Tuesday, 14th May

Leaving yourself no other option but to succeed is crucial to your success, and a big secret to achieving for the long term too.

If you give yourself too many options sometimes, then you’re always going to struggle.

For instance, if you are planning to do a workout tonight, and you start going through your mind that “maybe” you should leave it tonight, “after all you have to get the shopping, cut the lawn, clean the kitchen etc”, then the workout can easily be left.

Then you may say lets do it tomorrow? Then what happens is that maybe someone has invited you out, invited you for a drink, for pizza or just to have a chat, then the workout suddenly gets moved to Thursday.

Then one of your children tells you that they have parents evening and you HAVE to go of course! Then it gets to Friday, and then you come out with the oldest excuse in the book, “no point in starting back on a Friday, I’ll start back next week”!!!

This is a great example of you not prioritizing your workouts enough, and you can see it wont take much for “other” things to take priority!!!

The basic message of this is to put your workouts as something you MUST do (recipe for success), rather something you plan to do AS LONG as something else doesn’t come up (recipe for failure).

Ask yourself would you miss an appointment with the doctor, dentist or solicitor? Your workouts need to be considered just as important, as you will be looking after your health and there’s nothing more important.

Prioritise your exercise today and you will automatically get much better results!

Wednesday, 8th May

After a long bank holiday, a big workout on a Tuesday and today, Wednesday is probably the last thing you feel like.

Deep down though, you know you HAVE to hit it hard today, to not only work the weekend out of your system, but to set the right tone for the rest of the week.

Did you notice that if you didn’t train at the weekend, your eating probably took a dip too, in other words you probably ate and drunk things that could be considered “less than healthy”!

The combination of healthy eating AND exercise should never be underestimated, and they both feed off each other.

You can’t really do one of them well without the other, and once you commit to doing both at the same time, then you’re telling your body that you’re are going to be committed to achieving big things with your health again.

So if its feeling like the week has hit Wednesday already in double quick time, then you would be right, and the race is on to get your body and health feeling back to normal.

A good way to do this is to hit as close as you can the numbers that you have been used to in your best workouts.

For example, if you are used to rowing 10 minutes or under over 2500 metres, then this will give you a barometer on how you are performing after a weekend of drinking and eating too much.

If you can run 2 miles in 16 minutes, then you will know that if suddenly you are struggling to break 17 minutes, then you are some way from feeling and performing at your best.

If your body fat is measured 2-3% more than normal at the end of the month, then you will know that you have to change your habits right now, to get back to the heights of where you have been before.

This is why all my training methods have a lot of measuring tools, both in performance and body analysis. Don’t leave anything to chance and keep aiming high through constantly monitoring yourself!

Tuesday, 2nd April

So here we are, Easter has come and gone, lots of you have been on mini-trips, and been enjoying yourself over the holiday, and why not!!

Easter signifies for me how much work you have really put in over the winter? Have you been working hard when it was freezing and wet, as well as when it was dark at 4pm?!!! This is when it really counted and the annual expectation that some have got to look great in one month is often a foolish one.

This is why i write this thing year round, because EVERY single week is important, every monday to friday in terms of training and eating is ultra-important to shape your destiny this year. Ideally, you would have taken some of that stuff in i was writing every day, and applied it to get some decent results. I know that is clearly the case with a lot of you.

If you have ignored what i said in all of those winter months, and indeed the last four years, then no need to worry, i will certainly not be offended and will gladly continue to try and help you.

If today is indeed your first day of trying to get into shape for the summer, than i welcome you onboard!

The first thing you need to look at is your food cupboards, and are they full of sugary and fatty foods, or are they full of good wholesome foods. If they dont come up to scratch, then please plan ahead and make your next supermarket shop your first start, filling that trolley will foods as natural as possible, without all the added sugar, salt and saturated fat, start drinking more water and start moving, and by that i mean exercising, however small in duration terms.

The fact that you started is the most important thing you can do today, and you can still make a difference to yourself by the summer, if you knuckle down right now!!!

Monday, 18th March

A great day to be Welsh on saturday, an unbelievable result and great to see a great team effort coming back so strong, especially after the nightmare against Ireland in the first game. This shows unity, teamwork and a deep seated belief.

Monday is the same for them though as it is for us. Time maybe to still reflect on the weekend, but our minds need to be very much on today and the week ahead. The professionals from saturday will today be back into their stride. They will be eating right again, taking in plenty of fluids, ready to train well and look forward to the weekend’s games.

You should have that same attitude too. It may sound fanciful to you, but getting a professional attitude will keep you in shape for a lifetime.

Those of you who are used to peforming at a high level most of the time, will be used to eating the right things at the right times. You will be used to taking onboard enough water throughout the day, you will be getting to bed early in the week to make sure you recover from your workouts, and this is very much close to the attitudes those boys on saturday are used to showing in their normal daily lives.

This is what i try to teach individuals in their training too of all ages-professional training techniques that will get you results far quicker, and just as importantly, in a totally safe way that won’t stress your joints!

You have all the information now to train and eat like a pro, never has there been an opportunity like right now too get into the shape of your life!!

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!