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Eating together

This may be one of the most important ways to stay lean and healthy, all sorts of research shows.

When we eat as a family, a couple or even on our own at set times, we are likely to be eating in a controlled manner, and are not as likely to overeat as we would be if we just grabbed some food on our own in no particular order and just “got on with it”. This can be especially true in stressful situations.

How many of us have just grabbed some food and eaten far more than planned, as we got in from rushing from somehere and just “went for it”! I KNOW I HAVE, more than once!

This is when a structure matters in our day, breakfast with kids is always great (i only get to do it on the weekend due to my very early starts), lunch is not often a possibility for most of you in the week but tea time certainly is.

The practice of eating together works on so many levels and these two important feeding times should be part of life.

It’s like drinking in the local pub, most of you will be drinking at a decent pace and not throwing those pints back in too much of a hurry. It’s anti-social to be falling around in any public place these days and being in control of yourself is something we are all looking to do.

If you compare that to drinking at home, you have no reason to control yourself at all, you can fall around the place and nobody’s going to know about it. Plus you can drink bottles of wine and cans of beer very cheaply too, at a fraction of the price in fact so “control” is not a word often used when drinking at home.

 I’m not saying that most people drink wildly every night at home, but hopefully you get my point that eating and drinking in more controlled atmsophere’s tend to make us think a bit more about what we’re eating and drinking, therefore leading to less calories and less potential to blow all the good work we are doing with our workouts?

Back to the eating at the table part as a family, its also a great time to introduce new foods to kids, new vegetables and new fruits, if they see you eating all good foods, they are likely to follow given time and if the new foods are introduced in a slightly more imaginative way.

Have a great weekend and hope everyone has put in some great workouts this week?!!!!!

Twitt
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Summer ideas

There are endless ways to get fit this summer, so its up to you to do something about it!

A great way to get started is to sign up to an event of some kind. For example, you have a 10k coming up in mumbles in September along with other events through the summer. We had our mumbles triathlon at the end of april, and I know just how much this motivated those who took part, it puts fresh impetus in your training and allows you to shoot for goals you may not have thought possible.

Try and be like a kid this summer too, if you played rounders/baseball in school, why not now with your kids or grandkids of with anyone. For example, playing with a baseball bat encourages you to work your stomach in the swing motion, and quite a few swings can be the equivalent of 100 sit ups, but in a different motion of course (side to side). Also, the stop start running throughout the game will burn a lot of calories, plus you will probably have a lot of fun in the process!

If you’re down the beach, you can either swim in the sea or if swimming is not your thing, try wading through the water up to your waist, or for the very adventurous try running through the water, this can be extremely challenging so give it a go, a great workout!

You can combine your swimming with some cycling and running too the same day if your fitness is really good. It doesn’t have to be huge distances, for example our sprint triathlon in mumbles every year only lasts around an hour, and the record is 46 minutes so you can make it as long or as short as you want. Plus it can be a lot of fun so try it out!

If you’re not keen on the swimming, just try the cycling and running together, this can be  great buzz for your legs and take your fitness to another level.

Some ideas for you so let’s do it this bank holiday weekend!

Twitt
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Warm weather training

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the last few days have been energy sapping to say the least.

Saturday and sunday in particular was very testing, and not the most motivating weather to get out there and train which means you need to adjust your training accordingly.

When its this warm, your recommended 8 out of 10 effort will naturally be a little less. Don’t expect to do the same things and try and cut back on your training duration too. Its not much fun being out there for hours on days like these.

It’s no excuse either to miss sessions either, all im saying is reduce your intensity in warm weather and take plenty of water onboard, this is the most important factor of the lot and dehydration and exercising too hard in the sun can literally kill you!

Its easy to miss sessions on account of the weather, its too warm, its too wet, its too cold, all of these are likely to happen in this country so dont fall for all of these excuses, all you have to do is adjust your training accordingly which really should not be too much of a problem.

The summer and warm weather is great for your eating too. Nobody likes to be eating big heavy dinners in weather like this, and salads seem to be making a welcome appearance at this time of year too! Automatically, you suddenly want to become lighter because you know in this weather, you will be wearing less clothes and you will be wanting to show off all the hard work some of you have put in during this long, cold winter!

The bottom line is still consistency for you, no need to miss workouts, no need for your fitness to drop and this keeps your motivation high too. Once you stop training, your enthusiasm to stay in shape will drop sharply so lets keep slamming in the workouts, just make sure you’re careful on the very warm days and take proper precautions!

Twitt
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up and down standards

We talked about the importance of filling in the gaps yesterday, and how important it was not to take extended breaks from your training, as often it is so hard to get back into it again!

What about your own individual workout standards though? Do you know them off by heart now? Do you keep a workout diary to make sure you havent slipped back? How important are those workout standards to you?

Lets start at the beginning.

When you first start training, i like to start everyone off slow. For example, if you start off with 4 press ups first time, then that’s the beginning and where you should judge your progress from.

If we fast forward 6 weeks later, and i catch up with you and are thrilled to see you are doing 20 press ups, that means you are now doing 5 times the number you first started off with, this is REAL progress and you should be pleased with yourself.

If your favourite run takes you 20-23 minutes, then staying in this good range or even pushing 19 minutes can be regarded as good progress.

What happens though if the press ups start sliding back to maybe 10?

What happens if the run takes you 28-30 minutes all of a sudden?

There can be a number of factors such as illness of course but barring that, the reasons are likely to be over-eating, over-drinking, not sleeping enough or simply missing lots of workouts.

The big progress will be judged to have largely stopped, and you have no direction in your training once more, leaving you lacking motivation and inspiration to carry on most of the time.

This is why your standards are all important.

Workouts should not be done in a haphazard manner, there has to be a plan and routine. This plan also needs to show progress and this is done by challenging yourself on a weekly basis. If you have the desire to personally improve, then motivation can be easy.

If you are suffering more lack of motivation, perhaps you need to re-visit why you are training in the first place, and what being healthy and being in great shape would mean/really means to you.

A REALLY good idea is to keep a workout diary and write down your workouts, or follow the list of exercises you are suppoed to be doing, and recognise that keeping to your usual high standard is not only desirable, but is vital to your over health and progress.

Try and assess your progress over a week, and if things have gone wrong, don’t dwell on them too much, just go out and fix them. Everyone had good and bad workouts, as long as the trend if upwards though, you can be more than happy that you’re getting fitter and healthier. Use the opportunity you have right now to hit your health and fitness with real passion and drive, no putting it off or leaving it until “another day”, let’s do it and make yourself proud of your performances!

No up and down standards, let’s keep them right up there!!!

Twitt
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Filling in the gaps

Here is the true secret of training and being healthy and a few of you go through it from time to time, EVERY single year!

Cyril is going through it right now!

On the challenge of 84 days, he was cycling in the snow and ice, pulling out the stops at every opportunity and being a true example to everyone.

Now he is going through a harder time now just to get going. The weather is a lot nicer, everyone wants to get into shape for the summer, and there is far more opportunity to go out and do things. There is more light and its sociable this time of year to get out there and do it!

So what’s the problem would you say?

What i mean by filling in the gaps is this, there are significant gaps usually in the year in most people’s health and fitness programmes, and this is the biggest reason why most people don’t get the kind of success that they think they deserve.

If you have had an impressive 84 days already this year, then that’s fantastic.

What happens though if your next 42 days are mediocre, and you start to miss workouts.

What happens when the next 7 weeks are seen as “a rest” by you.

Then it gets VERY hard to get going again, and it can take all kinds of motivation simply to get to do ONE workout again, leave alone make the impressive progress that you’re used to.

THESE GAPS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!!!!!!!!

If you have a few gaps each year, its going to be like a game of snakes and ladders. You will climb one ladder, then slide down a snake pretty soon, then you have to start again which is so frustrating isn’t it?!!!!

What would happen to your teeth if you didn’t brush them every day? Would you let them rot? Then start cleaning them again for a couple of months, then stop for another couple of months?

Of course not and you know it!!

So why do you let your body go backwards so much in these “gaps” each year? Why does that happen?

You clean your teeth every day as if its second nature, in fact it is!!

If you can get to this stage with exercise, doing it without thinking about it, then your plan will work amazingly well for you and you will look and feel fantastic for 12 months, EVERY year!

So what are you waiting for, let’s get out of this rut and do what you know is very possible in your life, being in great health is a choice for you all, let’s fix it and get back to basics right now and start monday with a bang!!!

No gaps this week, no gaps next month and no gaps for the rest of the year! This is my challenge to you!

Twitt