Tuesday, 6th May

Determining your best workout should be thought of in terms of what does it cost your body in energy terms. This is the real way that great things are going to happen for your body.

A lot of men tend to measure their workouts on how good it makes them look, or think it makes them look. For many men for example, they tend to make Friday night “chest and arms” night because the chance are that they are going out later and want to look their “best pumped up”!

We like to think that we have changed that thinking completely.

Many women think that as long as they hit the treadmill and spend endless hours on the bike, that the fat will be “stripped away” and they will get their “beach body” far quicker this way.

Weights many females think are for the “bulky look” and they really don’t need them, in fact many females never hit the weight room. It should be obvious by now that we train with huge variety, and mixing strength training up with everything else is the way to go.

Many of our women are stronger than many men in certain tests, and all of those women are getting leaner, would certainly never be classed as “bulky” and are reaching new standards of fitness on a weekly basis.

Energy cost of workouts are a good way to think about your efforts, and will have a direction relation to lowering your body fat, getting you leaner and sending your fitness levels through the roof!

The tyres, the prowler, sledgehammer work with little rest in between, has a lot more energy cost than doing curls and leg extensions with very light weights for example.

It may be nice doing a couple of light weights exercises, and chatting on the bike for half hour at low intensity, but your time in the gym should be as productive as possible. Your weight sessions should be high on energy cost too, just like the ones I keep showing all of you all the time, and all of you are doing very well on them.

Use your gym time wisely, and you will always deliver far more impressive results.

Sunday, 13th April

We put so much emphasis on balance training because every single person needs it in their lives and I mean every day.

You need proper balance to even walk and run properly, you need it to perform every physical task, from carrying shopping , making food, doing the washing, taking part in sports, just about everything.

Most of you carry things one side, your school bag, groceries out of the supermarket, lifting in your job or at home, playing golf is ALL one sided for example (that’s why I see so many hip and back problems at the gym), even in cooking you are often bending and moving from side to side reaching for different things, the facts are we live an unbalanced life in terms of most of our physical movements if you really think about your daily life.

Some of you know you have poor balance, some of you will be unlucky enough to find it out unfortunately when you may have a fall of some kind or feel really unsteady and this can cause all sorts of problems.

It’s a simple fact that everyone is being far less active than they used to be, and balance and development of balance is going to be a big casualty.

One lesson of PE every week is not going to help kids get the amount of balance they need. How the government got away with getting rid of the double lesson PE is a national disgrace?!!

What happens when the child leaves school? Studies show that there are far less people playing team sports than ever before.

Adults slip easily in a lifestyle of inactivity because of the pull of computers, tablets and media. It’s easier to get anything done online these days, and it takes effort to exercise so its not much of a choice for some people.

So balance you will all know by now is something we concentrate an awful lot on, right from the start and all the way through our programme. We want you to move fundamentally better and pain free for the rest of your life. Assessing your balance on a regular basis should be an absolute priority for you.

Wednesday, 9th April

Development in your programme can always happen quicker than you think as long as you are willing to buckle down and work at your fundamentals every day and not compromise.

If you don’t eat breakfast as within one hour of getting up, you are struggling from the very start of the day. This is an absolute must for all sorts of reasons.

If you try to run before you can walk in exercise terms, you are likely to get injured or lose interest in your exercise programme very early, or both things will happen.

If you have a back problem, and most of you do or will do in your lifetime, then you need to address that immediately before proceeding. Then you only advance with caution under supervision at all times but it can be sorted out gradually and for good.

If you are eating well 80% of the time, then that’s great.

If you are not eating well, then your workouts are always going to be a struggle, you won’t perform well, and you won’t recover from them anywhere near as well as you could do.

If you want to get into good shape, you have to accept that you need to make a lifestyle change full stop. It doesn’t have to be some kind of unachievable tough regime either, you have to fit it into your weekly schedule and anyone can do it.

All it needs is planning and tweaking your workouts to suit life’s everyday inevitable challenges.

Not one person I train has “all day to exercise”, we all live super fast lives now, so scheduling it in as part of your week is vital.

Friday, 4th April

Once you start improving on a regular basis, it can be difficult to stop as long as you keep to a few simple rules. This momentum should never be understated. Being in a good place most of the time keeps your mindset strong and your body feeling fit and strong, and as if nothing is impossible.

Same when you start putting on weight and inches around your hips and waist. This can be a major effort to stop it happening, to reverse the process. Suddenly you will have to change what you are doing, really change your lifestyle again in order to stop the rot setting in.

So its easier to stay in shape than get out of shape.

Being in shape is associated with feelings of happiness, satisfaction, wellbeing, plenty of energy and an ability to do practically anything physically, and your mental strength is likely to be greatly increased.

Being out of shape is associated with being much more irritable, wonder all the time how you could feel and look so much better, you may tend to put off any physical challenges, a shortness of breath even on the most ordinary of tasks, and your mental strength is always under pressure.

So as it seems as if it may be a struggle to get in shape, once you get there you will automatically feel much better across the board, and perform better in every area of your life.

Sunday, 16th March

Since we have become the opposite of gyms who just encourage their members to spend just endless hours on the treadmill and bike, it’s always vital to tell you why.

The variety in the gym has never been greater, and there is a strong reason for doing every one of these new and old exercises.

Every exercise has an energy cost.

Walking slowly has a relatively low energy cost, whilst doing sprints full tilt up hills has a very high energy cost.

Flipping tyres has a high energy cost, whilst pedaling at low intensity on a spin bike will have a low energy cost.

It stands to reason that if you doing a number of high energy cost exercises in your workouts, you are going to get much better results than most people who go through the motions at most other places.

This is not to say that you have to do every single toughest exercise there is, in every workout! That is wrong and often dangerous and counter productive.

Thinking about your exercise programme though is vital, and to constantly question yourself if you are really getting the best out of your training each time is a very healthy place to be.

There is a chart on the whiteboard showing what methods and equipment you are using, and how your results are developing.

Chances are that if you are employing all the things available to you in the gym right now over the course of a week, and using them on different days and getting better on them by the week, then over time your results are going to go through the roof-this is afact.

You may be tired to start with getting used to new movements, but the overall result will mean you become a much better athlete!