Posted on

Monday, 25th March

The biggest thing you can change this week would be getting salt out of your diet. You get enough sodium in most foods, and overdoing it with salt can be a really bad idea.

Adding salt to your foods is a cardinal sin, and this one will hold water and fluid in your body like nothing else! Fluid retention is unpleasant and I know a lot of people get it, getting rid of salt will get rid of it for you.

Cooking with salt is something that many people consider “natural”, the same factors apply here too. Adding salt to your foods is strongly linked to high blood pressure problems, water retention and other serious health problems. Salt added to foods that make them highly processed are causing big problems around the world, and nows the chance to turn back from that road and fire on all cylinders and reach new levels of performance and health!

In fact, there was a big story in the press at the weekend about salt being linked to more deaths than sugary drinks, this is a serious charge when you consider all the terrible press that sugary drinks have had lately!!!

When you get salt out of your diet, straight away you may notice your food doesn’t taste as nice, but these feelings will go soon enough, and when you get used to cooking without salt, you will never go back to your old ways!! It would be like going from having two sugars in your tea to no sugar overnight. Tough to start with but you will never go back to adding the sugar would you?!!!

Refreshing that salt is getting exposed in the press, after getting away with it to a degree compared to sugar and saturated fat!!

Time to change right now!

The benefits of no salt go all the way across the range, and from a health standpoint, as well as looking and feeling a lot leaner, salt has to go and it needs to go now.

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 22nd March

Most people accept that when they get older, then automatically they will gain weight, slow down a lot, become full of aches and pains, feel as if they have no energy, feel a lack of optimism and I find the most common is a feeling they cannot do the things that they took for granted when they were younger.

Most kids take it for granted they can run and dodge.

Too many people over 30 even these days, feel as if they have lost the ability to do these things.

Most people who hit the gym in their teens and early 20’s often will work hard, and aim to get in the best possible shape typically for their summer holiday.

Many I speak to in their late 30’s and 40’s and older, never even seem to have this ambition anymore.

Lets hit you with a few facts.

I train people from 7 years of age all the way to 80.

Not a single one of them hasn’t kept on improving every month and every year, not one of them.
Part of this success is re-educating individuals on what they are capable of, rather than what they have become “used to” and have now settled for a lower quality of life, and a lower quality of health, and back to the first example, used to NOT doing anything like what they were used to when THEY were 21 years of age!!

As soon as they realize that they CAN do anything they want again, its at that exact moment that their progress really improves at great speed!

It can be a slower and much more gradual start than when you were 21, but the longer term results can be even much greater.

When you train smart, you will learn to run faster and why, you will learn to get stronger, much stronger and how to keep it that way and why we do it apart from looking good, your endurance will go to new highs, you will develop a much stronger core than ever before and why its going to be so important for you to keep it that way.
Endless possibilities as you get older, so lets stay optimistic and aim high.

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 20th March

Eating breakfast is something you should have done today without even thinking about it too much.

Eating breakfast is regarded as something you do within one hour of getting up.

Drinking water when you rise is a really great idea because it will help clean your system straight away, and set your body on a good path for the rest of the day. Drinking more water throughout the day will help you burn more fat, help a lot with digestion, and boost concentration levels as well as energy.

Eating a healthy breakfast will rev up your metabolism from first thing in the morning and greatly accelerate the rate your body burns calories.

Eating a good breakfast such as porridge, Weetabix, shredded wheat which are all natural products, will give you long lasting energy meaning you are less likely to snack on sugary foods to satisfy the cravings you will get from not eating breakfast or eating a very poor breakfast.

Starting the day right means you set the tone for the rest of the day. The slow and steady release of energy means that you stay in control of your food intake, less likely to make rash choices and your energy and concentration levels will remain much higher for the rest of the day.

Poached, scrambled, boiled eggs are all fine with dry wholemeal toast. This is again a slow steady release of energy and will fill you up for a much longer period of time (and more satisfying) than a sugary start to the day, or even worse missing breakfast. Natural yoghurt and fruit will help too and set your day up nicely.

Those of you who have fallen for the trap of telling yourself that its good to miss breakfast just to “save calories” are misguided and totally wrong. This is the biggest mistake you can make, and sabotage your fat loss plans. Get your body used to burning calories within an hour of getting up, and you will change the way you feel, look and perform full stop!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 14th March

Anyone who trains with me will know that we work on the latest scientific research of training all of the time. Things change and there’s always exciting things happening.

Then you will know we focus so much on balance, brain muscle communication, agility, strength and speed in particular, which will lead to endurance, very good conditioning and outstanding health (which is the most important thing!).

Which leads us to the much discussed conversation on which is better? Free weights and natural movements or machines?

Free weights and natural movements will always win because they go with the body needs to NATURALLY move. The movements we do mimic movements we do in daily life, and this is of vital importance to get you through the rest of your life in good shape and avoid serious injury or immobility problems, which unfortunately affect most people as they get older. Prepare well by doing a whole host of natural movements on a daily basis and weekly basis, and your long term health will seem much brighter.

Machines on the other keep you working on one plane of motion, and can lead to repetitive strain if done over a long period of time. Machines because of their limited range of motion will give you exactly that, LIMITED results, limited mobility and limited flexibility, all far more important than you think.

Its a shame that when these machines started being really popular in the 80’s, that most gyms still consider them viable.

The science of training has moved on light years since then, and most machines apart from a couple needs to be thrown in the scrap.

The sooner you get out of machine based training and get into whats happening in the real scientific forms of training, then you will improve in every single area of your body, your balance, your reaction time and your strength and agility!

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 13th March

The feeling that you get from exercise is well known, the endorphins released in your body create a feeling of wellbeing like no other.

The feeling hours after exercise is not often talked about, and this is always achieved from more intense exercise. A lot of people walk dogs, and this is classed as exercise, but this will not have the benefits of more intense exercise.

Any one of the workouts I have ever listed will give you that wonderful feeling of wellbeing all day long after your workouts, and I have millions of hours of anecdotal evidence to prove it, as well as the scientific evidence as I have spoke about regarding the endorphins and increased energy levels throughout the day.

Exercising with a plan and with purpose will make you more energetic full stop, even though you have just done a workout. You will want to do more that day because you have increased your body to a higher state of being.

If you think about your week of workouts, and then compare them to your days off, you will surely notice that on your days off, you will feel more sluggish by the end of them, and indeed the start of the next day.

On your good workout days, you may feel a little sluggish before the workout, but 99% of the time, you will feel a thousand times better, and this will continue until usually about an hour before you go to bed according to recent studies.

It doesn’t end in the going to bed stage either, you will sleep better after a day when you have exercised, you will have a better quality of sleep and this helps you recover from your day far better, and indeed prepare you for the challenges of the next day!

I hear this all the time from clients, they FEEL BETTER full stop when they exercise and this must be one of the most important things in life to look forward to!

Twitt