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Day 59

Choosing which workout is right for you is one thing, but always looking for the “magic fix” is another.

 I frequently have questions on which exercise equipment or exercise dvd is best, and the answer i usually give is that you’re lucky to find something that works in this world of gimmicks and workouts with “celebs”, which often have little or no foundation to them, as often these same “celebs” are seen weeks or months later having piled back on all the weight and more!

One such question this week was on the power plate, or standing on a “vibration machine” would be the plainest way on describing it. You can pay a lot of money to use one of these machines in some gyms or “health clubs”, and you will undoubtedly be peddled the same old marketing information on them, hearing that old favourite “madonna uses it”, that famous football club uses it and so does that famous film star!

 The reality is that madonna is on her 6th trainer, and she goes with some kind of “new” training routine all the time, but her weight training and cardio work (running etc) never changes, she likes re-inventing herself so much that she has to mention another revolutionary way of training, once a year usually that maybe forgotten about next year!

This is all great and the marketing campaigns get that little bit more elaborate each year, but here’s get down to some facts before some of these “establishments” take even more of your hard earned money out of your pocket.

The official university studies on most of these products (and there are many different ones) conclude that there is NO MORE BENEFIT of working on these machines than regular, conventional methods. I repeat this again, not one percentage more than doing your normal workouts!

I’m not saying they are bad, but its time to stop looking for that “missing link” in your training, that “sliver bullet” that will sort everything out once and for all, IT DOES NOT EXIST.

The missing link is actually, and this is actually true,  you taking control of your programme, knuckling down to some hard work, forgetting about all those “fancy gadgets”, not falling for the sales person’s talks in these “health clubs” and spending that money on something that will actually do you some good! I say health clubs in inverted commas because they are usually little more than money making machines designed to get you on longer term contracts, and using latest national statistics, they really bet on the fact you won’t turn up most of the time.

We have touched on this before, why do they try and get 6000 members, if they are lucky to get 100 people in that gym at any one time!! If you work out the numbers, they are betting that 1% of their membership turns up at any one time, that is scandalous!!

I love the way these sales people say the latest mircale machine will increase your metabolism, your heart rate, your muscle tone, Gosh I HAVE NEVER HEARD THAT BEFORE! Isn’t this what ALL exercise does anyway and aren’t they using every technique in the book to get you to sign on the dotted line!! To sign that contract that you have paid for so many sessions or even a year or two, once they have your money they have done their job, its time to get wise to all of this and see through all of these “cowboy” salespeople, because that’s what they are, most have never set one foot in the actual gym……ever, or least they don’t look as if they have ever trained, with no knowledge thrown in, this can be a very worrying situation for the newcomer to exercise!!

All the information you need to get into great shape is on here, its based on improving your programme most weeks, its about eating sensibly, little and often, sleep well and keeping a very positive approach in everything you do, in short, its about results and being the best you can be! It’s not about ripping you off in money terms, its about staying with a programme that will stand the test of time, and will be as good in 20 years time  as it is now, long after all these dreaded gym sales people are in their “other career’s”, whatever that may be but it probably will have nothing to do with improving your health, unless they get a lot more education and actual experience! They ought to try that sometime?!!

You can see i’m steamed about it, but i try to put people right and protect you from the con artists of this world, and believe me there’s a lot of “fly by nights” in the health and fitness world.

Please do the right thing, and follow common sense when trying to get fitter, healthier and more positive in your attitude to your life and those around you.

Hope day 59 is flying for you and your workout has been a huge one today! You’re doing it through hard work and doing it through tried and tested ways can be much more satisfying, plus you will keep getting amazing results, long after all the faddy machines have come and gone!

Twitt
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Day 56 End of week 8!

End of week 8 would you believe! 8 weeks at the start probably didn’t sound that long, but now you know it can be quite a long time to get your eating right, your training going well, and the most important part probably, get your mind right in order to give the effort required.

Had my first sunday morning run for a while today, as the demands of two small children over the last few weeks have taken over. Back to normal now that the first 6 weeks of a new baby are over, and this was the best sunday morning in some time, and the temperature was good enough to run in a t-shirt and shorts, the first time since last summer! The run felt great, and once you get a run in for the first time in a while, you realise how much you missed it!

The temperatures in january and february just gone will have actually done us good, however icy and snowy they may have been! If we can find a way to get our workouts in during the coldest time of the year, and the coldest temperatures in the last 30 odd years, then the current weather will only allow more activities, and it should be a breeze from now on to get more workouts in exactly when you want to.

This challenge started during the most demanding time of year, and working in the toughest times gives us more skills and discipline that we ever thought. Most businesses i know have had the toughest times since the Great Depression, but most of them are coming out of this recession leaner and meaner, and better equipped to handle a change world and economic environment.

The same should happen with you, we have a lot of ups and downs from most of you in the past 8 weeks, and from that you will have developed your very own strategies on how to overcome the challenges that life always throws at you. Once you develop these skills, you won’t miss so many workouts, you won’t use the same old excuses to eat sugary/fatty food, and you won’t write whole week’s off anymore, you will tend to recognise bad habits beginning sooner than you did before, and you rectify your habits before they become destructive.

Sunday is always a great time to get out and about, and a means of making sure you start off your new week with a bang. We talked about hangovers yesterday, and now’s a great time to get rid of it, eat some decent food, drink plenty of water today and get back to feeling your old self. I never see sunday as a “let’s break some records day”, i see it more as a relaxing, and gather your thoughts kind of day, and a morning run is a key element in that process for me.

I’m looking forward to the start of week 9 tomorrow, and a big last month from all of you!

Twitt
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Day 53 Take pressure off yourself!

Many people started this challenge with a bang, and achieved great things in the first month, and some have started well, then fallen off a bit, and now are bang on course to achieve big things of course. Whatever your situation, I don’t think it is realistic at all to expect you to be perfect all the time, that simply isn’t possible!

It’s always good to take the pressure off at times, and you will realise by now that 12 weeks is quite a long period of time to give your very best effort.

This is why I give everyone a 80% target on eating good natural food. I gave you a target of 8 out of 10 in each workout you do, because 10 out of 10 is highly unlikely each time.

If you manage to get these kinds of averages in, you’re going to be classed as working amongst the top percentage, and pretty much guaranteed to reach your goals in your programme in a relatively quick period of time.

Putting undue pressure on individuals to do well has never been a tactic I’ve considered successful. I remember in my teens, we had a captain in our cricket team who would berate you if you bowled slightly off the mark, or it wasn’t your day when you batted you would have a verbal outburst directed at you.

 Hammering someone because they weren’t performing at their best proved to be a potentially damaging tactic to myself and destroyed my confidence.

I remember another captain years later who would always give me a reassuring pat on the back if I was having a bad day, and told me that he was sticking with me no matter what. The result? My game and confidence came back sooner than I thought, and that meant my performance was up to its normal standard very quickly and that reassuring pat on the back helped me an enormous amount, and put a spring back in my step.

All of us need someone to show confidence in us from time to time, and you have seen it on this site with some members seemingly be at all time low’s recovering to be at all time high’s in just over a week sometimes!

 I tend to use the tried and tested method of showing great encouragement when someone is a bit down, and having a harder time than usual. I’m in the business of getting the very best out of people, and less is more sometimes!

So when you are looking to assess your progress so far, try and look at the big picture.

If you are getting it right most of the time, then there’s no problem and your condition will be improving naturally.

If your food and training is all over the place, and you’ve gone back to your old ways, then you need to reassess your priorities, and ask yourself if you really want to be in the best shape of your life, or not?

Answering this question honestly will help motivate you to take immediate action, and make you realise if you have put too much pressure on yourself, or too little even?

The focus should not only be on this 12 weeks, but creating the trends and patterns that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

Nobody’s perfect all the time, so if your lifestyle is healthier now than when you started, you are still making steady progress, then that’s perfectly acceptable to me and keep having confidence in your abilities, that is the vital element you always need!

Twitt
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Day 52 pain versus pleasure

Day 52 Pain versus pleasure

We all have this choice every day in our lives, and making the right choice is critical at it will usually shape our future.

If a couple of weeks ago like jean, you were frustrated by the scales and whatever you seemed to do, the scales wouldn’t come down, then the easiest thing in the world would have been to wrap it in.

 This is avoiding the pain that you think will permanently be there if you carry on what you’re doing, so you go for pleasure instead and that could be instant gratification of fish and chips you haven’t had for a while? It could be a bottle of wine, it could be two bags of crisps, it could a big huge tub of Joe’s ice cream, whatever it is, that idea of pleasure in that precise moment seemed highly attractive!

Through looking at the reality of her progress once again, jean realised that the scales were not reality, and there were in fact lots of positives she has achieved so far, enough to carry on with the programme and not only that, but to have the confidence to raise her performance several notches, to a level she hasn’t been for years.

 This is now HER pleasure, the joy of feeling out of this world and making rapid physical improvements that take her back in time almost!

So you can see, the power of pain and pleasure can literally shape your destiny.

The feeling of throwing it all in must have happened to all of you at times, and it’s interesting to find out what keeps you going.

It’s also interesting to see what happens when you do “come off the wagon”, the way you feel after a binge on food or alcohol, or both! Most of you tell me that all of that sugary/fatty food actually makes you feel sick now, gives you a bad stomach and even headaches! This is actually a positive sign!

A positive sign in the fact that your body has now become used to good, natural healthy food, and it doesn’t tolerate “chemical experiments” going off in your body any more with all that junk you used to put in. Your body wants to be “looked after” now and wants the good life!

The idea of working out through the most icy and snowy January and February for some time has been off-putting, and even seemingly impossible for some. Those of you that managed it probably worked through the pain and got the instant pleasure afterwards when you had a bath or shower, knowing deep inside that you had improved yourself that day, and you actually felt better because you got some fresh air in your body, which as you know by now gets rid of dead cells and regenerates your body.

The pain of doing 84 days straight on this challenge is too much for some before they start, this is “too long” they say, but how can 84 days seem too long if it changes your life for good?

Those of you in day 52 today will be thankful you have made it this far, and have that warm feeling inside again because you know you have found new things out about yourself again, overcome all those challenges I have thrown you, and are still here to tell the tale!

 This should now give a lot of pleasure because you know you now have a diary of success, the fact that you’re still here means you are becoming truly successful, and are beginning to master the emotions that have troubled you in the past, and not allowed you to become the person you really wanted maybe?

Pain and pleasure are facts in life, but using them to our own advantage and not taking the easiest option every time are great strategies that allow us to become our true selves, and finally achieve what we know we are capable of.

Twitt
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Day 51 Use your imagination and let’s mix it up!

Day 51

One of the reasons why some people give up and some people keep with their exercise programmes is down to flexibility and variety. I’m not talking about stretching or anything such thing, I’m talking about being flexible with your workouts, and if you can’t do your scheduled workout, then do a variation of what you were aiming to do in the first instance.

For example, if you were planning to run for 30-40 minutes, and somehow you only had 10-15 minutes, and were still focused on great progress, I would rush over to the nearest most vicious looking hill, and hammer 6 sprints forwards, and 6 sprints backwards, each for a total of 30 yards of so. If you go flat out, you WILL get a great workout in!

Jean asked about interval training, should she do it? I think Jean already knows the answer, of course you should jean and show everyone what you can do! I always say that most people are only limited by their imagination when it comes to training variety.

Jean is talking about interval training, which could be described easily as jogging between one lamppost, then sprint the next post, then jog the next, then sprint the next one and so on. Now THIS is a workout that you will struggle to last more than 5 minutes each time, it is that intense!

Now we are starting to use our minds for our workouts, please don’t end up like some mindless zombie doing boring treadmill runs all the time, PLEASE, PLEASE vary it, not only because it brings great results doing different workouts, but freshens up your mind too!

One word of caution before doing ANY type of sprint work. In my experience, it is always advisable to do some kind of warm up before you sprint flat out, the always present threat of pulling a hamstring or groin never goes away, and the more weight you carry, the bigger danger there is. I’m not being prejudiced there, I’m just saying that I’ve done a million sprint sessions, and although you will get massive benefits from the session, the goal should also be not to get injured, in which case you probably wouldn’t run for a month at least!

The different ways of training are literally endless, and although you must still have a good structure in place, any type of workout is good as long as it’s safe and you’re capable of doing it. The more experienced you are, the more options you should have and as you should realise by now, it’s not simply a case of training for longer the fitter you are, that’s simply not true. It’s about doing “higher quality” training sessions in the time to suit you, and as long as you are improving physically, that’s a great sign surely you are doing all the right things.

Always stick to your fitness standards and we all have our benchmarks on how we are doing. Most people training with me may have a very tough hill as a benchmark, if they can do that consistently, they know they are in great shape. If you can do 40 press ups in one go, and your new limit is just 25, you know you have been slipping and you need to re-examine what you’re doing.

Being in shape physically and mentally can be easier than you think, as long as you know what your good standard in life is, and you try your best to stay there, even through the highs and lows that life often brings.

Twitt