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Thursday, 29th December

If you got into your workouts gently yesterday, then today is a day to step up the ante.

You have to face reality that your first “proper” workout will hurt a little bit, and it will be a little uncomfortable, due to the high likelihood of your eating too much and drinking too much maybe. Throw in some lack of sleep and you have the perfect combination for inferior workouts!

The great thing about getting through a good workout today is that you are bound to feel better from it. It may be painful to get through at times, but after you have managed to get your blood flow going, the aches and pains will slowly go and you will leave the scene of your workout in much higher spirits than when you first started!

Another neglected part of Christmas for most people is the lack of water consumed.

Water is the most important part of feeling and looking food. Without it and its not going to happen for you full stop. Your internal workings and your vital organs wont function properly if you don’t hydrate yourself adequately every day. Water is vital to human life, so lets make every effort to get something that is so fundamental to your health 100% right now.

I was guilty of it myself over Christmas, drinking too much tea and coffee, and in a matter of days, realising your energy levels have gone so far south, you don’t have the inclination to exercise, and even if you have, your performance is unlikely to be anywhere near your normal levels.

I guarantee that if you get a good workout in today, and you sip water throughout the day and especially in your workout, you will feel 100% better and as close to your normal self as is humanly possible.

After all, the sooner you feel better, the sooner you are going to perform better and eat well too. A lot of people I know don’t feel they have the incentive to eat well unless they have trained.

It all starts with today’s workout, don’t follow the crowd and wait until the new year, hit it today and lets get the feeling good process moving right now!!!

Twitt
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Monday, 19th December

One of the first things a busy person thinks when they feel hunger pangs is “where can i find food that comes fast and is cheap”, especially in the current economic climate!!

If you are working and in the middle of a town or city, you are likely to be bombarded with fast food offers, with no shortage of places to choose. The problem is that most of the choices are going to loaded with saturated fat, sugar and salt, exactly what you don’t want when you’re trying to get in shape!!

As i said, its going to be cheap and fast so the problem is solved straight away? Not really because these habits if practiced enough will bring health problems like you never imagined!

Absolutely nothing wrong with grabbing fast food once a week, a burger here or a slice of pizza there, but when it  becomes an everyday occurrence, its then your health is likely to suffer from issues around obesity. With obesity rising still in this country very quickly (most of the uk’s population is already classed as overweight) , the chances will be that these fast food places will be full of busy people looking to get a quick fix just to fill up on empty calories.

The chances are that most if not all people in that store will know that the food they are eating is not going to be good for them. Unfortunately, its not until their health suffers that they do something about it, and that is sometimes too late. Putting off eating healthy until tomorrow has a familiar ring to it for all of us at some stage in our lives.

Heart disease and diabetes for starters, follow that with terribly low energy levels and bad digestion and you have a nasty combination of health issues that are really going to spoil your quality of life.

The good news is that it really doesn’t have to be this way at all, there is ANOTHER way and i’m here to help. Just as destructive a lifestyle this can be with fast food in your life every day, the opposite can be achieved with some small changes made in your everyday life, plus you will SAVE money!!! After all, all of that fast food was never that cheap in the first place was it? And did it ever really satisfy you?

My ideas to change your eating and life around start tomorrow on here, so see you then!!

In the meantime, click on the diet section on the right hand side for plenty of ideas to get you into all of this.

Twitt
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Friday, 16th December

Using anger and stress as a viable workout tool can make a hopeless situation turn into your best performing workouts!

How many of us have hit a workout in no mood to train, only feeling stress and anger at whatever situation presented itself that particular day?

Those of you who decided to carry on with your workout will usually feel ten times better at the end of the workout. All that anger and negative feelings can usually be absorbed into the workout, and sometimes your best performances are achieved.

I have seen people in gyms who work shifts, and after some night shifts have approached the gym with little or no sleep, and really hit the workout hard, and you can visibly see the anger subsiding after a few tough sets of high intensity weight training. They always leave the gym a different person, and they use the workout as the ultimate de-stresser!!!

I sometimes dont wake up in the best of moods after a night of little sleep with the kids,  but after my first run, i always feel 200% better, and its usually the same with the person i am running with.

If you want to categorise stress into different sections, think positive and negative.

Negative stress would be work pressures, money worries, relationship problems, family problems, job security, personality clashes, etc etc.

Positive ways to deal with it would be exercising, eating well, avoiding alcohol, avoiding negative people, sleeping better and more regular etc etc.

If you follow these rules, then the anger and negativity is likely to subside. We all have these feelings, lets not pretend otherwise, but if some sort of exercise is a daily part of our lives, we have the ultimate natural medicine for it!!!

Have a great weekend, the weather is clear and snow free so lets get out there in the fresh air and enjoy the benefits!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 15th December

We talked about interval training last week, and how to develop it from a simple treadmill exercise, or outside running exercise of walking for one minute, running for the next minute, then walking one minute etc, all the way through to non stop training in all sorts of ways.

This week I have already taken a number of individuals through to the next stage of training, that can be brutally hard but extremely effective in terms of benefits.

It’s a simple concept but again, you really need to be very conditioned to do this.

All it involves is light running and press ups and arm dips at various intervals in your run.

For example, a lot of paths such as the one in mumbles or parks in Llanelli, burry port and surrounding area have park benches.

So the concept is to run for say 30-50 yards before you come to a park bench, then you do 10 arm dips (lowering yourself down on bench working arms/shoulders).

Then run again for another 30-50 yards and get down for 10 press ups, or 5 press ups or whatever your capability is?

Then its 50 yards and hit the next bench with 10 arm dips and so on.

The first time you do it, you will probably only be able to hit 3 benches and you have to stop. Then you will need a rest. Start up again when you get your breath back and go for it again.

To give you an example of progress with individuals who have been of average/to good fitness levels, they sometimes started of being capable of doing a total of 50 press ups/arm dips on one run, that typically went up to 1000 and the record was 2500, and this was a 58 year old!!! I am totally serious and the numbers although seemingly unbelievable, can be achieved by a lot of people as long as they eat very well, rest well and are very consistent with their training.

This type of progress could take 6-12 months and would apply to someone of a high standard of fitness and capability.

The results as I said are phenomenal but this workout should only be done under supervision by an exercise professional.

Twitt
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Wednesday, 14th December

Making fresh goals in the run up to christmas may seem alien to most, but it may be exactly what you need!

If 2012 seems a long way away, you may be shocked to hear its only 18 days away!!! 18 days left until the end of the year!!!

If it seems stupid to look forward  until then, you may be glad you did in a couple of weeks.

Only once did i decide not to train for a couple of weeks over christmas, and i suffered like never before!

My asthma came back in a big way, i was wheezing like i was on 40 a day! My first run back nearly half killed me and i felt as much out of shape as i have ever done!!!

After that run, i decided there and then NEVER to stop training over christmas again!!!

I have spoken to many, many people since and they have been through the same thing.

I have even been running christmas day, thats not to impress you but it was more to do with my desperation  to rid myself of that wheezy stodgy feeling that comes with over-eating, over-drinking and under-exercising!!!

This is to potentially save you those horrible interal feelings of no energy, and literally no get up and go.

So whatever schedule you are on now, i would try to still keep it up to some degree. If you currently workout 5 times a week in some form, i would still try and do 3 times a week even if its light to moderate intensity. This will take care of all the excess calories and help you feel more like your normal self.

The big thing it will also give you is a flying start to 2012!!! Just when everyone else will be going through the Groundhog day of starting to exercise and eat healthy, you will already be making fresh goals from a very strong position!!!

If that sounds attractive, lets get going and keep on going!!!!

Twitt