Keri McKibbin Personal Training

Learning new exercises in the gym is very much learning new skills. I am horrified often when I get new members who may have trained other places before us, and their knowledge of training is very limited to say the least.

In my view, this is a dereliction of duty of the training/gym in my book. Every time someone comes into the gym, they need to be shown how to train right, especially in the early stages, 

Exercise form can go out the window from time for a couple of reasons too, trying to use too much weight or trying to do an exercise that you may not be quite capable of yet, due to your level of experience (which will only get better over time).

The main benefit of learning new skills is not only keeping your mind fresh and never getting bored, but it offers a brand new levels of results you perhaps wouldn’t have achieved by doing the “same old thing” all the time.

The main point of coming to a gym, apart from being in an encouraging environment that will elevate your mood and willpower greatly, is to do things the RIGHT WAY and not waste any of your valuable time.

It’s not about the time you spend at the gym, its what you DO when you are there. That’s when you results multiply quickly and you realise that joining the gym has been very much a great decision in your life.

The end of bank holiday and start of the new week highlights our mode of “surviving” in life, and then performing and thriving in life.

Over the weekend, we may have not have eaten so well as normal, drunk a little more than normal and been up for later than normal with less quality sleep.

Fast forward to our workout today and everything is much more of a struggle. 

We are very much in “survival mode”. If we live our whole week like this, not eating right and not training, then life soon becomes a dreaded survival mode, and it’s highly likely we will moan about life “is not fair” at times, but the truth is that a large part feeling better comes down to our habits.

Doing more of what we know will help us, and still doing a bit of what we enjoy too is always the magical “balance in life” we always talk about.

Tuesday to friday this week is a chance to thrive again. 

Today you can get the downside of bank holiday out of you once and for all, it will make sure you have a good night’s sleep and regenerate your energy stores so that you are ready to thrive in your workouts tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

Everyone wants to thrive in life, that way you are really making sure you love life, all you have to remember is the formula of training hard, eating well and rest well 80% of the time.

If you go back into “survival mode” from getting out of the habit of putting the work in, when everything becomes too big an effort and unpleasant to do, and nobody wants to end up there as its a big rut to get out of.

Today is critical to how your week turns out, not only physically but mentally too. Be kind on yourself.