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Monday, 17th June

Another monday hits us and as always hope you are prepared to hit it hard to start the week off on the right note!

Some base their most important workout on a monday, some just ease gently into it, some don’t have any kind of plan and just hope for the best (not recommended), some hit their highest intensity on a monday-whatever your situation AS LONG as you are exercising then you will be off to a flying start.

If you let your weekend go into a monday in terms of alcohol, overeating junk food and no exercise, then you are not serious about your health whatsoever, and you need to re-assess exactly what your goals are and set a realistic plan on how you’re going to achieve them!

Monday is always a great day to get your weights/strength work in, nothing raises your metabolism as effectively (and i am talking about weight training with little rest and with plenty of high energy cost movements no plodding slowly along!). I set a lot of strength workouts on mondays and thursdays with a nice three day gap in between, allowing for plenty of recovery in between.

A lot of my other workouts get set up for the tuesdays, wednesdays and fridays. This allows me to set up the fundamentals up for the week for people, and give a lot of variety in between, making sure we are fat burning every day and we are going to get higher and higher numbers almost on a week to week basis, which means we are constantly improving!

So you should be looking forward to a big monday, making the bigget possible statement for the week ahead!!!

Twitt
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Friday, 14th June

A common misconception with different training methods and different exercises is that you are only “supposed” to do certain movements based on your goals.

For example, if you are trying to lose body fat, trying to increase your speed, then you don’t need to do much weight training, and power exercises are totally not necessary!!

This is the big mistake that many people walk into.

Power and speed are very closely related, and you cannot have one without the other. This is why i always put these power movements in every programme, because of the strength it gives you all over. Bodyweight exercises for example involve total power. Your core has to take a lot of the strain and will deliver a lot of power throughout your body.

Boxing requires a lot of power, and this is one great discipline for getting you a lot faster and gets you shedding body fat quicker than just about anything else. Boxing is a great addition to your training programme for speed and power without a shadow of a doubt.

People used to say that weight training slowed you down, we now know that the opposite is in fact true! If done properly, weight training can revolutionalise your speed and power.

One of the best training techniques is sprinting, and if you have done it you will realise its all about power. Why do people sprint? Because they want to get quicker of course!

Power exercises should be embedded in your programme and never leave if you want to be stronger and faster in just about anything you want to do!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 13th June

The bad rap that carbohydrates have got over the last few years can be seen as totally unjustified.

You had the atkins diet some years ago banning “everything carb” related with the focus very much on protein only.

This fad lasted longer than most people thought, and at one time jacket potatoes were seen very much the enemy, and pasta was like the anti-christ!

Fortunately though, sanity prevailed and the atkins diet crashed and burned for many people, and some people had horrendous experiences from going through it.

Carbs can be a problem in weight gain if you eat too much of them and the wrong type. By the wrong type I mean the simple sugar version. White pasta for example contains a lot more sugar than wholegrain pasta does.

Brown rice will be better for you than white rice.

Wholemeal bread is a million times better for you than white bread and so on.

So the type of carbs you eat is all important in giving you the energy you need without all the simple sugars that will put weight on you.
Then the serving size becomes all important. Most people put weight on with carbs because they eat too much of them, plain and simple! Eat too much of anything and you will have a weight gain problem.

Your carb serving should be the size of your fist, so a plate full of pasta is overdoing it. This is why you should combine your pasta with a protein source, not only to bulk up your meal to keep you fuller for longer. Some vegetables chopped up will also will go very well with your meal, and give you endless benefits.

So please see that carbs are never the enemy, but it’s a matter of picking the right ones and in the right sensible
amount.

Twitt
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Tuesday,4th June

Assuming you started the week off very well yesterday by having a very positive workout, then its surely time you became very serious about supporting that effort with some serious eating.

Apart from all the energy you need, you also need to consider how your “engine” is performing inside your body, after all if this was not happening then you would never even consider top quality workouts, especially in the hotter weather we are experiencing right now.

Are you taking enough fruit in?

Are you taking enough wholegrain carbs in with a slow energy release?

Are you taking regular intakes of protein which repairs all the breaking down of lean muscle that takes place during one of your tougher exercise sessions?

Are you eating regularly and really taking advantage of keeping your energy stores high at all times?

And how about the most important factor in all this talk about tough workouts and warm weather training-WATER!!!

If you are not taking regular sips of water throughout the day, then your body simply will noty cope with the extra hard workouts done in a much warmer temperature. This is the thing that I have to keep on to everyone about during a week like this!

If there is one thing you can do this week, please become much more aware of the need to stay hydrated. If you are already thirsty, then you are already dehydrated according to studies done over the last several years, so remember that thirst is NO GUIDE to hydration levels, and the temperature rise only makes that problem worse!!

So like we talked about yesterday, you should be celebrating all the nice weather AND the opportunity to exercise in it. The big thing to remember however, is to prepare properly and treat your body like a car engine or hopefully much better, and prime yourself ready to perform!

Don’t forget the sunscreen though, another forgotten tactic that should be a whole subject on its own!

Twitt
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Thursday, 30th May

The pain and frustration in coming back from injury or illness is always difficult.

Its times like these when you really appreciate what you were capable of in the recent past, and you will do anything to get back to where you were.

First of all, you may be tempted to come back too early, and what usually happens is that you re-injure the problem that stopped you in the first place, which adds to the frustration again!

You have to learn not to work through the pain, and allow your body to re-adjust in its own time, this is the tried and tested way to do things properly.

When coming back from illness, you must take it easy, and allow your body to get fully used to training again, meaning you should do far less than normal. You should only be training if you feel well enough, not rushing back into things.

If you take the following example into account, you will see what i mean.

Studies show that when a pro athlete takes a week off, it usually takes them one to two weeks to get back where they were. If they have four weeks off, then it can take four to eight weeks to get back to normal. This shows that you MUST take your time when returning from injury or illness, take advice if possible and look for guidance on your journey back to full health.

Twitt