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Tuesday, 5th November

The best part about training is the overwhelming feeling of wellbeing afterwards!

The scientific community accepts and fully supports now the notion that you cannot be healthy and maintain healthy levels of body fat without doing both-training AND eating well.

This is how slimming clubs fall down every time. They don’t give you that great feeling of wellbeing afterwards. When losing weight Is your sole aim, you tend to forget all the enjoyable things you should be experiencing along the way.

Exercise will give you real long lasting healthy results, scientific research tells us that slimming clubs lead to you putting all the weight back on, PLUS another 5%!!! To me and most other people who rely on science, exercise is an absolute must!!

When you exercise and eat healthily in sensible portions, you will lose body fat no doubt but there are so many other benefits. Blood pressure normalization, healthy skin tone, strong lungs and heart, feeling good 24 hours a day, fitting into your favourite clothes for the first time in years, people giving you compliments on the way you look, etc etc are all good examples of what a proper exercise programme will give you.

So if on a cloudy, wet and miserable November day you are at all feeling sorry for yourself, then a good solid effort in your workout will sort a lot of those feelings out, and immediately give you the feeling that you are about to have a better day!

Twitt
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Friday, 1st November

The half term week confuses a lot of people when it comes to exercising.

Routines are all over the place, kids are off school, Halloween has thrown a lot of people off their normal good choices, and exercise has usually ended up in last place for many this week.

So if your overall goal is progress and you regularly take part in our measurements, then this week will have been a write off for some of you with children.

One of the key answers would be to shorten your planned workouts, select key exercises that will get the job done in double quick time, and maybe shorten the frequency too, after all doing a little bit is far better than not doing anything!

So for example, if you typically train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, for an hour each time, then if you really have no time, then just commit to three workouts for 20 mins a time, surely you can do that?

Those 20 minutes HAVE to count though! To make the most of your time, warm up before and after the 20 minutes.

For example, today I just did a 20 minute blast of using the prowler, batting ropes, boxing and swiss ball core work.

There is a nice variety in this work, making different demands on your body in double quick time!

Picking 4 exercises in a row can work very well for you if it TAKES INTO ACCOUNT your current physical condition.

You do not need to overwork, all you need a higher intensity workout than normal to SUIT YOU and nobody else!

Please consult a fitness professional before doing high intensity workouts.

So shorter high quality workouts can solve the problem of having no time to exercise.

Just make sure you are handled with care and WORK TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL LEVEL!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 29th October

With all the volatility in weather terms, avoiding storms, huge amounts of rain falling, temperatures rising and then falling quickly, this is an ideal time to become acclimatized to the upcoming very cold winter temperatures to come.

Instead of waiting until January to experience the unpleasant shock of your lungs not going to be able to inhale the very cold air, now is the perfect time to experience a more gradual change in the weather.

So instead of disappearing from the colder and wetter weather by taking up permanent residence on the settee, its surely time to get out in the fresh air even more and expose your lungs to all the changes to come.

Another good reason to do this would be to keep yourself in the shape that you worked so hard to get in during the summer. Don’t go through the agony of putting all of that hard work in, and then pile the weight and body fat all back on again.

We have 8 weeks left to Christmas and this is a perfect time frame to allow yourself to put a very good training period in.

The weeks before Christmas are often more important than the ones afterwards, because going into Christmas IN shape will feel fantastic, and allow you to avoid the torture of battling the bulge after overdoing in the Christmas holidays!

So it all starts here, keep doing your running, your cycling, your sprints etc, its all going to be much more valuable than you think

Twitt
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Monday, 28th October

Monday is a recurring theme in terms of the need to get off to a good start in your week, especially on here when we always like to discover what it takes to be in your best shape.

The need for a big workout is obvious.

What we don’t always talk about are those snacks or meals that can give you a bundle of energy that will power you through a workout.

That time of day when you may need it the most is around the 4 o’clock time when you may have just finished work, you are rushing around everywhere, and the last thing you need is going into your workout with zero carbs inside you.

For instance, don’t worry about eating a second bowl of porridge at this time too, even if you have had one for breakfast earlier in the day.

Porridge is the ultimate slow release energy provider, giving you real energy just when you need it.

If you don’t get enough energy in at this time, not only will you have a poor workout, but you are very likely to overeat in your evening meal, because just think of the time you have left it without a meal. Lunch at say 1pm, then an evening meal at 730pm is far too much of a gap!

4PM has become a crucial time for many people I have found in your 7 day eating diaries, so start filling in the gaps and you will perform far better, and lose more body fat in the meantime!

Twitt
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Friday, 25th October

Friday is a day which perfectly illustrates what we talked about energy levels being affected by lack of carbohydrates-the body’s preferred energy source.

How many of you have skipped your Friday session because you have “no energy left in the tank”. Perhaps you say to yourself that it doesn’t really matter anyway, because you have worked hard enough in the week anyway! I see this a lot.

If you manage to get a Friday session in, you will go into the weekend feeling good and much better about yourself. You will feel as if you have had a very good week, and you won’t be leaving your training Thursday until Monday, which is a who four days of training. This approach definitely won’t get you into the shape you really want to be in.

On top of all of this, when you get to the following Monday workout, you will feel that much more sluggish, and be less enthusiastic about starting your week with a bang!

Missing Friday also encourages you to start early on your weekend treats too. If you aren’t training, then you may just buy some junk food early, keen to “relieve stress” of your week with some sugary treats or alcohol bottles.

Friday for me is a “just do it” kind of day!!! Don’t think about, just do it and reap the benefits afterwards and put yourself in a great frame of mind coming into the weekend!

Twitt