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Food trouble

Spent yesterday on my back believe it or not. I cooked some salmon friday night and ended up with countless visists to the bathroom saturday! Felt weak all day but glad to report that now (sunday morning) my strength has come back quickly and have got a good walk in this morning. I usually do a run on sunday but thought it best not to push myself.

This is an example of reacting to your body when it breaks down and doing the right thing.

We have all tried to fight against illness, but sometimes it is better to go with the flow and surrender for a while.

The great thing is that my immune system is usually under a lot of exercise stress, so the idea of me laying down on the settee all day and night is a strange one.

What this allowed me to do though is recover far quicker than normal. All my body had to do was fix itself and not do anything physically stressful. All i did is lie down and watch sports all day, and couldn’t even raise my voice, that was even too much of an effort! I felt awful yesterday but the good news is today i am nearly back to my old self.

I encourage anyone not to exercise if they feel unwell, as all you are doing is putting off your recovery, sometimes putting it off quite a lot. Your immune system is hugely important of course and you have to manage the stresses on your body at all times.

This is why i always recommend at least one dayoff a week, if you don’t, your immune system will struggle with this and eventually break down, causing colds and many types of illness.

Fortunately, if you eat properly and include a wide array of nutrients in your diet, your chances of falling sick go down dramatically.

Your imune system is always protected best when you exercise regularly with at least one day off a week, your diet is packed full of nutrients with a variety of healthy food, and the most forgotten element-sleep! If you don’t sleep properly, you won’t recover and won’t feel like doing much full stop.

All of these three elements must be in place to achieve a good strong immune system!

Twitt
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Your type of start to the week

So how do you face this monday? Is it in good shape or bad shape? Lots of energy or no energy? Full of enthusiasm or down and out? Intent on having a big week or don’t care either way? Proud of your achievements or given up on yourself?

Whatever your situation, you can change it for the better right now.

How many of you have had a heavy drinking session on friday, saturday or sunday or all three? If you have, perhaps you are in not the greatest moods to have a big week for your exercise. Scaling back your weekend drinking will help a lot, and im someone who likes a few drinks from time to time at the weekend, so i know how it feels to struggle through the day after, it hurts!!!

We always like to talk about how important monday is, how pivotal it is to us to getting momentum for a big week, so its vital we set the conditions in place to get you all off to a flier!

If eating healthily on the weekend goes against the grain a bit for you, lets try and fix that on monday. The most simple thing you can do right now is drink just water the rest of the day. This will clean your system out and the toxins built up on the weekend will leave and create a great base for the rest of the week.

Now that your system is primed for improvement, its time to flood your system with nutrients, im talking fruit and vegetables, im talking good carbs and protein, all designed to give your body the best possible chance of having a highly energetic week, not only that but giving your body the best chance of repairing its broken down muscle tissue, from all those workouts.

This is a highly underrated process and if you want this whole thing to work very well without any unnecessay pain, you have to get  with the programme and lets do it rght now!!

Give yourself that chance today, come on lets do it right now and get active, give your body all the nutrients it deserves and lets have a bet right now.

I bet you right now that if you are willing to give this programme everything right now, and im talking today MONDAY, you will feel significantly better in yourself by the end of the week, leading to even more expectations next week. Its that easy and its that rewarding!!

Let’s make it happen!!!

Twitt
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Day 51 Use your imagination and let’s mix it up!

Day 51

One of the reasons why some people give up and some people keep with their exercise programmes is down to flexibility and variety. I’m not talking about stretching or anything such thing, I’m talking about being flexible with your workouts, and if you can’t do your scheduled workout, then do a variation of what you were aiming to do in the first instance.

For example, if you were planning to run for 30-40 minutes, and somehow you only had 10-15 minutes, and were still focused on great progress, I would rush over to the nearest most vicious looking hill, and hammer 6 sprints forwards, and 6 sprints backwards, each for a total of 30 yards of so. If you go flat out, you WILL get a great workout in!

Jean asked about interval training, should she do it? I think Jean already knows the answer, of course you should jean and show everyone what you can do! I always say that most people are only limited by their imagination when it comes to training variety.

Jean is talking about interval training, which could be described easily as jogging between one lamppost, then sprint the next post, then jog the next, then sprint the next one and so on. Now THIS is a workout that you will struggle to last more than 5 minutes each time, it is that intense!

Now we are starting to use our minds for our workouts, please don’t end up like some mindless zombie doing boring treadmill runs all the time, PLEASE, PLEASE vary it, not only because it brings great results doing different workouts, but freshens up your mind too!

One word of caution before doing ANY type of sprint work. In my experience, it is always advisable to do some kind of warm up before you sprint flat out, the always present threat of pulling a hamstring or groin never goes away, and the more weight you carry, the bigger danger there is. I’m not being prejudiced there, I’m just saying that I’ve done a million sprint sessions, and although you will get massive benefits from the session, the goal should also be not to get injured, in which case you probably wouldn’t run for a month at least!

The different ways of training are literally endless, and although you must still have a good structure in place, any type of workout is good as long as it’s safe and you’re capable of doing it. The more experienced you are, the more options you should have and as you should realise by now, it’s not simply a case of training for longer the fitter you are, that’s simply not true. It’s about doing “higher quality” training sessions in the time to suit you, and as long as you are improving physically, that’s a great sign surely you are doing all the right things.

Always stick to your fitness standards and we all have our benchmarks on how we are doing. Most people training with me may have a very tough hill as a benchmark, if they can do that consistently, they know they are in great shape. If you can do 40 press ups in one go, and your new limit is just 25, you know you have been slipping and you need to re-examine what you’re doing.

Being in shape physically and mentally can be easier than you think, as long as you know what your good standard in life is, and you try your best to stay there, even through the highs and lows that life often brings.

Twitt
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Walking versus running

A good question has come through from Chris, someone who like many others, has been viewing the site and has finally posted! Question is

Which exercise is better, walking or running?

There is no straight answer to this one Chris as I like to look at the big picture. The easiest to answer is this. If someone is new to training or wants to get started running, it can be intimidating and downright hard to say the least, anyone who has done it can testify to this!

Also, you may have a problem with your knee/ankle/back, and if this is the case, then I would advise walking to start with, make sure you get a good set of running shoes (although you won’t be running) as all the best technology and support goes into running shoes, they don’t have to expensive either, there’s always pairs on sale at any sports shop and sometimes you can get an excellent pair for around £40. What you want to spend is up to you, but bear in mind they mostly last for around 500 miles so you need to change them regularly, that is the true secret.

They used to say I would be a cripple by the time I was 35, however I change my shoes every 8 weeks now through picton sports in Llanelli, and im feeling better than ever at recently turning 41. I change them so often because my running would be considered excessive by many, but it is a big part of my job! So having proper training shoes is absolutely vital, or you will invite injuries.

Back to the question of walking versus running. I would say that an average person usually finds running for any length of time to begin with too difficult, so walking quickly is achievable and will soon get most people out of breath. Then, I would move them on to hills to drive up the intensity of the workout and this again, can be very tough!

Then, I find as long as there are no prior injuries or knee complaints etc, a lot of individuals want to step it up and achieve some running targets. I start with maybe running for 20 yards, walking for 50 yards, running for 20, walking for 50 and son on. Over a 6 week period, it could easily become running for 150 yards, walking for 50 yards, running for 150 and so on. People progress at different rates depending on ability, motivation, dietary habits etc, but with some well thought out and progressive training, the results will be very good.

I would only attempt to run a maximum of twice a week to start, to get your joints used to the extra load (the pressure can be 3 times your body weight). When you get up to around 20 minutes of constant running on the flat, I would suggest trying to bring in interval training (see my recent post on that), sprints on flat and sprints up hills over shorter distances (see previous posts on training for sports). These forms of training not only relieve boredom, but they cam bring you some tremendous results.

I have some individuals who are very good walkers too and just love walking. They start off on flat of course, then they work on rolling hills, and then they work up to some very demanding hills and even mountains. I have had a couple of people walk/climb up some very  famous peaks in the world, so the sky’s the limit.

So back to the question which is better, I would say both are very good depending on personal preference. I would say that most have a desire to run, but I have some who hate running and love to cycle. I have some who love to swim. I have some who hate an audience and love to work inside with weights and body weight exercises. I am fully aware that many people have ailments that make running not very attractive. It is up to me to make sure they have a programme that they can still get into amazing shape with. Anyone who has trained with me will know after a good period of conditioning, I seek out the highest hills and some of the most demanding terrains. There’s plenty of them around the Llanelli, burry port and gower area’s so take your pick and see what you can do.

Another point, I would use the level of intensity as your guide to your workout. Think 1 as very easy, and 10 as working at your max. If you can get a 8 or 9 out of a walking workout, then that’s fantastic, and the same with running. It’s the effort you put in that counts and not necessarily if its walking or running. If you have an issue with your knees, choose non weight bearing such as cycling and swimming, walking may be okay too but running may be inviting trouble.

Up to you and let me know how you get on and good luck on the challenge next week!

Keri

Twitt