Uncategorized – Page 10 – Never Give Up PT

Shall We Pull The Big Sofa Out?

My wife and I are both self employed in jobs that require us to work all sorts of different hours from week to week. Sometimes I have a morning free or my wife does but very rarely is it at the same time. Whether it’s on our own or together we always manage to have a good old clean and tidy of the house whilst the kids are at school. Tidying up is difficult at weekends as no sooner have we picked up an odd sock here and a crisp packet there we look behind us again to find a whole new bundle of mess left behind by the kids. We get them to help out and are teaching them to clean up after themselves, but it’s a work in progress.

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Today my wife and I had the opportunity to have a tidy up together. These are the most productive of tidying days. I have been known to to vac around a TV remote before. Under my wife’s watchful eye not only would the TV remote get picked up but it would get a polish too!

Starting in different rooms from each other we set about tidying, vacuuming, polishing and collecting a bag of stuff each to be taken to the charity shop all while shouting the answers out to each other on Ken Bruce’s Pop Master. I could have sworn that Irma Thomas was the first to record ‘Time Is In My Side’ but other than that I proved that I could get stuff done and be quite the Pop Master. I was multi tasking!

And it has to happen every now and again, every few months anyway, where we turn to each other and say, “Shall we pull the big sofa out?”

This is the ultimate deep clean day when this happens. The big sofa is where the kids watch movies, play computer games, snack, lounge about on duvet days and where they decide to change out of their football kits after playing on a muddy pitch. Oh yes, the day had arrived. The big sofa was getting pulled out to see what had managed to get kicked underneath it and spilled down the back of it.

We could’ve left it until another day. Our simple task of dusting and polishing while throwing a few Mick Jagger shapes to the radio could’ve been over but shit just got serious. I rolled my sleeves up and took a deep breath as my wife grabbed one end and me the other. The big sofa was getting pulled out. Slowly, as we pulled, little by little we began to see underneath. A few marbles covered in dust. Two ping pong balls. I wondered where they’d got to. And finally, with the big sofa in the middle of the room, we saw to the full extent our work for the remainder of the day.

Crisps, sweets, wrappers, random Lego bits, crayons, a colouring book, fluff balls, half eaten bread sticks, pens, pencils, a few scattered cards from the game Dobble, a jigsaw piece from a Star Wars puzzle which meant Kylo Ren’s face hadn’t been completed all year, there were chewed up pen lids, a wallet with nothing in it worst luck, a twig, a shell from the beach and an A4 sized drawing of Big Bird from Seseme Street (or Homer Simpson, I could never tell at the time) carefully drawn by my youngest. All with a coating of dust.

Once we had picked it all up, washed and put it all back in it’s rightful places we began to clean the skirting boards, vac and mop the floor. We sat on the big sofa, still situated in the middle of the room as we let the floor dry, and gave a satisfied nod to each other. The big sofa job had been done.

When I sit in a room in our house I like to see things in place. Tidy and clean. We’re not obsessive cleaners as my big sofa tale can confirm, but we like to live in a clean and tidy environment. I knew big sofa day was approaching. I couldn’t see it, but my brain was telling me that I’d best take a look.

Perhaps we all have a part of our house that can make you feel loads better once you’ve done a bit of sorting with it. The garage, loft, the fridge or freezer, the tops of the kitchen units, under the bed or back of the wardrobe. It’s not areas we see every day and, no matter how well we try to keep on top of stuff, there’s always an area that needs the ‘rolled up sleeves’ moment. We don’t always see it, but we know it’s there. And when it is done it can feel like quite an accomplishment.

My head told me that today was big sofa day and sometimes my head tells me it is actually my head that needs the deep clean. A moment where I can declutter the stuff that begins to collect worries in there. I find the best way to take this on is to tackle the small tasks first. Once I find a routine in dealing with the little things in life, the big things can be challenged much better. Like a game of Whack-a-Mole, I find a groove that I can work with.

Had I woken up this morning thinking about the big sofa I don’t think I would have got as much done, but because I started by polishing a remote control the big sofa job became easier. I created a momentum that enabled me to be productive to the point that the greater issue was just another job to complete.

My worries are like the stuff that get stuck under the sofa. They are there and I know they are there. I can watch a full episode of The Chase and take no notice of it at all because the missing jigsaw piece is swirling around in my cluttered mind. I know where it might be but to challenge it will uncover a whole host of other bits of crap to deal with. But I know that if I can make that first step and ‘pull the big sofa out’ not only will I be able to deal with the crap but there’s a real good chance I can find that missing jigsaw piece too.

And now my sitting room and my head, at least for now, are clutter free.

The Ironic Process

One of the reasons why formal diets turn to years of yo-yoing weight and frustration is because of the restrictions that we put upon ourselves. We ban Bananas because we read that they are high in sugar. We ban carbs. We ban fats. We try the next new fad diet because it is en vogue and the ‘expert’ wants you to buy his new diet book that is out for Christmas. It’s funny how this expert seems to bring out a new diet for us to try almost every year. If his other diets were so good then we wouldn’t need to change from his 5:2 diet, his Blood Sugar diet or his Fast 800 would we?

Anyway, in the long term, I am convinced that they are not sustainable and therefore are a fad to enable someone to make a whole heap of cash out of our diet culture.

When we begin to tell our brains not to do something, our brain wants to do it. That is not your failing willpower. It is not your lack of motivation to succeed in weight loss. It is how the human brain works. Yet you begin to hate yourself because you have ‘let yourself down’. But you haven’t.

Promise me now that you will not think of a Pink Elephant.

Have you thought of a Pink Elephant yet?

“Yes. But you deliberately put a picture of a pink elephant for me to see.” I hear you say.

When we open a magazine, go to the supermarket, watch TV, walk past billboards, go to a restaurant, sit on a bus or walk through the park you will also see all of the things that a poor restrictive diet will tell you not to eat. Burgers, ice cream vans, pizza adverts, cakes, rows of takeaway shops, takeaway menus through your letterbox and even the three most popular soap operas in the UK are based around the characters drinking in a pub. You can’t avoid the foods that you try to avoid from your life so I won’t let you avoid the pink elephant. And the more you try not to think about it the more it keeps entering your head. That is not you as an individual failing to comply with Dr Fad’s latest diet plan. That is the human brain.

I have worked with hundreds of fat loss clients who are amazed at my approach and how it has helped them. Do I expect hard work in the gym, home workouts and an active lifestyle? Absolutely I do! But I also give them freedom to eat food without guilt or restrictions. I aim to change the mindset of those I work with to enable them to enjoy and appreciate their food and still get their goals. We need to enjoy what we do. Exercise is not a punishment if you enjoy the exercises. Diets are not punishment if you enjoy the diet.

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote…”Try to pose yourself this task, not to think of a polar bear and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.”

In Psychology teaching it is known as the Ironic Process Theory. Restrictive dieting goes against every bit of research into human behaviours and leads to what we now have in the western world. Millions of people yo-yo dieting, living with obesity and type 2 diabetes and a health care system close to collapse with weight related health issues being cited as a major issue (NHS UK). Depression due to weight struggles is another factor in our society. And what do the experts do? The tabloids write headlines such as ‘avoid high sugar fruits such as Bananas’ and Dr Fad wants us to buy his new book this Christmas.

Let me be straight to the point here…Cassy from down the road never got obese from eating bananas, it was from listening to crap journalism and experts telling her that she is useless because she can’t stay away from eating a freaking banana in the first place. This lead to further frustration and depression and continues to binge eat because she has failed in sticking to a Daily Mail headline or Dr Fads crappy new book.

The Pink Elephant won’t go away. So are we going to acknowledge it and work with it or allow it to ruin your life?

The Monster On The Stairs

The young teenage me needed a pee. I was home alone in my parent’s house as I sat in the living room crossing my legs and uncomfortably shuffling as the feeling in my bladder intensified. It was early evening and the sun was going down but the lamp lit the living room adequately. Outside of the living room door, however, I imagined darkness. The dark hallway leading up to the dark stair case where I needed to climb to reach the dark first floor to enter the dark bathroom to pee. I could wait no longer. The spine tingling feeling of being chased as I scramble up the stair case was about to happen.

Opening the living room door presented me with nothing like I imagined. The dusky evening still provided some light and nothing like the pitch black in my head, but every light switch, barring the kitchen switch which was further away, went on anyway including the stair case and upstairs lights. I knew, though, that the light has never stopped the monster from chasing me up the stairs before. It’ll be back again.

I walked along the hallway towards the stairs, glancing behind me to make sure that no piercing eyes were peering at me from beyond the kitchen door left slightly ajar. Nothing. So where was it? I gulped and took my first step onto the stairs. As was my usual routine I picked out a jolly song to mutter as I slowly took my second step. I began to check through my peripheral vision to see if a whispy hand was reaching out for ankles. My song had gone. Adrenaline started to take over. The natural fight or flight feeling was beginning to peak. Each step became quicker and quicker until I could feel it breathing onto my neck…..

I ran, fell, scurried, jumped through the other 20 steps to reach the top! I turned and…nothing. The stairs were empty. I had escaped the monster on the stairs once more. ‘It’ll be back’, I thought as I caught my breath and had my pee at last. Going back down the stairs? Well, that was always a breeze.

Has anybody else ever had this feeling? I know adults who I have spoken to who say they still get this feeling sometimes. My boys at 5 and 8 are experiencing it now and I can only imagine that it comes from an anxious place.

I haven’t experienced this since my mid teens and I guess it would’ve been around the time that I decided that ghosts, spirits and Gods (good or bad) didn’t exist to me. Perhaps if I knew in my mind that no supernatural powers were at play then it couldn’t possibly be that. And I knew that an actor called Robert Englund dressed up to become Freddie Krueger and at the time of my life I started to watch A Nightmare On Elm Street and other horror movies I was able to separate fake and reality. I can no longer fear something that I don’t believe in or if I know it to be an act in the case of a movie.

Last night my eldest asked me what I was scared of. I find this such a tough question. I ask myself this question often too. I told him anything that takes me out of my own control scares me. I gave rollercoasters as an example but in my head the real example would be to lose somebody close to me or for me to die and leave them behind to grieve. Death doesn’t scare me, but thinking of those having to deal with my death terrifies me.

My son goes to a religious school and, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I respect his beliefs in a God. We have regular discussions and I never dismiss his beliefs just because they are different to my own. Coming up to Easter is a tough time for him as he learns about Jesus on the cross. Him playing Fornite has nothing on the graphic stories he is taught at school. He cares about Jesus and I love him and admire him even more for his extension of love that he gives to others. And for such a caring child I really wish he hadn’t have had to hear the stories of Covid, Afghanistan and Ukraine in the past couple of years. But they are our reality. We took him and his younger brother to the local charity where they were sorting clothes for the Afghanistan refugees and he helped a refugee boy in his class settle in.

There’s lots of reasons for kids and adults to be anxious about and, whatever the monster on the stairs is, seems to be a manifestation of this. It would be interesting to know your experiences of this whether in childhood or as an adult. Is it a thing that most of us experience? Because sooner or later, we’ve all got to pee!

Ban My Sunday Lunch And Me And You Will Be Having Words!

I usually post a massive meal of mine on Facebook and almost every time I think, ‘Hmm! Is that wise to post high calorie food and drink when I promote myself as a Personal Trainer?!’

This fleeting question is always met with a resounding ‘Hell yeah!’ And I need to explain myself…

I eat what I like and I tell my clients to do the same. There’s just one thing that I need to promise myself and that is I must stop when I am full. I have learnt to respect my body enough to not choose the low nutrition food all of the time. My 80/20 rule is very loose but it keeps me mindful of trying to keep 80% of my food nutrient dense. But I’m not going to polish a turd. If I’m having a Sunday lunch it’ll come piled up with all the trimmings. If I’m having my favourite beef curry and fried rice from the Chinese takeaway I’ll order the salt and pepper ribs and chips. These are meals that I have accounted for so I know not to eat anything ‘heavy’ around these mealtimes.

Also, I don’t panic around the time that we traditionally class as mealtimes. Breakfast is exactly that…a time to break a fast. It doesn’t have to be as soon as you wake up. For me personally, thinking of food so early on a morning is not appealing. If I’m not hungry then I don’t eat a breakfast. I’ll eat when I’m ready which is usually around 10-2. Dinner time (or tea time) is the same. Its far too early for me to eat with the kids. They’re very hungry when they finish school so their tea is at 4:30ish. My wife and I are conscious of sitting with the kids to eat though, so we will have something small with them just to make their mealtime an event with the family around a dinner table rather than a plate on their lap watching YouTube. When the kids go to bed our meals can be as late as 9pm.

So here’s my opportunity to kick the myth into touch once and for all…your 700 calorie meal at 9 at night would still be 700 calories in the morning. Eating late before going to bed might cause certain issues to some people, but making you fat isn’t one of them. Research shows that we tend to eat more calorie dense foods on the evenings and turn to snacking when we sit down to watch the latest box set. Perhaps that’s where the ‘don’t eat past 7pm’ headlines came from and it probably originated from The Sun or Daily Mail so it doesn’t count as factual journalism.

My ultimate goal as a PT is to be myself. I’m not going to prescribe anybody a lettuce diet and go to the kitchen drawer to dig out the takeaway menus (everyone has one of the those drawers right?!) But I also recognise that everyone is different with individual needs. So my eating habits might not suit the next person. That’s where my skills, knowledge and experience take over for each person that I speak to.

One thing is for sure though, I’ll never ban a food for anyone.

The Strength Phase

I walk up to the barbell. The calluses on my hands are stinging and my thoughts take me back to a similar lift I performed some 20 years ago when I put my back out. My deadlifts have vastly improved since then but the psychological games in the strength phase always seem to bite. Its not my favourite phase of my programme. The body and the mind take a hit. Repeating a moderate weight over and over is much easier for my body and brain to take. The pump is rewarding too which is less noticeable with a 3 rep set. I’m not a power lifter so I sometimes try to talk myself out of the the strength and power phase of the programme. How important can just a two or three rep set, or sometimes even just a one rep set, be to my goals of building lean muscle? Surely my body needs reps. That’s what the popular articles say. But what does the research say?

There’s a belief that, to make muscle grow we need to rep a weight (considered to be around 70% of a 1 rep max) for 10-15 reps. But that is just a small part of what we need to consider before we can stimulate real muscle growth. Otherwise all we will achieve is a pump (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy) which will only look good for the changing room pics after your workout.

Bodybuilder and auther Christian Thibaudeau writes…”The main purpose of heavy lifting on the basics when your sole goal is to build muscle mass is to improve the capacity of your nervous system to send a strong excitatory drive.”

This means that the stronger your nervous system signals are, which are developed through low and heavy reps, the better your performance will be in your hypertrophy phase of training. Planning a structured progressive programme can vary depending on time of year and lifestyle, but the fundamentals always remain the same. We must go through a process that stimulates the nervous system, produce growth hormone and increase testosterone. If you have these in your quest for muscle Hypertrophy, the process will be much more rewarding.

Staying In The 10-15 Rep Range For Too Long…

You need to keep reminding your body what you are asking of it. Stale workouts are the gym equivalent of ‘blue balls’. You are stimulating the muscle without ever reaching a climax. Tempo, technique, various positions, intensity and length are absolutely essential to the process to get the desired results.

Your body stops responding to the so called hypertrophy rep range and this is where results begin to slow down or stop altogether, especially for the regular gym goer. The more experience you have and the more you have worked your muscles, the more savvy you need to be to wake them up again. They’re bored, you’re bored. Have you noticed any significant growth to your muscle recently? That’s why you’re pressing and curling, right? It might be time to change your phase of training if you haven’t. Remind your muscle why you are at the gym.

The Best 1-5 Rep workouts To Do…

Movements that require multiple muscle groups to work at the same time are known as Compound exercises. The main ones are bench press, deadlift, squat and rows. You might not even include these in your usual hypertrophy workouts in their conventional form but they should definitely play a huge part for improving nervous system signals in a strength phase. These compounds will develop your overall technique in other movements too.

The sore hands, the extra aches and pains and the psychological games that You Vs Bar will give you will be worth it in the end!

The Reset Button

As I chatted to a fellow football dad this evening we got on to discussing the tipple we would be going back to. Although not essential to this story I can confirm that mine is a red wine and my new bezzie’s drink would be a gin & tonic.

Anyway, I told him that my wife and I had a dry January and we also appreciated a sober October. He had a dry February as it is the shortest month to endure. Hmm, clever I thought. I must remember that for next year.

What we both agreed on is that it is important to reset the body and mind from time to time from going ‘off piste’ so to speak. What was keeping an alcoholic drink just for the weekend becomes a Wednesday ‘midweek’ drink too. If the football is on then I would pour a glass for the occasion. In fact, before you know it, anything becomes an occasion! I’m sure at one point during lockdown my wife and I celebrated me taking the bins out with a chateau pape de neuf.

Maybe we can all identify times in our lives where we need to press the reset button. A chance where we can readdress our mindset and take a deep breath before we go again. In this past week, every evening I have intentionally put Come Dine With Me on TV at around 10pm so that I can see something fun and throwaway before I go to bed rather than watch the news. I’m not ignorant and I care about world events, but sometimes it gets too much and I need to reset my mind and turn off. I’m lucky, I know, that I live in relative peace where I can switch off and others can’t.

Every day during lockdowns I would look for the news that would give me the new death toll from Covid. It gets depressing. Eventually I had to try and find head space for other stuff to fill my head. And just for a couple of weeks banana bread, tik tok and Miranda became my reset buttons.

Sometimes, even if it is something that you either enjoy doing or feel compelled to do, if it can become detrimental to your physical or mental health, walking away from it for a short time to to gather yourself can press the reset button.

You are not restricting yourself, you are not abandoning anything, you are not uncaring. You are just taking a time out.

If It Isn’t Challenging You, It Isn’t Changing You.

I see females who regularly pick up their 22kg child and carry them into a supermarket, after pushing their child for an hour around in a full shopping trolley weighing over 30kg in total they perform a farmers walk with their shopping bags weighing at least 10kg each. I then see them in the gym picking up 2kg dumbbells to do a 20 minute routine because they want to ‘tone up’ and lose weight.

I see men running on a treadmill for 40 minutes followed by three sets of heavy dumbbell bicep curls everyday and in conversation they tell me that they want to grow muscle and lose belly fat.

Can you spot where they are going wrong?

They are not challenging the goals that they have set themselves. In fact, they can meet their goals just as easily outside of the gym.

Depending on weight and speed this man can burn around 300 calories on a treadmill. Yet with the correct portion control could manage a calorie deficit without using a treadmill. And struggling through a few ego bicep curls won’t grow muscle as not enough growth hormone (HGH) will be stimulated in his workout, so a daily squat and pressup routine after a good night’s sleep would be more beneficial to begin with.

The female is way short changing herself if she thinks that the 2kg dumbbells is enough for a Romanian Deadlift. I perform squats and deadlifts regularly at home just by tidying away my kids toys. A Super Mario Mansion is a good 10kg. I’m squatting as I take the clothes washing from the washing mashine and I get a decent HIIT routine by simultaneously clearing the dish washer, making four breakfasts, two cups of coffee, a juice and a glass of milk each morning whilst running back and forth from the kitchen and dining room.

So when I go to the gym I need something more challenging than what my daily life is giving me anyway. I’m in a pool of sweat after taking three bed sheets off and remaking them all. I have leg DOMS after a couple of hours gardening and I’m knackered after an hour playing football with the kids thinking I’m Neymar JR. Give me 150k deadlifts any day!

To get the changes that we want and to meet the goals that we set ourselves then we need to do something about it and that often means looking at what we do in our formal exercise routines. If you are a fairly sedentary person then walking an hour each day is a great way to start. But I’m really talking to those who are already hitting the gym hard or have home workout routines yet are getting frustrated by their returns.

Ask yourself honestly, do you do enough in your workouts to elicit change? Do you do the right stuff to get the changes that you want? Are you fuelling your body enough or too little?

Always remember, with every workout programme tell yourself ‘If it isn’t challenging me, it isn’t changing me.’ Give your body a reason to change but most of all give yourself a reason to change, because until you believe in the process your body won’t either.

Just One Stomach Flu Away…

Do you recognize the title?

The line ‘I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight’ comes from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. Its a most excellent film.

The line comes from the fact that the character believes she will hit her goal weight from either vomiting or not eating. It is true she will lose weight, but this will only be temporary. So here’s what we know…

The National Science Teachers Association in the USA use this line to teach about biology and body image. This is because it is one of the biggest false beliefs amongst dieters and for those with eating disorders such as bulemia.

When we become ill with a stomach bug our body’s need to try to eliminate the virus so we begin to vomit or have diarrhea. Everything we lose during this illness, which usually lasts 24 to 48 hours, is fluid. Your body, at this stage, has no desire to lose fat. In fact only when we begin to be more active and are eating again will the body want to lose fat.

The line in the movie was funny and in context with the story, but it amazes me how many people I speak to who also get bodily fluid and fat confused. Indeed, hitting a target weight is hitting a target weight however it is achieved, but I feel that it is important to understand what it is we are losing from our body’s to meet this goal.

Just like a car, you need to put fuel into a car to make the car move. To move it uses up the fuel that has been put into it. Your body goes through the same process and, perhaps we could take the analogy a little further. When we speed up, travel for longer distances or carry more passengers in a car it takes more fuel from the tank. In today’s fuel prices I’m not sure that this is what you want to be doing, yet it is exactly what we need to do to burn fat.

Of course your body is much more complex than a car and how much fuel (calories) you put into your body and how much fuel you use throughout the day is difficult to measure. You don’t have a fuel gauge. However, a sensible approach to calorie and macro counting can be useful for a short time until you develop a consistent routine with your nutrition. This enables you to identify what and how much you should be eating to meet your goals and, yes, if you enjoy chocolate, a glass of wine and eating out that should be allowed too! But if you have never counted then how will you know how much of it fits in with your goals? I wouldn’t try to fit a carpet if I hadn’t measured the floor first.

We often mistake our fitness abilities with the numbers on the scales. If we see those numbers as a secondary issue and focus firstly on our ability to move better, walk and run further, lift and push heavier and accompany this with a balanced diet, then you will soon get the numbers on the scales anyway. But to focus on the scales first and your fitness secondary will leave you like a hamster on a wheel occasionally coming off to nibble on a carrot. Take on an exercise routine that you enjoy, choose meals that are nutrient dense and allow for the foods that are not as nutritious within your daily calories and work with a professional for accountability. Get off of the hamster wheel.

Losing weight is absolutely fine as a goal if that is what you want to do, but it’s the finer details that are what actually accomplishes this goal. Going to the toilet, being ill or even sweating only means that you have lost water from your body which will replenish again when your body has recovered. Hitting a target weight should be due to a commitment of a healthier, enjoyable lifestyle that enables you to see past the weighing scales.

Your challenges and targets should be fun, not one that depends on you getting ill to achieve it.

A Place In The Sun

Derek and Joan love Spain. So much so they’ve just put an offer in for an apartment in Andalusia situated at a purpose built community for British ex pats. They sit outside in the plaza at the local Irish pub eyeing up the fish and chips on the menu waiting for the call back from the estate agent, Juan, with some good news.

My wife and I are watching A Place In The Sun. There’s a hint of jealousy towards Derek and Joan. It’s almost April and despite a couple of days where I ventured out in a T-Shirt last week, it is now snowing.

I have a coat that I threaten to pack away into the loft each year around this time but it certainly got an outing today as I went to take the kids to school. No exaggeration it could be 20 years old or more. I bought it when I thought I could get away with the Liam Gallagher look. Now when I wear it I feel like Peter Falk as Columbo. Old and disheveled. Every time I wear it I find a different pack of rizzlas from the early 2000’s.

Although no official diagnosis I’m certain I have SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Disorder). But maybe I just hate cold weather. I mean, I don’t suffer with my mood when it turns from Spring into Summer. I just suffer from being warm to bloody freezing!

Some people like winter time and the events that happen during that time. But trudging the streets in fake blood asking for sweets, burning the effigy of a man whilst eating toffee apple, hearing Noddy Holder scream those immortal words long before it’s Christmas or trying to stay awake for Jools Holland’s Hootenanny isn’t my favourite times of the year. Walking along a sunny beach, cranking up the BBQ and sitting in the garden watching the sun go down are a few of my favourite things which all happen to be during the summer time. In fact, the only negative I can think of to a British summer is that the footy season has ended. There’s always Wimbledon I suppose.

Without a doubt a massive mood lifter to me is going to the gym. Training has kept me right for years and I’ve stated many times I think that finding a life that focussed around the gym saved my life. I once felt aimless, useless and soulless. The gym made me feel the opposite. Until I became a husband and a father, the gym was my life line.

I did some growing up in the gym. I had many ‘give your head a wobble mate’ moments. In my first proper job I had to stop off at the shop to buy a couple of whisky miniatures to down before beginning my shift a few times. It was that or a panic attack. Slowly, however, the gym became a much bigger influence in my life than any quick hit.

I developed a routine over time which meant that I went to the gym before I started work. It meant extra early starts but I felt fantastic walking into the office and the rest of the day couldn’t bring me down. The gut wrenching feeling I sometimes had as I woke up was quickly quashed once I began to train. But there was always a telling sign to my mood each day and that was the weather. The colder and grey it was outside, the more difficult it was to snap out of a low mood. If the sun seeped through the bedroom curtains in a morning, the easier it was to start my day.

My little boys help me get through a bad weather day too. I’ll stand in the cold rain all day to see Jonas score a goal. And I’ll happily build a family of snow people with Finlay to see his chuffed freezing face at the end of it. Plus, their early morning starts and them needing me for breakfast and school prep ensures that I need to get my arse in gear straight away, whatever the weather!

The weather forecast doesn’t look like I’ll need to shove my Lieutenant Columbo coat into the loft just yet so I will brave the last bit of cold before I’m able to blow up the paddling pool.

Oh, and just one more thing…Derek and Joan had their bid accepted.

Will The Real PT Please Stand Up?!

Kerching!!

Did you hear that? That’s the sound of another cheap gym selling cheap Personal Training.

I’m not surprised that, what was once a list of PT friends on my Facebook page, are now calling themselves Lifestyle Coaches, Personal Coaches, Health & Wellbeing Coaches and Holistic Wellness Coaches. Anything that avoids the term Personal Trainer.

From my experience the nationwide gyms are exhausting the term Personal Trainer, employing people ‘in training’ towards their qualifications and charging the gym member a small fee whilst paying their PT minimum wage. The experienced and savvy PT rarely charges by the hour, instead setting a price per week that includes session planning for the hour and other physical activities for their client throughout the week, messages and calls, nutritional guidances and (where necessary) emotional support. This means that their prices are higher than what the gym offers.

Sometimes I pop into the Poundshop to buy a dustpan and brush. Cheap and cheerful can be good! I’ll only be sweeping up guinea pig poo with it. It might not last too long, but hey, it’s a quid! But if I’m going to the gym because my doctor tells me I’m obese or because my sciatica is keeping me awake all night, cheap and cheerful isn’t good. Poundshop PT isn’t good.

It’s no wonder that many fitness professionals are staying clear from the PT tag.

It would be a very short PT session if I told someone how to lose weight. Eat less, move more is essentially what it entails. And I use weight loss as the example because around 80% of people who come to me have that goal. I’d gladly give that advice for free, I’d find a different career and the UK would be full of men with their shirts off in summer drizzling half a bottle of cooking oil on their six packs. But it’s much more complex than just eating less and moving more.

Even Sandra, who is shamed every week for not hitting her target at Weight Watchers knows this. Don’t you think she would be losing weight if it was so simple as eating less and moving more? She feels unsupported and frustrated going to an outdated dieting institution so she joins the gym and they offer her PT for £12 an hour. They sit her on an ab crunch machine and tell her to cut out every single bit of food that becomes comforting during her low times. The cycle continues.

Personal training should be the occasional call or message during the week asking how your client is. It should be giving advice on different ingredients and recipes to try. It should be about advice on how to schedule extra time for themselves away from the kids and work. It should be about creating accountability, setting achievable goals, producing consistent and relevant workouts, making exercise fun and being the one face in the gym your client can rely on.

Calling myself anything other than a Personal Trainer takes me away from the absolute joy of seeing a client accomplish their goal, whether it be a personal best or a longer term goal. Even online, when I get the bleep to inform me that another goal has been met I give a ‘yesss!’

It means a lot to my client so it means a lot to me.

I’ll never not be a Personal Trainer. So when I’m old and on my death bed put your ear to my mouth and you’ll hear my last breath be,”squats and deadlifts, squats and deadlifts”. And if you see Sandra, pass it on.