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Get away from time, concentrate more on performance!

Who do you think is fitter out of the following and in the best physical condition?

The 100m runner who runs it in under 10 seconds or the one who does it in 12 seconds?

The runner who can run up a 2 mile gradient in 14 minutes or the one who takes 25minutes?

The swimmer who takes 10 lengths in 15 minutes or the one who does it in 25 minutes?

The cyclist who can cycle around pembrey country park in 30 minutes or the one who does it in 60 minutes?

The person who does his/her 3 circuits of inside workouts without a break, or the one who has to take a break after each exercise?

The person who power walks with her dog or the one who ambles along stopping to talk to everyone over the same distance and takes twice as long?

The one who recovers very quickly from a tough exercise session or the one who takes all day to recover from a tough session?

The one who can do 10 sprints up steep hills without much of a break apart from walking back down the hill, or the one who needs 3 minutes break in between each sprint?

The person who focuses on constant improvement every month or the ones who goes through the motions every day, every week, every month, every year, not focusing on improvement, just “getting through it”.

There are exceptions to a couple of these but in the main, if you are faster and stronger at something, it is a great sign that usually your body fat is lower, your strength is better and your health is in great shape. Since we don’t really want to be getting involved in races against our friends, we need to start competing with ourselves a bit more!!!

You should be able to tell if you’re improving right away. Are you better than last week, last month or especially last year? Are you going through the motions in your training or do you really try to do your best in most sessions? Did you have health worries in the past and have you tried living your lifestyle in a much healthier way to alleviate those concerns? These are the questions you should be asking yourself, especially as we come to the end of the year. Its always a time for reflection and its not too late to finish the year off at a high if you really want to.

Those distance high’s may seem a long way off, but if you train regularly, eat well and sleep well, and have patience, those once proud moments in your life will be your again!

Lets give it a go and get going!! Nine weeks to christmas so lets get a move on!!!

Twitt
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Showing up is always the hardest thing to do!

A good response this week from many of you on your training efforts and many of you are  now developing fresh confidence levels to reach your goals.

The secret i developed a long time ago was that if i show up here enough times, if i show up training enough times, i show up and shop for good nutritious food enough times, if i keep on believing in what i do every day and i use that mantra for all areas of my life, i will be successful.

People ask all the time how they can be more successful, how they can be healthier, how they can become fitter etc etc, and the answer doesn’t change a whole lot!

There is a book you can read for free online called Think and grow rich published in 1936 by napolean hill that i recommend as essential reading. Google “think and grow rich” and follow the links, no catches and i repeat, its all free!

Its not what you think though, its not about money as you may guess, its about fulfillment and getting what you want out of life, rather than life making you a prisoner in your own body and mind, afraid to take risks and not being able to try anything.

This book encourages you do read just one chapter every day and more or less guarantees success should you follow the advice from real life case studies. You dont need any magic power to read it or do what the book says, it promises anyone that they can achieve anything they put their minds to, and everyone i know has read it has found the promise to be true.

The main message from the book is for you to find the strategies to become successful in your chosen areas, then perform those strategies each day until you become a master and do these things automatically. When this happens, you become successful without making much effort because your life and daily actions will have changed so much over a short period of time.

The very most important thing i took out of it was the consistency bit, meaning as long as i showed up every day and approached all my tasks with real effort and dedication, good things would naturally happen.

We go over it all the time on here and try and work out in your head how much more successful you would have been if you were more consistent with your food, your training, your sleeping and your positive attitude. How much would that have made a difference to your results and the way you feel?

Go on and be honest, how much more would you get out of yourself if day in day out, your performance in every thing you did was higher? Interesting thought and this is the message you ought to get to really improve big time once again!

Twitt
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Scan the internet or just do it!!!

If you want to get fit these days, there is so much information out there, its not true! I wouldn’t call most of it “information”, i would call it MIS-INFORMATION!

If all of this worked that’s presented on the internet, then how come the obesity epidemic is still rising at an alarming rate, over 60% of the general population is considered overweight, adults and children are getting bigger and bigger, the NHS is crumbling under the pressure of adults in this country being overweight and all the negatives that brings, etc etc?!!!

The truth is that most of us have become lost under the weight of all this mis-information and we have forgotten “how to do it”!!

From dvd’s of so-called celebrities cashing in, to so called fitness “experts” demonstrating exercises in the media so complicated just to show how much “knowledge” they really have when in fact the opposite may well be true. Some could be considered helpful, many could be considered in the group of “a little knowledge is dangerous”!!

We can literally scan the internet all day long and come up with about 1000 different solutions on how to get fit. You used to exercise to get fit and healthy, but have you noticed now its mainly about “losing weight” rather than the health aspect anymore.

It is mostly about peddling dubious products that are usually about as helpful as a handbrake on a canoe, or in some cases downright dangerous.

In the dangerous column, you have two massive companies gone bankrupt over the last two years on their claims about losing weight through “fat-burners”. These tablets usually include ephedra which can put severe strain on your heart, and in some cases have killed people in the USA.  They promise the world, often they deliver misery through ill health.

The bottom line is that if you see adverts in the paper, tv or internet promising you things seemingly too good to be true, then they usually are that, TOO good to be true and downright fraudulent in nearly every case.

Same with exercise equipement, they will claim madonna uses it, or so and so uses it, but in reality this is rarely the case. Quite interesting to see someone else claiming to train madonna, that is around the 7th trainer i have heard of in the last 5-6 years. Either she’s not happy with her trainer or people just claiming to train her to peddle some product or to get some “acclaim”.

The bottom line for me and in any business is to retain clients and all the individuals or businesses i train right now have been training for many years, so i have no need to make fraudulent claims like these bogus companies! These fraudulent companies need too start producing real long lasting results, rather than latching on to some celebrity that they think will take them to the promised land.

We talk on here all the time about doing the fundamentals/basics all the time and you won’t need any of the fancy stuff. You WILL get amazing results from doing the tried and tested in terms of workouts and eating, thats a fact and deep down, you really know that even if you have spent hours on the internet “trying to get into shape”!

Its time to put down the computer and get off your backside and get out there and train, simple as that and JUST DO IT!!! There’s heck of a lot of difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it!!! Lets go!

Twitt
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Weekend results

Im feeling pretty good as we approach the weekend, this is a great weekend full of wonderful weather and the perfect opportunity to do a lot of stuff outside!

Im also feeling good because my eating has been good since monday and i will have my treat tomorrow probably. This relaxes me a bit and you should feel the same if you’ve been eating well all week and you can have some of what you fancy tomorrow!

So work it out, you have had 5 days of excellent eating and its time to enjoy yourself the weekend. Im not saying wake up first thing in the morning and stuff yourself until sunday night, but hopefully you’ll know what i mean! Moderation in everything can only be a winner when it comes to long term success and you should start as you mean to go on, instead of trying a new “wonder diet” every couple of months. If you’ve been eating badly all week, why not treat your weekend as having more time to cook and experiment with new healthy ways of cooking?

Your body likes continuity and a settled life. Healthy eating may not sound exciting, but if you’re creative with your cooking and pick good quality food, your taste buds will soon become accustomed to good old fashioned healthy food.

We as a society are addicted to foods high in sugar and fat, and its quite an achievement to get away from these foods that ultimately are likely to deliver poor health. You ask all the rich people in the world with poor health and they would give it all up in monetary terms to be back in full health again. Anyone who has been very ill will tell you same.

Most of you will have much more time on your hands the weekend, use it wisely and do the workouts and activities you consider most fun. Combine them with your family if possible and get everyone involved. Workouts hsouldnt always be something you do as some kind of solitary pursuit.

Good health is meant to be shared with everyone and good company will always help you enjoy it more, such as a fun training partner.

As i said yesterday, the weekend is shining down on us big time so lets make the most out of it!!

Twitt
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Show up and fight!

Pretty amazing progress is within all our grasp.

You must have heard some people who have made it big in life say that as long as you really focus on what you’re doing, what you’re trying to achieve, and the most important thing, YOU NEVER GIVE UP, then you can achieve absolutely anything you put your mind to.

If you haven’t got to where you want to go yet, and if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will probably be honest enough to admit where you’re going wrong.

You will have probably had wonderful periods of training and eating, you will probably have had some mediocre periods of eating too, and nobody can expect you to be wonderful all the time. But as long as you keep showing up all the time, or most of the time, then all good things await you. You have to trust me on that.

The more experienced you get, hopefully the down times should get less and the good times should form the majority of the year.

Each and every one of you tell me you feel lousy when you don’t train or eat badly, and especially when you do both.

All of this comes down to self-confidence or more likely, lack of self-confidence at times. Im not expecting you to be this super confident super achiever type of person. What I am expecting though is to show up in your workouts, when you make your big shop of the week, I wouldn’t expect to see white bread, biscuits, crisps, oven chips etc in your shopping trolley.

I’d expect a certain standard and that is very achievable for all of you.

The chocolate, crisps and wine stops in the petrol station during the week are not acceptable if you want to be in shape, they’re really not. It’s a free country for sure and we have a choice on how we look and feel. You know how to do it by now, you know that faddy diets will eventually drive you crazy and overweight, you know that moving is far better than sitting and you know the wonderful feeling of getting fitter and fitter.

So lets do this thing! Aim to improve every week but if you don’t EVERY week, then that’s no problem, but I guarantee if you show up all the time for your workouts, you take pride in your food shopping and what it contains, you don’t drink alcohol in the week, GOOD and even GREAT things will happen to you throughout every week, every month for the rest of your life.

Are you going to stick it this time? Or are we going to keep having this conversation?

TIME TO CHANGE RIGHT NOW!

Twitt