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Tuesday, 10th December

If you are short of time due to the time of year, and most people usually are right now, then its vital that when you exercise, you REALLY make it count!

Going through the motions for an hour is not an option, challenging yourself to do the biggest “energy cost” exercises will be absolute key so you make the most of your valuable time.

Please don’t end up one of these individuals who spends endless hours of low intensity on the bike or treadmill. That type of exercise will do you good of course, but there’s a huge array of other options you need to get into that will deliver far better results for you.

For example, I always encourage people in the gym to stand up on the spin bike.

Simply starting by standing up for ten seconds in intervals, then sitting down for one minute, then, up for ten seconds again will put some intensity into the workout that you have never experienced before.

When you are able to stand up for 30 seconds, down for 30, up for 30 again etc, you know you will be doing very well and you will start hitting a very respectable level in spinning terms.

Plus this is far more fun than just cycling away endlessly using very little effort, and you will be far more likely to keep this activity up which is very important .

If you are weight training, don’t spend 5 minutes or so in between sets, try working on your lung capacity too and getting your heart rate up.

Weight training does not have to be just about strength. Weights can give you a much stronger heart and some added lung power, IF you cut down your rest in between sets.

Longer term targets for rest in between sets would be 45 seconds. You may have to reduce the weight you use initially, but you will eventually build that weight back up again as you progressively get fitter!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 26th November

A nice story in the paper today about great rugby All black captain, Richie McCaw, was selected for under 19 trials and how his father in Christmas 1998, asked him if he wanted to become a full All black when he was older.

Naturally he said yes like all New Zealanders.

Then his father asked him if he wanted to become a “great all black”? And if he did to write it down on a napkin. McCaw was modest and nodded but just wrote G. A. B. on the napkin. He then took the napkin to his own notice board and hung it there to remind him. It meant little or nothing to anyone else who passed the board, but meant everything to him.

His father set him a target of 2004, but reached this lofty goal in 2001, ironically against Ireland winning 40-29, and last Sunday those teams shared one of the best ever games last Sunday, winning right at the death 24-22, and their win was largely down to the captaincy and calming influence under extreme pressure of McCaw, who has pretty much seen everything in his long career.

McCaw credits that napkin story with keeping his focus when it could have wavered. It was a big lesson in setting a goal and sticking to it, and actually WRITING THOSE GOALS DOWN.

Goals have been proven in studies at Harvard University to be 80% more achievable IF THEY ARE WRITTEN DOWN.

They found that they had students who would talk about their future goals by just talking about them, would in reality have only a 20% chance of being successful in those goals.

The ones in the studies who actually wrote the goals down, and in detail, were found to have an incredible 80% likelihood of achieving those goals when they left college.

When I ask everyone what they want to achieve from their programme, lots of people say “I want to lose weight”, “I want to get fitter” etc, but if you actually write your goals down in detail and what they mean to you, its only then they become much more real, attainable and then you can actually develop a step by step process to achieve them.

If you take the first step right now and write down what you really want, then you will then be able to develop a detailed plan with a TIME LIMIT and schedule it into your lifestyle. The time limit part is vital and means you actually get it done full stop!

More on this tomorrow with examples of successes.

Twitt
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Friday, 15th November

Hitting a Friday for many people means hitting the alcohol, hitting a takeaway and totally NOT hitting any kind of workout. This can apply to those who exercise or those who never exercise at all.

The weekend for many last from Friday tea time all the way until sunday evening and there’s nothing that’s going to stop that!!!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a drink once a week, but when it comes to more than that, I have seen many, many people put on weight and not progress much at all. It can and will make that kind of a huge difference to you, and your performances usually, and when I do my usual monthly measurement, the results are usually not that impressive.

So once a week drinking alcohol should be your maximum IF you are committed to improving and progressing with your body full stop, no if’s and but’s!

If you are not eating well 80% of the time, as discussed in the past, then you are not going to be able to fuel your performances at the level required for fresh improvements. You need to change right now, and this is why eating badly all weekend (from Friday tea time until sunday night flat out) is NOT going to help you reduce body fat, build lean muscle tissue like you really wanted.

Always make a promise to yourself, if you drink and eat badly on Saturday night, then exercise first thing in the morning the very next day, this case a sunday morning. This will help enormously in getting the rubbish out of your body, and make you realize that eating badly ALL weekend won’t do anything good in terms of future results.

By all means have a bit of what you fancy, but there’s no need to trash it all weekend!!!

Twitt
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Tuesday, 29th October

With all the volatility in weather terms, avoiding storms, huge amounts of rain falling, temperatures rising and then falling quickly, this is an ideal time to become acclimatized to the upcoming very cold winter temperatures to come.

Instead of waiting until January to experience the unpleasant shock of your lungs not going to be able to inhale the very cold air, now is the perfect time to experience a more gradual change in the weather.

So instead of disappearing from the colder and wetter weather by taking up permanent residence on the settee, its surely time to get out in the fresh air even more and expose your lungs to all the changes to come.

Another good reason to do this would be to keep yourself in the shape that you worked so hard to get in during the summer. Don’t go through the agony of putting all of that hard work in, and then pile the weight and body fat all back on again.

We have 8 weeks left to Christmas and this is a perfect time frame to allow yourself to put a very good training period in.

The weeks before Christmas are often more important than the ones afterwards, because going into Christmas IN shape will feel fantastic, and allow you to avoid the torture of battling the bulge after overdoing in the Christmas holidays!

So it all starts here, keep doing your running, your cycling, your sprints etc, its all going to be much more valuable than you think

Twitt
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Friday, 25th October

Friday is a day which perfectly illustrates what we talked about energy levels being affected by lack of carbohydrates-the body’s preferred energy source.

How many of you have skipped your Friday session because you have “no energy left in the tank”. Perhaps you say to yourself that it doesn’t really matter anyway, because you have worked hard enough in the week anyway! I see this a lot.

If you manage to get a Friday session in, you will go into the weekend feeling good and much better about yourself. You will feel as if you have had a very good week, and you won’t be leaving your training Thursday until Monday, which is a who four days of training. This approach definitely won’t get you into the shape you really want to be in.

On top of all of this, when you get to the following Monday workout, you will feel that much more sluggish, and be less enthusiastic about starting your week with a bang!

Missing Friday also encourages you to start early on your weekend treats too. If you aren’t training, then you may just buy some junk food early, keen to “relieve stress” of your week with some sugary treats or alcohol bottles.

Friday for me is a “just do it” kind of day!!! Don’t think about, just do it and reap the benefits afterwards and put yourself in a great frame of mind coming into the weekend!

Twitt