Wednesday, 2nd October

The courage to commit to an exercise programme can never be underestimated.

The courage to walk through that gym door, or make that first telephone call setting up your first appointment is always going to be painful.

The first session is a worry to start with, but with the right guidance you can develop quickly.

I start every individual slowly and steadily, no matter how fit that person is to begin with. It’s a case of building things up at a steady level and not trying to run before you can walk. Doing it any other way, or overworking someone is downright irresponsible and dangerous!

Everyone has worries, doubts, negative thoughts going through their minds before they start an exercise programme, but the very best way to get rid of all those emotions is to actually go through with the sessions, and begin your journey to developing into a much healthier, fitter and more active version of perhaps the current version of you.

Everyone has moments of indecision, but its in those moments that your destiny is shaped. Those crucial decisions will dictate if you improve, how quick you improve and how enjoyable the process becomes.

For example, with the colder, darker, wetter nights to come, the easiest thing in the world to do is sit at home, say its too cold and wet to go training, and sit on the settee all night.

This is why I tell people all the time that those sessions are the most important to make. If you get to the gym, then at least you know you are going to do something highly positive at the time. If you stay in the house, then you will be doing absolutely nothing to improve your health and wellbeing.

In life, we have big decisions to make every day, the decision to get healthier starts right now with you, and you should be in control of how to do it. Manage your time better and schedule in your sessions, making time for yourself has never been more important!

Monday, 16th September

Following a fitness programme where you just do, let’s say some work on a cross trainer, some treadmill maybe and a short spell on a bike could be described as very popular in the big clubs, and you would be one of many doing the same thing.

This programme undoubtedly has some health benefits and well done to you on exercising regularly.

If you do the same aerobic type of work, and you throw a little weight training in, then you will do even better. This is a better balance than the first example definitely.

Unfortunately, this is where even the most ardent exercises’ variety of training programmes ends, stuck in the 1980’s and not a thing has changed since! I have highlighted the fact that if you do indeed follow this way of training, then I congratulate you on actually training, instead of talking about it like most people do!

The point here is that exercise programmes have moved on so much more since then. A lot of people aware of the “core” these days, and the importance of working it, but most of these people haven’t a clue on how to work the core, and don’t know a thing about the different tools you should be using to strengthen your core.

They don’t know because they usually are not shown, not given a programme with a great deal of variety, and this is a great problem of the big gyms, when 3000, yes you heard it, three thousand people have to join for them just to BREAK EVEN!! They cant afford to get the quality of staff in, and you could never hope to service 3000 people anyway. This is why 90% of the big clubs are deep in debt or in bankruptcy already, both in the UK and US.

This week we will talk about different ways to make your programme work for you, come into 2013 finally in terms of training science, and actually enhance every area of your body in strength, flexibility and getter leaner than ever, plus reducing the risk of injury right now and in the future!

Friday, 13th September

If you’re putting the big workouts in this week, and are looking for superior results, then you need to keep up the relentless intensity of the workouts. Working in a low rest, big energy exercise cost kind of way, will reduce your body fat and seriously increase your strength, making you enjoy the best of both worlds.

The lack of rest in between sets is the real killer, and this is the biggest challenge to keep up. It requires a lot of focus and determination in getting the job done well and seeing it through.

The culmination of this effort is always significant, and getting used to a typical 45 seconds in between sets is ideal. Having 5 minutes rest in between weight training set is totally unacceptable if you want to be well conditioned!

Going through the motions with plenty of rest in between sets is what most people do, but you’re not most people and you demand that much more out of yourself surely by now

Fighting through these type of workouts is always tough, this is why good food will always power you through, help you recover quickly and allow you to grow into your next phase of development.

Training hard, eating right with an abundance of nutrients, and regular proper sleep are all of vital importance if you want to keep on moving forward and keep getting better and better, and age doesn’t really matter in that equation for getting better and better as we spoke about yesterday!

Making the effort to do a workout on your own when its easier to miss it and do something else, is a critical decision that many people get wrong, and the most important workout for you can be the extra workout on the weekend that you may be putting off for whatever reason. The returns on the weekend workout can be considerable though, so use even a 20 minute window for getting even more out of yourself.

6 extra workouts in a 6 week period can change a lot again for you in health so start putting an extra one at the weekend and you will only benefit in a big way.

Give it 6 weeks and your body will look and feel a lot different. Most people eat and drink more calories at the weekend, so it makes perfect sense to be far more active.

Tuesday, 10th September

The worrying news is that the faddy diets never stop coming.

Apart from the herbalife disaster, lighter life horror stories, the Cambridge diet example of perpetual yo-yo dieting, and you add a ton of other so called “diets” to these in the “hall of fame ruin your health and mind faddy diets list”, there comes a new one over the horizon.

Have you heard about the eat for 5 days, fast for 2 days diet?

Well, you may have because its been gaining some traction lately!

They claim to lower cholesterol, help with diabetes and generally help you lose weight-quickly! Interesting that nobody in the medical community is willing to back it, in fact they have come forward to publicly dispel its claims, and urge the public not to do it!

The downsides include a big hit to general health and immune system, some women have found themselves becoming infertile under medical tests, and all sorts of fainting and general not so pleasant side-effects.

Fasting has been around for many, many years and some people claim it works wonders but only now and again is it supposed to be practiced.

I have never tried it but I know there can be dangers with anything extreme, especially as not eating for 24 hours, but this new one says you shouldn’t eat for 48 hours, just drink liquids!

A lot of the medical community is up in arms and rightly so. The horror stories are likely to continue if you are doing without food for 48 hours. Of course you will lose weight by not eating, it doesn’t take a genius to work that one out, but the cost physically and emotionally cannot be worth any temporary short term weight loss!

15 weeks to Christmas today, and it’s a perfect opportunity to save your money, go and shop for good wholesome nutritious food that will do your body good, you will end up feeling a whole lot better, and in the process you will most likely drop a significant amount of body fat, especially when combined with a sensible exercise programme over those 15 weeks!

Friday, 6th September

Once you finish the marathon, you may think that’s it but its really not.

After the aching has subsided, and your toes, blisters and back has recovered, you still will likely stay in this very positive mood and state of mind for around 3-4 months afterwards.

The marathon often gives you a thought process where you start to think that anything is possible.

Six months later, you may develop an urge to do a marathon again the year after the last one you did. This is not uncommon.

The shorter runs you get back into after a marathon are both a relief and make you think that maybe you are cheating yourself.

The lack of injuries and minor niggles are great, but somehow you get to miss the aches and pains of the ultimate challenge.

All of these thoughts and deliberations are likely to go through your head for a year or two after the marathon, after all you have accomplished so much by going through the marathon in the first place, and you have overcome so many obstacles, then maybe it is true that nothing really is impossible!