Monday, 25th March

The biggest thing you can change this week would be getting salt out of your diet. You get enough sodium in most foods, and overdoing it with salt can be a really bad idea.

Adding salt to your foods is a cardinal sin, and this one will hold water and fluid in your body like nothing else! Fluid retention is unpleasant and I know a lot of people get it, getting rid of salt will get rid of it for you.

Cooking with salt is something that many people consider “natural”, the same factors apply here too. Adding salt to your foods is strongly linked to high blood pressure problems, water retention and other serious health problems. Salt added to foods that make them highly processed are causing big problems around the world, and nows the chance to turn back from that road and fire on all cylinders and reach new levels of performance and health!

In fact, there was a big story in the press at the weekend about salt being linked to more deaths than sugary drinks, this is a serious charge when you consider all the terrible press that sugary drinks have had lately!!!

When you get salt out of your diet, straight away you may notice your food doesn’t taste as nice, but these feelings will go soon enough, and when you get used to cooking without salt, you will never go back to your old ways!! It would be like going from having two sugars in your tea to no sugar overnight. Tough to start with but you will never go back to adding the sugar would you?!!!

Refreshing that salt is getting exposed in the press, after getting away with it to a degree compared to sugar and saturated fat!!

Time to change right now!

The benefits of no salt go all the way across the range, and from a health standpoint, as well as looking and feeling a lot leaner, salt has to go and it needs to go now.

Monday, 18th March

A great day to be Welsh on saturday, an unbelievable result and great to see a great team effort coming back so strong, especially after the nightmare against Ireland in the first game. This shows unity, teamwork and a deep seated belief.

Monday is the same for them though as it is for us. Time maybe to still reflect on the weekend, but our minds need to be very much on today and the week ahead. The professionals from saturday will today be back into their stride. They will be eating right again, taking in plenty of fluids, ready to train well and look forward to the weekend’s games.

You should have that same attitude too. It may sound fanciful to you, but getting a professional attitude will keep you in shape for a lifetime.

Those of you who are used to peforming at a high level most of the time, will be used to eating the right things at the right times. You will be used to taking onboard enough water throughout the day, you will be getting to bed early in the week to make sure you recover from your workouts, and this is very much close to the attitudes those boys on saturday are used to showing in their normal daily lives.

This is what i try to teach individuals in their training too of all ages-professional training techniques that will get you results far quicker, and just as importantly, in a totally safe way that won’t stress your joints!

You have all the information now to train and eat like a pro, never has there been an opportunity like right now too get into the shape of your life!!

Friday, 18th January

Had to take the morning off today, most people in wales are affected this morning, and i don’t really fancy doing damage to the car as i did in heavy snow a couple of years ago, or spinning up and down hills!!!

Anyway, the options for workouts today may seem limited to you, but theres a lot more than you think.

Walking in the snow (when it stops) is very tough and can give you a great workout! Your legs will be working overtime to say the least, and you will be very glad you took time out of the house to get some fresh air, especially when you are likely to be spending more time in the house over the next couple of days!!!

The house option is always viable with a typical inside workout.

Think a simple group of 5-6 exercises.

Press ups

Arm dips

Plank

Sitting up and down on chair

Alternate squat thrusts

Do your best on these exercises for a total of 3 times. This will make a big difference and give you a top quality inside workout!

Another good reason to train is to straighten out your eating.

I have found time after time that people never eat as well if they are stuck in the house all day, AND when they don’t exercise!

You have these two potentially weight gain situations happening today, so a workout of any sort should be very welcome in your day!!

We hav zero or sub-zero temperatures the next two days, so the same principles will apply, if you want to stay in shape that is!!!

Some people love the snow, and there’s no reason to let it destroy your workouts and good eating though!!

Monday, 17th September

First of all, a big shout out to all of those cyclists who took part in the Gower bike ride on sunday, some found it harder than others and the overall feeling was that it went very well. Another message of support to the lady who has knocked down by a car on the Mayals Road, let’s hope she is okay after being airlifted from the scene. This hammers home the dangers of road cycling and how aware we need to be.

Cycling in general is matter of simply “doing it” !

When you first start learning to ride a bike, you simply do that, you learn how to handle your bike, the ups and downs, the fall offs, the twists and turns, and eventually you move on to using gears, and you finally discover how to go up hills, as well as the fun part of going downhills!

Then when we cut a very long story short, and you can do all of the things necessary to have full confidence to ride on your own, we then move on how to actually improve your performance, to get stronger and faster on a bike and how to last for longer.

This is a journey that can last a lifetime, and one thing you learn for sure as you get older is to ride “smarter!”.

Selecting the appropriate gears, hitting the right revolutions per minute (i always like 80 rpm), and learning how to use “drafting” to benefit in terms of work you have to do, using the wind to your advantage and benefitting from other cyclists in front of you, or even cars sometimes!

We can talk about all of these techniques and ins and outs of cycling, but the actual DOING IT is how you really develop, how you really learn how to handle a bike, and how you can end up doing such fulfilling charity rides such as the Gower bike ride yesterday, move on to triathlons maybe, or just set your own individual goals, such as your first century as one of my clients did the other day, all for his own personal satisfaction.

Don’t waste a moment and enjoy your ride, it’s all a matter of getting out there!!!

Monday, 30th July

End of the month approaching fast and hope you are managing to get through the summer months in better shape than ever before?

If you are, then you are doing absoultely fantastic and you have undertaken regular reviews of your performance, and adjusted your training programme and eating regime to suit the goals you want to reach.

If you have been drifting, then you need to get someone to re-evaluate your programme, and then how to take it forward several steps from there.

We are all re-evaluating all the time when you think about it.

None of us have it easy and make gains without thinking about it.

Success in our physical conditioning and health requires us to think at all times in how to negotiate the twists and turns that life tends to throw at us.

If you have started missing your training sessions, and it has become a regular thing, then think about switching the time you train in the day. If something always “comes up”, then training first thing in the morning might be a great option for you, and takes all of the potential excuses out of your training aspirations.

If you can’t help picking snacks up in petrol stations or bottles of wine, we all have a favourite petrol station after all, then the simple way is to just fill up at another station where the big temptations aren’t there. This simple change will alter your behaviour if you give it just a week to get used to.

We all make associations with different things. Perhaps we like certain things in Morrisons that may not be good for us, and perhaps switching to another supermarket for a while might help you correct our bad habits/not tempt us so much with snacks that will de-rail our fat loss goals.

Nothing’s easy to get that’s worth getting, so be ready to read and react to every situation every day.