Monday, 24th December-A Christmas film
Monday, 18th May
We all love our comfort zones.
We all have our favourite clothes, our favourite friends, our favourite foods etc.
We make our favourite dishes because we know the hands that made it, how it was prepared and we knew it was a safe dish.
We wear the same clothes because they are comfortable and familiar. They may not be in fashion any more but for some reason they feel good on.
Our friends make us feel safe and secure, and we are content to stick with them, shying away from the risks required to form new friendships.
But the facts are that most of what we want and look for that is meaningful and significant is just beyond the edge of our comfort zone. If we never push ourselves further than we think we can go, we will never get out of our comfort zone, and achieve what we really think is possible.
You have to jump “all in” to your health and fitness programme. You can’t go half-hearted with your exercises programme, training 4 times one week and once the next for example, you need to be giving it everything you have, this is when great success happens.
You can’t eat good food now and again and expect to be in shape and have an abundance of energy. Going “all in” with your nutritional programme means getting amazing results, but you have to leave your comfort zone each day until you get used to what it feels like to “eat clean”.
It’s vital we all reach, stretch and expand from where we are now, if we want to keep on achieving more we need to get off the sidelines and start playing the game. Immersing ourselves in action is the one thing we can do immediately!
Thursday, 19th September
So assuming you have taken onboard the advice over the last few days, I would start to map out your programme out a bit more. Trying to do everything in one session will not work, will be ultra-time consuming and make you extremely tired all of the time, making you quit exercise because it wont fit into your life very well at all!
So I would look at doing weights Monday and Thursday with an all over body programme. Pick 6-8 exercise with one good exercise per body part.
For an average healthy adult male, I would look at giving the following programme a go.
Bench press-3 sets of 8
Upright rows-3 sets of 8
One arm dumbbell rowing-3 sets of 8
Leg press-3 sets of 10
Dips-3 sets of whatever you can do
Tricep pushdowns-3 sets of 8
Curls-3 sets of 8
Aim to improve the weight you use slowly but gradually, and as long as you are eating well, this should be achieved naturally as long as you train regularly and show good commitment levels!
So that would be Monday and Thursday with some sledge hammer work (3 sets of 10) to finish. If you haven’t done some sledge work with tyres before, then you need to change gyms. One lot of flipping tyres over 10 yards and back 10 yards.
So some stretching on the core roller to finish. Again, if you haven’t done some stretching on a roller, then I would strongly question where you are training.
The Monday and Thursday sessions are all about you delivering power in a safe and productive environment.
Your form on each exercise has to be good, you shouldn’t place any strain on your back whatsoever, and you should be shown PROPERLY how to do each exercise properly.
Tuesday and Friday, I would look to do some speed and agility work, and we’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Tuesday, 10th September
The worrying news is that the faddy diets never stop coming.
Apart from the herbalife disaster, lighter life horror stories, the Cambridge diet example of perpetual yo-yo dieting, and you add a ton of other so called “diets” to these in the “hall of fame ruin your health and mind faddy diets list”, there comes a new one over the horizon.
Have you heard about the eat for 5 days, fast for 2 days diet?
Well, you may have because its been gaining some traction lately!
They claim to lower cholesterol, help with diabetes and generally help you lose weight-quickly! Interesting that nobody in the medical community is willing to back it, in fact they have come forward to publicly dispel its claims, and urge the public not to do it!
The downsides include a big hit to general health and immune system, some women have found themselves becoming infertile under medical tests, and all sorts of fainting and general not so pleasant side-effects.
Fasting has been around for many, many years and some people claim it works wonders but only now and again is it supposed to be practiced.
I have never tried it but I know there can be dangers with anything extreme, especially as not eating for 24 hours, but this new one says you shouldn’t eat for 48 hours, just drink liquids!
A lot of the medical community is up in arms and rightly so. The horror stories are likely to continue if you are doing without food for 48 hours. Of course you will lose weight by not eating, it doesn’t take a genius to work that one out, but the cost physically and emotionally cannot be worth any temporary short term weight loss!
15 weeks to Christmas today, and it’s a perfect opportunity to save your money, go and shop for good wholesome nutritious food that will do your body good, you will end up feeling a whole lot better, and in the process you will most likely drop a significant amount of body fat, especially when combined with a sensible exercise programme over those 15 weeks!
Wednesday, 7th August
If you’re stuck in the same routine for the last few months, even last few years, then chances are that your results have come to a crashing halt some years ago, and your gym visits now are little more than going through the motions and nothing to get excited about anymore.
The fault is both with yourself and the people trying to help you at the gym. If you have been doing the same thing for years, then you have probably experienced extended absences from the gym, and exercise full stop.
You may stop and start regularly, always going back to what you know and never finding any kind of a good result.
You must change and you must change now if the following are NOT HAPPENING!!!
1 Your body is not improving at all.
2 You find the gym boring and have little incentive to go.
3 you have stopped eating well because you feel “what’s the point”!!
4 you don’t use your gym membership properly because your attendance is poor and
you get no help when you are there.
5 others comment on the weight you have put on
6 you get out of breath walking upstairs
7 you only do your “favourite” exercises
8 you can’t fit into your clothes anymore.
These are all signs things need to change RIGHT NOW and quit whatever you are doing, wherever you are doing it because nobody is caring a damn about you and your programme, meaning nobody is caring about your progress and your body and mind’s future wellness.
Change is as good as a rest too and you may find the change of scenery very empowering!
Please don’t treat your body as a second rate citizen, put it to the top of your list and stop putting up with gyms that frankly don’t give a damn!!