Posted on

Friday,6th December

Avoiding pain and choosing pleasure at this time of year is a totally natural reaction.

Choosing to stay on the settee, instead of training sounds great to most people. You have instant pleasure and gratification through being comfortable, and that pleasure can only be enhanced if you like a bottle of wine, a takeaway, chocolate or whatever you crave.

The thought of going out in the cold, wet and dark nights is the opposite of most people’s idea of fun.

The problem starts when you choose the settee and the wine over a prolonged period and the whole thing starts affecting the way you look and feel.

Wearing black all the time will only work for a while. Wearing a big baggy jumper won’t hide all the lumps and bumps that are going to develop in your body in the places you really don’t want them.

Then all the “pleasure” you have enjoyed really becomes painful.

You really start to hate the way you look and feel, and you will do anything to change it. This is why many look for the quick fix of faddy dieting, then this works for a while but inevitably all the weight comes back on very quickly once you start eating properly again.

This is why a relatively short period of time exercising gives you much longer periods of pleasure. You know you’re going to look much better if you exercise properly and regularly, that half hour or 45 minutes will contribute heavily to the way you look and feel.

The funny thing too is that as you get fitter and exercise more, you will enjoy it much more so the whole thing becomes much more of a pleasant and pleasurable experience.

Another reason to hit your training hard in December, and stops any kind of rut developing!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 29th November

Part two of the list we started yesterday

m. Exercise helps enormously with depression, which is a huge problem in society but rarely people admit. People need help and support and exercise and eating healthy plays a significant role in treatment now, after all nobody wants to be on pills all their life, and they want an escape route from this common condition if possible.

n. Exercise gives your social life a boost. When you workout or play sports, you tend to do it with other people, and you sometimes meet like-minded people that enhance your social experience.

o. Exercise proves that females are at least as fit as men, and in my personal experience of training a lot of individuals, most women I train now train harder than men-fact!

p. Exercise before the age of 20, along with good healthy eating limits the number of fat cells you can produce. This is biological fact and this is why exercising when you are younger determines a lot of conditions for your future. No exercise and fatty/sugary foods in your teens is a ticking time bomb that is already costing the NHS billions!

q. Exercises changes lives! Every single one of the transformations I have taken individuals through has changed them mentally and physically and all for the better! Every area of their lives improves!

r. Exercise gets you pregnant! I have trained women in the past who were told by their doctor in the past that they couldn’t/or were unlikely to get pregnant due to their weight and health, but once they made big changes to their lifestyle and health, quite often they fell pregnant straight away!

s. Exercise helps you help others. When you get healthier and feel much stronger and fitter, you tend to stop relying on others and want to help others achieve things in their life they may not have thought possible.

t. Exercise saves lives. Anyone who cant have an operation because they are too overweight will testify to this. Once the doctor tells you THAT YOU MUST LOSE WEIGHT just to have an operation, you take note and you get it done. Exercise benefits your health in all sorts of life-enhancing ways.

u. If you’re a parent, exercising will inspire your kids get healthy too. Sit on the settee, eat rubbish and be negative all the time and they will follow whatever you do. Setting a great example works.

v. Exercise helps you sleep better research shows in every study. Those who exercise will know this. There are 120 sleep disorders, 80 are linked to alcohol.

w. Exercise and weight bearing exercise gives you stronger bones and protects you into old age. Weight training/body weight exercises are the number one recommendation.

x. Exercise gives you natural highs! You don’t need drugs, just try to progress your programme so that your intensity
of exercise goes up, and then you will get the natural highs that many of you get anyway most days when you exercise.

y. Exercise teaches you discipline. The regime of eating healthy and working out regularly teaches you proper routines, and keeping them up can be a challenge. It’s the success of keeping it up that teaches you discipline that transcends into every area of your life.

z. Exercise and healthy eating gets you into shape without the aid of drugs or anything unnatural like weight loss powders which provide long term misery, which teaches you self-respect and respect for others. You know that this process can be very challenging, and overcoming all the self-doubts is hugely rewarding, this process is one of the most important of all.

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 26th November

A nice story in the paper today about great rugby All black captain, Richie McCaw, was selected for under 19 trials and how his father in Christmas 1998, asked him if he wanted to become a full All black when he was older.

Naturally he said yes like all New Zealanders.

Then his father asked him if he wanted to become a “great all black”? And if he did to write it down on a napkin. McCaw was modest and nodded but just wrote G. A. B. on the napkin. He then took the napkin to his own notice board and hung it there to remind him. It meant little or nothing to anyone else who passed the board, but meant everything to him.

His father set him a target of 2004, but reached this lofty goal in 2001, ironically against Ireland winning 40-29, and last Sunday those teams shared one of the best ever games last Sunday, winning right at the death 24-22, and their win was largely down to the captaincy and calming influence under extreme pressure of McCaw, who has pretty much seen everything in his long career.

McCaw credits that napkin story with keeping his focus when it could have wavered. It was a big lesson in setting a goal and sticking to it, and actually WRITING THOSE GOALS DOWN.

Goals have been proven in studies at Harvard University to be 80% more achievable IF THEY ARE WRITTEN DOWN.

They found that they had students who would talk about their future goals by just talking about them, would in reality have only a 20% chance of being successful in those goals.

The ones in the studies who actually wrote the goals down, and in detail, were found to have an incredible 80% likelihood of achieving those goals when they left college.

When I ask everyone what they want to achieve from their programme, lots of people say “I want to lose weight”, “I want to get fitter” etc, but if you actually write your goals down in detail and what they mean to you, its only then they become much more real, attainable and then you can actually develop a step by step process to achieve them.

If you take the first step right now and write down what you really want, then you will then be able to develop a detailed plan with a TIME LIMIT and schedule it into your lifestyle. The time limit part is vital and means you actually get it done full stop!

More on this tomorrow with examples of successes.

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 21st November

So if you have had a good week so far, you need to be concentrating on having a big end to the week.

The training you don’t really feel like doing on a Monday will feel possible on a Thursday or Friday.

Your performance should be good if you’re attitude is up for it.

How about a time trial for a mile on the treadmill? What about 2500 metres on the rower? How about spinning for longer on the bikes and use a really fast gear, instead of the easiest gear?!!

I used to do this myself every week on a Friday evening at the same time, and gradually my time would come down. The result after around 2 months of doing something like this can be quite dramatic.

Also, it doesn’t really seem like your training for the sake of it and takes away the boredom factor.

If you are weight training for instance, start keeping some kind of journal to record your sets and weight lifted. This can be a very powerful tool, and lift your performance for good as you wont want to go back at all.

Putting a little bit of pressure on yourself to make small improvements every week is a good thing, and again over a 6-8 week period, you are likely to have made sizeable gains.

How about your running? Instead of keeping to easier, flat roads, how about targeting some hilly terrain for a change and this can work very well on a treadmill too.

How about all those medicine ball/wall ball exercises you see me giving everyone else but perhaps you have ducked and dived on for a while? They do work in a big way so all depends if you want the results or not!

How about getting outside and getting stuck into the fresh air work outside? It may be cold at first, but your lungs will soon get used to it, and most people get to crave it after a while. Those of you who work inside all day should DEFINITELY get outside, do some speed and agility work, hit the prowler, work with the sledge, hit some steps or flip some tyres for a change (a big one people avoid!).

It’s nearly the end of the week and the easiest time to make it happen!

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 20th November

Post-workout snacks

Whether you are hungry or not, the quicker you eat food or drink after a workout, the quicker your body will recover. The enzymes responsible for making glycogen are most active immediately after your workout, leaving you with a 2-hour window to reload your muscle glycogen. Carbs are converted into glycogen one and a half times faster than normal during this post-exercise period.

Begin refueling with a high carb snack preferably with a high GI which will pass into your muscles much quicker than a low GI food.

You will have to watch portion sizes as eating too much carbohydrate will be stored as fat and not turned into glycogen. To help with recovery it’s a good idea to combine protein with carbohydrate for the post workout snack.

1. A couple of pieces of fresh fruit eg bananas, with milk.

2. 1 or 2 cartons of fruit yogurt such as Yeo Valley or Rachel’s.

3. A smoothie made with crushed fresh fruit whizzed in the blender with small handful of nuts.

4. A homemade milkshake. Use milk, yogurt and fruit such as bananas and strawberries for an excellent mixture of protein, carbs and antioxidants.

5. Tuna or cottage cheese sandwich. Choose wholemeal rolls, bagels, pitta or wraps.

6. A couple of rice cakes with jam and cottage cheese.

7. A handful of dried fruit and nuts.

Twitt