rae davies talk 25 4 17 from keri mckibbin personal training on Vimeo.
Tuesday, 7th March
What’s your standard? It’s important to identify it, and look for a way to improve on it no matter how good your standard.
If your standard is one workout a week, you know you need to improve, even improving it to twice a week is a victory and stick at it.
If your standard is training regularly and then eating rubbish all the time, then can make instant improvements on this and you know it. Just drinking more water and eating breakfast will be a massive improvement, plus you will feel a lot better too.
Do you coast through your workouts sometimes, knowing you can give more?
Do you give in easily to those who say “Why bother with the gym tonight”?
Do you leave days off become weeks off? And somehow wonder where the time went?
Do you let negative influences turn you off from doing positive things with exercise and eating right?
Are you stuck at half marathon knowing with a bit more effort and consistency you can run the full marathon?
Do you spend 5-10 minutes at the end of each session to stretch off, making sure your body is injury-free and fully recovered?
Do you call in for a bottle of wine in the petrol station each night, nobody else knows so it doesn’t matter anyway?
Identify where you are right now, and then work on a way to get better, small changes done often will make all the difference and progress you to where you want to be.
Wednesday, 18th January
Thank you Sharon!
You need to be consistent at what you do if you want success, that applies to anything in life.
The temptation to give up when things get a little harder can be overwhelming for some, but we gain faith in our efforts when we are able to see first hand, individuals in our community, and in our gym who go through transformations in every area of their lives when they stick at it no matter what.
Let’s take the story of Sharon Griffiths from Kidwelly, who hasn’t missed a week’s training in a year and a half. Bets were made that she wouldn’t last a week.
She gathered confidence through every small milestone along the way.
Walking through the door was the hardest she said first time.
Making 3 sessions a week was her first milestone. Not being so stiff the morning after was another. Then feeling good from exercise was a major milestone that kept her wanting to carry on, if you feel good doing something, then you are very likely to want to do it.
Once she felt she could stick to coming 3 times a week, her performances got better and she developed some confidence to push herself to achieve more.
Her photos compared to when she first started started changing radically, and she was happy knowing she was doing it the right way. Her skin tone was healthier and had a glow, and she started feeling guilty if she missed her exercise.
The next stage was attempting our outside runs. From a slow start when she walked much of the session, she soon was running the whole way and raised her performance levels to exceptional. A friend of her’s told me this morning that she was in tears the first time she ran it all the way, the culmination of not only a physical effort but a deeply emotional effort and experience too, the girl nobody thought would last was in the process of becoming a champion.
All of this was due to her sticking at it, never allowing excuses into her life even though she has a very busy family life and career that always brought it’s daily pressures and stress.
She is also a major part of Coach Dan Smith’s successful classes at the gym and outside, and to be honest, is one of the first people i introduce new members to so she can relay her inspirational story, so that an absolute beginner can relate to someone who has battled through from being inactive, to someone who is a major part of the gym, who ALWAYS performs at the highest level now and what that takes both physically and mentally.
We salute you Sharon, Diloch yn Fawr! Thanks for everything.
Wednesday, 7th December
Amazing day at the gym today, especially with the break in the weather, hazy sunshine and the whole area looked magically better.
Wherever you are in the world, the day looks a whole lot better with the sun out!!People’s attitudes were sunnier too, i noticed the difference in shops, at the gym and out and about on the hill. It really makes that big a difference.
If you look at it rationally though, our lives haven’t changed a bit since yesterday or at least for most people. The government is still the same, the council still the same, our relationships the same, our friends still the same yet we are so much brighter today.
It shows the power of changing our state of mind, and using triggers to do so.
The sun and warmer air will have done it today, but exercise and eating right does it every day if we give it a proper chance. Rosemary Thomas, 73 years, told me this morning that she has so much more energy now every day, and would spend the rest of the day after training cleaning the house. That lady is ALWAYS on the go, and even she has seen a massive boost in her energy levels since she started training properly.
There are many triggers to change our state of mind but exercise is a guaranteed ever-present way to turn even the gloomiest of days into a productive, energy-rich and positive day.
Saturday, 3rd December
We all face fears every day, and they usually stop us doing many things we always wanted to do, and are the reason why we are stopped in our tracks before we even begin.
Here’s the big revelation though, our fears don’t go away even after we take action and we get through them, there’s always going to be the next fear coming right up.
We need to completely embrace these fears and get on with doing the things that scare us or at least make us uncomfortable, and do them often so we get used to it.
You have to realise though that if you don’t take action and have a go at whatever is causing the fear, all that worry will build up in you in terms of negativity, wondering what could have been, frustration, and struggling to come to terms with you not being all you can be. Your talents need to be unleashed and you don’t need to be “special or one of a kind” to do it, we can all do it.
Society tell us not to take risks, to be safe and accept “our lot” in life, but as human beings we have a deep down natural tendency to want to improve and take calculated risks that make a better life and eventually make things easier for us in life.
Without taking risks and facing our fears, we would never have discovered other countries, developed all the modern day wonders in technology and the human beings we consider great pioneers would never have bothered getting off their settee’s in their caves to begin with.
Once we all accept that ALL of us have fears every day about taking on challenges, and we will only feel WORSE if we don’t take them on, then these challenges become more acceptable and achievable. Also, these fears are 100% of the time never has bad as we thought they would be, and we often why we worried about them in the first place.
When we realise that we will feel so empowered, so much better and fulfilled, and likely to achieve far more one challenge at a time by simply getting used to accepting our fears and doing it anyway, then we go from a life of shying away from doing the things that take us out of our comfort zone, to one of relishing challenges even though we will STILL fear them each and every time, but now we will see it as a very necessary part of life and one which we should embrace wholeheartedly.