Posted on

Friday, 23rd March

Any of you who have been away for a short break or holiday, will have on thing in common if you are a regular exerciser and practice healthy eating.

It can be ENORMOUSLY difficult to get back into good eating after you have been away.

Most of the time you will either eat in the hotel, restaurant or café and for most of them unless you specifically ask, it will mean a ton of extra saturated fat, lots more salt in every day and no shortage of sugar!!!

This can send the calorific value of each meal you eat to stratospheric levels!

Everyone expects to put on a couple of pounds from such trips, but there is an even bigger danger that you do not even think about, but seems to get everyone when they return home.

By eating every meal which is much richer than normal, your taste buds can change very quickly and by the end of your stay, richer food soon becomes the norm for you.

So getting back to normal when you get home is a bigger task than you think.

Eating plain natural foods on a regular basis suddenly is much harder again! The plain porridge doesn’t taste as nice as usual, fruit seems “boring”, the vegetables you eat taste “different” compared to the ones cooked with a lot of salt on holiday, and unprocessed white meat and fish seems a harder dish to swallow than when you first went away.

So although we promise ourselves  that we will “get right back into it” when we get back, the reality is often very different, and the get right back into it turns into a 2-3 week delay in knuckling down to good eating!!!

The holiday pounds seem much harder to shift and exercising seems much harder than normal, not a great combination.

So if I get an “early warning” out to you and tell you how its going to be, you have more chance to prepare and make the first week you get back the “hard week” in terms of getting your taste buds used to the right kind of eating that you know is tried and tested, and get you dropping fat right away as well as getting you back to the standard of performance you had before you went away!!!

This early warning system can work so wherever you go this year, be prepared for the time it takes to get back to “normal”!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 22nd March

Hopefully this week you have taken onboard the many different options you really have in getting fit, or if you are already have a decent level of fitness, then you are capable of substantially more!

The biggest danger to any good well thought out programme is being overly complacent.

Just because one workout programme has worked so well for you in the past, it doesn’t mean its going to do as well in the future if that is ALL you do.

If you go for a cycle a couple of times a week and that’s your entire fitness plan, then you should seriously think about doing a more rounded fitness plan.

Cycling is one of my favourite activities, but I’m not foolish enough to think that weight training, running, walking etc is not hugely important too.

Most of us know big guys who only lift weights and that’s it, taking long gaps in between sets. Whilst they may have impressive development from all of this, the horrible fact is that a 100 yard run down the road could put them seriously out of breath!!

Thos runners you see running on the main road all the time, on the same old route for the same old distances, at the same old pace, surely they can do better in terms of a more rounded programme?

Most people do not know that Paula Radcliffe for example, does regular weight training sessions a couple of times a week, as well as a lot of core stability work.

The same applies to Lance Armstrong of cycling fame, he used to do a substantial amount of strength work which means off the bike for longer periods than most people would have ever guessed.

So if you think “I’m a cyclist” or “I’m a runner” or “I’m a swimmer”, and think that to become good at one of those only involves doing that exact activity ALL THE TIME, then please think again, reassess your programme and look for more variety not just for the sake of it, but for the good of your body and for the improvement of your favourite chosen activity!!

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 21st March

We talked about the value of training yesterday, and by that we meant “quality” training.

I have bumped into people today also who have talked about the importance of different types of training and activities, and how they will bring you yet more results.

This lady i train is suffering from shin splints, and i advised her to keep off the walking for the moment, even though she has a walking marathon in london in 8 weeks. She is now doing a variety of other work with me, so she gets in incredibly good shape, without straining herself.

She has become a very good cyclist in the meantime too, so her fitness levels have reached new highs even though she has an injury. On the weekend, i have told her to go to the pool and use a float again, and just use her legs to complete widths or even lengths. Anyone who has done all of this will find it incredibly tough, but will give a super workout that tests you to the limit without putting any undue strain on.

Another workout i have scheduled for her is underwater walking, which again is very difficult but will bring her some impressive fitness gains. There is ALWAYS a way around an injury, all you have to do is use your imagination and the sky’s the limit!!

Another person i saw today is a policeman, and he had to chase down a criminal this week for the first time in a while.

When he caught him, he had to wrestle and that means grappling with this criminal and using muscles he hadn’t used for a while. He found it okay if a little tiring at the time, but for a couple of days later he was incredibly stiff! Again this is down to challenging your body in a completely different way!!

 The great news is that your body will get huge benefits out of changing your programme around continuously, also it can be a lot more fun.

Give it a go and see how much you enjoy it!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Friday, 16th March 2012

Like analysing your food, analysing the way you exercise is just as important and results giving.

One of the most startling realisations I had was when I discovered that if you were on the same moderate programme for years and years, and you do the same thing day in day out, at the same speed using the same resistance, for the same number of times, then your fitness levels hadn’t really gone anywhere for years.

This statement can be upsetting for a lot of people because the truth can hurt, and an enormous amount of individuals and groups even will do things this way. Change is deeply uncomfortable for most people I have found.

The positives you should take out would be that simply changing things around will almost improve you overnight!! There IS a new world out there waiting for you.

If you simply change your programme regularly, then your body will have to keep adapting to change, and this will usually keep bringing you progress too, which is a benefit many have forgotten about unfortunately!

For example, if you have never done any balance or instability work on an unsteady surface, then you are missing out in a big way.

If you have become totally dependent on machines for your workouts, then I guarantee you that you are missing out on the huge benefits of free weights, and that you are really NOT getting the best out of yourself. Your body needs natural movements as much as possible, for all sorts of reasons and many machines do not come close to providing this!

Training is moving away from machines and has been for some time, there are far more inventive and beneficial ways to train, and you need to explore them and ultimately test your body under brand new conditions.

Freshening everything up is usually a massive positive in every other area of life, time to do the same with your exercise!

Put your trust in RESULTS, instead of machines that are already dinosaurs!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 15th March

If we are talking so much about analysing the food and drink what you put into your mouth, we must realise by now how important the “little things” really are.

If you can chip away at every meal by simply making small changes, to achieve a MASSIVE result, then this has got to be a change worth making surely?!! Its not really about the massive overhaul that most people imagine either.

If we talk about having a plainer breakfast such as weetabix which means no additives, then that does not mean a “version” of weetabix such as the ones which honey coat or sugar coat the wheat. This I can assure you will turn this normally good cereal into a cereal that contains heavily refined sugar, or the porridge oats with apple pie filling-IT DOES NOT WORK OUT WELL FOR YOU FULL STOP!!

This may taste nicer but its only going to do you harm in terms of weight gain and elevated blood sugar levels. Also, it will keep your “sweet tooth” well and truly alive, making you rely on refined sugars the rest of the day.

Its like taking sweetener with everything, what you are doing is keeping your taste for sweet tooth strong making you prejudiced on the kinds of foods you are “willing” to eat!

If you are only willing to eat heavily sugared foods, then you have little or no hope in achieving your true aims and goals. This kind of eating and behaviour will undoubtedly lead to potential diabetes issues in the near future unless you modify your eating without delay.

When you look at the carbohydrate section on the nutritional analysis on practically every food you eat, if the “of which sugars” is almost or all of the total carbohydrate, then its never going to be any good for you, unless its things like fruit juice which I advised to dilute anyway.

The “of which sugars” part should be comparatively low meaning theres a slow blood sugar release, and doesn’t play havoc with your blood sugar levels. You want stability all day long in this area, meaning you have longer term energy and little or no risk of developing diabetes over time.

Make it your goal to truly analyse what you eat, you may think you are eating healthy but in fact, you could be consuming a lot of unhealthy sugar which will disguise all your good work in the exercise department!

Twitt