Thursday, 17th October

The importance of food is a message that never gets forgotten on here, as you may have noticed. The thing that keeps this message going, is the feedback that comes from the people who read this every day, the ones who receive emails from me through their normal everyday training, and the questions I have almost every day from people who haven’t trained with me yet, or have and are in another part of the country or continent even!

So the questions and conversations I have daily are what shape this blog in the first place, and this is why the conversation always goes from topic to topic very quickly indeed.

Its great to hear that a huge number of you are taking advantage of our new emphasis on recipes, and how to make food from scratch that will fill you up, be really good for your body, is easy to make and perhaps is the solution to the helplessness that many of you feel when it comes to making good quality healthy food on a regular basis.

The journey that many of you have taken when it comes to re-discovering food again, and how good it can ACTUALLY taste has been inspiring, and inspired us to comes up with regular new recipes that we use in our everyday life, and especially the challenging times when it comes to juggling the responsibilities of raising a family, running a full time business and all of the other stress of modern day life.

So this blog is shaped by you, and please keep the ever-increasing comments coming to fitness@kerimckibbin.co.uk. Register on this site if you want and ask a question directly so everyone can see it, or simply call me on 07968 980 808.

Look forward to the ever increasing variety of questions too, however simple or complicated you may think they are!

Monday, 17th June

Another monday hits us and as always hope you are prepared to hit it hard to start the week off on the right note!

Some base their most important workout on a monday, some just ease gently into it, some don’t have any kind of plan and just hope for the best (not recommended), some hit their highest intensity on a monday-whatever your situation AS LONG as you are exercising then you will be off to a flying start.

If you let your weekend go into a monday in terms of alcohol, overeating junk food and no exercise, then you are not serious about your health whatsoever, and you need to re-assess exactly what your goals are and set a realistic plan on how you’re going to achieve them!

Monday is always a great day to get your weights/strength work in, nothing raises your metabolism as effectively (and i am talking about weight training with little rest and with plenty of high energy cost movements no plodding slowly along!). I set a lot of strength workouts on mondays and thursdays with a nice three day gap in between, allowing for plenty of recovery in between.

A lot of my other workouts get set up for the tuesdays, wednesdays and fridays. This allows me to set up the fundamentals up for the week for people, and give a lot of variety in between, making sure we are fat burning every day and we are going to get higher and higher numbers almost on a week to week basis, which means we are constantly improving!

So you should be looking forward to a big monday, making the bigget possible statement for the week ahead!!!

Tuesday, March 26th

We have had some great successes this week and last in my personal training, and at the gym by the railway station in burry port.
The average losses of body fat over a 4 week period were more than 2%, some over 3% and one person was an incredible 4% body fat loss!!!
To give you an idea, 1.8% body fat loss is considered as very good over a month, so you can see we are outperforming these levels in abundance at the moment.

Whilst all of this good news is great, the trick is to draw a line under those measurements straight away and look forward to the next 4 weeks, and look forward to hitting those 1.8% body fat levels and hopefully more, just as we have been doing.

The danger always is trying to over-congratulate ourselves too much, and forgetting what got us in this great situation in the first place.

This is why I tell everyone who has done well over the last 4 weeks, the last 6 months month, the last 18 years even, to forget about the last month and really set about upgrading their training once again, look for things that may improve their eating habits once again, make sure they stay hydrated, sleep better maybe, and keep alcohol in moderation.

I know and all the people I train know that if they keep these lifestyle habits up, they will be bang on course for another truly impressive measurement.

This is a culture I have got everyone into, and the positive reactions have been overwhelming!

Its all about being honest about your food intake?, how much of it you eat?, how much you really drink in alcohol terms?, are you skipping workouts?

Once you can be honest about these questions, you instantly become more accountable and therefore much more likely to create a situation where you can attain outstanding results!

Thursday, 14th March

Anyone who trains with me will know that we work on the latest scientific research of training all of the time. Things change and there’s always exciting things happening.

Then you will know we focus so much on balance, brain muscle communication, agility, strength and speed in particular, which will lead to endurance, very good conditioning and outstanding health (which is the most important thing!).

Which leads us to the much discussed conversation on which is better? Free weights and natural movements or machines?

Free weights and natural movements will always win because they go with the body needs to NATURALLY move. The movements we do mimic movements we do in daily life, and this is of vital importance to get you through the rest of your life in good shape and avoid serious injury or immobility problems, which unfortunately affect most people as they get older. Prepare well by doing a whole host of natural movements on a daily basis and weekly basis, and your long term health will seem much brighter.

Machines on the other keep you working on one plane of motion, and can lead to repetitive strain if done over a long period of time. Machines because of their limited range of motion will give you exactly that, LIMITED results, limited mobility and limited flexibility, all far more important than you think.

Its a shame that when these machines started being really popular in the 80’s, that most gyms still consider them viable.

The science of training has moved on light years since then, and most machines apart from a couple needs to be thrown in the scrap.

The sooner you get out of machine based training and get into whats happening in the real scientific forms of training, then you will improve in every single area of your body, your balance, your reaction time and your strength and agility!

Friday, 28th December

Glad to be right back into it all and get a great couple of workouts in yesterday, and some today too!!!

The great energy that these bring can be fantastic, and being back in routine again will make you realise all of the energy you have been missing, especially when you were not training, and eating badly.

For all of you who are back on track, or at least partially so, will know what i am talking about!

For those of you who are yet to get into it, i strongly encourage you to do so. The new year is going to hit you like a truck otherwise. The last thing you will feel like is making a flying start to the new year when you feel all groggy and sluggish. Feeling this way can give you a major disadvantage in anything you want to do.

Just think of what job you have? You have to give effort to make a living, and if you have no energy, that’s going to be a challenge.

The prospect also of losing the body fat and weight in general can be daunting. That’s why once you decide to muster up all of that effort, it’s important to make the right choices!!

They were talking on the radio this morning about the latest seaweed diet! Apparently Victoria beckham is an endorser, as well as Brittany Spears. Seaweed is a superfood but relying on seafood to drop all your weight and feel better has to be one of the most desperate measures you can undertake?!!!

What’s wrong with eating sensible natural food, in moderation? What’s wrong with drinking enough water at regular intervals throughout the day? What’s wong with getting enough sleep and not drinking too much alcohol? What happened to these reliable common sense methods that really work ALL of the time?!!!

I urge to avoid the faddy diets, the weight loss clubs who only help for a very short period, then they pile all your weight back on (plus 5% more according to reliable research). You should know by now that these products make me feel sick, and they should be exposed for the frauds they are, and the long term misery they create.

Lighter life, herbalife etc? The ultimate waste of money and con artists! Save your money now and use your common sense this year to avoid these disgusting products!!