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Monday, 5th November

Benchmark workouts are a major consideration when it comes to all sorts of situations in your life.

Life isn’t always the same, things crop up, trips happen overseas, layoffs can happen for whatever reason, and the last thing you want to happen is not know where you are in physical and health terms full stop.

Easy ways off checking your health including buying a blood pressure machine, i like to do it every 4 weeks for everyone i train, sometimes more frequently for those who i am really concerned about.

In physical terms, you can measure your waist and hips once a month, you will need to be alarmed if your waist does go up, and then you can alter your diet and training programme to bring it back down.

The “benchmark workout” idea is one which i use every week on most people, and this lets us know straight away exactly where we are.

Someone i train who has been touring america for 3 months got his first workout in today. I put him on one of HIS benchmark workouts, and the results were quite staggering!

Bear in mind that this workout is one which he normally gets through without too much of a problem. It consists of around 300 press ups total in the workout split into 20’s at a time, some step sprints, some backward running up hills etc.

Today, he found it extremely tough indeed!

He has been used to doing 3 shows a day, which is demanding physically of course, but got used to the sugary cereals and breakfasts in the states, and the lack of genuinely plain, sugar free nutritious food that he was accustomed to has hurt his energy levels now he’s back to normal.

This has led to him becoming not so energetic now he is back home, and the benchmark workout reminded him exactly where he was!!!

If you don’t have standards you can measure against, then you will never know or appreciate where you are!!!

This is something to consider when you work out what level you want to be at!!!

Twitt
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Friday, 17th August

Once you make the big change to eating well, and more natural food, the common question is how long it will take to get used to a big change in diet.

Scientific studies show us that it generally takes around 12 weeks to get used to this change, and more importantly for your taste buds to change completely.

This means that foods that you used to be tempted to eat will soon become foods that you find sickly, you especially when eaten to excess.

The great thing about this situation is that you won’t feel like going to the bad old days once you make this change, as long as you follow it through and remain committed in getting used to it.

Making the first step is the hardest part and sometimes the thought about eating healthy for the rest of your life can be overpowering.

Most of us would love to stay in our comfort zone and it would be so much easier to eat in the chip shop every night, drink alcohol as often as we liked, and hit the bakery every morning for some lovely snacks full of sugar.

The downside to all of this behaviour if done over a longer period unfortunately would likely to be weight gain, shortness of breath, joint trouble, heart disease and elevated risk of many serious diseases.

So if you look at the big picture, which scenario is more appealing?

Would it be a lifetime habit of eating foods very low in quality nutrients and super-high in saturated fat and calories, that in general makes you feel sluggish, desperately low in energy, overweight and plain unhealthy?

Or do you put up with a few weeks of all that sugar, salt and saturated fat leaving your body and then your body having a much more sustainable diet for the rest of your life, giving you huge amounts of energy, healthy body fat levels, much more joint strength, more endurance and higher strength levels?

Not much of a choice there but it’s a free country so at the end of the day, it’s YOUR choice!!!

Twitt