Friday, 21st February

We concentrate on a bigger variety of training at the gym all the time, and that trend is very likely to continue with new ways of rising you to the highest level you can possibly be all the time.

The one thing you need to concentrate on doing is giving it your best effort, and adjusting to the new demands I put in front of you. I never ask anyone to do something I don’t think they can do, so have trust you are always going very much in the right direction.

If you go through the motions, you are likely to only get mediocre results and not develop in the way you really could.

If you focus on results, and give it your best every time, then the benefits you will get out of your training will be substantial and constantly surprise you in a pleasant way. Your body can respond to anything and this is why constant adjustment to your training programme is vital, and not something you should just think about
now and again.

If you hit outside work twice a week, then ignore it for the next two weeks then you are letting yourself down in terms of the progress you can get. If you finally get used to doing pull ups on the bar and you become good at deadlifts for example, and then you ignore them and only do lat pulldowns for your back instead, your body will notice this and dramatically slow down the results you have suddenly become used to.

The great thing about constantly being aware of the results you are getting is that you become totally aware of your eating too, you know that if you don’t eat well, then there is no way you can keep putting in meaningful efforts on your training, its impossible over the longer term.

Aim high and keep taking on new challenges!

Friday, 29th November

Part two of the list we started yesterday

m. Exercise helps enormously with depression, which is a huge problem in society but rarely people admit. People need help and support and exercise and eating healthy plays a significant role in treatment now, after all nobody wants to be on pills all their life, and they want an escape route from this common condition if possible.

n. Exercise gives your social life a boost. When you workout or play sports, you tend to do it with other people, and you sometimes meet like-minded people that enhance your social experience.

o. Exercise proves that females are at least as fit as men, and in my personal experience of training a lot of individuals, most women I train now train harder than men-fact!

p. Exercise before the age of 20, along with good healthy eating limits the number of fat cells you can produce. This is biological fact and this is why exercising when you are younger determines a lot of conditions for your future. No exercise and fatty/sugary foods in your teens is a ticking time bomb that is already costing the NHS billions!

q. Exercises changes lives! Every single one of the transformations I have taken individuals through has changed them mentally and physically and all for the better! Every area of their lives improves!

r. Exercise gets you pregnant! I have trained women in the past who were told by their doctor in the past that they couldn’t/or were unlikely to get pregnant due to their weight and health, but once they made big changes to their lifestyle and health, quite often they fell pregnant straight away!

s. Exercise helps you help others. When you get healthier and feel much stronger and fitter, you tend to stop relying on others and want to help others achieve things in their life they may not have thought possible.

t. Exercise saves lives. Anyone who cant have an operation because they are too overweight will testify to this. Once the doctor tells you THAT YOU MUST LOSE WEIGHT just to have an operation, you take note and you get it done. Exercise benefits your health in all sorts of life-enhancing ways.

u. If you’re a parent, exercising will inspire your kids get healthy too. Sit on the settee, eat rubbish and be negative all the time and they will follow whatever you do. Setting a great example works.

v. Exercise helps you sleep better research shows in every study. Those who exercise will know this. There are 120 sleep disorders, 80 are linked to alcohol.

w. Exercise and weight bearing exercise gives you stronger bones and protects you into old age. Weight training/body weight exercises are the number one recommendation.

x. Exercise gives you natural highs! You don’t need drugs, just try to progress your programme so that your intensity
of exercise goes up, and then you will get the natural highs that many of you get anyway most days when you exercise.

y. Exercise teaches you discipline. The regime of eating healthy and working out regularly teaches you proper routines, and keeping them up can be a challenge. It’s the success of keeping it up that teaches you discipline that transcends into every area of your life.

z. Exercise and healthy eating gets you into shape without the aid of drugs or anything unnatural like weight loss powders which provide long term misery, which teaches you self-respect and respect for others. You know that this process can be very challenging, and overcoming all the self-doubts is hugely rewarding, this process is one of the most important of all.

Friday, 5th April

The role of speed and agility should not be limited to the “young and sporty”.

How many of you went to school, took part in sports to some degree, then may have even gone on to play for the school team, maybe a proper club team and maybe for a number of years……………….then everything stops!!!

You may have a couple of years off, sometimes a number of years off, and when you try to get back into exercise, the agility and speed you once had in school for example has disappeared!

You feel stiff as a board and you always put it down to “old age”, even though you may only be in your 30’s or 40’s!!! Hardly old age in my book!!

The great news is that there’s many ways around this but you do have to start slowly.

Getting a more general programme that concentrates on making your core stronger is the way to start, getting your muscles more flexible and allowing them to strengthen. You need to stick at this for a couple of months until your body recognizes that its ready to improve again, and you suddenly start realizing that you are not really “too old” at all, that you can feel better, that your clothes start to feel looser and that you can show improvements in your training, and incremental improvements start becoming a normal way of life for you.

Its at this stage you can think about doing more speed and agility work.

Fast footwork sessions are suddenly an option, backward running can be done, light sprint work is back on the agenda, and a whole host of techniques I love to take people through.

Once you get through this work, automatically you will start to remember the way you were in school or in your sports team, you will be a lot more agile, much faster and literally a big spring in your step!

This is what a much more complete programme is all about, and this is why I so feel that amazing results are always consistently possible.

Wednesday, 13th March

The feeling that you get from exercise is well known, the endorphins released in your body create a feeling of wellbeing like no other.

The feeling hours after exercise is not often talked about, and this is always achieved from more intense exercise. A lot of people walk dogs, and this is classed as exercise, but this will not have the benefits of more intense exercise.

Any one of the workouts I have ever listed will give you that wonderful feeling of wellbeing all day long after your workouts, and I have millions of hours of anecdotal evidence to prove it, as well as the scientific evidence as I have spoke about regarding the endorphins and increased energy levels throughout the day.

Exercising with a plan and with purpose will make you more energetic full stop, even though you have just done a workout. You will want to do more that day because you have increased your body to a higher state of being.

If you think about your week of workouts, and then compare them to your days off, you will surely notice that on your days off, you will feel more sluggish by the end of them, and indeed the start of the next day.

On your good workout days, you may feel a little sluggish before the workout, but 99% of the time, you will feel a thousand times better, and this will continue until usually about an hour before you go to bed according to recent studies.

It doesn’t end in the going to bed stage either, you will sleep better after a day when you have exercised, you will have a better quality of sleep and this helps you recover from your day far better, and indeed prepare you for the challenges of the next day!

I hear this all the time from clients, they FEEL BETTER full stop when they exercise and this must be one of the most important things in life to look forward to!

Wednesday, 6th March

If you feel that your best years are behind you in terms of physical prowess, then I have a ton of evidence that I could produce for you every single day that will disprove that statement.

I have countless individuals who have started training in their late forties, into their fifties and into their sixties who have consistently better numbers than many twenty somethings I train.

This may seem hard to believe, but these are the kinds of results that you can begin to expect if you train and eat consistently well over a period of months, and especially years!

This is what you can expect if you change your lifestyle accordingly, starting getting to bed earlier especially in the week, and being in a programme of constant development and progress.

This is what will happen if you have your blood pressure, body fat, waist measurements done regular, and aim to improve them every single month. Your programme has to help you get there not only quickly but safely, and this is of paramount importance.

As you get older, you really want to avoid dangerous movements that will stress your joints. You want to be kind to your bones and theres a million ways to accomplish that.

Training smart will always beat someone screaming in your ear with a mindless training programme that accomplishes very little and eventually get you injured.

We always talk a lot about core stability in terms of training options, and this is the biggest feature of my training with everyone. Once you get your fundamental strength right, then the sky is the limit when it comes to your overall progress.

Mentally too, you have to open your mind to big progress, and seemingly unimaginable ability again with your body. You will soon learn to stop thinking like a fifty something and rekindle the ability you thought you had left behind in your 20’s.

The science is there to do it, so changing your plan right now to reflect that is of vital importance to you. Nobody needs to feel or look older than they are, changing your lifestyle will achieve a more youthful you in no time at all as long as you’re willing to commit to it!