“You can avoid reality, but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality”-Ayn Rand
Thought for the day
Day 77 80% is enough for me!!
Another great sunday morning run done today, and the sun was out loud and proud this morning again!
This great harbour scene was overshadowed a bit by the presence of church goer’s in cloaks at burry port lighthouse having a sermon, or chanting or something really weird, they could have been devil worshippers?!! Who knows, but what i do know is half those people pretending to be christians are usually the biggest sinners in our community, you know them so i say no more!
Anyway, how’s your sunday morning going? Has there been a workout in already before you get on with easter sunday? Have you had a great breakfast packed with vitality, or is it your weekly great british breakfast? Is this a day of rest for you or is it a day when you hit several beers, as easter sunday has come to mean this for a large part of the community.
Whatever your choice, i’m cool with it as long as you keep hitting your 80% target.
80% in school used to mean you were really intelligent, were very at good exams and likely to go on to college and have a very good career.
80% as a goal kicker in rugby is phenomenal in terms of coverting penalty kicks. Johnny Wilkinson and Neil Jenkins are the best of all time, and i would doubt even these great kickers ever achieved this success record!
If you were successful in something, it could be assumed that you were doing things right most of the time, not all of the time as that is impossible, but 80% or more would be classed as being a master in your chosen field.
This 80% i keep going on about is your target with your eating and training. If you can do this, you can see by comparison with everything else, you will be highly successful without a shadow of a doubt!!
I think the problem sometimes is that people often have to go 100% or nothing! You will see some on this site at either remarkable highs, or depressing lows (for a short time only i hasten to add!!). You can see that being perfect is not only impossible, its stupid to beat yourself up for not achieving it or even close to it!
EVEN the so-called masters are not perfect, and don’t achieve perfection, or anything close to it. Their magical number is closer to 80% rather than 100%.
Johnny Wilkinson often said that his pursuit of perfection nearly destroyed him mentally. He has since become a buddhist and now has a different view on life, which he says, has helped his rugby as now he doesn’t put so much pressure on himself. He still has hugely high standards, but doing his best and what comes from that is now enough for him.
Being yourself is often frowned upon but shouldn’t it be encouraged? Your best should and always be enough in my book, and whatever the result, then so be it. You willl be happy, i will be happy and when everyone’s happy, results nearly always go up and up!
Day 70 Tough choices, you win!
Day 70 is pretty significant, it sounds an awful long time but it is only 10 weeks. Did you ever really believe that 10 weeks could be so long, create so much possibility and change in your life?
Or was it the other way around?
Was it too long, or is it too long already? Is it more comfortable being in a programme that promises the world in 2 weeks? Is it easier that way so you can find it out quicker that it doesn’t really work, and you can move on to the next one that wants to take your money for another two weeks?
Should we all be eating crunchy nut corn flakes for breakfast and lunch, and we would all live happily ever after? That’s what mass marketing would have us believe of course, and would those magical two weeks actually create that model’s body we see in the adverts?! Maybe not.
Society wants us to have the massive highs and lows or there would be no “wonder” products to come along and change our lives. We all secretly want a magic bullet to change things easily for us, and be able to call on that magic bullet when we want to.
If we didn’t have routines and structures in our lives, we would all love to be in the pub every night and having fish and chips on the way home. We wouldn’t get up for work the next until WE felt like it, and we wouldn’t really have to work unless WE liked doing the job. This imaginary world doesn’t exist of course unless you had the financial freedom of a lottery winner.
Lottery winners are often in the paper though saying how money has ruined their lives. How they lost all their friends and life became “boring” for them.
What they really mean is that life became boring because they had no challenges in their lives anymore. Life had no value and they aspired to nothing. When you have something to aim for, you tend to raise your game and meet the challenges that are in front of you. This gives you self-esteem and self-confidence, which makes you feel good and gives you self-worth.
I have met a few people with all the money in the world given to them on a plate, but were often unhappy as they had nothing to contribute to in life. They had no tough choices, nothing to get up for and when that moment comes, life usually takes a downward spiral.
You hear it all the time, when people retire and have no interests, they don’t usually last long. Those who have plenty going on in their retirement and are challenged usually remain the vibrant person they always were, and usually keep contibuting to the environment around them.
This programme is all about tough choices and big challenges, and getting over them creates ultimate success and a long lasting vibrant life.
Have a great sunday!
Day 51 Use your imagination and let’s mix it up!
Day 51
One of the reasons why some people give up and some people keep with their exercise programmes is down to flexibility and variety. I’m not talking about stretching or anything such thing, I’m talking about being flexible with your workouts, and if you can’t do your scheduled workout, then do a variation of what you were aiming to do in the first instance.
For example, if you were planning to run for 30-40 minutes, and somehow you only had 10-15 minutes, and were still focused on great progress, I would rush over to the nearest most vicious looking hill, and hammer 6 sprints forwards, and 6 sprints backwards, each for a total of 30 yards of so. If you go flat out, you WILL get a great workout in!
Jean asked about interval training, should she do it? I think Jean already knows the answer, of course you should jean and show everyone what you can do! I always say that most people are only limited by their imagination when it comes to training variety.
Jean is talking about interval training, which could be described easily as jogging between one lamppost, then sprint the next post, then jog the next, then sprint the next one and so on. Now THIS is a workout that you will struggle to last more than 5 minutes each time, it is that intense!
Now we are starting to use our minds for our workouts, please don’t end up like some mindless zombie doing boring treadmill runs all the time, PLEASE, PLEASE vary it, not only because it brings great results doing different workouts, but freshens up your mind too!
One word of caution before doing ANY type of sprint work. In my experience, it is always advisable to do some kind of warm up before you sprint flat out, the always present threat of pulling a hamstring or groin never goes away, and the more weight you carry, the bigger danger there is. I’m not being prejudiced there, I’m just saying that I’ve done a million sprint sessions, and although you will get massive benefits from the session, the goal should also be not to get injured, in which case you probably wouldn’t run for a month at least!
The different ways of training are literally endless, and although you must still have a good structure in place, any type of workout is good as long as it’s safe and you’re capable of doing it. The more experienced you are, the more options you should have and as you should realise by now, it’s not simply a case of training for longer the fitter you are, that’s simply not true. It’s about doing “higher quality” training sessions in the time to suit you, and as long as you are improving physically, that’s a great sign surely you are doing all the right things.
Always stick to your fitness standards and we all have our benchmarks on how we are doing. Most people training with me may have a very tough hill as a benchmark, if they can do that consistently, they know they are in great shape. If you can do 40 press ups in one go, and your new limit is just 25, you know you have been slipping and you need to re-examine what you’re doing.
Being in shape physically and mentally can be easier than you think, as long as you know what your good standard in life is, and you try your best to stay there, even through the highs and lows that life often brings.
Gym based workouts
Had some emails in so i’m going to do a great gym circuit that works, and is very much using the same principles of the home workout, which really works too of course!
Select 6-8 exercises again, trying to work each body part in each circuit, and try to do a total of 3 circuits if your fitness allows. Take sips of water in between each circuit, and use good form in each exercise, no cheating or using too much weight for the sake of it!!
Use 8-10 reps for each exercise, and i like 12-15 reps on the leg exercises, you will get out of breath so scale down the weight you normally use, over the weeks that weight will go back up slowly as your fitness improves.
Bench press (chest)
One arm dumbbell rowing (back)
Upright rows (shoulders)
Leg press (legs)
Arm dips (using bench) (triceps)
Dumbbell curls (arms)
Sit ups (do as many as possible)
So basically, you will be using the same principles as the home circuit (see my previous posts), and if you really put a good effort in, you will get an excellent sweat and really get out of breath. Plus you will be breaking down muscle tissue, as you should now by now will raise your metabolism significantly (burn more calories 24 hours a day!).
Other examples would be
Pec deck
Lat pulldowns
Lateral raises
Leg extensions
Leg curls
Plank-Aim for 1 minute eventually (the gold standard)
Alternate squat thrusts-your best effort on each one, it’s a great exercise!
Your combination of circuits is only limited by your imagination. The bottom line is i repeat, DO EACH EXERCISE IN PROPER FORM, not simply so quick as just to finish it, or you won’t get the results you want!
I would do these circuits in the gym on a monday, wednesday and a friday (use the 48 hours in between each circuit to your advantage). These are over quickly but bring some big results to your body’s firmness and stamina levels. All good stuff!
Keri