Monday, 10th September

Your training should always be balanced each week over a seven day period, and you should plan what you’re going to do each workout.

For example, today is monday and typically would be a great time to put some weight training/resistance training in. This can be done through weights and dumbbells, or using your own bodyweight as resistance.

I encourage all over body workouts each time, so I would look to put my second weight session in on a thursday whichht gives you 72 hours to recover. Your muscles break down during the session, and build back up again and recover properly only when they have had enough rest.

48-72 hours is a great rest period enabling you to come firing on all cylinders.

A beginner would tend to do their weight training programme on a monday, wednesday and friday because the intensity of their workouts isn’t going to be so great, therefore needing less recovery time.

A beginner will also spend a lot of time just getting used to the new movements, usually using a lot less weight so this means less muscle tissue broken down, this is the big reason not so long a recovery is needed.

So monday, wednesday, friday if you’re just starting out, monday and thursday if you have much more experience and you’re familiar with training and the required exercise and intensity.

Then we look at the cardio side of things. Down at the gym in burry port, we use treadmills, rowers and bikes, but there’s so much more to cardio in my view.

I’m a big believer in the battling ropes, which anyone who has trained with me knows only too well! They are massive on lung capacity, shoulders. Arms, back, legs and most importantly, core! You only need around a minute on these ropes, and you are absolutely blasted so get used to them as soon as possible!

Then we like to use a lot of speed and agility techniques, as discussed late last week, so you can see you definitely DO NOT need to rely on traditional forms of cardio anymore!!

I would put these fun sessions in on a tuesday and friday, with wednesday off to recover and rest properly. Recuperation is vital and always an underrated part of your health and fitness programme.

The weekend can be your fun stuff outside, getting up walking or running even up mountains, and you have endless routes to try in terms of cycling.

There’s always swimming, longer walks in natural surroundings such as pembrey country park and exercise ideas are only limited by your imagination!

Friday, 7th September

There’s an old song called “it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it” and this definitely applies to your training!

How many times have you been caught up with the mantra that you MUST train for an hour, or even an hour and a half?!!!

This may have applied to the thoughts of previous generations and the people who gave them this misleading and inaccurate information, but now you have to accept that times have indeed changed, and now exercise science dictates that we do not have to spend endless wasted hours exercising, especially when we can achieve a huge amount in the fraction of the time it used to take us to exercise!

If you believe that endlessly running on a flat surface is much more results giving than doing sprints up hills, then you need to think again.

If you still believe that lifting big weights, take long gaps for testing in between sets, then slowly move on to exercise to exercise is the best way to go, then please re-visist that thought process once again and try it out for yourself. Stop resting for 5 minutes in between sets, and cut down that rest period to 45 seconds. You will have to drop the weight maybe, sometimes by 20% if you’re not conditioned to it, but the overall effect of the workout will absolutely blow you away!!!

Too many people go to gyms and train so inefficiently it’s not true!!!

You need to get to the point, go after your targets with urgency and hopefully you have some kind of plan and direction you intend moving in!

This is a “must have and have it now” society we live in, maximise this by making your workouts shorter, more intense and make sure you’re focused on results!!

Monday, 3rd September

The school term is about to start, and with all of this comes a lot of rushing around chasing your tail.

The word “workout” may not happen for you this week, and if you expect me to agree with that statement, then you’re totally and absolutely wrong and making far too many excuses to yourself!

You need to schedule your workouts when it is possible for you to do them, there are 168 hours in every week, and 7 days, we have all have that time available to us, nobody gets more time than others!

Its how you use this time!

This is why morning workouts can be so valuable to you.

When you train early, the exercise part of your day is over, done, completed and taken care of! You may not like getting up early to start with, but the individuals who i do train and have done for many years, wouldn’t train any other time of day now, they now PREFER TO TRAIN EARLY, and often say that early is the best part of the day!

If you think you cannot get up that early to train, there is a simple solution, try getting to bed earlier the night before, that may help! I could never get up as early as i do if i didn’t get to bed early the night before, it simply couldn’t happen!!!

The people who schedule in their workouts NO MATTER WHAT are the ones i have greatest respect for. These are the people who without fail have the best results too! Not missing workouts will have a dramatic effect on your body, and its all good!

If you train most days, then this difficult school week will become far more tolerable too. Exercise is proven to effectively deal with stress very well so its a no brainer to include workouts most days of your week.

Less stress, less body fat, a stronger heart and leaner stronger body are all huge benefits impossible to ignore!! Schedule your workouts in today for the rest of the week!

Thursday, 30th August

To follow on from all of the positivity yesterday, its vital you practice this each and every day, and after just a few days your life WILL change.

Let’s get one thing straight, EVERY SINGLE PERSON i know get their moment of doubt in what they are doing, and sometimes different parts of every day.

The key is to try and keep crushing those doubts by carrying on with certainty in what you are doing. If you believe in what you are doing, then the key is to carry on with that belief until good things happen.

Those moments of doubt and indecision are the critical moments in deciding whether you’re ultimately going to be successful or not.

When i first started off in my career, there were countless times when i wondered whether i was doing was right, but the more practice and the more results i had, the more certain i became that what i was doing was going to work time and time again. This is what comes with plenty of experience, we all make mistakes sometimes but the more experience you develop, those mistakes should become less and less as long as you have done your research!

So if we trying to have a really big effect on our bodies through exercise and eating well, we had better start learning how to become positive every day. Exercise is one of the most positive things you can do, and if you are planning to do some form of exercise most days, then your chances of being a much more positive person should be pretty high.

So accept that you WILL get those moments of doubt and indecision, on whether you should show up for your workout, whether you should eat that high fat meal or not, whether you should have another heavy night on alcohol or not, whether you should go on a new faddy diet or not, whether you should listen to all of the magazines on how to get fit, all of these decisions and more will dictate on what kind of physical condition you get in!!!

Your future is shaped by everyday questions, what kind of future is dictated by your answers!

Friday, 24th August

Snacks-calorie breakdown

Snacks are vitally important as we talked about a couple of days ago, to keep energy levels up, and to keep important nutrients coming in throughout the day. Your diet needs to be all about energy and getting your performance levels right up there!

 Here are some ideas on what you should eat and their calorific value.

Fresh fruit for energy-100g usually

Apple-50

Pear-64

Banana-95

Blueberries-30

Kiwi fruit-29

Plums-34

Grapes-60

Strawberries-27

Satsuma-23

Dried fruit-to cure a sweet tooth and good for you

Sultanas-138

Raisins-136

Figs-43

Apricots-29

Low-fat yoghurts-provide calcium and nice desserts

Natural low-fat-56

Whole milk-79

Low-fat fruit-90

Low fat fromage frais-58

Nuts-50g-for essential fats

Cashews-287

Brazils-341

Almonds-306

Walnuts-344

Pumpkin seeds-57

Sunflower-57

Mixed nuts chopped-304

Hazlenuts-325

 As you can see by this list, we are talking about good healthy natural foods that are going to do you the world of good!

Please throw out the other sugary snacks such as biscuits, crisps and chocolate, the fact that they are still in the house means that they will get eaten at some stage or another, so give them away to someone who will appreciate them!

Snacks have often been the area where i have seen a lot of individuals leave themselves down. We have talked about the usual suspects such as chocolate, crisps, biscuits but what about the ones with real hidden dangers?

I am talking about cereal bars, and these were highlighted in the news this week as containing much more saturated fat and refined sugars than even chocolate in some cases.

When you add all the chemicals that they put in that you have never even heard of, then you have a very destructive so called snack that is going to put body fat on, and give you a lot of useless energy that is unusable by the body.

Eat natural and this means eating well