Massive efforts (only sometimes!)

Making  huge efforts all the time isn’t going to be good for your exercise programme. It is one sure fire way to get fed up of exercise and it soon wears thin in terms of enthusiasm.

We can all pull out all the stops and have amazing efforts in terms of workouts. People do amazing things for charity, and you have to commend them for doing so.

So before you think I’ve gone totally mad, I’ll explain!

A well structured exercise programme aiming to get a 7-8 out of 10 each time you train, will likely be far more successful than workouts now and again demanding 10 out of 10 each time. Even champions can’t work at that intensity all the time, they actually periodise their training plan into different sections of the year.

The time when the champions often go flat out is often only 8-12 weeks of the year. The rest of the year is often structured to create a base for the next level up.

That’s why its sensible to focus at steady and gradual improvements. We talk about it all the time, if you can do 5 press ups in week 1, and you can do 25 press ups in week 5, then this is a great example of making progress without working so hard that you’re blue in the face!

You look forward to workouts that don’t have unrealistic challenges in store. They become more enjoyable and you tend to love the whole process more. Going for a run in a scenic location is fun, and exillerating at the same time.

If you approached the same run with maximum intensity every time you did it, and were constantly trying to beat your personal best, you would soon become sick of that and start putting off workouts when your time wasn’t improving.

You should know by now that im all for working out with great intensity, but you have to put it in its proper context.

Those who did the London marathon a couple of weeks ago will have spent many months or even years training for it.

Those who did the Mumbles Childline Triathlon with us definitely worked hard for months before.

These two events were examples of pinnacle’s in people’s sporting lives.

The reality is that you can’t train like that forever, you have to scale it back for a while, and look at fresh goals.

The bottom line is that you’re still exercising every week, you’re eating well every week and to me, that amounts to being truly successful as you’re aiming to be fit and healthy for the rest of your life, not so many people get to achieve that unfortunately!

Keep working hard!