Uncategorized – Page 2 – Never Give Up PT

Turning Anxiety Into Excitement

As my son and I walked away from his opportunity to do football training with the older kids the other day I noticed that the anxiety had overcome him. The coach was fantastic, he tried to encourage him to join in. The kids are a good bunch, they would have welcomed my son. But the occasion got too much for him. He just couldn’t do it.

It isn’t the first time. At an open trial event at Leeds United, a similar thing happened. And there’s been lots of scenarios where he has not joined in with something because of this. He gets anxious and I get that. My first ever fitness class in front of 30 experienced class attendees was a disaster because I could hardly get my words out or move my feet. Not a good start for a coach trying to lead the class!

Being good at something and even excelling to become successful at it requires much more than skill and intelligence. My son has this at football in abundance. His ‘football brain’ is excellent for a 9 year old. He has an instinctive mind of knowing what to do in certain situations of a game that is unusual to have at his age. But it’s no use if he can’t walk onto the pitch to showcase this ability. This is a different skill entirely.

Turning anxiety into excitement is an art.

American author Simon Sinek has spoken about the Nerves Vs Excitement situation. During the Olympics he observed that the interviewers would ask the athlete if they were nervous about their upcoming event. Almost in every reply, the athlete said that they felt excited. An elite athlete who has reached the peak of competing at the Olympics won’t get nervous. Despite their talents, had the nerves gotten the better of them then they surely wouldn’t have made the cut to represent their country at the Olympics in the first place.

We could define being nervous as having sweaty palms, a faster heart beat and a future cognitive thought process whereby our minds come up with negative outcomes such as tripping up, losing or getting injured.

And yet excitement could be defined in a very similar way. Sweaty palms, a faster heart beat and, as for the future cognition, this would be our minds coming up with positive outcomes such as winning a gold medal, breaking a personal best and celebrating.

But the interviewers are actually commenting on their emotions. It is them who would feel anxious. They’re not the elite athlete.

And this can be seen in many other, non-sporting contexts. The Great British Bake off contestants will talk of being nervous about baking a cake. Mary Berry would feel excited. She is an expert and the contestants are amateur bakers.

So these elite athletes and Mary Berry have one thing in common and that is the fact that they have practiced their craft a million times before. And during this time there will have been some disastrous events and many soggy bottoms, but they kept on going. Practicing and perfecting their skill until it wasn’t daunting to them in any way, just exciting.

I could only get over my fears as a class fitness instructor by going back to the class each week and training my emotions to get better at it. I knew that I could lead a class, but I had to keep repeating it several times to lose the nerves.

And I know that, had my son trained with the older kids the other day, then he would have been a little bit more prepared for the next week. And the week after. And the week after that. Until a time would come where he felt nothing but excitement to train with them.

One way in which I worked with my initial anxiety about my first few classes was to announce to the participants that I was nervous. I even tried to laugh and make a joke of it. This broke down any barriers that were there between me and the class participants. I became one of them. After all, there are plenty of gym goers who are extremely anxious about stepping into a gym. Them knowing that I was nervous too, seemed to put us all at ease. We could work through it together. I am now about to stand in front of a class full of people whether it be two people or two hundred! The adrenaline would be there, but it would be excitement and not nerves.

We don’t need to be elite athletes to transfer anxiety into excitement, but we do need to keep turning up. Start by thinking about what could go right instead of what could go wrong. Sure, such as life, things won’t always go as you would like, but if you can be at peace with that in mind then the rewards are massive.

Just remember, we can all be guilty of a soggy bottom before we create a masterpiece.

The First Law Of Thermodynamics

I didn’t expect to be talking to my 9 year old son about the first law of thermodynamics on a Friday night as I was driving him home from his football practice. My prior thoughts were to get him into his pajamas, tuck him into bed and pour myself a beer while I binge watch Search Party. But he asked about dying, so…

Apparently, he has been struggling to get to sleep over the past few nights worrying about dying. Him dying, his brother dying, me and his mum dying. He was asking about the people in his life who have died. The car fell silent for a moment as I gathered my thoughts for some sort of an answer. An explanation about what he should know and how it could ease his worried little head.

‘The first law of thermodynamics!’ I blurted out as I drove through the dark Scarborough streets.

I went in to explain that, although I don’t believe in an afterlife or a heaven as such, I do believe that our energy continues after we die. I quoted the physicist Aaron Freeman to my son, who stated…

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. They can explain to your family that no energy is created and none is destroyed. They can tell your mother that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. The energy that flows through our bodies does not disappear, but is simply rearranged.”

Ok, I can’t tell my son that loved ones who die become the little bird that sits on our garden fence each morning, but I can tell him that their energy is as strong as when they was alive. In the first law of thermodynamics, energy does not go anywhere, even if a physical form does.

And this is why our energy is so powerful, right? I mean, the energy, the vibes that we put out into the universe, whether positive or negative, will remain long after our physical self is gone. That’s why a smile, a good deed, a positive affirmation or an act of kindness to yourself or others works so powerfully. This energy can change lives, even when our physical form is not around.

‘We only live once’ is a saying that we’ve all heard a million times before. Well, the body that you are in will only live once and it is important to treat that body with the love and respect that it deserves. I make many decisions based on this. I want to take my physical self to new experiences and push it to new levels whether in the gym or in learning new things. The body and the mind need to be exposed to exciting new challenges.

My energy won’t grow or multiply by achieving different things in this physical form. The first law of thermodynamics tells me that. But I might just be able to leave behind some positive energy. Forever.

A Day In The Garden… That’s NEAT!

With my work done for the day (it’s never done, but) I sat down to eat my lunch and decide on what I should do with my afternoon. And with our house about to be put up for sale, I decided that doing something that would give the house a fresher feel would be a good start. Certainly a better start than watching Steph’s Packed Lunch all afternoon!

Hmm. But where to begin? I had a timing issue here. I had to begin something that I could finish before I picked the kids up from school, so painting their rooms, a job that will need doing, wasn’t going to happen today.

So as I placed my empty dish in the kitchen sink and looked out of the window, my answer was right there in the garden.

I’m no green fingered gardener. My wife is responsible for the pretty things that grow out there. But I’m pretty good at ripping things up and tearing things down. And at the side of the garage was a huge big tree like climber that I had been meaning to wrestle for some time. In fact I trimmed it down a year ago after the neighbours complained that it had started to grow inside their part of the garage.

I must admit, any day that I miss training at the gym I feel guilty. I can reason with myself, however, when I consider my NEAT activities. I have explained NEAT previously in my articles, but a brief summary of this is the Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Any movement that you do outside of your usual training schedule is classed as NEAT. This can be from breathing, walking and, well, ripping down trees.

I’m confident that I remain quite active even away from the gym. Barring a couple of hours on an evening watching a football game or a movie then I am rarely sedentary. Therefore, my NEAT is alright.

And it’s amazing how tough a day in the garden can be! When my wife and I begin to plant seeds for vegetables or create new wildlife areas during spring time I have muscle soreness that most gym exercises don’t produce. This makes it just as good a calorie burner as a steady paced treadmill run for an hour.

So the bottom line here is don’t despair if you haven’t made the gym today. There’s lots of stuff you can do to keep you going.

Life, Heat and Catching Up!

Over the past few weeks I have set myself targets as to where I see myself in 12 months time. There’s no stress that I’ve put myself under with it apart from a further education course that I have started which has a deadline. Other than that, I have focused on what makes me happy and what my future self would thank me for.

I guess that’s partly why I have been less active in scribbling down my thoughts here. Any chance I have I have been studying, training or finding ways to develop myself, my business, my family life and my happiness.

But this makes me happy. Right now, writing this. So I thought it was time for a catch up.

I wouldn’t be able to commit to any of my targets if it wasn’t for certain people, or groups of people, in my life. I have spoken before about how my wife had encouraged me to become a Personal Trainer and her empowering spirit for me has now enabled me to become a certified Meditation teacher but also enrol on a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy course. The human brain interests me. I truly believe that if we can control the thoughts in our head better then we can live much happier lives with ourselves. I meet so many people who are unhappy with their physical selves, yet with a different approach to their way of thinking they would realise that they don’t have to be. Wanting change is fine, but only for the right reasons.

My clients inspire me. My online PT app bleeps at me more than a busy checkout isle at Sainsbury’s. I love getting alerts for a new achievement or a message on how their new training program is going. It makes me get off of my arse and get stuff done too!

And I have told my kids before that they are my heroes. Yes, kids should be told that they have the ability to inspire, empower and display heroic acts by their grown ups. My kids dealt with periods of lockdown better than me. My youngest is the brightest and most thoughtful boy. And my latest beaming with pride moment is when my 8 year old played a football tournament in stifling heat and helped his team win the final. 7 games in total and he didn’t stop running. His commitment in the final, even as his team went a goal down, saw him equalise and push his team to victory.

I have wanted to give the gym a miss during the recent heatwave but then I recall my son’s commitment to HIS cause in a difficult, energy zapping environment and got my own training done. It isn’t easy. Winning his medal didn’t come easily to him. If it did, would he have been almost in tears with sheer jubilation at the final whistle? I think not. Similarly, my goals don’t come easily either. But not even doing it eventually makes things even harder. My son tried his best. This time he won, but that won’t always happen.

Surround yourself with triers, empowerers and positive people and if you can give it back to them too.

I must get back to the books now. I have a course to complete. But I enjoyed the catch up. Speak soon.

Not If, But When

I like to think that I have a group of motivated and enthusiastic trainees who are focussed on their goals. At the moment there seems to be a buzz of excitement in what we are achieving, but it comes with a big red flashing light of caution.

As early as the consultation stage I like to prepare my future clients for the reality. Yes, they will succeed. They can reach their goals. But only if they become comfortable with the knowledge that it will be a case of not if, but when they have to face the feelings of failure.

Failure comes in many different guises. To some it’s a disappointing week with nutrition. To others it could be not seeing the results as quickly as they expected. It could be that they feel that they haven’t dedicated enough time to the gym or their weekend binge has set their progress back.

Even in elite sport the athletes will face failure. Djokovic might win Wimbledon, but he will drop sets. City might win the league, but they will lose games. A boxer might win the fight, but it doesn’t come without a few blows along the way. Real Madrid lost a whopping four times during their Champions League campaign in 2022 and yet went on to win the final. Being a Liverpool supporter I know that stat all too well!

The above sports people are trained to deal with the highs and lows of sport and competition. And let’s not hide away from the fact that your goals are a competition. If you set any type of target or goal, you begin to compete against yourself. Today, you compete against the yesterday’s you. Find that mindset and you make a big step towards your success. Acknowledge that sometimes the yesterday’s you will defeat you, then that’s an even bigger step.

But if you allow yourself to get bogged down on the low days then your journey will be so much more difficult. For many people it becomes too much and they give up.

The low days are the ones that you can look back on and embrace. These are the days when you learned something about yourself and you responded. It becomes an education. And in many ways you learn more on these days than you ever will on your good days.

Giving up on your goals is like slashing your three other tyres because you got a flat.

Sometimes you will get a flat tyre. Acknowledge it, know what to do or who to ask when it does, fix it and move on.

Dirty Fries

Scarborough is a small town. It’s the sort of place that if you go into the town centre you will probably know somebody to say hello to. Train in a gym with almost 3,000 members and the chances are that I will definitely see somebody I know.

Had they seen me in a bar this lunch time they would have found me with a large gin and tonic and some ‘dirty fries’. When I ordered them I imagined some chips with a sprinkling of grated cheese. What I actually got was a bag of potatoes, a pack of bacon and a block of cheese squeezed into a good sized pasta bowl. This wasn’t the amuse bouche that I had visioned in my mind, but it was one my belly was happy to try.

I wished a client of mine would’ve walked in as I slurped the stringy melted cheese into my mouth. If only to keep proving my point. I keep reiterating my point regarding food and weight management…eat it. All of it. If it fits your daily calories, eat it and enjoy it. But there’s a slight caveat. Just one little rule.

If you aren’t going to cut out the low nutrition foods, then you must keep the nutritionally dense foods high. Whether you are very active with fitness goals or more sedentary, keep the nutritionally dense foods high.

You see, I don’t believe in banning food types. If you want to stop off at a bar and order a truck full of McCain’s Chips then do it, as long as your weekly macros are met. Yes, weekly. Some days your carbs might be up, but if you keep the nutritionally dense and high protein foods a priority over the course of the week then your calories and macros will average out. Judging your Journey on just one day will serve you no purpose.

I knew that I could eat some greasy cheesy chips today. I count my calories.

Now, if you read the newspapers you might gasp in horror at the knowledge that I count calories and I also endorse it for others. The one exception being anybody suffering from an eating disorder. In which case they don’t need me, they need professional medical support.

But the media seem to be very negative towards counting calories. Which is interested, because they print lots of other methods such as 5:2, Intermittent fasting and promote large dieting companies who count ‘syns’.

My conclusion is that counting calories isn’t sexy. It isn’t a buzz word or trending on Twitter. And if it isn’t a large company paying a newspaper to advertise their diet or a book publisher paying them to flog Michael Mosley’s new fad diet, then it gets demonized as wrong.

If I go into a shop and see something that I want to buy I will check my bank balance before I purchase it. That’s just simple accounting.

If I go to the carpet fitters I will take the measurements of the room that I wish to have carpeted with me. That is just common sense.

If I take my son to buy a pair of shoes I will ask the assistant to measure his feet first. Efficient.

And if I want some dirty fries washed down with a gin and tonic I will make sure that my meals around this tasty treat are low in calories and high in nutrition. No anxiety or concerns.

I get what I want now and again and I also get to keep my body on track with my fitness goals. And a part of my fitness goals is my mental health, therefore stressing at banning all of the foods that I enjoy is not something that I consider healthy. I have a good relationship with food. I don’t want to feel anxious about being in a social environment and seeing half of the food on the menu to be cancelled for me.

I don’t develope programmes or challenges for my clients if I wouldn’t do it myself. So occasionally doing my own Balanced Plate Challenge works for me. My clients succeed, why shouldn’t I enjoy my own methods too?!

And so it’s time to make my smoothie. With plenty of spinach and fruit in there my body will still know that I love it. And it might even get another bowl of dirty fries again next week!

Fitness Auditing And Why We Need It

You have this cool programme that you developed/got off YouTube/received from a trainer about 6 months ago and it was fantastic.

It excited you, gave you a new purpose in the gym and got you some kick ass results. For the first time in a long time, you had a new belief in reaching your goals.

It was amazing. WAS.

But now, 6 months on, it all feels like a slog. The thought of going to the gym isn’t exciting you any more like it did. The results are slow if any at all and you’ve started to feel the injury niggles from repeating the same old exercises. Day in… Day out.

>sigh< “here we go again” you say as you enter the gym doors.

You start to blame yourself. Are you tired? Is your mind just not in the game anymore? Is it just an age thing? Are you eating right?

The odd day off creeps in where you would usually have gotten to the gym. A few mates are having a pint after work. It’s tempting. The gym bag gets thrown back into the boot of the car. Or the early morning start where you once jumped out of bed to get a workout in before work has gone. Now the snooze button seems like a better option.

If any of this sounds familiar then the chances are is that your programme has run its course. I’d estimate that it’s probably a good four months out of date.

Not only does a progressive programme last over months and in some cases years, but keeping a check on the finer details like rest periods, weights, reps and sets becomes essential to a trainees goals.

If you have a workout plan that you repeat every week without a direction beyond that plan then it will become stagnant. You become demoralised and you give up. Or you become demoralised and injury gives you little option but to give up.

Internet workouts perplex me. They appeal to people because they are free. I’ve been there. The free option was like finding a cheat sheet. A short cut that didn’t cost a penny. And the guy posting it was jacked. ‘That’ll be me soon,” I thought.

Programming isn’t a one size fits all. And if you are lucky enough to find something that works to begin with, then eventually, without auditing, you will be forever treading water. It will become a tired workout. You’ll become tired.

Assessing your progress every 6-8 weeks should be as much a part of your training as perfecting your squat or your bench. Knowing how and when to tweak your workouts is a skill. I only acquired this skill when I was studying for my PT qualifications. Since then I’ve written thousands of programmes.

If only I’d have known how to audit my fitness 20 years ago when I was at my physical prime. In truth, I didn’t have a clue back then.

I don’t blame myself or anyone else for not auditing and following a progressive programme. There’s so much confusing information out there and, as I say, it’s a skill. A skill that I learnt and became qualified in.

Why wouldn’t you try out free workouts online? After all, I wouldn’t trust most PT’s in mainstream gyms anyway. I honestly can’t tell if they’re giving the gym member an induction or a training session, such is the lack of passion in their approach.

But very good PT’s do exist. Ones who are fully self employed are generally 100% committed and knowledgeable to their clients. They have to be. If they fail then nobody will pay them. If they don’t get paid they don’t have a job. I literally go to sleep at night thinking about programmes or tomorrow’s sessions. I have to. I’m the one who will help my clients audit their workouts. I need to know every tweak for over 20 programmes at any one time.

The Bottom Line

Any new workout usually works for a time. They often work muscle groups that haven’t been worked before and muscle soreness feels intense but satisfying. But the body adapts and with it so must your programme. How you adapt it is what will keep getting you the results.

Goal Setting

https://mindist.page.link/EDHu

Above is a link to my recently recorded meditation guide I entitled Goal Setting.

We get so fixated on the goal sometimes instead of the little challenges that we overcome to have to reach the big stuff. Those little steps, the 1%, amounts to great things if you perceiver and confidently follow the process.

Every day there should be a time to reflect on your goals and expect that some days won’t always be the best. But as long as you acknowledge them and move on then you will still get to where you want to be.

Thank you for reading and listening!

Shay PT

Resistance Machines

My usual gym routine is from Monday to Friday. The weekends are generally for family time and relaxing away from formal exercise. It works for me. There’s no set rule that works regarding a training plan. Perhaps my ideal plan would be having two rest days that aren’t together but personal circumstances have to be accounted for.

What training a full five days in a row allows me to do is have a definitive day in which I can begin a wind down in the intensity of my workouts. I can’t hammer my body every single day with heavy compounds. Indeed, I believe in my 420 reps workout that I have developed for others so much so that I am doing it myself. This means that once Thursday’s session is over I have completed over 1500 reps. By Friday, my body is telling me that I need a little assistance from machines!

And this is exactly what the resistance machines are perfect for. They provide much more relief for the body and it isn’t just the physical aspect that needs the respite. Neuromuscular Innovation, or more commonly known as the mind-muscle connection, takes its toll on the brain. The thought process of connecting with your target muscle in a bench press scenario is much greater than on a press machine.

Foot positioning, core engagement, time under tension, breathing and the contraction are all crucial components of a bench press. Sure, there’s still the necessary check list to go through on a machine but in no way is it as thorough. Therefore, instead of risking injury with sloppy end of the week technique, I still get to workout without breaking myself.

It does concern me, however, how overused these machines get. I get the impression that lots of gym goers use them because they haven’t been shown how to squat, deadlift, bench press or barbell row. Their inductions usually include a brisk talk through these machines, so why would they use anything else?!

When I did gym inductions I went through deadlift form as a priority. It is a free weight compounds that requires the whole body to move and work together as one. I can analyse the hip extensors and knee flexors of the participant and get an understanding of overall strength and fitness levels. Without it, I would struggle to know what machine or what type of exercises a new gym member should be doing. So I am perplexed as to how the gym staff know. Introducing them to an ab crunch machine is way way off of where most new gym members need to be.

And don’t get me started on an ab crunch machine. An over reliance on a resistance machine can cause injury, but an ab machine can be particularly dangerous. The deep abdominal muscles, together with the back muscles support and protects the spine. I cringe as I see yet another gym member rocking wildly like a wound up toy trying to work their abs. Back pain is the biggest reason for staff sickness in the UK and until we begin to train our lower backs correctly this statistic won’t change.

The Final Word

Resistance machines are a great way to supplement your workouts. A heavy session on the bench or in the dumbbell section takes a lot out of us physically and on the nervous system. Rounding off a session on the machines or cables can be a perfect finish. But we can’t rely on them to reach our goals, be it injury rehabilitation, weight control, muscle gain or movement. If you are completely new to the gym then I would recommend starting in the free weights area with a trainer who knows what they’re doing.

That you for reading this article. If you have any questions on this or any of my practices then do get in touch!

Shay PT.

Calm Mind

https://mindist.page.link/bxUb

Here is a link to my Calm Mind meditation that I recently recorded. A bit wierd meditating to my own voice! But I’ve done it a couple of times and find it quite relaxing.

Keep smiling!

Shay.