Monday 29th November

Belief in what you’re doing is the single most important thing that can happen in your life.

If you ask any multi-millionnaire who has made that money out of nothing, they will say that.

Anyone who has changed people’s lives or even countries lives such as Ghandi would not have achieved so much had the initial belief not existed.

If you don’t believe in what you are doing, you will eventually fail to bring the desired result into your life.

When you have complete belief, anything is possible.

For example, if you wanted to try and drive to london, you would know to travel pretty much on the M4 all the way. You may take the odd wrong turning or get off at the wrong exit maybe, but you will know how to re-position yourself and get on the right track again all the way to london. This is due to the fact that you may have done it a few times and you have total belief in your ability to get there.

Those of you who have been in good shape before, will know the way you need to go to get into great condition. The problem becomes when you take “the wrong turnings” at times and instead of “getting back on track”, you tend to lose heart and lose your direction.

It’s at this exact time that total belief in what you’re doing has to be the number one priority. This will get you through every time as long as you remember a few simple principles. You will know it when you eat right most of the time, you will feel much better and keeping a good water intake coming remains vital to your health and progress. You will know it when you’re having great workouts, fantastic energy levels will become the norm. This all adds up to very good sleep which is hugely important and makes your body recover better than ever.

We maybe only 3 weeks to christmas, but this is the time to really believe in yourself and your abilities. Don’t let ANYONE put you off because you have the ability to do these simple things to be in the best shape you’ve ever been.

Belief starts here, let’s do it!!

Friday, 26th november

Whether the snow has reached you or not, your workouts should absolutely not be affected!!

Unlike a tennis coach who relies on outside work only (unless he/she is involved with inside courts), i never lose work to the weather. I realise that inside workouts are just as important as outside work. Accept the fact that in this country it rains around 9 months a year and you will be adequately prepared!! Your workouts are only limited by your imagination so let’s take the excuses right out of the equation right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, you should be adequately prepared to switch workouts when you have to. For example, if you were supposed to cycling today and the cyle path is snowed over, then it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you could skip the cycling and workout tremendously hard inside?!!! There’s a million things to do inside so lets pick up the pace, pick your attitude up off the floor and aggressively attack your strength work just because of the amazing results its capable of bringing you!!

See this situation as a positive too! Have you noticed if you exclusively run or cycle and thats all you do, when you do an inside workout or do any other activity out of the ordinary, sometimes you are stiff for days!!

This will be telling your body that you need to be more diverse in your approach if you are serious about being a well-rounded athlete. Your muscles need to be worked from different angles if you want to feel and look your best. Variety is the spice of life so lets make it your priority and start thinking about the many ways you can be fit and healthy!!

Four weeks tomorrow is christmas day and hopefully you have and are making the big push to a tremendous christmas body. Quitting now before christmas is the easy way out and nobody ever achieved ANYTHING like that. Let’s think and grow your mindset into something very strong thats going to support your physical efforts very well!!!

Thursday, 25th November 2010

As debbie has just posted, you shouldn’t take for granted good health, and when you’re ill, you obviously have a new appreciation for being fit and healthy. Thanks for posting that debs!

I also hear stories about people who drink every night down the pub, and they suddenly get into a healthy lifestyle of exercising and eating properly. Within a month, the drinking down the pub soon disappears and they soon appreciate what it feels like to have much better health. The pub in the week and good workouts definitely don’t work and anyone who has ever tried will tell you that!

If you went to the supermarket right now and filled your shopping trolley up with doughnuts, white bread, cans of lager, bottles of wine, biscuits, multi-pack bags of crisps, chocolate bars etc etc and then tried to exercise every day, then something would have to give!!! All of these foods are what we call “empty calories” meaning they don’t have much to offer us nutritionally, other than putting more body fat ON us, which is the opposite of what we are trying to do!!!

Add on to the fact that we will get lousy workouts from this fuel (the fatty supermarket trolley) and we will be on a one way course to an expanding waistline and no energy in our lives.

Debbie will take some time to return to her former levels, but she will get there as long as she takes her tried and tested approach of solid workouts inside 3 times a week and any other activity she decides to undertake. She also knows that good food, full of essential nutrients are just as important toget her back to normal, or her progress will be bumpy at best.

Say point A is being ill and feeling terrible, and point B is feeling great and energetic, debbie has been bad for 5 weeks so far and is on her way back. It should take 5-10 weeks to get back to normal based on scientific studies. The exact time it takes will depend on how good she is in her lifestyle and daily habits with food. It will be interesting to see how she gets on so come on debs, keep us updated on your progress!!!

Wednesday 24th November 2010

If you remember your best ever week of training, you will remember you will have probably been very tired at the end of the week from the huge effort you would have put in. You will have also noticed that your body will have felt a whole lot tighter at the end of the week. This will have brought you a huge amount of satisfaction because you would have signifcantly improved yourself.

I don’t know about you but i find the week AFTER very tough sometimes. Your best ever week is unlikely to be followed by another mind-blowing week of training straight away, so this is why a proper programme is important to follow. Getting into shape and staying in shape is very much a matter of following routine and progressively OVER A PERIOD OF TIME. You won’t improve every week in a big way, but even tiny improvements will matter big time in the end as long as your nutritional needs are being met.

So if you look at a 10 week period, your first week may have been unbelievably good, the next may have been tough to get through, the next after that i guarantee will have been easier, and if you manage to keep these good weeks up for 10 weeks, you WILL SIGNIFICANTLY trasnform your body. I repeat, you will change your body in a way you thought not possible!!!

Let’s talk this through again, you need to be HUGELY CONSISTENT if you want this amazing progress and it is totally possible!! You don’t have to have these super person genetics, you don’t have to have any money, you don’t have to “know the right people”, there are no catches in this and im totally confident that anyone can pull this one off.

So when cyril posts regularly how well he is doing, or even if he is having a down week, he is still interested in improving himself and usually VERY consistent. This is such a more powerful secret to success than any fat loss pill, faddy diet, faddy piece of exercise equipment etc. Showing up as i keep saying is such a strong way to make sure you are improving all the time, and in my mind the most powerful get in shape tool you could ever use.

Being consistent means being successful full stop!!!

Tuesday, 23rd November

Whether you are very optimistic today or you are a bit down and very pessimistic, it won’t really dictate the shape your’e going to be in right now, or indeed the rest of the year.

If you don’t exercise all week and don’t in general, you are unlikely to be in good physical condition no matter how optimistic you are.

If you eat mostly rubbish with only the occasional healthy meal in there, then there’s no way at all you will be in shape, no matter how much shouting and optimism you bring into your life. Being a good talker won’t guarantee you anything, its the “doing” that really matters and deep down you know that!!

Optimisim of course is a BIG help when you ARE training well and eating a good variety of healthy foods. Optimism then will give you all the momentum you need to continuously get better and better.

Optimism is quite a hard thing to pull off in the gloomiest period of the year and with all the bad news going on, so you’d better get used to practicing it and action better be the name of the game from now on!

Optimism can depend on the questions you’re likely to ask yourself. If you have a slight muscle pull that requires you to abstain from training for a couple of days or even a week, instead of getting down about it, see it as a nice little break to refresh yourself and that you will come back much stronger than ever. Breaks from training can be a good thing as long as they are handled properly.

Instead of having one bad meal right now and saying to yourself that your diet is blown, try and get the next meal right and get back in the saddle. A moment or experience in life will have the effect you let it have. No one bad meal should make you write off your week, that is just a weak excuse to get back on sugary and fatty foods that certainly taste nice, but will make you feel and look like a rubbish bin!!

Some people let certain experiences destroy their day, their week or even their life!!!

Its how you react to all of this that will make the difference ultimately. So let’s get used to getting up quickly from any setback and showing how well you can bounce back from anything!!!