Posted on

Wednesday, 26th February

Moving in straight lines is a thing of the past in terms of training, or at least it ought to be!

When you think of your regular weight training, you will usually move in straight lines in a fixed movement. Most people know I regard weight training as extremely important, vital in fact and that will never change but there are other options you need to do in ADDITION to this form of strength training.

The same with running in straight lines like someone will typically do in a sprint or on a long distance run especially. Sprints are great and one of the most productive techniques you can use and are vital in my view.

Longer distance running can be ok but is often at a cost to your joints, especially for those with poor running styles and poor running shoes and not changed often enough (every 500 miles or 6 months in general).

If you are not doing speed and agility, then you need to start doing it however slow you may start. It will only get better and with the right instruction it will get rapidly better.

All the recent additions in terms of equipment to the gym (over the last 7 days) are very much biased to you becoming much better at handling your own bodyweight and becoming more free in your movement.

These movements are also intended to mimic everyday life experiences in all that you do, as well as copying multi-sports movements.

This will lead to your core becoming a lot stronger again, and being ready for any eventuality in life that comes your way in movement terms.

Anytime you need full instruction on this new equipment let me know!

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 12th February

The ability to eat well in social settings is one of the biggest difficulties most people face.

Some people eat the likes of pizza, Indian/Chinese takeways, party food “just to be sociable”, this is what many of you have told me over the years. The same could be the said about the pressure to drink alcohol every single time you go out no matter what.

Absolutely nothing wrong with the occasional treat, it keeps you fresh and you shouldn’t have to feel you are on some kind of “diet”!

To make the change publicly to eating healthily in front of your friends, or at least not making “quite as bad” choices is a difficult path for some of you to follow.

It is though a powerful sign that you are prepared for people to see that you are on this healthy path, that you don’t want to eat the fast food on offer all the time, and usually people I train are pleasantly surprised how positive it goes down with their friends.

Changing your behaviour and associations with food and alcohol is always difficult, and people will have a few comments to say about your new choices in public, but apart from that initial change and surprise, after that others will almost expect you not to eat all the rubbish in future, even if they are piling in themselves!

To get into shape and the physical conditioning you want to really achieve, you have the change your lifestyle for good. There is no other way and everyone I know who has had the best results over the longer term has changed their lifestyle and will never go back to the way they were.

Nothing feels better than being fit and healthy, to being close to your optimum body fat levels, and being capable of regularly improving your performance levels.

Nothing can beat that!

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 11th February

Everyone wants to practice things they are good at, what they excel in and its human nature to look at your strengths.

Our training should make us think what we are struggling on, what our weaknesses are, what we need to really improve. What our injuries, our past injuries or breakages when it comes to joints and bones? All these things need addresses before old age comes, because it gets even harder then but still great advancements can be done even then!

This is not a negative, its only going to improve what we like doing in the first place.

If we like to play rugby or football to the best of our ability for example, then working on our weaker areas will only enhance our performance.

Just being stronger with weights or just being better on the treadmill won’t guarantee a better sporting performance, it will help A LOT, but all the stuff we do in our training will give you all the little “add ons” that will make you the difference between okay at a sport, to excelling at it.

The top athletes are the ones who do the little things to improve, this what separates a great athlete from an average one.

You have every opportunity to use the latest science of training to take you wherever you want to be.

The only thing stopping you would be falling for the trap of doing the same old thing all the time. If you do the same old thing, you’re going get the same old results.

We are looking to get the very best out of you, so start searching where you can get even more from your training, more out of your nutrition, and how you can get an even more positive state of mind to see you through the ups and downs of getting into top shape!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 6th February

If your results have been good in January, then you should see February as a continuation of the lifestyle habits you developed or rediscovered in January.

Lots of people ask what is the “true secret” or the “one thing” of getting into the shape you always wanted, and I have to tell them the same old answer. The “one” thing is EVERYTHING.

You can’t fool your body for long with the latest faddy diet, the latest exercise gimmick, or whatever comes on the market on a relentless basis. If I based my business on any of these, I would have been out of business in a few weeks or months at best, like all of these fads inevitably do.

If you are not eating healthily, if you are not exercising regularly, if you are not sleeping well, if you are not keep alcohol to once a week, then you are not going to get near the results you want, and please don’t let ANYONE tell you different!

February is time to try something new too, now your foundation is better, you can experiment more and hit new exercises. We always like to talk about exercise cost and this means the hardest exercises usually have the biggest energy cost, so try this month and approach your programme in a different way.

Moving on to the next phase of your training is vital, and this is only possible when you are doing everything right in the first place.

We have more people than ever exploring their limits on the physical potential.

This means new exercises, variations on older exercises and a higher training intensity again using all new and different strategies.

Time to make the step up.

Twitt