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The train has left the station!

Getting some momentum in your training makes all the difference, as debbie is obviously discovering now that she is off the alcohol. Things are moving in the right direction for her, and she says she hasn’t had to make this  huge kind of effort to get there. Once she got into a new routine, and one that she has been very familiar with in the past, she is continuing to make the right choices and she is confident to post it here, and to inspire others.

She says its never too late, and although she didn’t do as well as she could have in the challenge, she is certainly making up for it now!

It’s like a train leaving the station, it chuggs away very slowly and with a lot of noise when it leaves the station, but when it leaves eventually, it gathers momentum and when at full pace, is a sight to behold and has huge momentum and nothing’s going to stop it!!! That sounds like what debbie is moving like now, and with that kind of mometum, the results and overall progress could be huge.

Now if you ask someone what feels better, is it a few beers and a life of takeways and chocolates? Or a life of feeling good about yourself 24 hours a day, full of energy, occasional treats and a good balance in your life of eating well 80% of the time, exercising well 80% of the time and sleeping well?

Heck of a choice there and i know some of you will go with the beers and takeways!! And its your choice because we are still a free country and you can make any choice you want. However long it takes you, as long as you get your life on a more healthy level, then thats great news to me and it will be for you i’m sure!

All i know is that anyone who has had a few years of eating rubbish, and not training at all, and THEN changing it around by eating the right things, and suddenly putting exercising into their life, ALWAYS TELL ME that their life is now better, and should have done it years ago, THIS HAPPENS 100% OF THE TIME!

If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go, you never know you may like it!!

Twitt
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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
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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
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The right path

It’s never to late to take the right path. We have all chosen certain ways of doing things, approaching challenges etc, and many of us are too stubborn to change course, even if the ship is at times heading firmly for the rocks.

It stands to reason that we fall for the best marketing technique when choosing a way to be healthy. Actually, that was wrong, most marketing techniques are aimed at those who want to lose weight, whatever the consequences! Being “healthy” doesn’t seem to matter to most people as you would think. Associating losing weight with being totally healthy is misguided at best.

Living the healthy lifestyle involves a number of factors, and losing some weight can be beneficial of course if you have to lose in the first place.

Choosing what food and drink goes into your body matters greatly.

Exercising regularly matters heck of a lot.

Sleeping properly is hugely important.

Living life in a positive manner supports your immune system, being negative often brings on stress which attacks your immune system, you can see how important this is.

I find that most people go through all the marketing techniques before they get to me usually. I can be the last resort to some, but bringing people back to doing the right thing is always the answer.

Doing the “right thing” again after going through so many faddy ways of doing things may not work immediately believe it or not. Because you will have confused your body so much by constant dieting, and different methods of dieting, your body can be resistant to new ways of losing the weight.

I will concentrate on doing the right thing and your body has to get used to finally getting used to consuming all the important nutrients again. You have to get used to working out properly, doing the right exercises on the right amount of days, with enough rest in between. This will help you sleep better, which is massively important to your ultimate success.

So once you’re on a solid plan, regular improvements should come almost on a weekly basis to start with. These improvements will constantly increase your belief in the programme, and with that will come self-confidence.

After you’ve had some experience doing the right thing continuously, you will wonder how on earth you ever fell for all the faddy marketing techniques in the first place. Don’t feel like a fool, there are people out there making a lot of money in “selling” you this imaginary result that is never likely to happen, or at least last for an extended period or a lifetime.

So whatever your position, its never too late to get on the programme and put your body on a firmer course. All I know is that this way works, there may be some ups and downs, but ultimately you’re going to arrive in a better place, and you will be able to keep it up for life without too much trouble.

Its always the right time to do the right thing!

Twitt
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With a purpose

If something is worth doing, then its worth doing well.

If you’re planning a workout, make sure you put some effort into it, and you’re not guilty of going through the motions.

If you struggle to get going some days, then get going anyway. I find if i get a day like this, i feel a whole lot better 5-10 minutes into the workout. After the workout, i am really so glad i got going in the first place, and everything feels better after the event!

We all would like to act on some of the takeaway leaflets that come through the door sometimes, wondering in fact if we are really missing something? When we fall for it again, the reverse is true of how we feel after a workout. We feel all groggy, sluggish and generally terrible, exactly how we didn’t want to feel!

Doing things for a purpose works on a time basis too. We all have constraints on our time from time to time, and if we train with a purpose, we usually have to train LESS than most people do, because we have a purpose in mind and simply we want “to get the job done”!

Making changes in our body fat, and energy levels can be done with eating with a purpose too. I gave you the pizza example earlier, or just about any takeaway, when we feel terrible after junk. The opposite can be done with “good” and “clean” eating, we automatically feel better when we do this, but we have to shop with a purpose too, this means pre-written shopping lists with intent on being healthy and being well-nourished. This is easily done and you don’t have to think about it too much.

Good planning is often imperitive if we are aiming for some impressive results. When this planning becomes second nature, then good results and a good standard of health and fitness becomes natural, and almost like being no effort at all.

Most people are impatient and unwilling to give it time. This is a common reason for failure. If you give anything enough time, you will do well as long as you’re sure what you are doing contains common sense and has every chance of working.

One of the secrets of success is simply showing up time after time, remember the 80% rule about doing everything right. Then 20% of the time, do whatever you want and enjoy the treats in life on all sorts of levels.

Twitt