Thursday, 3rd January
I had to form an insurance policy when I first went self-employed. I knew that without my health, I would struggle.
I knew I had to be on top form ALL the time. This is when my eating became more serious.
This is when my sleep became religious.
This is when I made sure I was still putting some exercise myself. In short, I had to put all the unseen work in.
I had to get rid of distractions, and find a way of getting through mountains of written work, in the days before facebook, messenger and having to drop messages to people literally by hand through their letterbox first thing in the morning.
Energy was the key, then find more energy, then when business kept expanding, find another sea of energy from somewhere else.
The good news is that energy does expand over the year, if you do the basics right, and be ultra-consistent with your habits.
You fend off more colds, you realise that food, exercise and sleep can be a very valid form of medicine.
You boost your immune system daily, and make your choice on where you want to be in terms of future performance.
Of course anyone can still pick up a cold, flu and other nasties, but you must make your own self-insurance policy up.
My income, my impact, my business, my family depend on me strong in terms of health (and I touch wood when I say this), and they support fully my aims through the great food I have at home daily from Nicola.
This single factor has helped made me have a long career, helped me have mega-energy days and helped me finish the day off strong, after a very early start.
Don’t want to make this I’m a smug git post. But I do want to impress on you what it really takes to perform at the best of your ability, all year long. Don’t make any compromises when it comes to your health.
Thursday, 3rd January-Workout bodyweight no equipment
Wednesday, January 2nd
Magnificent day one, huge effort from everyone and a magnificent effort from Emma Williams‘ class outside in the cold.
Easy to talk about success all the time, but let’s talk about people who were doing their first session in a while today, about those people who are ill and can’t train at the moment until they recover, those who want to train but can’t seem to get over that mental wall they are sometimes imprisoned by.
The gym is never complete until you get a vast array of characters, battling to do something special and often incredible. We made our reputation on being the underdog, and turning bad situations for people into strong opportunities that they can thrive on. The more underdogs we have the better, because we know we can turn that fight deep inside of you into something powerful and unstoppable.
We are a group of people who secretly like it best when we are written off by outsiders (those who are deeply negative in their outlook). We know how to turn that negativity into good productive things once we get a sweat on, and then keep repeating this process until our progress becomes so good people can’t ignore us anymore.
Being written off helps us enormously keep our edge, and only increases our focus to keep getting better.
When you get back to hitting those weights, then those great feelings will return for you too if you are struggling in any way right now. We are all about going hundred miles an hour most of the time, but sometimes it’s great just to get a session in no matter how fast, how hard, how slow, just doing something is the “victory” moment, that will only set you up for another memorable year.
All of you who are struggling right now, STAY the underdog and get ready to bite hard again when you feel up it. You will soon be unstoppable again.
Wednesday, January 2nd
Some words of reality on the first day back after Christmas.
When you joined us, you had high expectations and if you showed up regularly, they were met and you even raised your expectations from there.
Lots of you are doing INCREDIBLY well and we are eternally thankful for your efforts. You approach the new yer in fine form and can hit the ground running.
What about those who are struggling, can’t get going and those who doesn’t take much to lose their enthusiasm.
To all of you, I must ask you to remind yourself why you started. Many of you started because you were unhappy with your health, and that in itself was making you…………..well unhappy!
The pride you had in your initial achievements wasn’t enough to keep you going because you were easily influenced to give up.
People usually give up because another “story” takes over their lives.
It could be someone in your social circle thought it would be ‘best’ if you quit, after all, that exercise ‘thing’ wasn’t really good for you. You should be like them, watching tv more than ever, eating more fast and processed food than ever, after all, wasn’t this such a ‘fun and happy way to live’? Even though that lifestyle is shown to shorten your life ((Doctors tell us this and all the science backs it up).
It could well be that your initial success was not enough to install new habits. You didn’t stay long enough to make exercise and eating right a WAY OF LIFE. Not enough to make it a natural process, so quitting seemed like such an easy decision to make.
Another story could be that you like following others. Whatever your crowd says, then that is the ‘truth’. Even though you secretly know exercise is good for you and you are pretty good at it, then you had ‘better’ follow the crowd as you don’t want to ‘stand out’ and its easier to have a ‘quiet life’.
If the COURAGE has left your life, your individual personality has disappeared or deeply hidden and the PRIDE you showed when you did so well with us has long been forgotten, then you need to find a way, because people are DEPENDING on you.
They never saw you happier when you were fit. Never saw you carry yourself with so much confidence when you were achieving things with your health. Never saw you give so much leadership to your family when you were fit and strong, and have now seen you weaken due to your lack of outstanding heath.
Harsh words, and you may hate me for saying it, but if you aren’t exercising 3 times a week, then life is drifting away from you, life is not on YOUR terms and life is nowhere as great as it could be.
Don’t tell yourself a life, a story that says the being overweight, unfit, lacking in energy is somehow ok because its NOT and YOU KNOW IT and your life depends on it.
Time to act, you know the truth.