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Personal standards

A key way of determining your progress is asking yourself a realistic question.

“Am i performing better than this time last year?”.

If you can honestly say yes, then of course you’re on a great programme and doing a lot of things right.

If you say no, you’re not doing any better, you need to re-examine what you’re doing and scrap the programme you’re on, and come up with a plan that’s actually going to advance you, and not push you through the motions all the time.

That’s why im writing this, of course i have a plan that can not only raise your personal standards, but get you to the level when you’re at your all-time best performance.

Personal standards apply to everything. You buy new clothes so it makes you look a bit smarter, you wash every day with soap because you don’t want to smell, you brush your teeth because you don’t want them to fall out, you have to earn money because you don’t want the bank to repossess your house, you have to pay your bills because you want some light and warmth and the list goes on. Personal standards are key to each and every one.

Personal standards certainly apply to your exercise and eating standards.

If you shop for very sugary and fatty food, it may take you a few weeks but you’re definitely going to be putting on lots of unwanted body fat.

If you shop for fresher, more nutritious food, you’re going to look and feel fantastic, simple as that and you’re going to have a healthy glow about you.

If you don’t exercise or just go through the motions, your body is not going to be firm, you will be frequently out of breath over the slightest thing, and you simply won’t feel good.

If you exercise with passion and strive to do better and better over a longer period of time, you’re going to be feeling so energetic, and feel full of ambition for the future, nothing should be able to stop you if you approach everything with the drive and enthusiasm you approach your workout plan.

You can see your personal standards are key, lets set them high!!!!!!!!!

Twitt
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Workouts that mean something

Another key basic is doing your workouts that mean something, not merely going through the motions!

How many of you have gone through the same old workout over a period of months, then wondered why you weren’t getting any results?

How many of you may have been the same workout for years even, not making any noticeable improvement in your numbers, and everything has become too much like routine for you?

If this is the case, you are likely to be totally uninspired, and your chances of making meaningful progress are limited to say the least.

If your workouts are lame, you can be sure your eating is too. The same old stuff on the same old days can lead to a complete halt in your progress, and really make you wonder if its worth all the effort in the first place.

So enough of all this please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lets fix it right now, rip up your current workout routine, throw it in the bin and start again.

Throw out those boring walks on the flat ground, aim for hills instead. You will be far more satisfied climbing something substantial, you can measure your progress better, plus you will usually get a gret view at the top of the hill. See my running workouts section for ideas.

Throw out your normal weigh training exercises for a while. Substitute your old exercises with new ones working the same body parts, you will feel refreshed after feeling a bit uncomfortable the first week or so. You will feel stiff again, with the different angle of the exercise working your muscles in a different way, thats always good.

What about your bike rides? Are they the same routes? There’s a million and one routes around here to challenge yourself on, and who knows, you may actually find them more enjoyable!!!

Back to the subject, so you’re going to change everything around to allow you to freshen everything up, then you have to think about how much effort you’re putting into each exercise.

As discussed previously, think of 1-10 in terms of effort, 1 being sitting down, 10 working at your very max. If you aim for a 8-9 on each exercise, you will be guaranteed success because you will be getting so much more out of yourself. This will freshen you up and you actually feel alive again.

So in terms of your workouts every week, think 5 minutes before you start “let’s make it really mean something today”, and you’re not going to take medicore progress any more!!!

Twitt
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A better employee?

There are many parallel’s between your training and your place of work. I train many employer’s as well as employee’s, so i see both sides of the fence, and here’s what i see.

When we train, we are at some stage going to get tired, sick or sore, or all three and there are times we either pick ourselves up or just lie down on the floor. We know though that withing 5-10 minutes of doing our workout, we will feel automatically better once we get going and remember why we train in the first place.

Work is like that sometimes. When you are faced with a side of the job you’d rather not work on, you need to show the same perseverence as your training, and complete the task no matter what.

The same with time keeping. An employer doesnt want someone who drinks every night and has hardly any sleep, this is likely to lead to being highly unproductive in work. Most employer’s i know would like their staff to come to work with lots of energy and on time. If you’re in a workout programme of any kind, you will know how important it is to stick to a schedule and show up on time for your workouts, perhaps meeting a training partner that you never want to leave down. Being punctual is a good trait, especially when someone pays you to do it!!

Impatience is good sometimes too, how many of you who suddenly get into a health and fitness programme start getting impatient at being slow in your job, or those around you being slow? The fitter you get, usually the more ambitious you become and you want to achieve much more. You will take less time over the same job and this will lead to an increase in your desire for promotion etc.

How many people do you know who always moan at their job, part of the reason is usually they find their day a struggle and therefore hate their job, this is mainly down to them being unfit, overweight and lacking the health and energy to do their job with the pride it deserves. Am i right or talking rubbish?

The facts are usually the fitter, healthier employees tend to be better for the company involved, less sick leave, more productivity and generally happier workforce.

Twitt
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Day 47

Day 47 and many of you are starting to get through some of the limits you had previously set on yourselves. It may have felt as if you have been dragged through a hedge on here sometimes, but some of the best things in life are like that.

Think of a woman giving birth, absolute agony that is unimaginable but worth it in the end! Think passing your hardest exams, horrid doing all the work for them but worth it in the end, and makes you proud of yourself.

 Some people I have trained for a marathon never thought they were capable of doing it, yet six months later they achieved their lifetime ambition, or one of them anyway! Absolute hell doing the longer runs sometimes, but prepares you for the big day and you can enjoy the scenery even more if you’ve prepared properly, and getting a decent time which is always good!

This challenge is a bit like all of those things for you, and the same end result will be true. A sense of achievement, a sense that you have overcome your own demons, your own previous physical limits, your own previous discipline levels, and most importantly in my view, you have discovered you have to take action for a sustained period of time to become truly successful.

This talk may be a little premature for some of you, but those of you at day 47 will have already become a lot more powerful mentally too, and hopefully, your life and decision making process will never be the same again.

Those feelings you had when you left school and anything was possible may have been extinguished by life’s twists and turns over the years. Maybe some of those feelings have come back to the surface again? Maybe you have discovered you weren’t finished physically, and you’re ready to become a warrior again, and are not prepared to be pigeon holed by people’s perceptions of you?!

Most people have opinions of us, and sometimes its hard for people to accept we are transforming ourselves from a couch potato to an accomplished athlete. You may laugh at that but that’s what you are, an athlete if you are following this programme. I encourage different training based on you being your best athletic self. You may not be at the next Olympics but you can be at your own personal best?!

There is not one person I train who has gone back in fitness due to their age, I don’t people in categories that because they are 50 or 60 years of age, they are finished! That is not true, and if you go out to southern California like I have many times, its not unusual to see packs of 70-80 year old’s running in packs, its not unusual to see new mothers running in packs with their prams and new born babies, it’s not unusual to see healthier menu’s as the norm in restaurant, and not just as a token gesture, this place is always true inspiration for me and gets me fired up every time I go there.

So what’s the difference over here? Do we have to take a different lifestyle view because we are british? Do we have to base our lives around the pub, around the takeaway, around supermarket ready meals, or have we got a mind of our own? Those of you who really want to change but are too afraid too for some reason, I urge you to do so right now and really don’t put up with feeling so lacking in energy any more, it doesn’t have to be that way!

Don’t put up with being too afraid to go to the swimming pool, don’t be afraid of the beach, don’t be afraid to chuck all that rubbish like the ready meals and all the junk in the bin and take it down the tip! There is a way out that really works, but it depends on hard work, and a lifestyle that you need to practice before getting used to it, this is what this challenge is all about!

Here’s a great example of someone who has changed her life in an instant, a lady called Caroline has joined the programme and eaten 5 bars of chocolate since the beginning of time. I challenged her to not eat chocolate for a week, she initially had headaches for the first 3 days as the chemicals leaved her system and managed the whole week without chocolate.

Most people expected her to go on a chocolate binge after the week, but guess what? She hasn’t touched one since and her training performance has literally gone through the roof. Her squat thrusts have gone from a typical 30 to 100 in a week! That is the power she has given herself and from a lifetime of sugar intake, she now has changed her life in ONE WEEK! True story and there are many like hers on here too. That is the power you have, so are you can be pigeon holed as having as someone who can’t excel in life, or are you going to join the many, many people on here changing their lives on here every day?!!!

The time is now so let’s turn it all around in an instant!

Twitt