Posted on

Variety

Although the principles of your training and nutrition may always remain the same, the variety of what you do can vary greatly.

Take your eating for instance, if you made the same shop every single week, with exactly the same foods, and you made exactly the same foods, life would be EXTREMELY boring for you, your family and whoever else you eat with or make food for.

You always need to have the staples in your shopping trolley.

You will always have your lean proteins such as lean meats, fish, good carbs such as wholemeal bread, wholewheat/grain pasta, brown rice, porridge, plenty of fruit, a wide variety of vegetables all supported by plenty of water throughout the day.

I have ideal shopping lists printed on previous posts so give them a look and they will be very helpful for you.

As long as you have a wide variety of each food group, you will not become bored and as long you get enough cooking ideas, and there are thousands of recipes for healthy eating all over the internet.

How about your exercise?

Is going for a run the only thing you do? How about cycling? How about swimming? How about walking? How about weight training? There are countless options for you to choose from, and as long as you tend to put some strength work in there twice a week with a 3 day gap in between, you’re going to firing on all cylinders and likely to get very good results.

From all of these things, you must achieve a balance or your plan eventually fails and you simply say “this isn’t for me after all”!!!

I always like everyone to have enough sleep, enough exercise with at least 1-2 days off training over your week to refresh you, and allow you to make further gains and really feel like approaching your workouts with enthusiasm every time, this is the optimum attitude to have, but you must keep yourself fresh as you always want your performances to improve.

Another good idea is to plan your activities for the week, and if you do this, you’re not likely to skip workouts and you can keep a record of your progress. A training journal is always handy, as you can write down what you have actually done. As we talked about before, you will develop your own “success map” on how to get in great shape, and you will always be able to refer to it whenever you want to get into great shape in the future, or to even help others get into their shape of a lifetime.

Have a great day and lets use the great weather to your advantage!

Twitt
Posted on

The long list of excuses

“Your own personal excuse list”

How many of you are hindered in your health and fitness because of your circumstances?

Is life really hard and you have no time on your hands to exercise?

Do your friends tell you that exercise is not worth the hassle because of that old favourite story about some jogger somewhere on this planet dropping dead on a run, so you should never run again, as it is “dangerous” as all these joggers all die young?

Do you have little time because the kids are keeping you too busy and you REALLY have no time?

You can’t join a gym because you have no time AND no money?

Exercise never worked for you anyway?

Now is “not the right time” in your life to get fit?

Are you too old to get fit?

Are in you skinny so you don’t need to be fit?

Work comes first so getting fit is the last thing you need to do?

Your grandkids come first, and it keeps you fit just running after them?

You can’t eat healthy food, its too “boring”?

You can’t exercise, you have asthma?

Exercise is no fun for you?

The gym is boring and you can never get on the machines anyway, and it is full of posers?

Life is a bitch to you, and nothing goes right for you?

By the time you get home from work, you haven’t the energy to do anything!

Life is so busy for you, ready meals are the only option!

Diet clubs are the only thing for you, as you want a “kick start” to get you going!

You don’t want to do weight training as “it makes you too big”.

You can’t commit for the rest of your life to exercise?!!

Its always raining and too cold, and too warm in the summer to exercise!

My knees are bad!

My back is bad!

I will start exercising when I “lose weight”.

I can’t resist my treats and after all, only one life I have!

I have to drink every day, life is boring without it!

IF YOU ARE KIDDING YOURSELF THAT THESE EXCUSES ARE ACTUALLY TRUE IN SOME WAY, JOIN THIS PROGRAMME AND LET ME PROVE YOU WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can do something about every single one of these excuses, and turn your life around so let’s be honest with yourself and lets get it done once and for all!!

Twitt
Posted on

Weather not a factor mentality!

Strange topic to talk about on such a nice day, and a nice couple of weeks really but we have to talk about nice weather mentality, and “bad” weather mentality regarding your training.

I know some of you love getting out on the bike and going for it on a day like this, and some of you have had  a whale of a time the last couple of weeks. Your fitness has improved, some of you tell me you feel so much better and you’re revved up to get more out of yourself and reach new highs.

 Some of you who are competing the Mumbles Childline Triathlon on sunday will have been swimming, running and cycling the last few weeks or even months to prepare yourself. The great thing about this weather is that it gives you great incentive to get out there and do it, and straight after you complete your ride, or your run, or even you walk, i’m going to put everything i have on you feeling so much better about yourself!

So life is good with this weather, and you are able to do exactly what you want, and the great thing is its not too warm either.

With all of these favourable weather conditions, your fitness is about to go to new heights, and new levels of what is possible in your life and with your health in particular, this should be a very exciting time for you as long as you’re taking action and really want the best for yourself and your family.

Let’s turn it around the other way when the weather is wet, and cold and being outside doing a bike ride, a run or even a walk is not the most attractive thing in the world!

Does your mood dip a lot when the conditions aren’t working for you. Mine certainly does a touch when the weather isn’t so good.

I try to make up for all of this by hitting it really hard inside, and to be honest with you, the rain doesn’t really scare me as i accepted a long, long time ago that it will rain around here at least 9 months a year, or close to 12 months of the year it seems like at times!

Once you accept the weather isn’t always going to help you out, you are likely to just get on with it and make the very best out of the cards you are dealt. I find it invigorating sometimes getting out there in the rain and wind, and sometimes realising that i am the only one out there, and the person i am training of course!

I find these the most valuable workouts, the times when nobody expects you to get out there! The times when most people “chicken” out and slump in front of the television when they get home from work! Once you feel guilty about not doing your workouts, the closer you are to having a healthy and active lifestyle as truly part of your life, this is actually a GOOD thing!!!!

So the bottom line is not to worry about the weather, don’t ever let it put you off (unless dangerous of course!), and tell yourself that you CAN be really commited to being in amazing shape, all it does take is that extra effort and extra push in your mentality. Once you adopt these successful strategies, life will feel a whole lot better!

Twitt
Posted on

Decisive moment

What was the decisive moment you decided to get fit?

What was the decisive moment you decided you change you health around and actually do something about it?

That particular moment that decides whether you get on a health and fitness programme can be very poweful.

For instance, ive seen lots of people ignore health warnings about their weight and lack of activity and pay the price down the line. We all know people who smoke too much, eat too much, dont move around much and can end up having a stern lecture often too late in a hospital bed. The person concerned would have much preferred to have taken the preventative approach, of exercise and eating healthier.

Decisive moments also include the time when you lose confidence in your own health and fitness programme, about the lack of results you may be having. I find some people are either very enthusiastic (which is good) about their programmes or are over-pessimistic about their programmes and their chances of success.

You see people posting all the time on here either on top form, or a couple of weeks later, in despair because a couple of things have gone wrong, they have panicked and their progress has well and truly collapsed!

Little do they realise that if they hadn’t blown their programme off the rails, and had kept their heads that they would have in fact stayed on track, and got a bit mentally tougher from staying the course and greatly enhanced their chances for being overall very successful and for the long term too!

We are here on a monday again and whats your plan this week?

I ALWAYS find that if you have a good monday, that means a good workout to start the week off, that you are motivated to get it right for the rest of the week, and you are very likely to eat better too, as you don’t wish to blow all your efforts!

So have you got your week sorted out? For example, personally i have hit some good runs today, and am doing a weights workout later with a client so today is massively productive for me.

Not only that, but my energy levels are up too which is ultra-important to me. My job is highly energy based so if i am not raring to go each day, then i have little motivation to give people!

We have already done the 84 day challenge this year, we have the childline triathlon in mumbles sunday morning which we organise every year, and we have 120 people all raring to go over the three disciplines. So this year already, there have been a lot of goals being met by all sorts of people from all walks of life.

The opportunities are there for you, all you have to do is take them.

Of course it is easy to sit down every night after work and have a beer, and to eat “easy” food that may have been made for you such as a take away. But guess what? “Easy” doesn’t do anything for yours self-esteem, self-confidence, body fat levels, energy or performance and simply feeling good, it DOES NOT GET YOU THERE!

Hopefully, you’re having a great week so lets make sure a big monday happens to put you on a great course for the rest of the week!

Twitt
Posted on

Benefits of being strong!

Back on my schedule today again, the 6.10am run and the day off yesterday did me no end of good so im hitting this message today with no end of energy too!

 I like to talk about balancing your schedule throughout the week, and how important it is to have your week planned in a broad sense to make sure you are successful each week full stop.

You always need to be doing some strength work a minimum twice a week to boost your metabolism, increase the rate your body burns calories 24 hours per day, really firm you up all over, get you stronger and fitter all round.

For many years, doctors argued that weight training and resistance work of all kinds would simply give you a heart attack if you pushed it too hard and would give you high blood pressure too. We all know now that the opposite is true.

Making gains in your health and fitness plan is impossible without having resistance training in your plan.

Another myth that used to be put around was that strength training slowed you down a lot.

The heaviest users of weight training in the running world are always the sprinters. Try telling someone who can run under 10 seconds for the 100 metres that weight training/resistance training slows you down!

The realities are that the athletes were the ones finding out first what worked before the doctors. The doctors would then research the claims made by athletes and then verify all the amazing benefits that they were constantly reporting.

Now any sport from tennis, to football, to squash, to canoeing all use strength training as vital parts of their weekly training, year round!! None of this rubbish “i don’t want to get too big”!! If only that was possible that easy!!! Sportsmen are discovering the benefits of strength training in all sorts of different ways for their chosen sport, and are not “getting big and slow”, they are getting sharper, fitter and lasting a lot longer into their 30’s than ever before.

A lot of strength training is about avoiding injury too. Most people dont know that you are strengthening your bones and joints when you use resistance too. This makes your body work together in harmomy more, making the chance of injury much less.

When you get in old age, you want strong tendons and ligaments, as well as strong joints and bones to avoid falls for instance, and to do things that will still give you a high quality of life. We all want to be active into old age but you have to create a strong base and foundation first.

You need to do your strength work AND cardiovascular work (running, walking, cycling, swimming etc), thats a perfect balance!!

Have a great sunday and thanks for visiting!

Twitt