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Variety

Although the principles of your training and nutrition may always remain the same, the variety of what you do can vary greatly.

Take your eating for instance, if you made the same shop every single week, with exactly the same foods, and you made exactly the same foods, life would be EXTREMELY boring for you, your family and whoever else you eat with or make food for.

You always need to have the staples in your shopping trolley.

You will always have your lean proteins such as lean meats, fish, good carbs such as wholemeal bread, wholewheat/grain pasta, brown rice, porridge, plenty of fruit, a wide variety of vegetables all supported by plenty of water throughout the day.

I have ideal shopping lists printed on previous posts so give them a look and they will be very helpful for you.

As long as you have a wide variety of each food group, you will not become bored and as long you get enough cooking ideas, and there are thousands of recipes for healthy eating all over the internet.

How about your exercise?

Is going for a run the only thing you do? How about cycling? How about swimming? How about walking? How about weight training? There are countless options for you to choose from, and as long as you tend to put some strength work in there twice a week with a 3 day gap in between, you’re going to firing on all cylinders and likely to get very good results.

From all of these things, you must achieve a balance or your plan eventually fails and you simply say “this isn’t for me after all”!!!

I always like everyone to have enough sleep, enough exercise with at least 1-2 days off training over your week to refresh you, and allow you to make further gains and really feel like approaching your workouts with enthusiasm every time, this is the optimum attitude to have, but you must keep yourself fresh as you always want your performances to improve.

Another good idea is to plan your activities for the week, and if you do this, you’re not likely to skip workouts and you can keep a record of your progress. A training journal is always handy, as you can write down what you have actually done. As we talked about before, you will develop your own “success map” on how to get in great shape, and you will always be able to refer to it whenever you want to get into great shape in the future, or to even help others get into their shape of a lifetime.

Have a great day and lets use the great weather to your advantage!

Twitt
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Day 77 80% is enough for me!!

Another great sunday morning run done today, and the sun was out loud and proud this morning again!

This great harbour scene was overshadowed a bit by the presence of church goer’s in cloaks at burry port lighthouse having a sermon, or chanting or something really weird, they could have been devil worshippers?!! Who knows, but what i do know is half those people pretending to be christians are usually the biggest sinners in our community, you know them so i say no more!

Anyway, how’s your sunday morning going? Has there been a workout in already before you get on with easter sunday? Have you had a great breakfast packed with vitality, or is it your weekly great british breakfast? Is this a day of rest for you or is it a day when you hit several beers, as easter sunday has come to mean this for a large part of the community.

Whatever your choice, i’m cool with it as long as you keep hitting your 80% target.

80% in school used to mean you were really intelligent, were very at good exams and likely to go on to college and have a very good career.

80% as a goal kicker in rugby is phenomenal in terms of coverting penalty kicks. Johnny Wilkinson and Neil Jenkins are the best of all time, and i would doubt even these great kickers ever achieved this success record!

If you were successful in something, it could be assumed that you were doing things right most of the time, not all of the time as that is impossible, but 80% or more would be classed as being a master in your chosen field.

This 80% i keep going on about is your target with your eating and training. If you can do this, you can see by comparison with everything else, you will be highly successful without a shadow of a doubt!!

I think the problem sometimes is that people often have to go 100% or nothing! You will see some on this site at either remarkable highs, or depressing lows (for a short time only i hasten to add!!). You can see that being perfect is not only impossible, its stupid to beat yourself up for not achieving it or even close to it!

EVEN the so-called masters are not perfect, and don’t achieve perfection, or anything close to it. Their magical number is closer to 80% rather than 100%.

Johnny Wilkinson often said that his pursuit of perfection nearly destroyed him mentally. He has since become a buddhist and now has a different view on life, which he says, has helped his rugby as now he doesn’t put so much pressure on himself. He still has hugely high standards, but doing his best and what comes from that is now enough for him.

Being yourself is often frowned upon but shouldn’t it be encouraged? Your best should and always be enough in my book, and whatever the result, then so be it. You willl be happy, i will be happy and when everyone’s happy, results nearly always go up and up!

Twitt
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Day 71 Start of week 11!!

The feeling of helping individuals improve their lives is a fantastic one, and one that keeps me getting up at 4am every day.

I do rely on a certain amount of effort on the individual’s part though, and i am glad to say that everyone improves, even if some do better than others at times. Up in Cardiff today was fantastic, as i know every single one of the girls at Arthur Llewellyn Jenkins has made substantial progress, and are still excited about their improvements and their potential to do more than they ever thought possible!

I think the real secret throughout this challenge has been everyone learning that they must carry on even when they don’t feel like it. Isn’t it the same during exam time? We all have taken exams at some time in our lives, and a lot of us taken exams after we left school, i was one of them and remain commited to life-long learning.

I have trained so many people who have taken such after school exams, and they were glad they persevered when they felt like throwing the towel in many times. I felt like catching the train straight back from london when i did my exams, but glad i stuck it out or i wouldn’t be here writing this here tonight!

To get up and do your workouts each day does take more thought and effort than most people appreciate. This week for instance there is heavy rain around, there is icy weather back wednesday and the chances to workout will be more limited. Some of you may well make excuses, but you will know by now that’s its not going to cut any ice with me, if you parden the pun!!

Some people always ask me do i lose work through bad weather? The reality is that i do an awful lot of inside workouts when the weather is rough, and the quality of the workouts doesn’t have to suffer, sometimes it is even better! The only time i lose work is if i can’t get in because of the snow, and even then i always give it a good go, foolishly sometimes!

 This is why a proper structure in your exercise programme is vital, or you will become a “weekend warrior”. This means someone who only trains the weekend because of “lack of time”. This is still good for you but a very inefficient way of training. What happened to the other 5 days?!!! Time to get with the programme!

Three days strength work is great along with a maximum of 3 days cardio work (running/walking/cycling/swimming etc). You always need one day rest minimum, no matter who you are, the body’s need for recovery cannot be understated so let’s keep everything in proper balance.

It’s like your food, keeping everything in proper balance is vital. Don’t cut out food groups although some are tempted for short term gains. Food and natural food at that, were put on this earth for a reason, to nourish your body properly and to be enjoyed in all its full natural glory. Ready meals and low calorie chocolate bars weren’t exactly part of nature’s master plan!!!

Hope you are having a solid start to the week and welcome to week 11!!!!!!

Twitt
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Day 70 Tough choices, you win!

Day 70 is pretty significant, it sounds an awful long time but it is only 10 weeks. Did you ever really believe that 10 weeks could be so long, create so much possibility and change in your life?

Or was it the other way around?

Was it too long, or is it too long already? Is it more comfortable being in a programme that promises the world in 2 weeks? Is it easier that way so you can find it out quicker that it doesn’t really work, and you can move on to the next one that wants to take your money for another two weeks?

Should we all be eating crunchy nut corn flakes for breakfast and lunch, and we would all live happily ever after? That’s what mass marketing would have us believe of course, and would those magical two weeks actually create that model’s body we see in the adverts?! Maybe not.

Society wants us to have the massive highs and lows or there would be no “wonder” products to come along and change our lives. We all secretly want a magic bullet to change things easily for us, and be able to call on that magic bullet when we want to.

If we didn’t have routines and structures in our lives, we would all love to be in the pub every night and having fish and chips on the way home. We wouldn’t get up for work the next until WE felt like it, and we wouldn’t really have to work unless WE liked doing the job. This imaginary world doesn’t exist of course unless you had the financial freedom of a lottery winner.

Lottery winners are often in the paper though saying how money has ruined their lives. How they lost all their friends and life became “boring” for them.

What they really mean is that life became boring because they had no challenges in their lives anymore. Life had no value and they aspired to nothing. When you have something to aim for, you tend to raise your game and meet the challenges that are in front of you. This gives you self-esteem and self-confidence, which makes you feel good and gives you self-worth.

I have met a few people with all the money in the world given to them on a plate, but were often unhappy as they had nothing to contribute to in life. They had no tough choices, nothing to get up for and when that moment comes, life usually takes a downward spiral.

You hear it all the time, when people retire and have no interests, they don’t usually last long. Those who have plenty going on in their retirement and are challenged usually remain the vibrant person they always were, and usually keep contibuting to the environment around them.

This programme is all about tough choices and big challenges, and getting over them creates ultimate success and a long lasting vibrant life.

Have a great sunday!

Twitt
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Day 55 Ireland V Wales day!

Evolution has happened for most of you on this site, and all of this is illustrated very well on a day like this, a Wales versus Ireland rugby international traditionally used to mean lots of alcohol, some fast food half time, and then a nightmare headache the following morning! It may also have been a fried breakfast before the game too, and the morning after so it would have been “calorie city” for most of us on these grand occasions.

These grand occasions that many Welsh people will have gone through will have meant calorie excesses of between 2000 and 4000 calories in one day!

This means that you are likely to put on one pound of body fat in one day (3500 calories) and are likely to give your artieries a severe thrashing, along with your liver of course! Most people then will not try to minimise the damage caused with a workout the following morning,  as their “headache” will be too bad, and bed will be the most likely option!

Many of you who used to follow such a ritual will testify that you wouldn’t have properly recovered from all of this until the wednesday or thursday, or did you simply get used to that lifestyle?!

Living in such a world leaves only room for functioning in the most basic of ways. You go to work and simply “go through the motions”. Your exercise plan starts on a wednesday, and peaks on thursday! Then the whole process starts all over again. Which brings us back to today.

Nothing wrong with a couple of drinks today, but everything doesn’t have top be “fried” all day! You don’t have to drink as if it’s your last day on earth? The big key for me has always been going for a run early the morning after. Your head says no as you have this huge headache, but once you are 10 minutes into it, you actually feel amazingly better.

Have a decent breakfast on the sunday morning, and you’re set for the day! You don’t want to stay in bed all day and you may actually want to “do things” on a sunday! What a concept!

Your monday then starts off with a bang and by the wednesday, you are absolutely flying, which means a great week!

This is always a great strategy and whatever you decide, take it easy and enjoy your big saturday!

Twitt