Friday, 31st May

The standard you have set for yourself will dictate how healthy you are, what performance levels you put in, and how regular an exerciser you are.

If you have a good standard of personal achievement, then you will never miss a session, unless you are ill or something big came up in your day or week that stopped you training.

If you have a lower level of standards, or don’t really care what you do, then you will miss numerous sessions, never really perform close to your potential and your achievements could be described as mediocre at best.

I write this on a very warm (for us anyway) and sunny Friday, and there must be a million reasons for you not to train today. Your decision today usually tells me what your level of commitment is really like.

Even if you are going away the weekend, there’s no reason why you couldn’t have put in a session this morning before you went, no reason why you couldn’t have packed your tshirt, shorts and trainers so you can do a workout when you are away, and this all comes down to what personal standards you have set for yourself.

If you are struggling for direction right now, and achieving very little, then you had better set yourself higher standards, and leave yourself no other option but to achieve them.

For example, if you want to eventually want to row 3600 metres on the concept 2 rower, and currently you go through the motions and are hitting just 2500 metres, then you need to try and start improving.

Ask someone who knows how to improve on the rower, commit to rowing 3 times a week, set yourself a target of improving 100 metres every 2 weeks, within 20 weeks you should be within touching distance of your goal, there you have it, within 4 months you could be a very decent rower, and as a results you will have lower body fat, stronger heart and lungs and the satisfaction you can achieve anything you set your mind to, then KEEP that standard in everything you do!

Thursday, 30th May

The pain and frustration in coming back from injury or illness is always difficult.

Its times like these when you really appreciate what you were capable of in the recent past, and you will do anything to get back to where you were.

First of all, you may be tempted to come back too early, and what usually happens is that you re-injure the problem that stopped you in the first place, which adds to the frustration again!

You have to learn not to work through the pain, and allow your body to re-adjust in its own time, this is the tried and tested way to do things properly.

When coming back from illness, you must take it easy, and allow your body to get fully used to training again, meaning you should do far less than normal. You should only be training if you feel well enough, not rushing back into things.

If you take the following example into account, you will see what i mean.

Studies show that when a pro athlete takes a week off, it usually takes them one to two weeks to get back where they were. If they have four weeks off, then it can take four to eight weeks to get back to normal. This shows that you MUST take your time when returning from injury or illness, take advice if possible and look for guidance on your journey back to full health.

Wednesday 29th May

Just to recognise melanie bowen for her excellent post the other day, and the very positive reaction from you, here is her blog address.

www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/melanie

I am sure she has a big future in front of her.

Melanie is currently a Master’s student with a passion that stems from her grandmother’s cancer diagnosis. She often highlights the great benefits of alternative nutritional, emotional, and physical treatments on those diagnosed with cancer or other serious illness. To read more from Melanie, visit her blog for the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance. In her spare time, you can find Melanie trying new vegan recipes, on her yoga mat, or spending time with her family.

Wednesday, 29th May

Internal changes to your body are the true measures of success, without these changes your body would not be able to perform in the way you would like.

If your heart is not functioning properly, then there is no way you can perform in the way you would want. You couldn’t test yourself in any sort of way, and you will always be worrying about what could go wrong with you body, instead of what was going right!

There’s nothing worse than admitting defeat with your body, and claiming that you can never even train hard anymore! Worse than this, there is something worse-telling yourself that you can’t even train anymore AT ALL!!

These things tend to happen when you don’t look after yourself, and this is why internal health is vital, even though you cannot see it on the outside!!

I have met an awful lot of people who have had their lives curtailed by their health, some through no falt of their own.

If you can do something about it though, you had better get on it straight away and go through some tests.

Cholesterol tests, blood pressure, resting heart rate tests are all things you can sort out very quickly.

Please do it today and treat your internal health as an absolute priority, this way the way you look and feel will change almost immediately with a sensible eating and exercise plan.

Tuesday, 28th May

Setting yourself targets is important in your overall development.

The targets in terms of numbers will change all the time, depending of course on exactly how much you keep on improving.

A good more general target you can set yourself every year is just as important, and sets up your mindset to achieve bigger things.

I try to get individuals to improve each and every year.

This is a big target i set myself and as long as i improve, even in a small way, i will know that i have been successful in that year’s progress.

Let’s it another way that may surpise you, like it did with me the very first time i heard it.

Let’s say an individual can run for 2 miles, and can cycle 5 miles sometimes, and does a little weight training twice a week with the same weights all the time. Let’s say this happens every week, and has done for the last 5 years.

The vital thing to take out of this example is that this fitness programme is the SAME all the time. It never changes one bit, the intensity never changes, an even the weights are always the same.

I have to say right now that the very fact that this individual is exercising, and this is a MASSIVE POSITIVE in health terms, and i encourage these habits very strongly!

However, this is an example of someone who never improves, who goes through the motions too much, and has remained in the same state of fitness for 5 whole years, when if he/she changed his/her programme much more regularly, then the physical improvements would have been drastically more impressive.

You can easily change your programme every 6 weeks, at the latest every 12 weeks, and really benefit from those even subtle changes you could make.

Time to re-evaluate what you are doing, study what could improve, and aim to improve each and every year, no matter how small that improvement would be. This is a simple goal for you every year, and one guaranteed to bring a level of success that you wouldn’t have otherwise.