time, but sometimes i will feel a little off colour, but as long as i do my best on that day, even is its not to my normal standard, then thats still okay for me and over the years i have learned to accept that, which keeps me positive even in the most trying of cirumstances.

See you tomorrow!

Keri

One of the biggest transitions you can do is make the difference in thinking about purely weight, and thinking about your health overall.

If you purely think about weight, then healthy food can sometimes take a backseat and it doesn’t seem to matter what the quality of food is.

I have seen a ton of people eat things because they are “only 80 calories”, they will only drink things because they are only 80 calories. The next time you do that i challenge you to do this, count how many ingredients there are in that drink. I’m serious, you would have a tough job writing them all out in one go as its such a lengthy list! PLUS it does a very good job of representing a chemistry experiment, just about everything artificial you can think of is thrown in there!!!

Another way to look at it is the energy value in foods.

For instance, things such as green veggies, fruit and nuts will have a greater energy than processed foods, which are lower in calories of course but not so good for your stomach, and interal workings. These foods were put on earth for a reason,so you need to take advantage of them!

Nobody i know wants to feel terrible all the time, and if that is the case with you at the moment, do you even believe that life could feel better than it is right now? A massive part of this is to enable you to feel better and the facts are that whatever you put into your mouth will have a direct effect on how you look  and feel, its that simple for you so you take your choice on where you want to be!

Making your goals become real all start with looking after your insides, and although it could be a sizeable change for many of you right now, once your eating habits do change, even though it will be a struggle to start with, you WILL feel better inside, and as i keep saying, you will feel a lot better when you get it right from the inside out.

The biggest transition i made was saying to myself “is this piece of food going to any good for me”? Once you get to this stage and are very aware of your nutrition, life will be more full of energy and your immune system gets some serious boosting!

That monday feeling works in the opposite way for me.

Most people are very tired on a monday, life can be dreary and not much fun, and it can take a while simply to get going monday!

I use  monday as my day when i cleanse myself and give myself energy for the rest of the week.

My multiple runs start on a monday, all my emails start on a monday, all my multiple phone calls start on a monday, all this gives me energy and power, and does not drain me as you may have thought.

The minute i have a shower on monday evening, i feel better and i feel energised, i use exercise as a tool to give me all the power i will ever need.

Monday is a great day to straighten your eating out too, it feels fantastic right now to have eaten pasta with salmon steaks, along with some vegetables, im serious, i feel that good right now and its all down to monday being the day when im back in a routine and im super-charged to get going all over again.

Lots of water cleans my system out too, and i feel that great about it that i want to broadcast it loud and proud right now!

I get lots of energy of others too on a monday, i feed off their enthusiasm and their progress, and it inspires me to get more and more out of them, and myself too!

Monday should be used as the start to a new week, and a fresh beginning to make you feel amazing, and to renew yourself from the excesses of the weekend.

Its in your power to do it, so lets go!!

Congratulations to all of those who did our triathlon down in Mumbles today, we had a good turnout with over 100 taking part.

It’s always great to see this event every year, and to see a constant stream of new faces, as well as the old favourites of course!!

Making the difference in these events is not the fastest times, its not the person with the show-off gear, its not any of that. What’s important is simply finishing the event and knowing you can get through this three discipline event in still one piece!

Every single one of them today did well and gave their all, whether on their own or as part of a joint effort so its was a first-class day all round.

You get feelings like this when people do things against the odds.

I have seen many give up on things over the years, and im talking about life in general. Giving up doesn’t taste too good does it?

If we are all honest, we have all given up on things we perhaps should have stuck to, and we usually have regretted the decision not to carry on.

The good news is that we all get second chances, and this week could be the brand new start for you to make some new goals, some brand new levels in life you want to get to. This could the exciting time in life you’ve really been waiting for all this time.

It all starts with writing those goals down before you do anything, because if you don’t know what you really want, then how are you going to come up with a plan to get it?

Let’s do it and im here every day to tell you straight on how it should really be done so what are you waiting for?!!!

Sounds like Jean is getting serious with her programme and well done on to her on showing all of the determination we knew she had in her.

It takes certain moments sometimes to make you do things and this may be no exception.

We all have the reasons to do what we have to do and jean is fired up to achieve something really big here too, and its an exciting time of life for her!

There are countless people excited tomorrow too. Theres the childline triathlon we organise each year going off tomorrow at 8.30am. They will be achieving their own personal high’s tomorrow, and achieving things they probably never thought they could do.

Theres nothing like the expression on their faces when they cross the finish line, and get somewhere where they thought was beyond them, and it will be great for me to witness it too! I am THAT excited about it, even if it means me getting up very early tomorrow again!

You have the London Marathon again tomorrow too, and i know only too well the nerves and excitement they are going through right now. There’s nothing like the encouragement you get off the crowd all the way along, and its hard to imagine 500, 000 people cheering you along for 26.2 miles!!

All these amazing feeling take some serious training, doing the right thing more often than not, some sacrifice and heck of a lot of dedication.

Whatever your choice of goal’s in life, its time to get serious and really fired up about your training and nutrition, because you’re all clearly capable of going a very long way indeed, so let’s do it!!

See you tomorrow and enjoy your saturday night!

Although the principles of your training and nutrition may always remain the same, the variety of what you do can vary greatly.

Take your eating for instance, if you made the same shop every single week, with exactly the same foods, and you made exactly the same foods, life would be EXTREMELY boring for you, your family and whoever else you eat with or make food for.

You always need to have the staples in your shopping trolley.

You will always have your lean proteins such as lean meats, fish, good carbs such as wholemeal bread, wholewheat/grain pasta, brown rice, porridge, plenty of fruit, a wide variety of vegetables all supported by plenty of water throughout the day.

I have ideal shopping lists printed on previous posts so give them a look and they will be very helpful for you.

As long as you have a wide variety of each food group, you will not become bored and as long you get enough cooking ideas, and there are thousands of recipes for healthy eating all over the internet.

How about your exercise?

Is going for a run the only thing you do? How about cycling? How about swimming? How about walking? How about weight training? There are countless options for you to choose from, and as long as you tend to put some strength work in there twice a week with a 3 day gap in between, you’re going to firing on all cylinders and likely to get very good results.

From all of these things, you must achieve a balance or your plan eventually fails and you simply say “this isn’t for me after all”!!!

I always like everyone to have enough sleep, enough exercise with at least 1-2 days off training over your week to refresh you, and allow you to make further gains and really feel like approaching your workouts with enthusiasm every time, this is the optimum attitude to have, but you must keep yourself fresh as you always want your performances to improve.

Another good idea is to plan your activities for the week, and if you do this, you’re not likely to skip workouts and you can keep a record of your progress. A training journal is always handy, as you can write down what you have actually done. As we talked about before, you will develop your own “success map” on how to get in great shape, and you will always be able to refer to it whenever you want to get into great shape in the future, or to even help others get into their shape of a lifetime.

Have a great day and lets use the great weather to your advantage!

“Your own personal excuse list”

How many of you are hindered in your health and fitness because of your circumstances?

Is life really hard and you have no time on your hands to exercise?

Do your friends tell you that exercise is not worth the hassle because of that old favourite story about some jogger somewhere on this planet dropping dead on a run, so you should never run again, as it is “dangerous” as all these joggers all die young?

Do you have little time because the kids are keeping you too busy and you REALLY have no time?

You can’t join a gym because you have no time AND no money?

Exercise never worked for you anyway?

Now is “not the right time” in your life to get fit?

Are you too old to get fit?

Are in you skinny so you don’t need to be fit?

Work comes first so getting fit is the last thing you need to do?

Your grandkids come first, and it keeps you fit just running after them?

You can’t eat healthy food, its too “boring”?

You can’t exercise, you have asthma?

Exercise is no fun for you?

The gym is boring and you can never get on the machines anyway, and it is full of posers?

Life is a bitch to you, and nothing goes right for you?

By the time you get home from work, you haven’t the energy to do anything!

Life is so busy for you, ready meals are the only option!

Diet clubs are the only thing for you, as you want a “kick start” to get you going!

You don’t want to do weight training as “it makes you too big”.

You can’t commit for the rest of your life to exercise?!!

Its always raining and too cold, and too warm in the summer to exercise!

My knees are bad!

My back is bad!

I will start exercising when I “lose weight”.

I can’t resist my treats and after all, only one life I have!

I have to drink every day, life is boring without it!

IF YOU ARE KIDDING YOURSELF THAT THESE EXCUSES ARE ACTUALLY TRUE IN SOME WAY, JOIN THIS PROGRAMME AND LET ME PROVE YOU WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can do something about every single one of these excuses, and turn your life around so let’s be honest with yourself and lets get it done once and for all!!

Strange topic to talk about on such a nice day, and a nice couple of weeks really but we have to talk about nice weather mentality, and “bad” weather mentality regarding your training.

I know some of you love getting out on the bike and going for it on a day like this, and some of you have had  a whale of a time the last couple of weeks. Your fitness has improved, some of you tell me you feel so much better and you’re revved up to get more out of yourself and reach new highs.

 Some of you who are competing the Mumbles Childline Triathlon on sunday will have been swimming, running and cycling the last few weeks or even months to prepare yourself. The great thing about this weather is that it gives you great incentive to get out there and do it, and straight after you complete your ride, or your run, or even you walk, i’m going to put everything i have on you feeling so much better about yourself!

So life is good with this weather, and you are able to do exactly what you want, and the great thing is its not too warm either.

With all of these favourable weather conditions, your fitness is about to go to new heights, and new levels of what is possible in your life and with your health in particular, this should be a very exciting time for you as long as you’re taking action and really want the best for yourself and your family.

Let’s turn it around the other way when the weather is wet, and cold and being outside doing a bike ride, a run or even a walk is not the most attractive thing in the world!

Does your mood dip a lot when the conditions aren’t working for you. Mine certainly does a touch when the weather isn’t so good.

I try to make up for all of this by hitting it really hard inside, and to be honest with you, the rain doesn’t really scare me as i accepted a long, long time ago that it will rain around here at least 9 months a year, or close to 12 months of the year it seems like at times!

Once you accept the weather isn’t always going to help you out, you are likely to just get on with it and make the very best out of the cards you are dealt. I find it invigorating sometimes getting out there in the rain and wind, and sometimes realising that i am the only one out there, and the person i am training of course!

I find these the most valuable workouts, the times when nobody expects you to get out there! The times when most people “chicken” out and slump in front of the television when they get home from work! Once you feel guilty about not doing your workouts, the closer you are to having a healthy and active lifestyle as truly part of your life, this is actually a GOOD thing!!!!

So the bottom line is not to worry about the weather, don’t ever let it put you off (unless dangerous of course!), and tell yourself that you CAN be really commited to being in amazing shape, all it does take is that extra effort and extra push in your mentality. Once you adopt these successful strategies, life will feel a whole lot better!