New Year’s Eve, 2012!

Exactly the time today to make new year’s resolutions!! Not the kind that everyone breaks or that are unrealistic of course, but ones that are absolutely sustainable and will work!!

Committing yourself to eat as much food that is fresh and natural, and plain without artificial sugar added has to be a worthwhile goal. I tuly believe that would be a major worthwhile new year’s resolution for you!!

Comitting yourself to being MORE active would be as much as most of you can realistically do. The time for setting olympic records may be over for most people, but fitting in an extra workout per week is not really that difficult to do surely?

Committing yourself to being better this time next year is something i have always aimed at doing, and it tends to work. This way you tend to do the little things each day, each week, each year to get yourself better, stronger, healthier and fittter, and it can really pay BIG dividends for you trust me!!!

Commit yourself to doing less of things that are bad for you, and you know which things they are by now surely?
Drink a little less alcohol, drop one day of alcohol consumption and no more binge drinking!!! How about eating less junk in the week, and serving a wholesome meal EVERY evening after work and really treating your body as something special and important to you.

These four commitments will be exactly what you should be looking at over the next twelve months, and ensure you WILL be better all over this time NEXT year!!!

Don’t fall for the fads and scam merchants, and please save your money and invest it on things that are really going to help you and your health!!!

Have a great new year’s eve, enjoy yourselves and get ready to hit it big in 2013!!!

Friday, 21st December

It looks as if the world didn’t in fact end today, although there are still a few hours to go!

It hasn’t been the end of the world for most people i train this year if they have made a lot of mistakes in their diet and exercising either!

Through explaining to everyone i train that they don’t have to totally blow their diet if they go off the rails now and again, this has resulted in my largest number of people training right up to the last friday before christmas. Not only that but we have record numbers scheduled to train christmas eve, the gym in burry port will see a surprising number on christmas day and especially boxing day!

The message really seemed to have worked better than ever before this year, and i would like to thank everyone for continuing to show so much dedication right up until the end of the year. The encouraging fact is that these are the people who would normally throw the towel in during early december.

So after persuading everyone to train all the way up to christmas or more or less, its heartening now to already have people tell me already how much better they are feeling in themselves, how much money they are saving by not buying all of the junk food that they normally do, how much they are saving by not buying sometimes vast quantities of alcohol etc etc, and how great its going to be NOT to wear the baggy jumpers at this time of year, because most are keen to show their new found bodies!!

I am hearing better sleeping experiences, and a wide variety of people are reporting one of their best measurements THIS WEEK!! We all try not to put on much in december, but to actually lose quite a lot of body fat and shave off 3 inches off your waist is sensational. Again, i have to say that this a big benefit of being measured regularly!

Thanks again for the huge effort, and let’s see what happens next week!!!!!!!

Tuesday, 18th December 2012

Having done many measurements over the last week, and most people fulfilling a lot of their goals and ambitions that they made at the beginning of the year, one question comes up all the time from most individuals i train.

“How much should i expect to lose in a set period of time”?

To answer that can never be exact.

It all depends on the effort you put in, how well you are eating, how much good sleep you get, do you keep yourself hydrated, do you miss workouts regularly or do you hardly ever miss, how much intensity to you put into your workouts, are your performances constantly improving, do your drink too much alcohol too often or do you keep it in moderation, is your workout plan good or is it more haphazard, do you stay positive in times of stress or do you let stress stop you from doing your workouts?

These are all potential helps or hindrances and are are definite factors when it comes to determining progress. No two months are exactly the same and i can spend as much time councilling people on their problems sometimes as much as i do training! This is what it’s like in the real world, “life” happens and you have to keep doing your best with it!!!

Baseline figures are possible though and here’s what has been typical for me working with individuals for a lot of years now!

Waist-1.5-2 inches a month off, sometimes more

Hips-1.5-2 inches a month off, sometimes more.

Resting heart rate-2-3 beats per month down OFTEN MORE

Blood pressure-big success in getting people back into a normal healthy range

Body fat-1.8% down a month, often more!

These are exciting changes you can make your life, and all deserved to be measured!

More on this tomorrow.

Friday, 5th October

Metabolism talk rounds up our week, and if you can get this vital subject under control, and firing FOR you 24 hours a day, then you are likely to be burning fat and likely to achieve the body you always wanted, AND STAY THERE!!

One of the most unlikely tips i can give you that you wouldn’t have thought about regarding metabolism is water!

Most people don’t regard water as boosting your metabolism but they couldn’t be more wrong!!!

Water is paramount to a lean healthy physique.

Water is crucial for flushing fat out of the sytem, and is crucial for your body’s messaging system to fire correctly. And drinking water can actually raise your metabolism!

Being dehydrated can give you sugar cravings, tricking your mind into thinking you are hungry, rather than thirsty! Keeping hydrated keeps your body in balance, keeping you in tune with your body’s actual needs.

The less cravings you have, the more fat you lose because you’re less likely to make poor choices.

A recent german study showed that subjects who drunk healthy amounts of water, compared to others who didnt drink enough, BURNT around 30% more calories, and their metabolic rates were proven to increase for the same amount. This started within 10 minutes of drinking the water, and reached a peak 40 minutes after drinking the water.

The moral of the story is drink more water, and if you train hard in the gym, drink even more!!!

One minor point is to say that you should keep it to water too. If you fall for misleading information about energy/sports drinks, then you will be consuming almost pure sugar for no real reason apart from some dodgy marketing claim that has no basis. Your performance will go up 33% if you keep fully hydrated, so don’t fall for similar sports drink claims. Sports drinks are only worthwhile after 60 minutes of continuous exercise.

Time to get your metabolism working at its best levels, and make fat loss much easier than you ever thought!!!

Wednesday, 26th September

As time goes by, technology allows us to do everything faster, more conveniently, and achieve a lot more in a record amount of time!

This has been proved to me yet again by two completely different training clients this week.

One is a 16 year old boy, who has already been training 5 years with me, and has gone from a very overweight young man, hating sport, to someone who has become very accomplished in exercise terms, is now very lean and pacy, and has reached national level in one of  his chosen sports, he plays three different sports now, and none of them rugby or foootball!!!

He has become very organised now, and now keeps training diaries and records of everything he does.

He told me the other day that he finds this whole process fascinating, purely because of the staggering progress he has made over the 5 years. He was shocked to see how he is training now, compared to the light and basic programme he had to start! He now realises that he can get in shape in a very quick period of time! He trains 5 times a week for 25 mins a time, and that’s it!!

This is how technology can work for you!

Then the other individual is someone who used to be fit and healthy, but now has several issues with his health and life in general.

He tried to get fit on his own, doing the same things he did when he was 20. It turns out he can’t do any of those things anymore, and he came to me in desperation, realising  even at 45 years of age, his body couldn’t move in any way like he used to, and he panicked about it!!

Six weeks on, he feels alive again! He is moving better, stronger, leaner and finally getting control of his diet, realising that whatever goes into his body will have a direct effect on the way he looks and feels!!

Best of all he says, exercising 4 times a week for 40 mins a time suits his lifestyle, and all the new moves and exercises are a tiny sacrifice to get him feeling young and healthy again.

Exercise doesn’t have to be all grunt, using your brain can make the whole process a lot more enjoyable and dramatically speed up your process!!!