Author: admin

The practice of exercise is proven by science, and by thousands of years of practice by ancient people of this earth, without doubt it works, and many new benefits are discovered all the time.

Eating well is compared to giving yourself medicine, the right kind that can fix a number of ills. Eating right is a priority, and can literally save your life because your immune system depends on it.

The practice of these two things then is a “no-brainer”? You would say yes.

If I had to analyse what makes someone successful with these two things (bear in mind nobody is perfect), then it must be that they practice these two things when enormous doubt and challenges hit them in life, as they are bound to do at times.

Suddenly exercise is not something you cancel for a few weeks (which becomes a few months, and often years), it becomes your SALVATION, for your mental health as well as your body-no compromise and the link is very strong indeed as we all know. 

The “practice” is your outlet for stress, your magic cure for the pain in your body and mind, and the medicine for daily flushing out of all the toxins, and toxic thinking too that threatens to invade you, and eventually overcome and BE you.

When stress hits, your immune system takes a big hit, and often food is not something you even think about. If you eat well so often, it is engrained in you, then you practice good eating just to feel better even when life seems like you are in the middle of a hurricane.

When you first start exercising, the practice of exercise and eating right will be a novelty. Then you get to the make or break period when doubt from many sources threatens to derail you and your progress, then once you are beyond those stormy waters, you become an exerciser whose practice is so deep, you rely on it to think better and clearer, you rely on food to heal your body rather than a bucketload of pills, and most of all you turn to exercising and eating right for STRENGTH just when you need it most.

Drew Dernavich is the New Yorker magazine’s famous cartoonist, making more funny and enlightening cartoons than anyone else at the magazine’s history.

Many people wrote to him admiring his life, imagining he gets out of bed late every day, thinks of a funny cartoon in 5 minutes, draws it and then sends it to the magazine, and that’s it, his work for the day was over.

Drew is amused and frustrated of people’s opinion of his imaginary lifestyle, so he posted the photo seen above as the true nature of his actual life, it went viral on social media.

The big pile of around 300 cartoons are the ones he’s recently got turned down for. The tiny pile is the one which actually got printed.

Drew started early in life drawing, enjoyed it and eventually became good at it, and became a professional cartoonist but only years of failure and discouragement along the way, yet he continued to love what he did and kept practicing in his spare time which was fun to him. 

The photo shows the vast amount of rejections that became his daily life. When he was told to give it up, forget it and how much of a waste of time it was for him.

Luckily he ignored the negativity and those who didn’t believe in him.

This story sounds familiar to most of us, rejection, nobody believing in us when we try something new and different,  It is true that many people won’t be happy when we have a go at something bigger than we have ever done before, to achieve something we have always chased and felt passionate about, to become something or someone that loves every day what they do.

I distinctly remember the silence and faces of dismissal when I studied how to make films for our gym, and then imagine years ago that online training could actually benefit our members as lifestyles were changing, and they would engage in it no matter where they lived.

To be honest, I am terrible at drawing and at art in general, but the computer gave me a unique way to make my own art, making exercise films every day that would hopefully inspire our members and create different and unique workouts daily, they could magically watch anytime too, the technology still astounds me. I kept practicing until I became better, and it’s the practice that is the essential part of getting good at anything, just like exercise. 

Keep showing up and working on your craft, keep exercising, eating right and great things will happen eventually because your energy will becoming unstoppable.

I realised we are all making art every day if we stay ourselves and not try to be anyone else, expressing ourselves with our own personality and whilst not everyone is going to be happy with our art because all art is subjective, we can still help A LOT of people do great things too.

We are constantly encouraging our members to be fit and healthy, build their self-belief and self esteem, and develop a ton of energy, live with positivity and seize their opportunities in life, which only enables to get so much more out of their own lives, to make them realise that the lessons from what they have achieved through the discipline of exercise, can be applied to showing off their very own unique talents that the world can only benefit from and change others’ lives too.

Next time you have failures and rejections, think of the very successful  cartoonist at the New Yorker, where failure is a relentless and essential part of his daily life in finally finding “the one” cartoon that will make plenty of people’s day!!

The value of being on our schedule can be much greater than you think.

Every day is an event, where I give it everything in our live sessions, constantly changing it up and hopefully you do a little better each time.

If our sessions last up to 45 minutes, then you may do 5 minutes, have 2 minutes recovery, and then do another 3 minutes before you are out of puff, then have another rest and start back when you feel you are able to.

One guarantee is that if you stick with it at least 3 times a week, those times you take part getting a bit longer each time, your rest periods get less too, meaning your recovery is only getting better. 

This is the value of sticking with it and being in our flow of exercising.

You will want to eat better because you don’t want to waste any of your progress, and if you do, you will discover more energy and your muscles will recover far quicker after your sessions too.

You will sleep so much better, as expending a lot of energy only encourages a good night’s sleep, so your workout is paramount to good sleeping habits.

Lockdown demands you can’t look ahead too much, you approach every day as a new event and experience, and you do your best.

This approach also means that time will fly, before we know it the summer will be here and you will be able to reflect how you got there, how the hard work earlier in the year made you physically so much more powerful and out of pain, and mentally put you in such a STRONGER position with anxiety, stress and worry firmly in the rear view mirror.

Those few months will happen anyway, so live them appreciating every day, every workout and every experience in our beautiful community and scenery, and feel the pride and sense of achievement pumping through your veins.

Be the one who takes part, not the one who lives a life of regrets because when you did have the chance to do great things and feel better, you stayed on the sidelines too afraid to get into the game.