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Thursday, 2nd January

Making a lifestyle change right now is obviously very much in the news at this time of year, but many people get confused with what a lifestyle change REALLY is. I have been through this time of year in a professional capacity many times of course, and its heartbreaking to see many people fall for the same false promises year after year.

In exercise terms, a lifestyle change can be defined as simply moving more, having some sort of exercise plan, however simple. Showing up regular for exercise can be the most powerful thing you do this year.

Even exercising three times a week can change your life this year, and affect positively all of your medical key indicators such as blood pressure, heart rate, body fat levels etc.

If you try just to jump in and get into exercise without knowing what you are getting into, then the chances of injuring yourself are high, and the dangers to your health can be very real. Nothing can crush your morale quicker.

Getting evaluated by a health and fitness professional is critical to you knowing where your starting point is, and how you are going to improve and at what rate. If you show up to exercise not knowing a thing about it (like most people), and then typically just get shown around once and forgotten about, then you are already in a dangerous position.

Not doing things properly is the chief reason why a large percentage of the population will give up on exercise by the end of the month. This is heartbreaking after usually signing a 12 month contract. The sad thing is that many gyms spend all their efforts trying to get you signed up, and very little effort in helping you navigate the first few months of transforming your body and mind.

If you don’t train right, then you’re not going to get any results.
Without results, your incentive to carry on will vanish.

January 2nd 2014 and surely it’s time to spend time researching the best way to do it this time.

Twitt
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New Years Day

It’s time to explode some “myths” of training, and answer a range of questions I seem to get at regular intervals from a surprising amount of you.

MYTH NO1 “The best sign of a great workout is how exhausted I am, and how sore I am the next couple of days!”

Many people I meet regard a great workout with being totally exhausted and sore.

When people come down the gym for the first time, they assume that because they didn’t feel “sick”, that they weren’t training hard enough!

I always have to put them right on this straight away because “feeling sick and exhausted totally” is the exact opposite of what we are about.

I always tell clients that making them sick all over the car park would be easy.

I am FAR MORE interested in getting them stronger, more flexible, being more agile and balanced, and dramatically increasing their speed and endurance.

Being sick from training is one of the worst things you can do for your body, causing great internal distress that your body takes a long time to get over.

If you’re measuring your training progress on being exhausted, and you are doing a speed and agility session with me, then you’re quickly forgetting why you are doing the session in the first place.

Teaching people to run properly and move in multi-directions requires the individual to use their brain power, their reaction time, as well as physical effort.

Last of all, there isn’t one scientific paper out there that says you have to be dramatically sore after a workout to get maximum gains from it, not one! You may get sore now and again from changing your training around and using different muscles, and who wants to be sore all the time anyway!

Always remember that anyone can get you tired, but it requires a far more professional approach to get you much faster, stronger and much better conditioned for absolutely anything you want to do.

Twitt
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Wednesday, 11th December

It’s very easy to walk away from this programme, and even easier to never start it. It takes guts and determination to get through it and come out the other side a much fitter and healthier person. I’m getting some pretty inspiring stories through too, such as daughters and sons nagging their parents to keep on going right up to christmas, even when the parent is trying to find excuses a lot of the time.!

When questioned, the main reason the parent wasn’t going to exercise that night was due that old chestnut “I didn’t have time”! That’s my favourite one, or at least my favourite because its probably the most used excuse we have all used at times and most of us are sick of by now.

If you look at the training/workouts section of my blog (www.kerimckibbin.co.uk), some of those workouts are 15-20 minutes long JUST to fit in with those who have no time. I work on this theory and it’s heavily based on actual progress, and actual results. Anyone who has ever been through it will know exactly what I’m talking about. Some of my best workouts have been shorter ones when I had no time.

If you start off being able to do 4 press ups, then 6 weeks later you may be able to do 30, would you say you progressed?

Of course you have, if you did 20 squat thrusts to start with, and 6 weeks later you are up to 100, did you progress? It doesn’t take a genius to work that one out, so hopefully you are seeing you can actually do this thing!

Three sets of 5-6 exercises takes a maximum of 20 minutes including water breaks! So what exactly are you spending your time on? What do you exactly base “I haven’t got time on”?!!

Most people work so 8 hours there if you’re full time, let’s give you 8 hours a sleep night, family responsibilities I know are very challenging this time of year, but you have to find the minutes(not hours) to exercise! For some people, the extra hours go on watching neighbours, emmerdale, coronation street, and estenders, sorry I forgot holby city? And what about the trashy reality shows that are much worse again? Sorry, I forgot that life was supposed to be about all of those?!!

So even allowing for all of that, you probably have a couple of spare hours, yet you need just 15-20 minutes to turn your life around, and you can’t manage that? Compare that to driving to some gyms, 30 mins there and back, then a workout and that’s nearly 2 hours out of your night, same with the swimming pool?

So the question is again, is 15-20 minutes too much inconvenience in your schedule to get you into shape, sorry I forgot about the pub on the way home, the petrol station to get wine, the spar to get chocolates, and tesco to get your ready meals? There are more important things every day than your health, I apologise!!!

If you’re reading this for the first time, then you may think who this crazy person is, but I make no apology for stating the obvious!!! Many people, make that, most people have become very skilful at making excuses why they aren’t in the physical condition they want to be!

What would happen if you actually committed to the 20 minutes most days, and within 3 months, people started saying “wow, you’re looking great, what have you been doing?!!!”, would you like that? Would you like people saying that those clothes are hanging on you? You should buy a size that fits you?!! Would you like that or not? Would you like to be on the beach or certainly wearing less clothes, and people commentating on how amazing you look now and you look 10 years younger? THIS IS POSSIBLE AS LONG AS YOU QUIT MAKING YOUR EXCUSES NOT TO DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don’t fool yourself anymore, this IS possible I’m repeating myself and I want to know when you are going to give yourself the body and health you really deserve?!!!!! I’m excited anyway because I’m living this every day as I am helping others to achieve what they want. Nothing better when you see someone you are training and their clothes no longer fit, and they realise they are getting into their best ever shape, that’s a great feeling for all of us, so let’s pick up the pace and really hammer the final few day to Christmas!!!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 21st November

So if you have had a good week so far, you need to be concentrating on having a big end to the week.

The training you don’t really feel like doing on a Monday will feel possible on a Thursday or Friday.

Your performance should be good if you’re attitude is up for it.

How about a time trial for a mile on the treadmill? What about 2500 metres on the rower? How about spinning for longer on the bikes and use a really fast gear, instead of the easiest gear?!!

I used to do this myself every week on a Friday evening at the same time, and gradually my time would come down. The result after around 2 months of doing something like this can be quite dramatic.

Also, it doesn’t really seem like your training for the sake of it and takes away the boredom factor.

If you are weight training for instance, start keeping some kind of journal to record your sets and weight lifted. This can be a very powerful tool, and lift your performance for good as you wont want to go back at all.

Putting a little bit of pressure on yourself to make small improvements every week is a good thing, and again over a 6-8 week period, you are likely to have made sizeable gains.

How about your running? Instead of keeping to easier, flat roads, how about targeting some hilly terrain for a change and this can work very well on a treadmill too.

How about all those medicine ball/wall ball exercises you see me giving everyone else but perhaps you have ducked and dived on for a while? They do work in a big way so all depends if you want the results or not!

How about getting outside and getting stuck into the fresh air work outside? It may be cold at first, but your lungs will soon get used to it, and most people get to crave it after a while. Those of you who work inside all day should DEFINITELY get outside, do some speed and agility work, hit the prowler, work with the sledge, hit some steps or flip some tyres for a change (a big one people avoid!).

It’s nearly the end of the week and the easiest time to make it happen!

Twitt
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Friday, 15th November

Hitting a Friday for many people means hitting the alcohol, hitting a takeaway and totally NOT hitting any kind of workout. This can apply to those who exercise or those who never exercise at all.

The weekend for many last from Friday tea time all the way until sunday evening and there’s nothing that’s going to stop that!!!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a drink once a week, but when it comes to more than that, I have seen many, many people put on weight and not progress much at all. It can and will make that kind of a huge difference to you, and your performances usually, and when I do my usual monthly measurement, the results are usually not that impressive.

So once a week drinking alcohol should be your maximum IF you are committed to improving and progressing with your body full stop, no if’s and but’s!

If you are not eating well 80% of the time, as discussed in the past, then you are not going to be able to fuel your performances at the level required for fresh improvements. You need to change right now, and this is why eating badly all weekend (from Friday tea time until sunday night flat out) is NOT going to help you reduce body fat, build lean muscle tissue like you really wanted.

Always make a promise to yourself, if you drink and eat badly on Saturday night, then exercise first thing in the morning the very next day, this case a sunday morning. This will help enormously in getting the rubbish out of your body, and make you realize that eating badly ALL weekend won’t do anything good in terms of future results.

By all means have a bit of what you fancy, but there’s no need to trash it all weekend!!!

Twitt