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Friday 16th September

Congratulate yourself today if you’re doing something positive about your health and i really mean that!

From individuals i know currently having pulminory rehabilitation to those who have just done the Tenby Ironman race, the efforts on both counts have been hugely impressive, and in some cases relatively the same considering the starting point of the individuals!!!

Anytime you show up and do some exercise, life will become better and move in the right direction for you.

Anytime you get up saturday morning and you start grilling your breakfast instead of frying, you’re improving your health if you can make it lasting change.

Anytime you can say that you’re not going to go through the motions anymore, and you want to do different things in your training that will bring you some great results, life will change for you for the better because you will be focused on continuous improvement.

Anytime you decide that instead of staying in bed saturday and sunday morning, you walk up some hill or even small mountain that you never even thought of, you’re going to be improving at a speed that will shock you!

Anytime you start thinking that just because you have hit 40, 50 or 60 years of age, you are finished in physical terms you are doomed!!! TURN IT AROUND RIGHT NOW, cut that thinking right out of your mind and start realising that these ages offer OPPORTUNITY and not the end of the road!!! I have countless examples who have proved me right, and its their experience that inspires me every day!!

So we are on friday and traditionally the end of the week for most, start seeing it as the beginning of your enjoyment if you have been stuck in an office or house all week, this weekend is the beginning of your opportunity to feel alive again and get in shape so lets give it your best shot!!!!

Twitt
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Thursday 15th September

14 weeks to Christmas and an ideal opportunity to put a sequence of events in place to make sure you’re in great shape by then.

Number one is that you have to WANT to do it. Of course everyone WANTS to be in shape, but how many of you are really willing to go through the kind of effort needed to do so?

I see so many people believe it or not asking for OTHER people to get into shape. If someone else has to ask for you to get into shape, then there is a sincere lack of will to do it in the first place.

If you have a lack of will, then what hope have you got?

The abundance of will and NEED to do something will be the driving force when times get tough.

For example, I was talking to the coach of an under-achieving rugby team the other day, and complained that they always start off well, falter big time mid-season and then fall away completely at the end of the year.

When I dug under the surface of the problem, the issues on why these performances were falling away soon became apparent.

The most amount of players they had out for training was in the summer months just before the season started, which explained their excellent start to the year, in fact 30-35 players.

Then when the bad weather came, it went down to 10 players believe it or not.

Then because of under preparation, they start losing and the turn out’s dwindle to sometimes 4-6 players!!!

Then you don’t have to guess too hard that the season more or less collapses due some heavy losses. The players who were then tempted to come back often just write that season off and promise to  come back the next season!!!

So does that team “want it” enough?

 Definitely not it seems.

You will find the most successful teams or individuals are the ones who practice the most, with most intensity and don’t have big gaps in terms of weeks or months in the time they train or play.

UP TO YOU!!! 14 WEEKS TO GO!!!!

Twitt
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Monday 12th September

Having an escape route to relieve life’s tensions has become even more important.

With life’s pressure’s getting bigger and bigger for most people, the escape route in exercise terms has never been so important!

I can think of many people who use exercise as the perfect route.

It could be a bike ride on a more obscure route, it could be a run in the woods, or it could be a simple walk anywhere.

What you find with these options for exericse is that you not only get a good fat burning workout in, you also get some “you time” when you can gather your thoughts and really unwind after the pressure of a hard day, or if you turn it around another way, you can exercise first thing in the morning which is the best preparation for a hard day to come, and seriously helps with the pressures of normal life to come!!!

Everyone has a favourite run or bike ride, or cycle or even swim becomes they become familiar with it.

I have a woman with five children i train who likes nothing better than walking up a really steep route to her friends house, and a walk that used to take her 40 minutes now only takes 20 minutes!!! What once was a pain in the you know what of a run has now become a quick easy walk which she now happens to do more often!!

The best part about the walk is the time out she gets when she can let off steam and think about what went right and what went wrong with her day! Some people use alcohol as this emotional crutch but many, many people i train now use their daily “escape route” as their must do every day.

Nothing better than getting rid of stress and losing  body fat the same time!!!

Twitt
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Friday 9th September

A reflective sunday coming up for many and i am talking about september 11th of course, the kind of day definitely when you remember exactly where you were on that day!!!

Ten years ago now and its a good day to remember where you were with your health and fitness!!!

Were you leaner, were you heavier, were you out of shape, were you at your fittest, did you always perform well then, were you in a rut you never thought you would get out of then?!!! All different situations and i will bet that things could have turned full circle by now if you haven’t been consistent with your training and eating, or certain things in life happen sometimes completely out of your control?!!!!

The bottom line is where are you now and what you have learned about yourself in the meantime. Why are you or why aren’t you in shape now? There’s a pathway to being in shape and staying in shape and did you stay on it or did you completely go off that path and have forgotten the way back since?

So ten years may have gone and you may be reflecting on what has happened in your life since back then!!!

The question is now are you going to use all of that positive and negative experience to good effect this time in determining the path you’re going to go on for the next ten years? If you don’t, then the last ten years of training will have been a waste of time if you can’t use it to your advantage?!!!

You should be a smarter trainer now, you should realise that faddy diets do not work, you should know the value of rest, you should know the value of changing your trainers regularly (every 6 months max), and the really good advice of having a really well thought out programme thats going to bring you results year in year out!!!!

Things change over the years, but the fundamentals never do, i mean the stuff you need to do every day to be successful!!!

Twitt
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Thursday 8th September

As winter approaches, and we are definitely in autumn already, it seems as if all the “warmer” type of cooking is very much “in” and the summer salads are very much “out”!

The problem is that when winter food does come in, that seems a big excuse for some people to really slam lots of salt in when it comes to food preparation, and with added sugar in just about everything these days, this is one of worst ways to stay in shape, and weight gain is pretty much a certainty unfortunately.

Once all of this winter food starts becoming a way of life again, the next stage are the famous baggy jumpers and dark colours to try and look “slim”!!!

You can get used to baggy jumpers and we all must have been there at one time or another. Baggy jumpers become addictive because nobody really knows whether you are in shape or not!!!! You enter another world where you think you can get away with anything!!!!

 Baggy jumpers don’t really work the following summer though, unless you like sweating a lot of course, and then a whole winter of eating “winter food” becomes apparent to everyone and this is why crash dieting becomes universally popular in spring!!!!!

You can easily avoid all of this disappointment and crash weight gain, then crash weight loss horrible scenario if you just use your intelligence and don’t change things too much!!

Nothing wrong at all with eating warmer foods but there is absolutely NO reason to slam lots of salt in your cooking, you don’t need ANY as it happens!!! You don’t need to add corn flour, sugar or anything else thats guaranteed to make your health a lot worse over time. Whats wrong with keeping it all natural anyway?

It can be done and all people i look after do it this way.

If you thinbk thats no possible, then perhaps your taste buds are conditioned to junk food, and saturated fat and high sugar in particular!! If this is the case, then you need to change and make it right now!!!

Twitt