Wednesday 3rd July

Great workouts are the results of a variety of factors, and don’t “just happen” by accident.

They definitely don’t happen due to a “pre-workout formula” you can drink before training, they don’t happen just because you psych yourself up and shout at yourself, they don’t happen because of the fancy training gear you have on, they don’t happen just because the gym you train in looks “pretty”, and definitely don’t happen because you have a direct debit for a gym and never go!!!!

If you fit into any of these categories and have tried such a strategy, then I am probably preaching to the converted and this means you have been constantly disappointed with your results, and probably spent a ton of money in realizing this in the end.

This is not putting you down for making a bad decision, and I sincerely hope you have learned from all of those people trying to make a quick buck out of you and delivering extremely poor results if any at all!

Great workouts happen over a period of time.

Great workouts will happen time after time if you keep eating well for the vast majority of your week, week in week out, month in month out etc!

Your fluid intake will always dictate how well you perform and feel, a key element that needs to happen throughout the day, every day!

If you sleep well most nights, then you set yourself up for success, if you don’t then you won’t feel like doing much!

Great workouts will also happen over a period of incremental workouts, in other words, you will gradually get better over a longer period and this is when your capabilities are there to cope with great demands.

You can achieve these workouts if you stay consistent in all the key areas, and when you get there you will know how you achieved this great level of ability.

Monday, 1st July

July brings a fresh batch of challenges in terms of training improvements.

You will be usually be in one of two camps.

The first one is the attitude of taking it easy just because it’s july and july is a month of holidays, finishing school for example, stop fortnight for factories, and the weather is usually much warmer and sunnier too (sometimes!). This camp will usually miss a lot of workouts, start drinking alcohol in the week, generally eat much more poorly than normal, and justify all the weight gain on “the time of year”.

The other camp is the one where you have people either who are about to go on holidays, or have just been away. They are now dead keen to get back into their training, they are hitting their workouts hard, never miss a session and maybe about to start pre-season rugby or football. This camp associates july with hard work, tough workouts, and have got accustomed to working out in warmer temperatures, and have got to the stage they actually relish it.

The first camp end up piling on the weight, and often take a long time to get back into their training after their holiday. These are the inconsistent ones who never achieve anywhere like their potential.

The second camp are the more serious trainer, who are used to seeing results and are prepared to keep putting the results in.

July is a critical month for you to change your attitude and mindset to set yourself up for a month of great results, and the months to follow after that. Don’t settle for a lazy july, instead change the course for the rest of the year right now by showing up all the time this month and making every workout count!

Thursday, 27th June

An instant solution to sort your eating problems out is writing down everything you eat and drink.

If for instance, you had a cooked breakfast, then you had a roll for mid-morning bought in a garage, then you grabbed something out for lunch in a shop, then mid-afternoon you had a bar of chocolate and packet of crisps, then to finish off you picked up a takeaway on the way home, just because you had a busy day and you couldn’t be bothered to make your own food when you got home.

If you did this most days, then it wouldn’t take a genius to work out that you will not get in any kind of decent
shape!

Most people though do not realize what they eat, and never have any kind of plan for their day ahead. Its this type of approach that will lead to longer term weight gain, longer term health problems, and a feeling of hopelessness when it comes to how you feel about your health.

To change all of this, I strongly encourage individuals to keep a 7 day eating diary, writing down exactly what they eat for a week and how much too. They will also write down what they drink, again how much is important too.

What this does is immediately recognizes how well you are actually eating, it shows if you are overeating in each meal or not, how much of your calories are coming from drink (studies have shown that obese individuals can consume 40% of their total calories through fizzy drinks, alcohol etc).

Once your awareness goes up, and it definitely will doing this, then you are likely to get a plan developed, have a good healthy shopping list for the first time in a while, and you will be likely to start cooking many meals yourself, as the takeaway, grab something at lunch time option, grab something in the garage option, soon becomes a thing of the past, as long as you prepare more before you leave the house in the morning.

This simple 7 day eating diary will make all the difference!

Friday, 24th June

Good news will come from your training efforts if you remember what it was like to start in the first place.

Remember the times when you thought of beginning an exercise programme, you seemed to have plenty of enthusiasm, an urge to do well, and to take onboard a new approach on how to get fit and healthy. You rigorously followed the advice given, were proud of your much healthier supermarket trolley and knew how much those foods would do you good.

You took pride in drinking more water, and you noticed how much more alert you became throughout the day, and how much better you seemed to perform in your exercise sessions.

Then as you started to progress, you took even more of an interest, and you started to question on why you did certain movements, why you did certain exercises on certain days, and why you started to perform better on some days than others.

Then you started to take an even greater interest in your body fat improvements, how your resting heart rate was coming down, how your blood pressure was coming into a healthy range, how your waist was continuing to come down, and in general how much of an incredible difference you were making to yourself!!!

If you are currently stuck in a rut, you should remember how all of this felt, and with some effort you can easily get back there look and feeling your best!!

Friday 21st June

Finishing off your week is a big task for you today in terms of making sure finish it in the way you really want. There’s a million reasons to put off your workout today, you can’t be bothered as you have trained well enough all week, you are thinking of going out for a meal or drink early, you are too tired, you have had a stressful week in work and can’t face training, friday IS the weekend for you and you’re not going to train as its “relaxing time” and that’s that!!!

Finishing off the week well sends a message that you are a serious trainer, and not the type to make the kind of excuses like i just mentioned above. Those type of excuses hold people back from reaching their true potential, and shut off something in their brain that doesn’t allow them to reach the higher levels of human performance that would bring superior results.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with going away the weekend, having a great night out etc, but making sure you train before you go sets up your body in terms of pure conditioning.

When you train regular, eat regular good food full of nutreients, when you sleep well regularly, when you don’t eat too much fast food, don’t drink too much alcohol etc, you’re GOING TO IMPROVE FULL STOP!!!

Consistency is king.