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Thursday, 17th October

The importance of food is a message that never gets forgotten on here, as you may have noticed. The thing that keeps this message going, is the feedback that comes from the people who read this every day, the ones who receive emails from me through their normal everyday training, and the questions I have almost every day from people who haven’t trained with me yet, or have and are in another part of the country or continent even!

So the questions and conversations I have daily are what shape this blog in the first place, and this is why the conversation always goes from topic to topic very quickly indeed.

Its great to hear that a huge number of you are taking advantage of our new emphasis on recipes, and how to make food from scratch that will fill you up, be really good for your body, is easy to make and perhaps is the solution to the helplessness that many of you feel when it comes to making good quality healthy food on a regular basis.

The journey that many of you have taken when it comes to re-discovering food again, and how good it can ACTUALLY taste has been inspiring, and inspired us to comes up with regular new recipes that we use in our everyday life, and especially the challenging times when it comes to juggling the responsibilities of raising a family, running a full time business and all of the other stress of modern day life.

So this blog is shaped by you, and please keep the ever-increasing comments coming to fitness@kerimckibbin.co.uk. Register on this site if you want and ask a question directly so everyone can see it, or simply call me on 07968 980 808.

Look forward to the ever increasing variety of questions too, however simple or complicated you may think they are!

Twitt
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Wednesday, 16th October

Since the weather is turning obviously, its time to talk about any potential restrictions the weather may put on your training.

I know lots of individuals who rely on the weather to dictate what they do on a particular day. I have tried getting the people I train away from making excuses solely on the weather affecting their participation in training.

1. Some people won’t go out of their house for instance just because its raining (like today as it happens!).

Remedy-it rains pretty much 9 months of the year in this country, if you didn’t train the days it was raining, you would never get fit and healthy!

2. Some people won’t go out of their house because its too cold, and like to stay “in the warm”!

Remedy-you get warm through exercising, you feel a lot better and you won’t have to have the heating on when you get back in the house, because your body’s temperature will be much more comfortable after you have exercised!

3. Some people won’t want to train when its too hot! Another excuse to stay in the house and do absolutely nothing!

Remedy would be to train first thing in morning or in the evening when it is a lot cooler. Drink plenty of water throughout the day, and regularly throughout your workout. Don’t work quite as hard on the really hot days.

4. Some people won’t go out because its snowing, and you can totally understand that because it is plainly dangerous to drive in particular in such dangerous weather!

Remedy-the only reason that I cancel workouts in the snow if I cannot drive to a client, but if I can get to them we can workout inside, or if people can get to me in the gym, we always have a great workout again inside!

You can see the weather really doesn’t have to cause you to stop training, its only a case of adapting to the different situations and working the weather to suit you!

Twitt
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Thursday, 10th October

There’s a nice little story in the paper about the famous runner and Olympic champion Mo Farah, in the press today talking about his upcoming autobiography.

He talks about his early career and all of his ups and downs, and his long journey from Somalia to where he is now.

The critical moment was way back in 2005, when he was advised to attend a Kenyan training camp. This changed his life in many ways, but brought the professionalism in that was required to take him to being a world champion.

When he first arrived, he expected to go to the cinema or go out dancing. He looked at his watch and it was only 830am, yet all the Kenyan athletes went to bed! He used to drink 6 to 7 cups of tea a day, the Kenyans only drunk water, and when he followed this advice, his performances started improving quickly! He also started eating only simple whole foods, and this was a major change and revelation for him.

Then at 6am, everyone got up to loud church music, and he was required to do a 7am really hard run which half killed him!

Then they would return for food, then the Kenyans would sleep in the afternoon, then hit another big run at 5pm, eat throughout the day and then go to bed at 830am, day in day out without fail!!

This was their true secret of success.

While I could never ask anyone I train to follow such an extreme training regime, there are similarities in what I ask people to do.

I always say that regular, high quality training sessions are the way to go.

I always recommend getting to bed early, especially in the week, and putting great value on proper rest. My clients who do this are my best performers and usually look incredibly well!

I recommend much plainer, whole foods, which nourish the body very well and help you perform extremely well!

I recommend plenty of water, up to 3 cups of tea or coffee can be fine, but you dehydrate after that so this downgrades performance.

The Mo Farah story is a great learning experience for all of us!

Twitt
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Thursday, 3rd October

Just under 12 weeks to go to Christmas, and some people are already describing it as the Christmas run in!

In terms of your body and health, 12 weeks is an ideal time to make a monumental change for the better with your body and mind.

If you improve the way your body looks, feels and performs, then mentally you are going to feel a whole lot better!

I know of many people who say they feel lousy, and it usually coincides with them never exercising or given up exercising, they don’t often eat well and sometimes drink too much alcohol.

So you can see that living a much healthier lifestyle is a whole 180 degrees from that lifestyle of eating and drinking too much, and never ever working out.

The mental side to training is not discussed anywhere near as often as it should be. There is a strong connection between exercising, eating healthy and feeling at your best.

When you feel at your best, you tend to be at your best emotionally too. This always goes into every area of your life too, making everything seem much more positive, and leads to a whole new level of optimism in your life!

The best part about making a big lifestyle change is that it is relatively easy to keep up, and you really wont want to go back to feeling that you haven’t got any energy in your life, you wont want to go back to feeling that you cant fit into your clothes any more, you wont want to go back to feeling sluggish all day, you wont want all of that negativity in your life again.

This is why its vital that the emotional side of things comes with your physical improvements, they have to go hand in hand.

This will make your overall chances of feeling happy much higher, and when you are happy you tend to make much better everyday decisions, cutting the risk of falling back into your old ways when your lifestyle was making you really unhappy.

When you are happy, you tend to want more out of life, you will tend to want to improve all the time, and this is why its much easier to stay healthy and in shape for the rest of your life.

All it takes is exercising sensibly and using common sense with your food, it’s a great time to start right now!!!

Twitt
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Thursday, 26th September

You need to get around the “no time to train” problem that many suffer from.

One of the easiest ways is to SCHEDULE it in! Would you miss a doctor’s appointment? How about your dental appointment? How about the meeting with the solicitor? Are they more important than you fixing your body?

So the times you make for your workouts should never change too much, or you will keep putting them off!

This is why I strongly suggest many individuals train first thing in the morning, before they go to work or the kids get up!

This takes care of your exercising before anything else comes up! It will be tough at first, but everyone I know who has done it for a while wouldn’t train any other time!

Make exercise your priority, and study you weekly diary to get at least three sessions in!!! Your body needs regular workouts, it needs regular attention and you want to feel good?

Exercising late at night never usually works, this is because you will usually be too tired, something else will usually come up, and training before bed will get you going at the wrong time, causing you not to sleep straight away because your body will not be shutting down and calm like it usually is before bed!

I haven’t met one person yet who really hasn’t had time to train, there is always a way if you want it bad enough!!!

Twitt