Posted on

Thursday, 1st December

A great chance meeting this morning with a gentleman Roger Rees, a 65 year old pensioner who has always like a pint (or three!), liked a smoke every day and thought exercising should be banished from society. He always believed that somehow things would “turn out okay” in health terms.

Then after being diagnosed with blood pressure problems, he was prescribed blood pressure tablets for which he stayed on for a couple of years.

Then he decided to exercise!!! It was sort of a “light bulb” moment and he discovered the massive benefits of exercises.

He has taken to exercise like a duck to water, although he has stuck to cycling as his first love.

Since he bought a bike, he has had the best 12 months of his life he says!

His blood pressure tablets have gradually come down, and with the doctor’s approval, has literally just been signed off medication as his progress has been so remarkable.

He had a big weakness for bacon, he now says he cant remember the last time he had it.

He drunk a few times a week. Now he has a couple of pints once a week, and he says he enjoys it this way far better, and doesn’t wake up with a hangover anymore!!!

His smoking is a bad memory from a distant past he says. He says it was the worst thing he ever did, but since he is now smoke free, his lung capacity is far more impressive which has been backed up by all the tests hes been having with the doctor.

The bottom line is that hes changed his life completely with exercise and eating well.

 Hes lighter than hes ever been. Hes far more energetic than I have EVER seen him and all of this shows exactly what can be achieved by a healthy lifestyle change!!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Wednesday, 30th November

The end of the month and a time for celebration or throwing your chips in and calling it quits for christmas?!!!!!

Depends on your current level of fitness and conditioning i suppose!

If you are in good shape, you will raring to go in december and really make further inroads into your body fat and strength levels, i certainly see a lot of people in this situation.

If you are struggling to get workouts in and shop well for good food, then chances are you will be glad to see christmas coming, so that you make a “new year resolution” and lose all the weight after christmas!!!

This is following typical behaviour by most of the population.

I always tell people that december is one of the most important months to train hard and eat relatively well. Of course, you will be having lunches out, evenings out when healthy food may not be on top of the list, and you will be drinking alcohol a lot more too.

Despite all of this, the exercise and effort you put into it will be worth heck of a lot to you.

If you want a wheezy chest, then don’t exercise.

If you want to lower your immune system, then don’t exercise.

If you want your clothes to feel much tighter, then don’t exercise!

If you want to stagger into christmas and face a herculean challenge in the new year again, then don’t exercise!!!

So in december, everyone knows you may well drink more than you should, you will almost certainly eat much more than you should, and your sleep may well be lousy, but despite all of this, commit yourself to exercising throughout the month. This is the greatest christmas gift you can give to yourself, you are nothing if you haven’t got good health so lets keep this uppermost in your mind please!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 25th November

Are you keeping variety in your programme? You still need to keep to your core programme, but you need some extra activities to add to the spice of your life. If you just go to the gym, do you run outside too?

 Have you been cycling outside? Have you ever tried canoeing (its much harder than you think!)? Have you ever tried a trampoline? A lot of people i know find it fun! Have you ever wanted to learn how to swim? Whats wrong with signing up for a course for 10 weeks?

We talked about exercise being an every day habit for you, have you got to that stage yet or are you still fighting that concept? Good news is that if you stop fighting it, it WILL become an every day event that you actually enjoy as long as you have enough variation!

Have you had the goal of becoming a good runner? If this is true, start out walking every day and see how you feel after a couple of weeks.

Then you may be able to run ten yards in different intervals when you get your breath back. The worst thing you can do is start off running.

 I know people who bought the “run a marathon in 26 weeks” book and ended up with nasty blisters, bad feet, knees and back because they didnt listen to good advice. They followed the advice of running 5 times a week and it ended up in disaster! These books often don’t take into account everyday people and the problems they may run into.

You MUST try to find something you like, otherwise you are very unlikely to keep it up.

Another great tactic would be to team up with a friend in your fitness, as long as you have similar goals and are of similar fitness levels. The social aspect alone will motivate you along very well and take you to levels of training you may not have thought possible.

Bottom line is simply to DO instead of talking about it so lets give it your best shot!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 24th November

All options are possible if you apply yourself to a goal that’s uppermost in your mind.

What stops us getting there is being sidetracked into minor things that have no bearing on what we are trying to achieve.

This week as I have said yesterday, has seen me focus on getting every single person I train up to their best levels for the year. This has led to exciting training sessions and previously unseen motivation levels.

There are so many things that can detract us from our goals, this is why its vital to have a structure in our lives we can do without even thinking about it.

I had to visit the dentist today with a minor complaint, but still enough pain to cause me some distress. We then get lectured (rightly I might add!) on how to clean our teeth properly, twice a day to enable us to have our teeth for a lifetime. Im sure most if not all of you have experienced this.

So why do we brush our teeth every day, twice a day, some people more, and we cant look after the rest of our bodies every day?

If we don’t look after our teeth, they eventually fall out!

If we don’t look after our body and continually abuse it, we are likely to have a heart attack or bring on a serious disease.

So by that comparison, most of the population doesn’t treat their body with the respect it deserves, until its too late usually when you are being lectured by a doctor in hospital!

So if you are doubting whether to continue your exercise programme, and somehow questioning the virtues of eating healthy food daily, then surely this must be the wake up call you need?

The primary need to exercise and eat right is to be healthy, to function properly in daily life, for your immune system to be strong to fight off disease, and to live a decent quality of life.

Surely these most basic reasons are enough to get you back on track and get you exercising today!!!

Twitt
Posted on

Thursday, 23rd November

Hopefully, you have reinvigorated yourself this week by re-booting your exercise programme and you have already hit a big couple of workouts already this week.

Its this type of enthusiasm that i have been bumping in to all week long. Any “feeling sorry for yourself” attitude has been crushed and replaced with fresh enthusiasm full of people rallying themselves for a big end of year performance.

All this sea change in attitude takes is a momentum shift in the way you approach everything. If you approach everything in a negative way, you are highly likely to get a negative reponse.

If you approach everything in a highly optimistic and positive way, then doors usually open for you and people can be very receptive to your ideas.

For example, if i suggest a workout to someone that involves one of their most difficult bike rides so far this year, with a few extremely difficult hills etc, then the initial response may not be so good! However, if i point out that this type of ride coincided with them being in their best physical performance all year, then they start to associate the two and then start nodding in a positive way and are then far more likely to approach and have heck of a go at this hugely difficult ride.

Then when the ride is completed, a huge sense of achievement and satisfaction starts to come over them and this one workout alone, can make the difference from either having a mediocre end to the year, or a far more exciting end to the year with perhaps new highs of performance attained, which usually transform to excellent body fat levels and that all important feeling of wellbeing!!!

Whatever your situation right now, positivity about your true ability and previous achievements this year need to be revisited right now to end the year on a massive high, and allow you to follow on into 2012 with a fresh batch of goals that will inspire you on to greater things again!!

Twitt