Posted on

Monday, 30th July

End of the month approaching fast and hope you are managing to get through the summer months in better shape than ever before?

If you are, then you are doing absoultely fantastic and you have undertaken regular reviews of your performance, and adjusted your training programme and eating regime to suit the goals you want to reach.

If you have been drifting, then you need to get someone to re-evaluate your programme, and then how to take it forward several steps from there.

We are all re-evaluating all the time when you think about it.

None of us have it easy and make gains without thinking about it.

Success in our physical conditioning and health requires us to think at all times in how to negotiate the twists and turns that life tends to throw at us.

If you have started missing your training sessions, and it has become a regular thing, then think about switching the time you train in the day. If something always “comes up”, then training first thing in the morning might be a great option for you, and takes all of the potential excuses out of your training aspirations.

If you can’t help picking snacks up in petrol stations or bottles of wine, we all have a favourite petrol station after all, then the simple way is to just fill up at another station where the big temptations aren’t there. This simple change will alter your behaviour if you give it just a week to get used to.

We all make associations with different things. Perhaps we like certain things in Morrisons that may not be good for us, and perhaps switching to another supermarket for a while might help you correct our bad habits/not tempt us so much with snacks that will de-rail our fat loss goals.

Nothing’s easy to get that’s worth getting, so be ready to read and react to every situation every day.

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 26th July

If you are a bit more serious into sports in terms of being a participant, you can’t beat flipping tractor tyres for a great overall workout.

You will be working everything in this type of workout.

Your legs, your stomach, your back, your hamstrings, thighs, arms and shoulders will all go through a massive amount of work when you go through this process.

Down the gym for example, we now have a dedicated area outside purely for this activity.

The same area is also used for sprints, for carrying heavy sandbags, for using a sledghammer on to tyres, and the latest addition is the famous “farmers walk” with the rubber-cased 125 pound blocks!!

All of these movements will give pure explosive power to your body-vital to perform at a high level in sports.

The great thing about all of this is that many of the participants are not sportsmen or sportswomen at all, they are normal everyday people who want that just little bit different from their workouts!!! The results they are getting are simply sensational, and although these exercises are not for the beginner, they are tremendously enjoyable and a great addition to more traditional methods!

Every exercise has an “energy cost”. By this i mean if you went for a gentle walk, then this would not have much of an exercise cost at all.

Going for a run would have much more of an exercise cost, a set of high-intensity sprints would be much more, and the tyre flipping would be right up there too.

You can see that the higher intensity of exercise definitely burns a lot more calories, a lot more fat and gets you into tremendously better shape than you ever previously thought!!Training is changing all the time, make the most of your efforts and don’t settle for second-best!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Tuesday, 24th July

If we are feeling sorry for ourselves training in the heat that is around us right now, you have to bow to the riders of the Tour De France over the last few weeks!

You can swap our 22-25 degress for 38-43 degrees at times, all done on some of the highest mountains known in world cycling. This is why these men are probably the toughest athletes on the planet, and anyone who has observed them up close will know how extremely hard they work!

They need up to 7000 calories a day to get through such monumental days, and when most are only around 9-10 stone, this feeding regime on its own is a big feat!!

So next time you consider this week if its too warm to exercise, stop feeling sorry for yourself and enjoy the relative heat, because we don’t get it very often!

Another thing the great Bradley Wiggins victory demonstrated was the ability to recover every day, dust yourself off and get up the next day and do it all over again!! Often a lot harder and many days!

This shows extremely conditioning but this is done with an extreme amount of practice too and attention to detail! Wiggins spent the early part of his winter going up the side of a volcano in tenerife, which simulated the very real challenges he would face in the Alps and Pyrannees!!!

Like anything in life, if you prepare really well, then everything is likely to go a lot smoother and better on the day, and so it proved. Not only Wiggins but he had a super team with him too, who all prepared ultra- well in their own disciplines to make sure nothing was left to chance, and they ended up the best and most dominate team in the tour.

This is why regular training is all-important and will lead to your best results if you keep putting your mind to it!!

Twitt
Posted on

Monday, 23rd July

We are right in the middle of the most popular period for people going away or just having time off work.

The big question is where do your workouts fit in during this time off, if at all?

Some people use this time off as time away from their workouts too. The more serious exercisers can be forgiven and even encouraged to be doing this, as measured time off from a tough exercise programme, can be very beneficial and often enables the individual to come back stronger after the time off.

For people who are just getting to grips with their exercise programme, time off may not be the best option, and consistency of exercise may be the most important thing right now.

If you are abroad on holiday, then swimming will serve as a very good exercise, especially when done with some intensity and purpose. Improving your swimming should be your goal, and 30-40 mins a day will help out enormously on both improvement and in terms of being a very good workout.

When it comes to running abroad, try and run in the cooler times, which means early morning and evening. This will make the conditions a lot more tolerable, and enable you to put in some decent efforts.

Try and avoid staying out too long in the sun full stop for all sorts of health reasons, please stay out of the danger zone in terms of over-heating your body.

When you exercise, try and make them shorter efforts, but having a real purpose will help an awful lot.

For example, if you had to do 10 thirty yard sprints up a steep hill, and that was it, then this is much more attractive than a 3 mile run in the intense heat, and probably far more beneficial.

These type of shorter, sharper workouts are more likely to get done and the best way to maintain your fitness.

Keeping an exercise programme up at this time of year, with increased heat and holidays happening is tough. In a couple of weeks time though, you will be very glad you did it!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 19th July

If you are continuing to struggle to get into good structures with your eating, then you need to stop over-complicating things and simplify things.

If you’re not eating breakfast for instance, you will pay for it in some way later in the day.

Not eating breakfast DOES NOT help you lose weight, and WILL encourage binge eating usually much later in the day.

START eating breakfast right now if you are interested in losing body fat straight away and maintaining healthy levels for the rest of your life.

Don’t be afraid to snack! If you don’t snack, your hunger levels will go up and down leading to bingeing again later in the day. Snacking healthily is always a successful strategy when it comes to fat loss, maintaining healthy lean muscle tissue, and feeling energised throughout the day.

Don’t skip lunch or you will pay for it later in the day. You need the satisfying feeling of a good lunch or you know what’s going to happen?!!! Those hunger pangs you get by missing lunch will lead to yet another bingeing opportunity later in the day, I hear this time and time again, so lets get it sorted right now and make your eating plan simple!

If you get the breakfast, the mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snacks sorted, then you should be feeling great when it comes to evening meal.

Due to the fact that you have fed your body throughout the day, you shouldn’t be absolutely starving when it comes to evening time. Your energy levels will be much more constant and you shouldn’t feel the sudden urge to slam in a cheese sandwich whilst waiting for your main meal.

Those people who try to make the process of getting lean and healthy sound like rocket science are the same ones trying to rip you off on some kind of “wonder diet” that comes around all the time. Nearly all of those diets don’t work, and once you accept all you need to do is keep a good structure to be successful, you will never fall for those dodgy sales people ever again!!!

Bottom line is to eat often but in smaller portions, the number one way to lose body fat AND STAY FULL and end your wild bingeing on food days forever!!!

Twitt