Posted on

Tuesday, 23rd April

Energy cost, effort, meanings of every exercise you do, why you do certain things and their effects are all vital parts of my work, and form an integral part of my planning for everyone’s training.

When someone starts off for the first time, the energy cost of exercises you give them tends to be low in order to see how they react.

Why we do certain exercises is fully explained, and how their body will react is critical to see how quickly the programme will work for them.

This programme can easily take 4 weeks, and from then we can usually accelerate the programme at a faster pace from there. Without a good grounding in exercise, nobody can really be successful in getting into shape both in the short and long term.

So this is why we set the energy cost of each exercise low to start with, and then gradually building up and replacing the lower cost exercises with higher cost ones over time.

This is why the fittest individuals I train will always be used to high energy costs in every session, what this means is that not only will a lot of calories/energy be burnt in the session, but this will lead to quicker fat-burning, raising the metabolism for longer, and create meaningful changes in a very positive way to one’s resting heart rate.

I have started with many people who have started with a 100 beats per minute heart rate, and now have a 60, 50 or even 40 something resting heart rate. As I have mentioned many times before, having a good strong heart rate is vital to enable you to advance in exercise terms and this can be developed gradually by increments in your exercise programme at regular intervals.

All of these results we talk about, always all start with smart, intelligent exercise programming, making sure you improve quickly but at the same time making sure you lay strong foundations for the future.

Regular reviews of your programme are also vital, and everyone’s programme should be seen as a work in progress, and never something that you go through the motions with leading to poor results.

Seize the moment and look to move your programme along regularly!

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, 22nd April

If you stop eating your favourite food completely, and I mean you never plan on eating it ever again, this is a perfect recipe to binge and go off the rails big time.

The best way to get around this is to still eat these foods that may be very high in fat or sugar or both, but eat them in much smaller portions. For example, if you had a habit of eating a whole pizza on a Saturday, and maybe a
Tuesday, then you were probably eating at least 1000 calories in one go, a ton of saturated fat and refined sugars.

If you keep it to one slice at a time only, thin and crispy to lower calories, and eat it slowly to savour the taste more, then this is perfectly acceptable once or twice a week. The main thing you would be doing though is consuming a fraction of your normal amount on a Saturday and Tuesday.

This alone will have the effect of you not seeming like being on a diet. Your saturated fat and sugar will drop dramatically. Your ability to eat a lot in one go (bingeing) will diminish greatly, and your behavior towards food will likely change permanently.

Once your brain realizes that its not on a diet, you will automatically relax and you will develop a far more healthy attitude to food, and be far more comfortable knowing that although you have to eat around 80% good healthy food, you will still be able to have one or two treats a week such as the pizza in this case.

After studying people’s habits for years, I have seen this situation many times turn out that the individual involved eventually goes off treats such as the pizza because they KNOW they can have it! Its when you know you cannot have something that usually makes it far more appealing!!

Try it out and see how you get on.

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 5th April

The role of speed and agility should not be limited to the “young and sporty”.

How many of you went to school, took part in sports to some degree, then may have even gone on to play for the school team, maybe a proper club team and maybe for a number of years……………….then everything stops!!!

You may have a couple of years off, sometimes a number of years off, and when you try to get back into exercise, the agility and speed you once had in school for example has disappeared!

You feel stiff as a board and you always put it down to “old age”, even though you may only be in your 30’s or 40’s!!! Hardly old age in my book!!

The great news is that there’s many ways around this but you do have to start slowly.

Getting a more general programme that concentrates on making your core stronger is the way to start, getting your muscles more flexible and allowing them to strengthen. You need to stick at this for a couple of months until your body recognizes that its ready to improve again, and you suddenly start realizing that you are not really “too old” at all, that you can feel better, that your clothes start to feel looser and that you can show improvements in your training, and incremental improvements start becoming a normal way of life for you.

Its at this stage you can think about doing more speed and agility work.

Fast footwork sessions are suddenly an option, backward running can be done, light sprint work is back on the agenda, and a whole host of techniques I love to take people through.

Once you get through this work, automatically you will start to remember the way you were in school or in your sports team, you will be a lot more agile, much faster and literally a big spring in your step!

This is what a much more complete programme is all about, and this is why I so feel that amazing results are always consistently possible.

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 29th March

Good friday is here again early, and although a lot of people have time off today, i can tell you right now that 90% of people i train are ready to work hard again today, just as if it is another normal day. This shows great dedication and a willingness to improve no matter what the holidays, and its a great sign that everyone is involved in an ever-evolving programme that brings progress no matter what!

This is because of the flexibility of our programmes, most if not everyone i train know that they can get great session in a 45 minute time frame, 30 minutes or even 15 minutes, as long as they tell me in advance their limitations on time, and the need “to get it done” in record time!!

This is what life is about, and the super-fast nature of it all. Why cancel or put off a workout when if you had just spared that 20 minutes, you could have had a great workout that would have further contributed heavily to your overall progress.

ONCE you adopt this attitude, that anything can be done anytime of day, and WON’T take you the time that others seem to take over exercise, then the rate of cancellations you have in you exercise schedule will greatly reduce, and guess what? So will you overall progress jumpy to levels you never thought possible!!!

Its all about taking action, instead of “talking a good game” so let’s get it done this Easter!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 28th March

If you think you can do something, then you are right.

If you think you cannot do something, then ou are also right!

If this does not make sense, then you may not have got the meaning of this statement.

What it means that your mind is the all powerful factor in the decisions you make, especially when you decide to take no or no take on a challenge, however beneficial that challenge may be for every area in your life.

How many times have you not taken something on because it may have been too scary, too uncertain, too hard, too uncomfortable or you were worried about what “other people” would say?

I’m sure all of us have done this despite us knowing the end result would so beneficial to us. That decision not to even try has held most of us back many times.

When we do decide to take a challenge and we actually go through with it, we still live through the uncertainty, we get through the hard times and we definitely feel uncomfortable a lot of the way through it, so you can see a pattern of feelings here that either stop us doing things or make us/allow us to reach our goals.

So it all starts with that first quote again, its up to us whether we take it on because its US after all that decided whether we can do it or not, its US that decided to go through with it or duck the challenge for a “quite life”!

If we think we can do something then, we switch something ON in the brain that allows us to use all our resources to get the job done, and we are very likely to see it through and actually achieve this big thing in our lives.

It sounds simple, but it really comes down to that decision we make right at the beginning of the thought process. Your exercise programme and your health depend on you believing and being positive throughout.

If you think you can, then you probably CAN do it!

Twitt