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Get back to your best

How many of you are hovering 10 pounds to a stone above your best and can’t seem to do anything about it?

Here’s my guess on why.

Are you just showing up for workouts going through the motions maybe?

Have you forgotten how good it feel likes to be at your best?

Have you lost your confidence in your physical ability? Are those hills you used to go up suddenly “off limits”?

Is it easier now to be a little bit overweight, maybe the effort of being at your best now is “too much”?

The great news is that we all go through such situations and we all need to snap out of this thinking as soon as posible.

That initial uncomfortable period of finally getting your best “head on” only lasts around a week, after that you wll have regained the desire needed to get those extra pounds off.

I’m talking about getting back up those hills, getting back on the bike maybe, being more active full stop.

This will then lead to better and better performances. For instance, you may get back to doing sprints up hills but how much effort are you REALLY putting in to them. Is it simply a matter of gettiing to 6 0r 8 0r even 10 sprints, but not worrying how fast you are going?

Once you get back to worrying about your performance and really wanting to get 100% out of yourself again, this is when those extra 10 pounds to a stone will come off. Your body will recognise the big efforts again, and adjust itself accordingly. Lower body fat will have to happen, more toned muscles will have to happen, better lung capacity will have to happen, a stronger more efficient heart ready for anything will happen once again!

You will start to feel alive again and realise that getting back to your best wasn’t mission impossible after all!

A dry 3 days coming up believe it or not so lets make the most of it!!!

Twitt
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That “its florida, they are all fat over there” holiday excuse

Anyone who has been to the USA on holiday, and in particular florida (orlando especially), always seem to come back with the comment “all americans are fat!!”.

This comment seemed to go on year after year, for the past 30 years it seems.

First of all, there are two florida’s. Orlando is where people come from all over the world, so there are people from many countries there at any one time. Also, you have to go on the facts, a majority of americans ARE overweight, along with an awful lot of Britons!

This creates a shocking environment for many holiday makers but i got the same exact feeling when i went on my weekend family break in butlins.

I have never seen so many people overweight, so many people driving motorised scooters in their 40’s and early 50’s. So many people wearing clothes that you didnt know they made so big. There were literally so many people looking ill it was scary.

These people were mostly eating rubbish all day too, drinking too excess in the evening and simply staying in the shade all day to keep cool, sort of anyway.

I AM NOT HERE TO JUDGE, only to report what i saw and to put all of those “only americans are grossly overweight” arguements to bed once and for all!

There is another florida as i saidd, there is miami and south florida, where you have much higher percentage in shape, working out on the beach, eating much fresher food and generally looking a picture of health.

The same can be said for california, especially los angeles (coastal parts anyway) and particularly san diego.

The USA is a huge country, with 4-5 times our population, interestingly the population overweight in terms of percentages are roughly the same, which will surprise many.

So its maybe time to get real about the UK, and how we are continuing to abuse ourselves on food and drink, and lack of exercise.

Its funny how things change, and how we seem to be catching orlando up as a holiday destination, for all the WRONG reasons!!

Hope you’re having a great start to your week and lets make it  a big one!!

Twitt
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England are out!!!

Apparently, England are expecting a heroes welcome today, their flight home has been diverted to Glasgow airport! That was on Talk sport this morning which is an english radio station but thought that was really funny!

Jean asks why was Rooney looking so slow etc and i think that most of us are fed up of the “bigging up” by the press, the england team are either rubbish and unpatriotic, or they are world-beaters! Clearly they are no world beaters so this probably leaves england amongst the weaker nations when it comes to international football.

The question that has been asked is why these players play so well for their clubs and they are so poor at international level.

There are a number of reasons i suppose and im not an international football coach, but playing players out of position doesnt work, the english players are not technically as good as the germans, the germans “wanted it” much more and were prepared to run all day to make opportunities to win the game.

The likes of rooney, terry, gerrard are obviously over-hyped and were taken to the cleaners by this relatively unknown German team, these unknowns are now household names now in germany and is a testament to their youth policy. You have to say they were the best team.

In this country, the focus seems on getting the best foreign talent in and not developing our own. This probably means that club football is far more important than the international game, and really exposed when england gets such a hammering and end up being a disgrace.

A lot of people are saying get rid of Capello and bring in Harry Rednapp.

As i stated before on here, Rednapp seems a much better man manager and seems to have the knack of getting the very best out of players, many of whom were previously heading to the scrapheap! He is also full of passion and drive, and its great to see he is getting the recognition he deserves.

Getting people to believe in themselves is more than half the battle, Rooney doesn’t become a terrible player overnight, after all he was voted the player of the Premiership this year. He clearly has lost confidence, perhaps his injuries caught up with him, whatever the reason, there was no excuse for not chasing every ball down and no trying your best, at times it did seem many of the English team were not as committed as the Germans clearly were.

England need a huge inquiry into their performance and need to create a centre of excellence, like most successful nations have. However it appears the FA are about as pro-active as the Lawn Tennis Association, plenty of talk but on the results front, pretty useless and a national disgrace, always have been and always will be.

Twitt
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Eating before exercise

Its more important than you think to have a snack before exercise.

We are all a bit different and react that bit different to all sorts of foods, so working out what best food choice for you and agrees with you is always important.

Whole grains, lower far dairy or fruits will always work well for you as a stop gap for your workouts and give you some energy for your tougher workouts through the summer.

Try eating these snacks if you can at least 30 minutes before exercise to make sure your food goes down properly, and your food is ready to release energy into your system.

The 30 minute rule applies to smaller snacks, if you were to eat a big meal before training, you may need 90 mins to 2 hours before your workout.

I find some people have better digestive systems than others. I find i can eat and literally then go for a run. I could probably do a big meal and exercise 30-60 minutes later, but that took a lot of getting used to because i tend to eat on the run throughout the day, and took me years to get used to that because of my lifestyle.

If you stick to the guidelines i first mentioned, you shouldn’t really go wrong.

I used to try the no food strategy before a workout because i thought i may feel sick. This was a stupid strategy because i would always then fail towards the second half of the workout, due to lack of carbohydrates left in my system. I avoided the sickness for sure, but it wasn’t worth losing all that energy.

You will find also that if you don’t have food before workouts and you have no carbs in your system, then your body will use precious lean muscle tissue already on your body. This can be a disaster because you have worked so hard to get in the first place, as well as muscle being so important for your metabolic rate (the rate your body burns calories). The last thing you want is to slow down your metabolism, so lets keep getting your snacks in every 3-4 hours and really make this thing happen for you!

Not eating before exercise is bad news full stop, just like the idea of not eating breakfast, any time your body goes long periods without food, its goes into starvation mode and stops burning fat so easily.

Keeping your weekly eating well-structured and full of nutrients is the only way to go if you want the best out of yourself.

Twitt
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Longer life

Most people who try to sell you exercise equipment these days to it in a way of promoting looking younger and more atractive.

On the other hand, scientists are coming up with more and more ways of eliminating or a least improving the quality of treatment for many diseases.

The facts are that today’s society is more inactive than ever before, and throw in more packaged and processed food than ever before, and you have this huge timebomb ticking away ready to blow big time in the future, in fact its started now with the NHS.

So the marketing of exercise is great in promoting youth and physical attraction, but surely the prospect of a better, healthily, in other words, higher quality of life should be promoted to the hilt.

My house search continues and when i look for a house like most of you, we take into account how far we are away from the shops, parks and other amenities. The reality is that we use he car for even half a mile journeys for a variey of reasons such as we  are pushed for time, we can’ be bothered to walk and simply its easier to take the car. Over 5 years and if we didn’t do any other exercise, this sort of attitude contributes heavily towards our chances of ill health in our future unfortunately.

A scary statistic is that not being physically active doubles our chances of developing heart disease, and the burden we create on society is comparable to that of smokers.

So the choices are clear, we either stay inactive and see what our “fate” is sometime in the future, or we become physically active using a prevention is the best cure mindset.

There is endless evidence to say that making physical activity part of your daily life not only gives you more energy, less body fat, greater muscle tone, more physical attraction and holds off the ageing process, but it ALSO gives you the power to seriously reduce your chances of developing serious disease.

All of his helps you live a high quality and longer life, lets get out there today and do something!

Twitt