I didn’t dress for Halloween to be scary. Although a man in his 40’s wearing an inflatable Yoshi and Super Mario costume running around the streets might have creeped some people out. Anyway, my kids loved it and with the response from the other kids doing their trick or treat rounds, it went down well this Halloween.
There’s something very inevitable about Halloween that is as predictable as a Mariah Carey song at Christmas. I eat and drink rubbish. White bread looking like tombstones, pizza, cheap hotdogs, crisps in the shape of ghosts, cake draped in marzipan, beer and wine to be exact. I tried to convince myself that, seeing as I had Yoshi with me, I was eating for two. He’s a hungry little dude.
But I accounted for the evening binge by how I behave the rest of the year. Indeed, there will be other occasions where I’ll abandon my structured eating habits this year and it is all within my caloric limits. This is how I know that I won’t put on unnecessary weight.
For many years I have assisted people in balancing their diets. I am proof that we can eat whatever we like on special occasions without the guilt, the ill health or the weight gain. We can live our lives without the restrictions of formal diets.
If we can plan for the occasional ‘day off’ of protein powders, fruit smoothies and the training schedule then it is very easy to appreciate it, enjoy it and move on. But planning it is the key. It’s my birthday in two weeks and, again, this will be a planned day (or two) away from thinking about my nutrition too much. As long as I put the work in-between these events then I am confident that I will be absolutely fine with no regrets.
My only regret about Halloween is that I didn’t go as Bane.
The act of congratulating one’s self might seem a little egotistical to some. And perhaps, like everything else, we can form opinions about stuff that only makes sense once we give a bit of context to each situation.
For example, the gym goer checking themselves out in the gym mirror can look like they’re being self absorbed or a ‘poser’. But what if they’re training for a bodybuilding competition and a part of their sport is to flex. Or even if they’re not training for competition, maybe they’re actually quite insecure about a certain part of their body and they want to admire themselves for a short time before the negative feelings about themselves come flooding back.
And I have met people who have tried ‘bigging’ themselves up by putting other people down. They will constantly tap away at your insecurities and laugh at your failures to cover up their own inadequacies. It is difficult, but being the better person and politely removing yourself from this type of person is the best thing to do in this situation. Like I say, it is difficult, as your reactions are often to start believing what they say to you or to give them a piece of your mind and insult them back. But remember, they’re possibly even more insecure than you, that’s why they do it.
Congratulating yourself can be done with humility. It can be done in private so you’re not being ‘showy’. And maybe you should give it a try.
Men of all ages (not just teenagers) grunt into the mirror as they flex their pecs like a WWE wrestler and women check their rears with their new jeans on and feel satisfied with the gym work they’ve done that week. That is a sure sign of congratulating one’s self and giving a well deserved pat on the back, but I’m thinking of something much deeper than that with a greater impact on our mindset and wellbeing. I’m talking about positive affirmations, mantras and reflection.
Sometimes it’s important just to stop and reflect on what you’ve achieved that day or week. Heck, if you have the time you can reflect on your achievements throughout your whole life!
Did you pass the exam and get a dream job? Did you stick to an exercise plan and reach a fitness goal? Have you done your best as a parent or partner? Did you make someone smile today?
If your answer is no to any of these, that’s fine, because now you have given an honest answer, doing it better tomorrow becomes a little easier. But to do things better I believe that affirmations are powerful tools. These are words and short sentences that you tell yourself and repeat them.
In the advertising industry, short sharp slogans are very popular. The most popular seem to be the three word slogans which are also adopted by politicians. Here are a few examples…
Just do it
Taste the rainbow
Build a wall
Get brexit done
I’m lovin’ it
Yes we can
Education, education, education
Take back control
Strong and stable
Maybe it’s Maybelline
Let’s go places
How many of those can you identify? They are memorable because they have a certain ring to them, almost like a chant. Indeed, Trump’s ‘Build a wall’ speech was chanted by himself and his followers. Whether you like the political ideology and the product or not, these slogans were/are very successful which have helped create huge brands with many voters and consumers alike. They were believed. They were punchy.
Now, let’s go back to you. If you gave yourself a moment each day, for example in the mornings, to repeat positive affirmations to yourself, do you think that this could work for you? Indeed, this precedes advertising slogans by thousands of years so it is most certainly working for somebody! My guess is that it worked so well for so many cultures and religions throughout the world for so long that a very clever advertising agent cottoned on to it too. And voilà. What was said over and over again became reality.
You might find it strange to come up with a phrase and repeat it to yourself. It might be uncomfortable at first. But you actually do it already without really acknowledging it. You make a judgement on whether you can reach the jar on the top shelf. You create dynamic risk assessments when crossing the road and driving a car. These daily routines are embedded into your life. Therefore the same affirmations are repeated over and over again.
“Yes, the road is clear,” is a typical example of this. You are confirming your belief that you can cross the road. So why not take a moment in your day to consciously go through your positive affirmations?
Phrases such as…
I am strong
I am confident
Today, I can do it
I am grateful
I will do
…can impact you so profoundly that you begin to believe. After all, you use self fulfilling prophecies to be negative about yourself all the time. Whether it’s how you look, how you act, what you’ve achieved. Imagine countering this negative thinking with “today I look good, I feel great, I am happy!”
Allow yourself the time to tell yourself these great and wonderful things about you. Yes, you. Just a moment in time where you tell yourself how fucking fantastic you are. Tell yourself daily. Make it as much of a priority as eating. Ensure that it becomes as natural as breathing. There’s no shame in telling yourself that you are a good person. It is not self indulgent to believe that you are an important person in other people’s lives and you are capable of great things to them and to you.
You just need to do one simple thing to make it be true. And that’s to keep telling yourself.
I am a Personal Trainer, Meditation Guide, a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist in Anxiety and I tell myself that I’m the luckiest man alive every day. Therefore I am.
I find myself talking about it more and more with my wife. Within my circle of friends the subject keeps cropping up. And for my clients it is often a topic of discussion.
Age. Or the ageing process.
Lately I’ve found that a couple of stubby beers at 4% and a couple of glasses of wine on an evening is fairly excessive to me lately. My younger self would be calling me a lightweight. I’m happy to be a lightweight.
One too many these days can leave me feeling rubbish and it can ruin the next day. Long gone are the days of me partying on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights as a twenty something. It didn’t bother me then.
But as I got older my body gave me a little tap on the shoulder and told me to slow down. If I didn’t, it would let me know by feeling ill for the next 24 hours and, whether through having young children, running a business or simply just having a zest for life, I didn’t want to waste a day being so hungover that I was missing an important day. And that’s another thing you realize when you get to a certain age. Life’s too short. Sure, at 20, a day or two having duvet days due to excessive partying doesn’t seem to matter. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.
Age can’t be ignored though. The ‘whole life ahead of us’ thing at 20 seems like a much shorter route when you reach middle age. We do feel and think differently with age. Attitudes change. Aches and pains appear much more. We can’t escape the process. But the key here is this…we don’t need to accept it.
Dying. That’s what we all need to accept. But we all hope that it will be when we’re very old and we’ve lived a long and happy life before we get there. Being shackled by getting older, being defined by age, this is something that doesn’t have to be accepted.
I rarely teach fitness classes now, but when I did I promised my participants that I would give them what they came for. They deserved a top quality delivery that helped them towards their goals. A class on an early Tuesday morning would attract older people as opposed to a class on the evenings where it would bring in a younger demographic. However, I rarely changed the exercises or the intensity in the morning to how I would approach an evening class. I found that there were many people in their 70’s who were very capable of keeping up with a lively barbell class just as the younger group could.
If I slowed the music down, created easier exercises and spoke to the older people like they were some ‘old dear’ in a retirement home, then they would, over time, become the old dear in a retirement home.
If you tell someone something over a period of time there’s a good chance they start to believe it. Also, similarly with the body. Under perform it and the body gives in to what it has been taught to do. Underperform.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn.
When your body begins to tell you something about ageing that you should know, you need to listen. The waves get higher as we get older. Instead of regressing to the toddler’s paddling pool in defeat, I’m going to try and ride out those waves. For sure, sometimes I’ll fall into the sea. But if I keep the challenge interesting, fun and with set goals then I am giving myself a chance to thrive as I age.
There’s no doubt that there will be tweaks to be made as we age. Wear and tear is real! But the earlier we can strengthen muscle, bones and joints, the easier it is to deal with general ageing wear and tear. If we fail to address these issues early enough then the body, through the ageing process, will pick up on them. I’d recommend listening to your body before it happens.
The only certainty in life is death and in the western world we are living longer than ever. This is great. However, it means that in many circumstances, our chances of living the final 20 years of our lives with any meaningful quality and dignity are decreasing.
When we reflect on our previous week, month and year, we will often find patterns to our behaviour. Some behaviours add to positive outcomes but some can be negative and impact us greatly. Indeed, the positive things might get unnoticed, while the negative stuff gets pushed to the front of our mind.
Currently residing in Scarborough, I’m holding personal training, meditation and CBT for anxiety sessions as well as remote coaching to create happier, healthier futures to children and adults.
Reflection is good. It will not only assist us in our own lives but it can be a welcome trait for those around us. I might snap at my wife or the kids, for example, but if I am capable of reflection then I can put things right, apologize and do better next time.
So how can reflection help with lifestyle changes in relation to your health and fitness goals? Well, it might surprise you that you do this all the time. You have the cognitive capacity to think, process and act on everything you do in your daily life. But how much of it sticks is usually where the problem lies. Sometimes we end up thinking about a hundred things at once. Our moments of reflection just whiz on by without us really being able to act on them. In the end, nothing gets done.
Unless, of course, reflection becomes a conscious act. As each day goes by, this act will become a subconscious habit. This habit can lead to better decision making.
Bestselling author John Maxwell perhaps says it best when he said, “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine.”
Each day you are capable of finding the new norm. A lifestyle that you find fulfilling. It’s the little things that you can reflect on each day. Day by day, little by little, changes happen.
There’s a magic number of days that psychologists and lifestyle coaches often cite as the amount of time it takes to create a positive habit (or get rid of negative ones) and that is 28 days. After this time, research shows, we have trained ourselves to be consistent in our new behaviour.
And, as a Personal Trainer, I find the 28 day rule quite accurate in our approach to our health and fitness. You see, we think that we just need motivation to reach our goals. And whilst a burst of motivation can be helpful, we cannot rely on it. Motivation is a fleeting emotion. It doesn’t last 28 days. Therefore a little bit of strategy is needed.
To find your new norm, firstly you need to stop creating problems. They exist only in your head. If you find yourself doing this, call yourself out in it. Write the problem down if you need to with a set of solutions next to it. Do this daily.
Start a thought or mood diary. Never dismiss writing down your thoughts. This helps with reflection and it keeps you on track on the days that those bursts of motivation escapes you.
Plan ahead but don’t plan your year or your whole life. Just your week or the next day or two. Whatever feels comfortable. Again, write these plans down. It could be when you schedule your exercise times or plan a menu. Keep it where you can see it. As an online PT I keep all daily tasks on my app so that my trainees are alerted each day.
You have a new opportunity each day to change something that you don’t like and to add something positive and meaningful to your life. Act on these few ideas above and start today in finding a new norm.
Believe it or not, I’ve trained my brain to like this green stuff.
Brian Clough was right about football. It is a simple game.
“All you have to do is get that pig’s bladder into that onion bag” is something I always remember my dad telling me just before a game. Maybe he got it from Clough. It sounds like Clough. Or maybe he made it up himself. As a footballer who would often get the pig’s bladder into the onion bag, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of my dad’s original mantras before entering the field. He was one of the best football players I’ve ever seen live. He kept it simple. He scored goals and won football games.
My dad playing for Huddersfield in 1975
In my profession, what I try to convey to 90% of my clients is to keep it simple. Now, if you are training for a particular sport, event or for aesthetic bodybuilding purposes who make up my 10%, then I have lots of great advice on training splits and various techniques in other articles but the principal should remain the same. Keep it simple.
Just like the footballer or the athlete, they have to turn up if they want to compete. They have to enter the football pitch or athletic field. So your priority, too, is to make sure that you turn up. Turn up to the gym when you have scheduled it. I see so many missed opportunities from people which, can I be truthful? It’s usually because they found an excuse to not go as they couldn’t be arsed that day.
And life gets in the way. I understand. But this is where we begin to overcomplicate the game. If completing an exercise routine is as engrained into your life as eating, sleeping and breathing then it remains simple. You just do it.
Here are the main culprits when it comes to overcomplicating your fitness goals and how to simplify it…
You don’t go to a gym. Either you don’t feel that you can afford a membership or there isn’t a local gym to you.
Simple. Exercise is free. Training in a gym can be good motivation and it has lots of equipment, but bodyweight exercises or a few weights that you can store away after use at home will suit most fitness goals. And for general fitness, walking is one of the best exercises you can do.
You don’t have time. You work long hours. You have meals to prepare, kids to sort out and by the time everything is done you have run out of time and energy for exercise.
Simple. An exercise routine doesn’t have to be some elaborate plan that takes over your life. The general advice is to complete 150 minutes of moderate intensity a week for aerobic fitness. That’s just over 20 minutes a day per week. For weight loss, increase the intensity by taking less rest periods or adding more difficult exercises over time. You’ll find that you have more energy for your work, social life and your home life by sticking to it.
You can’t stick to a diet plan to lose weight. Everything from 5:2 to the paleo diet has failed leaving you frustrated and demoralised.
Simple. Every diet plan needs to have one common criteria…they need to put you in a calorie deficit. That is consuming less calories than you burn. You don’t need an overhaul of your cupboards and fridge contents. You just need a sensible approach to what you eat. I would recommend a calorie counter app, log your food entries for a few weeks and see where you are going wrong and where you can put it right. It could be just cutting back on a bottle of wine each week, switching to wholegrain instead of white or reassessing your portion sizes. You don’t need to completely ban any food that you enjoy.
It hurts your knees when you squat. You are put off by exercise because certain exercises hurt.
Simple. Don’t do them. I would advise that you ask a professional about your pain and either they can correct your form (which is what is causing the pain) or they will find alternative exercises that don’t cause pain.
We often form some long elaborate web of plans to reach a fairly simple goal. Most of it is highly unnecessary, leading to over thinking and a target that becomes impossible to reach. We forget the simple things. You can’t lose two stone without losing your first kilogram. You can’t run a marathon without running your first mile and you can’t put the pig’s bladder in the onion bag without entering the field of play.
If you’re struggling with your fitness goals, have a think about how you might be able to bring it back to being simple.
My friends would perhaps describe my football managerial skills as more Bobby Ball than the great Bobby Robson, but as I paced the touchline of my son’s under 9’s match like a semi final at Italia 90 I spotted a leaf. Upon it sat a lady bug. I was compelled to take a picture.
Of course, my phone camera is always out on match day in the event of catching a left foot volley. That would have been lovely to see too, but this morning the lady bug was just the tonic.
I felt a bit low this morning. No particular reason. I know that seasonal adjustment symptoms seem to kick in around this time of year. It could be that. Or it could be a simple matter of it being two episodes away from completing the full 6 series of Better Call Saul. Quite possibly the best TV series I’ve ever seen. What will we watch after that?! Whatever caused my sadness this morning, it was a lady bug that cheered me up.
We tend to dream too big too quickly. We want to see the end goal with a click of the fingers. The problem is we miss the small matters that knit things together. It’s the little things that make the big dreams happen. It’s easy to forget.
And this morning I had forgotten that. Wind swept, cold and damp in a field when I’d had a rotten night’s sleep made me grumpy. Sure, watching my son play football always cheers me up and that adds to one of the little pieces that eventually creates a bigger picture. But for that moment in time it was the lady bug that caught my attention and made me smile.
The universe can be cruel yet deliver us with such beauty too. And that beauty that kept me grounded today was a lady bug. Not even a left foot volley would have beaten it.
For 8 years I’ve been training people in helping them towards their fitness goals. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…
1. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had. Sure, it sounds cool. Training people in something that I’m passionate about is fantastic and I get to hang around gyms and talk about football and train myself. But I also need to stay business minded. It’s about getting clients and keeping them. Keeping them by setting goals and working towards them. Their results represent my abilities as a PT and my own performance, whether with a client or training myself, will be watched by everyone else. It’s intense.
2. What a client achieves physically isn’t even 50% of their goal completed. They might think it. Great! They’ve lost half a stone. That’s good work. But how do they keep it off? And, now that they have achieved a weight loss target, do they actually respect themselves any more? Do they like themselves? Fitness is more than a PB, a marathon run or a weight loss goal. It’s how we begin to perceive ourselves. It’s respecting yourself enough to WANT to eat nutritious foods, not just because you have to. I have to make people believe that they’re worth hitting their goal, otherwise it’s just going through the motions. And eventually, motion without emotion comes to an end.
3. Chain gyms don’t care about their freelance PT’s. Ok, let me explain this one. The floor managers of these gyms might, but if you think anyone sat in Pure Gym Towers cares about a PT then think again. And why should they? If you are a newbie freelance PT the sooner that you can get into your head that you are now a business person the better. You are a contractor on their premises. It’s tough at times. You pay them rent and they can still call the shots on your business. If you leave then they’ll just replace you. But the sooner you understand that the sooner that you will either a) learn to suck it up or b) find a niche at an independent gym, online or in your own premises.
4. I needed to stay relevant to people. Over the years and with a change of gym in a new town with a pandemic to deal with, I stagnated. So in the past couple of years I started doing different courses to become equipped with reinventing my PT work. Now, armed with new qualifications, knowledge, an online training app and new business ideas I have kept myself and my business fresh.
5. I have to stay grounded. If I believe that I am the oracle of fitness then I’ll look silly. I’m not. Nobody is. If I don’t know the answer to a question then I’ll be honest and do my research on finding the answer out. People respect that.
And the most important thing that I have learned is that respect goes a long way.
The term ‘false choice’ is used to describe a situation where we believe that we only have two options to get the answer.
Examples of this include…
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
If you want to protect the environment, you must want the economy to crash.
If you support Utd, you must hate City.
If you are proud of your nation, you must be xenophobic towards all other countries.
You like horror movies? So you don’t like comedies?
Marmite. You either love it or hate it.
All of the above gives us very little option. It is an either/or dilemma. Which is not very helpful.
And it is not very helpful when it comes to fitness goals. We often restrict ourselves to two categories. Our pigeon holes are…
A. I don’t go to the gym therefore it doesn’t matter what I eat so much because I haven’t got any time to make fitness goals.
B. I often workout therefore I restrict my diet to look and feel my best in order to reach my goals.
These two extremities are unhelpful when it comes to planning your health, wellbeing, nutrition and quality of life. It doesn’t have to be down to choosing between two options.
As much as lots of people begin their exercise routines in September and start a particular diet in time for looking their best for Christmas parties, there are more people that decide on leaving it until January when they will make it a New Year’s Resolution. Yet both options often lead to disappointment.
The September starter will find that they have hit the gym hard, restricted their calories too much and still run out of time to reach their (usually) unachievable goal.
The January starter finds it even harder. They procrastinated back in September for a reason and it’s because they don’t like exercise or they have never been shown any exercise or food that they like to sustain it. So they decide to leave it until after the summer. Then decide to wait until January where they can make a New Year’s Resolution. The cycle continues.
So what if I told you that there were multiple choices? Options that were all shades of grey and not just a black or white view. A consistent, sensible lifestyle approach that didn’t leave you with anxiety about your body and your health.
You don’t need a program that you would expect to see from an Olympian. You don’t need to spend hours each week in the gym. In fact, for most fitness goals you don’t even need a gym. And you never have to quit your favourite snacks.
When you enter a false choice scenario, it is easy to reach a dead end. The all or nothing method can leave us unfulfilled, demoralised and either ends up in quitting or never getting started.
The chicken and the egg question is a prime example of a puzzle that only becomes a puzzle because of how the question is posed. Whilst both options are correct, the only way of explaining the conclusion to this is by exploring the grey areas. This is because the original question is poorly delivered.
We ask ourselves poorly delivered questions all the time. Would I prefer the chocolate cake or the spinach smoothie tonight? If this was my only choice, then the chocolate cake would win every time. But again, if you were to explore the possibilities you would find that a small portion of chocolate cake would be great and you can have the smoothie too!
Should you begin an exercise routine for weight loss or not? Once again, this question is poor. If you find yourself motivated in that specific moment, you might answer yes. Tomorrow, you might feel differently.
To get your answers, first you need to discover why you should exercise more and why choosing nutritional meals is important to you.
My answer is easy. I don’t want my kids to have to bury me when they’re just young men and if I do live to be a ripe old age I want to be as independent as possible. I want a certain quality of life. So yes, I do want to exercise and I do want to choose healthier options.
However, I don’t want this to dictate my life. I enjoy not moving too. I enjoy laying on the sofa watching four episodes of Better Call Saul back to back with a glass of wine. But I can rest easy knowing that I walked the kids to school instead of driving, or I took the stairs instead of the elevator, or I went to the gym or… whatever I did, I moved. I had an active day and I made sure that I had nutritional meals.
I’m not training to run a marathon or for a bodybuilding competition. The only event I’m training for is in the event of old age I can get in and out of a chair, that I can play football with my grandkids, that I can get to the toilet in time. That doesn’t require me to hammer the gym for two hours a day.
Your false choices will kill your goals if you let them. If you look closer, you have many options to choose from. You just need to start answering them honestly.
Perhaps there is a shift happening in the UK regarding attitudes towards mental health, mindfulness and our well being. Only today I heard a report saying that more employers are offering their staff the opportunity to participate in yoga sessions during working hours. It is found that destressing in this way can make for better production of the work force.
Those opposing such a scheme say that it is time and money consuming and it is pandering to the ‘woke briggade’ (whatever that is).
Yet we were all fine with cigarette breaks and, in fact, these breaks were often seen as our right to a quick ciggy if we were stressed. People also commented on how productive a group of colleagues were during their cig breaks and how they would bond. Funny, cig breaks that I remember would be a time for people to slag somebody off behind their back.
It is hard to criticize yoga. I practice it a bit at home with the kids but, I must admit, I’m no expert. Meditation, however, is a passion. And this should also be something considered in the workplace.
How can working on our breathing to calming music be a detriment to an employee? How can focussing on positive thoughts and visualising happy outcomes not help an employee in their work life, thus making them a very productive team member?
Depending on where you are reading this, there will be something unsettling going on in your town, city or country. Whether it be war, political divide, Covid or, as it is currently in the UK, a real concern about the cost of living and energy bills. Perhaps since most of us were restricted in who we could see and limited in how long we could be out of our homes for during the pandemic, we have become a little bit more angry or disillusioned at life. The figures suggest that we are. Depression is at an all time high in the UK. For one reason or another, we are just not coping. And if the adults aren’t, I can bet the children aren’t either.
And this is where my wife and I felt that we could help. It’s a small way but we aim to make this work and hopefully grow when we receive our feedback. Our new project will be to provide schools with mindfulness and meditation sessions to their children. Indeed, schools are already finding that children’s mental well-being is becoming a priority. As I mentioned in my example of an adult’s productivity, a child too can thrive in their development if they are shown how to be more mindful.
I’ve been preoccupied recently, which in part is the reason for me writing less blogs. My wife and I have been arranging meetings, developing session plans and meditation scripts. Along with our regular work, it has become quite a commitment. But one worth making.
Soon we will be conducting two focus groups so that we can test our work so far with a view to begin in our first school in January. We want to be in every school in Scarborough within two years.
School and education is important, just like the workplace and production. But if we don’t respond to our future worker’s needs now then how productive will our society be?
A few weeks ago I wrote an article on a doctor’s appointment that I had made. This was my first visit to see a doctor in over 3 years. With a dash of procrastination and a good sprinkling of Covid lockdowns I had created a recipe of anxiety and paranoia regarding going to see my GP.
I was prompted in making this long overdue appointment because I had noticed a few aches and pains in my abdomen that seemed new. I had to do it.
Anyway, yesterday I saw my doctor who prodded and poked, asked me lots of questions and took readings. He surmised that my discomfort was probably musculoskeletal pain which was down to my job and the work I do in the gym.
Now, DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness) is a pain like no other. I know this pain and I can confidently identify this in my clients. But musculoskeletal pain such as sprains, strains or tendon and ligament damage due to overuse and over stretching (or under use) are pretty common too. The doctor booked me in for blood tests just to be safe but he was quite satisfied with what he’d heard and seen for it to be nothing more than musculoskeletal pain that will heal over time.
With the self diagnosis and Dr Google keeping me awake at night, I was happy with his verdict. It was much better than what I’d imagined in my irrational mind.
But there was something else he said that, well, quite frankly I wanted the very words framing and hanging on my sitting room wall. He called me an athlete.
Me
Yes. As he listened to my heart beat he referred to me as an athlete.
Images of Jessica Ennis hurdling to Olympic gold came to mind. Mark Spitz swimming towards breaking another record. Mo Salah sprinting through the opposition defence to score a goal. And then me. I’m not a record breaker or an Olympian and I’m not a Golden Boot winner in the Premier League. But I am an athlete. The good news is that, if you exercise regularly, you might well be an athlete too.
Me
The doctor went on to say that due to my exercise routine I have shallower breathing because my heart is pumping oxygen to my working muscles. To cope with this demand, my breathing increases to remove carbon dioxide from my body. And depending on the intensity of my training, breathing can become shallower but with an increase in my breathing long after the exercise routine.
This regularly puts my body in the ‘fat burning zone’ due to the work I am expecting my body to do for its recovery.
Me
Ok. I jest when I put myself into the same category of professionals and those who dedicate their lives to their sport. They live and breathe it. What they eat, their sleep patterns and the years and years of practice. They get sponsored and paid to do it too! As a PT I’m dedicated alright, but I’m also an average gym goer who has a life outside of the gym.
But isn’t it amazing what the average gym goer can achieve with the right routines and intensity? We can be athletes too. We can achieve goals by knowing what our bodies are capable of and fine tuning it to do what we ask of it.
A lot of what an athlete must do is what we need to do too, of course. We need to be mindful of what we eat. We need regular sleep. And we simply just need to turn up even if we don’t fancy it sometimes. Yes, even on a cold and windy night in Stoke. We can’t pretend to be athletes. We need to play the part and become one. And even at 43 I am one. My doctor told me so.
Never Give Up PT 