Posted on

Wednesday, 30th November

The end of the month and a time for celebration or throwing your chips in and calling it quits for christmas?!!!!!

Depends on your current level of fitness and conditioning i suppose!

If you are in good shape, you will raring to go in december and really make further inroads into your body fat and strength levels, i certainly see a lot of people in this situation.

If you are struggling to get workouts in and shop well for good food, then chances are you will be glad to see christmas coming, so that you make a “new year resolution” and lose all the weight after christmas!!!

This is following typical behaviour by most of the population.

I always tell people that december is one of the most important months to train hard and eat relatively well. Of course, you will be having lunches out, evenings out when healthy food may not be on top of the list, and you will be drinking alcohol a lot more too.

Despite all of this, the exercise and effort you put into it will be worth heck of a lot to you.

If you want a wheezy chest, then don’t exercise.

If you want to lower your immune system, then don’t exercise.

If you want your clothes to feel much tighter, then don’t exercise!

If you want to stagger into christmas and face a herculean challenge in the new year again, then don’t exercise!!!

So in december, everyone knows you may well drink more than you should, you will almost certainly eat much more than you should, and your sleep may well be lousy, but despite all of this, commit yourself to exercising throughout the month. This is the greatest christmas gift you can give to yourself, you are nothing if you haven’t got good health so lets keep this uppermost in your mind please!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 24th November

All options are possible if you apply yourself to a goal that’s uppermost in your mind.

What stops us getting there is being sidetracked into minor things that have no bearing on what we are trying to achieve.

This week as I have said yesterday, has seen me focus on getting every single person I train up to their best levels for the year. This has led to exciting training sessions and previously unseen motivation levels.

There are so many things that can detract us from our goals, this is why its vital to have a structure in our lives we can do without even thinking about it.

I had to visit the dentist today with a minor complaint, but still enough pain to cause me some distress. We then get lectured (rightly I might add!) on how to clean our teeth properly, twice a day to enable us to have our teeth for a lifetime. Im sure most if not all of you have experienced this.

So why do we brush our teeth every day, twice a day, some people more, and we cant look after the rest of our bodies every day?

If we don’t look after our teeth, they eventually fall out!

If we don’t look after our body and continually abuse it, we are likely to have a heart attack or bring on a serious disease.

So by that comparison, most of the population doesn’t treat their body with the respect it deserves, until its too late usually when you are being lectured by a doctor in hospital!

So if you are doubting whether to continue your exercise programme, and somehow questioning the virtues of eating healthy food daily, then surely this must be the wake up call you need?

The primary need to exercise and eat right is to be healthy, to function properly in daily life, for your immune system to be strong to fight off disease, and to live a decent quality of life.

Surely these most basic reasons are enough to get you back on track and get you exercising today!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 23rd November

Hopefully, you have reinvigorated yourself this week by re-booting your exercise programme and you have already hit a big couple of workouts already this week.

Its this type of enthusiasm that i have been bumping in to all week long. Any “feeling sorry for yourself” attitude has been crushed and replaced with fresh enthusiasm full of people rallying themselves for a big end of year performance.

All this sea change in attitude takes is a momentum shift in the way you approach everything. If you approach everything in a negative way, you are highly likely to get a negative reponse.

If you approach everything in a highly optimistic and positive way, then doors usually open for you and people can be very receptive to your ideas.

For example, if i suggest a workout to someone that involves one of their most difficult bike rides so far this year, with a few extremely difficult hills etc, then the initial response may not be so good! However, if i point out that this type of ride coincided with them being in their best physical performance all year, then they start to associate the two and then start nodding in a positive way and are then far more likely to approach and have heck of a go at this hugely difficult ride.

Then when the ride is completed, a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction starts to come over them and this one workout alone, can make the difference from either having a mediocre end to the year, or a far more exciting end to the year with perhaps new highs of performance attained, which usually transform to excellent body fat levels and that all important feeling of wellbeing!!!

Whatever your situation right now, positivity about your true ability and previous achievements this year need to be revisited right now to end the year on a massive high, and allow you to follow on into 2012 with a fresh batch of goals that will inspire you on to greater things again!!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 4th November

Massive changes in your body will happen if you are training in a proper manner.

For instance, i was doing a one off session with someone yesterday and this person claimed she always did fit ball/swiss ball group classes and was also a regular a pilates classes.

Since a lot of my sessions are now focused on balance and stability work, i was ready for this person’s valuable input on my session.

The result was the exact opposite of the one i expected.

Out of 20 exercises i did on the fit ball, she had only done one of them before, i was stunned.

On the pilates moves i usually do, she had never done one of them.

Guess what too? She still had a bad back despite her appearance at all of these “group classes”!!!

I asked how she found all the new exercises i had given her, and she said she felt relieved because her back was so much looser and the exercises i had given her she felt would quickly strengthen her back. This was good for me to know too, as you are looking for good feedback on the work you do, and getting the right exercise prescription is always important.

It shows that if you do the right exercises, then not only do you get substantially better results, but you spend less time exercising too because you will be getting the job done a lot quicker!

It is like seeing someone who only does treadmill work every session, every week, every month for years. They may appear quite lean, but you know they are missing out on so many elements of health and fitness. For example, they are not doing a lot of muscle toning, bone strengthening, muscular endurance etc etc.

They will need resistance training in their lives if they are to reach their true potential. Sometimes we don’t like leaving out self-enforced comfort zones, but we must do it to reach our true ambitions.

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 19th October

Nine weeks left to christmas, and you can definitely tell this if you walk into B and Q for example, and the vast array of christmas trees and decorations they already have there!!!

I have always been puzzled by some people’s lack of drive for training up to christmas, as for me its a great time to hit your best levels and standards.

For example, the most popular time to get into shape is always after christmas in january, when most people have piled on the pounds from eating and drinking too much, and non-existant exercise of course!!!

The effort to try and get going from that situation is unbelievably hard, yet people do it in their droves with often very limited success.

When you are at your heaviest, the motivation you have is usually low and your self-esteem is even lower. So the confidence and drive needed to get going can be too much for a lot of people i have spoken to.

Compare that situation in january and the one y ou have now. You shouldnt have eaten too much by now, you should still be exercising to a certain level and generally its not exactly party season so your sleeping habits should be farely good too.

The step up from here shouldnt be that dramatic to get into great shape?!!!

You won’t be wheezing hard like you do in january from all the increased efforts in your workouts?

You wont have a big sweet tooth to overcome that you would have definitely developed over christmas and beyond?

The great foundation you could develop now from giving your best to your training and eating could be phenomenal!!!

Nine big weeks would make the difference between you going into christmas with real momentum and looking your best, or going into christmas overweight and unfit and no momentum and a grim effort in the new year to come!!!

Your time is right now so lets make it happen!!!

Twitt