Posted on

Friday, 5th April

The role of speed and agility should not be limited to the “young and sporty”.

How many of you went to school, took part in sports to some degree, then may have even gone on to play for the school team, maybe a proper club team and maybe for a number of years……………….then everything stops!!!

You may have a couple of years off, sometimes a number of years off, and when you try to get back into exercise, the agility and speed you once had in school for example has disappeared!

You feel stiff as a board and you always put it down to “old age”, even though you may only be in your 30’s or 40’s!!! Hardly old age in my book!!

The great news is that there’s many ways around this but you do have to start slowly.

Getting a more general programme that concentrates on making your core stronger is the way to start, getting your muscles more flexible and allowing them to strengthen. You need to stick at this for a couple of months until your body recognizes that its ready to improve again, and you suddenly start realizing that you are not really “too old” at all, that you can feel better, that your clothes start to feel looser and that you can show improvements in your training, and incremental improvements start becoming a normal way of life for you.

Its at this stage you can think about doing more speed and agility work.

Fast footwork sessions are suddenly an option, backward running can be done, light sprint work is back on the agenda, and a whole host of techniques I love to take people through.

Once you get through this work, automatically you will start to remember the way you were in school or in your sports team, you will be a lot more agile, much faster and literally a big spring in your step!

This is what a much more complete programme is all about, and this is why I so feel that amazing results are always consistently possible.

Twitt
Posted on

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!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 29th March

Good friday is here again early, and although a lot of people have time off today, i can tell you right now that 90% of people i train are ready to work hard again today, just as if it is another normal day. This shows great dedication and a willingness to improve no matter what the holidays, and its a great sign that everyone is involved in an ever-evolving programme that brings progress no matter what!

This is because of the flexibility of our programmes, most if not everyone i train know that they can get great session in a 45 minute time frame, 30 minutes or even 15 minutes, as long as they tell me in advance their limitations on time, and the need “to get it done” in record time!!

This is what life is about, and the super-fast nature of it all. Why cancel or put off a workout when if you had just spared that 20 minutes, you could have had a great workout that would have further contributed heavily to your overall progress.

ONCE you adopt this attitude, that anything can be done anytime of day, and WON’T take you the time that others seem to take over exercise, then the rate of cancellations you have in you exercise schedule will greatly reduce, and guess what? So will you overall progress jumpy to levels you never thought possible!!!

Its all about taking action, instead of “talking a good game” so let’s get it done this Easter!!

Twitt
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

Tuesday, 19th March

An interesting part in the paper yesterday about people who had made their names into brands.

Two of the most familiar to you are worth mentioning.

Richard branson and James Dyson of the vacuum cleaner fame of course.

Both of them said they had failed so many times before they eventually became super successful, often having moments of doubt and indecision, always doubting whether they would and indeed, could carry on after a trail of failure.

The best bit of advice they said would be to keep trying if you believe what you are doing is right, and you really want to get there.

This is so important to consider when you think of your eating and exercise programme.

How many times have you thought about giving up? Or more like actually GIVEN up on your programme, only to be brought back into it when you suddenly had the heart to give it one big effort again.

This is the trick, the hardest thing to do like branson and dyson said. To pick yourself up and really drive yourself on in the face of all kinds of adversity.

So you should consider it no big deal to fail-a number of times!

For example, if a baseball player scores just 3 times out of 10 in his innings, he is considered a hall of famer!!!

If you this example, then surely you should be concentrating on your SUCCESSES and not your failures, because failures HAPPEN full stop, and you had better get used to them because they will always be around.

The great news is though that your successes will always far outweigh them! They will be more fun, change your life more and they will be a lot more pleasant! Just keep trying and you know they will keep on happening!!

Twitt