There are certain industries that require us to dislike who we are, how we look, what we fear and dislike each other by being judgemental.
Working in the fitness industry I know only too well the secrets and the subliminal messages that advertisers and the media put together to make us feel inadequate.
I’m determined to break the mould with how I approach your health and your wellbeing.
Start now. Right now. With giving yourself a great big hug and telling yourself how amazing you are. Wanting change isn’t a bad thing, but you’ve got this in your own time with the right support around you.
Then tell somebody how fantastic they look. Comment on their hair, their clothes, compliment somebody at work for doing a great job, and don’t feel silly about making someone’s day in the gym by telling them how well they’re doing with their goals.
Empower others, but make sure you’re empowering yourself too.
Something changed when I stopped listening to the generic body building and weight loss sites and I reassessed my own fitness goals. I took charge of what I had to do. This led me to becoming a PT and helping others. I became in control. I became the lion. And I teach others to be the lion too.
It is said that “until the lion learns how to write, every story will praise the hunter.”
I used to follow a narrative led by muscle magazines, gym bro websites, diet books and all of the other mediums that generate billions of dollars from selling their latest trend.
For most of my adult life going to the gym was about ‘lift big or go home’. That’s what I was told. I had to eat chicken and broccoli every day. It’s what the experts told me. I got it so wrong.
I beat myself up daily just to try and lift heavier than some guy who I didn’t even know.
But then I discovered a better way. I could still get results and train without causing injury and anxiety. I realised my ‘why’. And I didn’t find it on YouTube.
Sure, I wanted to be happy and confident with my body but I needed to know how to love myself in the present moment and not just focus on loving what I wanted to be. I began to imagine the future me. What would the future me thank the present me for? I started to do my homework. To save my physical and mental health it became so important to me that I acquired so much knowledge on the matter that I qualified as a PT and successfully made a business out of helping others pretty quickly.
I became the lion. And this lion learnt how to write his own narrative.
I now recognise that training is how I have energy for my kids. It is what keeps me focussed in my marriage and in my work commitments. It is giving me a chance to have a better quality of life. I like myself at last.
I don’t punish myself for not making it to the gym every day. If I can’t get there then a walk with my family is a great way to exercise and surround myself in nature with the people I love.
I don’t regret eating something that is ‘bad for me’ because I enjoyed it at the time and I can have an occasional snack. I enjoy life without living in fear of ‘losing muscle’ or gaining weight. I am free of fads and confusing information.
Perhaps I was a little over ambitious to set about a new online course for a further qualification just a couple of weeks before the summer holidays kicked in. With two boys off school I’m struggling to find any extra time for my regular appointments, let alone the added stress of completing assignments.
But that’s where I’m at. It’s what I signed up for. I don’t like my personal growth, business, economical, family or physical growth to become stagnant. And sometimes it is challenging.
I recently listened to a podcast from a speaker who said,”If you remain comfortable, you will fail. Success is not a comfortable procedure. You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Start putting some pressure on.”
I fully understand this sentiment. I need goal setting, time lines, wins and losses. I’m not a betting man. At least not with the bookmakers. I hate it. I don’t even do the lottery. But I do take a punt on the outsider now and again trying to sneak a goal or ‘win by a nose’. On this occasion, that outsider is me.
One of Mohammed Ali’s most famous fights in the ring was 1974’s Rumble In The Jungle. He spent most of that fight on the ropes defending himself against the onslaught of George Foreman’s punches. Ali managed to tire his opponent out (throwing punches continuously is extremely tiring) and counter this by building his own attacks. He knocked Foreman out in the 8th round. The term was called rope-a-dope.
Success isn’t always built by coming out of the blocks looking for the quick fix. It often takes calculated risks. Ali left his comfort zone. He didn’t want the heavyweight champion of the world throwing punch after punch on him whilst he was trapped on the ropes. It’s a risky tactic. But he knew that this was a technique to win the match in this particular battle.
And as I sit in my bedroom thinking of the punches that are coming my way, I know that I will need to roll with them. Sure, I’ll need to come out fighting at some point, but I also need to find a way of protecting myself until I align myself with the task in hand. It’s not my round 8 just yet.
Choosing between…
* worrying about unfinished jobs, crying over missed opportunities, procrastinating over deadlines, avoiding the mirror because the school holidays seem like a looooong time and my belly looks bigger and the ‘v’ frown on my forehead gets more prominent, or
* choosing your battles, when to attack, when to rest, planning your route, accepting the knocks and finding solutions.
Both are about leaving your comfort zone. But the latter, albeit daunting and uncomfortable, still gives you control. There’s no easy way in finding what you want. The one that at least puts you in the most amount of control must be the best way.
Ali was always in control during this fight, but Foreman didn’t know that. Foreman felt too comfortable. It would be his downfall.
I know that my desires and ambition shouldn’t be tethered. They should be allowed to run freely around in my head like a pool of ideas, creativity and inspiration. And so I need to leave my comfort zone and set them free, knowing that I must remain patient in truly finding the wins in some cases. Locking my future goals away entirely will only fester anger and frustration.
I need to start with my next assignment if I’m to follow my own advice. One punch at a time, Shay. One punch at a time. As long as I can withstand that, It’ll soon be my round 8.
Over the past few weeks there’s been parents queuing up at the booze isle so that they can choose their poison for the evening when they’ve put the kids to bed.
How do I know? Because I’ve been one of them. And although it hasn’t gotten to fisty cuffs just yet, there’s been a few near misses as I hurdle the crates and boxes placed by the staff in the centre of the isles to get to the last bottle of Montepulciano. I almost straddled Big Dave’s back to reach for this particularly fruity red but luckily he was headed for the stout section. Just as well. If I had to challenge him for my favourite tipple I think I would’ve lost.
Of course, it’s not just the parents heading for the booze section. A study published by The Lancet in 2017 found that global alcohol consumption had gone up by 70% from 1990 to 2017. Notice the dates. This was pre-pandemic. I can’t imagine the consumption of alcohol to have gone down.
People are finding work stressful. They turn on the news to wars and political unrest. The economy is a mess. Social media can be addictive but toxic. People are having to hang on in there. The daily grind leads to an alcohol unwind. I just made that up. It rhymed.
But anyway, my job as a fitness coach isn’t to analyse the many studies made on our society. But it is my job to know how to deal with the many different issues that our society brings up. Body confidence, work life balance, injuries, physical health, mental health and food anxieties are all things that I deal with regularly in my work.
But I’ll tell you why I am particularly good at what I do. Everything I have listed above I have had to deal with in my own life at some time or another. Some are more prominent than others, but damn, it hits you like a ton of bricks and knocks you off course pretty quickly. Alcohol, perhaps, becomes a crux for some. For others it might be over or under eating. And then there’s a whole myriad of people who self harm in other ways. There isn’t much I haven’t seen.
My weight management programme has been tweaked to what is now a well established offering to my clients. Why? Most people don’t even know they’re on a programme. It simply becomes a journey of self discovery. It deals with becoming stronger both physically and mentally. It is designed to challenge the body and the thought processes that we have. I not only wrote the programme, but I lived it first.
Adding a summer sports school for a hundred kids two days a week to my list of work commitments this summer has had me spinning those plates to the extent that, just maybe, Big Dave wouldn’t have stood a chance had he made a grab for my bottle of Montepulciano.
But come September, I’ll be back to dropping the kids off at school and having a focus on developing my online coaching programmes and my gym work.
And seeing as the kids go back to school next week and I’m about to open this bottle of Montepulciano right now, it could be the last of my summer wine.
Up and down the country parents are dealing with consoling their children who have just received their GCSE results today. There’s going to be some very happy households too. Many kids will have made their grades and will be able to put their plan A into place.
But for the kids that were like me at 16 it will feel like a lonely experience. Embarrassing too. Friends, cousins and jubilated kids on the news waving their bit of paper in the air all seemed to do better than me. I felt like a failure.
I even remember what I wore that day. It was my grunge stage at 16. Long hair, ripped jeans and an orange REM t-shirt from the Monster album. Grunge symbolised the anger, frustration and angst of those years. Listening to bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden became much more appealing than revising for exams.
I will never know how those exam results changed my life. Not really. I never felt like I wanted to go to University, so top grades never appealed to me anyway. The problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do at 16.
But what I do know now is that those results didn’t define me. I thought they did at the time. And it used to annoy me that If I were to fill out a job application form it would ask for my GCSE results. 27 years later, is my knowledge of GCSE algebra of any importance to any potential employer? My knowledge of algebra does not define me!
I didn’t know it then, but I learnt a great lesson that day. I learnt how to deal with disappointment. And not just the sort of disappointment you get when you open up the takeaway bag to find that they’ve missed out the salt and pepper spare ribs, as crushing as that is. No. The disappointment that you feel when you don’t even want to be on the planet anymore. You don’t know why you exist.
And looking back throughout my life I managed to discover lots of failures. I fail often. Only now, I absolutely love it!
Due to knowledge, experience, a good track record and plenty of recommendations I seemed to have stumbled into becoming a weight management specialist within my coaching. And I call it weight management because as much as the large percentage of people want to lose weight, I also work with those who need to gain weight. So specialising in weight loss wouldn’t do what I do any justice.
What I find is that many people go through the same emotions as I have. Not so much in them having the same experiences, but in how they feel about themselves after failure. Not hitting a weight target, not managing to complete an exercise routine or feeling like they’ve eaten too much or too little. Anxiety and resentment can take over.
But over time I’ve managed a lightbulb moment that has armed me with the most valuable tool. I now know that failure is not the opposite of success, it is a part of it. To succeed at anything, we must accept that we fail sometimes. That’s why I love it. Failure, to me now, is a milestone moment. If I know how it went wrong, tomorrow I will know how to put it right.
You will not have success every day, whatever your goals. It will hurt. I know it will. And the good news is that whatever your journey might be, it won’t be as bad as learning algebra.
What do you think about the term ‘alternative therapy’?
So often during conversations about certain therapy that might be useful to a person’s physical or mental health it gets passed off as ‘hippie dippy’ (which is what crystal healing was called by a friend of mine). Other descriptions made to reference alternative therapies are bizaar, ridiculous and weird.
Perhaps some are. We live in an era where multi media can help sell any fad to any group of people or demographics and I have no doubt that many alternative therapies have been hijacked by the billion dollar business of the health and fitness industry. Indeed, if a celebrity brings out a book on maggot debridement therapy alarm bells start ringing to me.
However, many helpful treatments classed as alternative therapies are things that are much older than conventional treatments. Yoga, for example, is traced back to Northern India some 5,000 years ago. Meditation is an ancient practice from 5000 BCE. The Chinese medical text Con-Fu of the Toa-Tse dates back to 1800 BC detailing the application of massage techniques for therapy. Crystal healing, thought to be ‘hippy dippy’ by a friend of mine, was first used 6000 years ago by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotomia.
Conventional treatment cannot be ignored either, of course. I’m a science man myself. I like the research, experimentation and the practical study of our world. Without it I wouldn’t be able to be a Personal Trainer. I don’t just stumble across a number of movements and hope that they work for a client. I follow the evidence in what WILL work for whatever my client wishes to achieve.
But it is also important to be open minded and question things. And I question everything. I question why our health services are so quick to dispense anti depressants to us. According to the OECD Health Statistics, the USA and the UK have some of the highest numbers when it comes to their citizens taking anti depressants compared to other nations.
The pharmaceuticals industry is worth 1.42 trillion US dollars (statists.com). The antidepressant industry alone is worth 28.6 billion dollars. So I question why our health services would ever want to promote any type of alternative therapy when they earn so much from us popping pills.
And yet I still can’t discredit medicine. It is a fantastic invention that saves lives or can make lives easier to live. Choosing between conventional treatment or alternative therapy is the issue for me. It shouldn’t be a case of either/or.
Personally my last resort has always been turning to conventional medication. In my early 20’s I was prescribed antidepressants. I held the prescription in my hand as I stood outside the pharmacy, wondering if there was an alternative. Down the road to the pharmacy was a gym. I joined that instead.
But the gym didn’t completely cure my anxieties. They’re still there and, as I have discovered, it is just a part of my personality. The gym just helps me to think whilst producing endorphins, which happens to be the body’s very own natural happy drug. There’s me and science again! Any type of movement can produce it. Just do the movement that you enjoy and you’ll get your very own supply of endorphins!
I have never met a person who has not benefited from yoga. And I don’t mean the sort offered by most multi national gyms. You want fixing not breaking. I mean proper yoga taught by a yoga instructor in a yoga studio. I’ve never heard anybody feel worse from a massage treatment performed by my wife. Most people feel that, with consistent treatment, their body and mind feels much more relaxed. And I’ve never encountered a poor meditation. Sitting in silence with your own thoughts and feelings for a short time each day should be a priority to anybody, whatever ailments we have. What’s so weird about that?!
Alternative therapy should always be considered in our quest for peace, happiness, health and fitness. As much as modern day medicine is extremely important, grounding ourselves and opening up our therapeutic experiences in our lives should always be considered.
And if somebody scoffs at you for buying a yoga mat, invite them to do The Crow and enjoy the entertainment.
One of the biggest obstacles you will have to overcome in your quest for happiness is fear. You fear the past, you fear the future and no matter what state of mind you are currently in, you fear it. If you are happy you fear being too happy because you don’t want to be hurt or let down again. If you are unhappy you fear it because you’ve been here before and you’ve read the script. It cripples you.
Maybe you have to change the script. As the author, you can make edits.
“You are a ghost driving a meat covered skeleton made of stardust on a rock in the middle of space. Fear nothing.” Eric Mina.
It is your ego that makes you fearful. You don’t want to fail. You don’t want to be seen doing something wrong. You don’t want to die.
Yet you WILL do all of these things anyway. And when your ego holds you back, tell it to f@#k off. And if it’s another person holding you back, get them out of your life.
Then you will be fearless.
Everything that you want is on the other side of fear.
If you want success then go and get it. What would make you feel like a success? Take a moment to visualize what a successful you looks like.
If you want good health then go and get it. What would make you feel healthier than you do right now? Close your eyes and imagine what a healthier you would do.
Don’t let fear hold you back.
Don’t fear your next struggle. Some of the biggest struggles that we go through, we learn our biggest lessons. Think about your own personal life. Think about a particular struggle. Now think about how you turned it around. How did you do this? What did you learn? Who was there to help you? These are the questions you need to ask yourself often, because it is the answers to these questions that become your armour. You have faced fear before. You’ve suffered misfortune and you have had moments of despair. Yet here you are. Surviving.
So don’t fear what you have already conquered. The chances are you are stronger than you think you are.
I am a Fitness Coach, Personal Trainer, Meditation Teacher studying Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I’m good at what I do because I deal with fear every day just like everybody else. Today I won. Tomorrow I’ll try to win again.
Hmm. How can I make an interesting article about the thickness of mirrors? How can I make it informative without having you guys fall asleep when I start describing the thickness of glass?
Well, if you go to the gym and look in the mirrors or if you try clothes on in a clothes shop then you might find it rather enlightening. And I’ll not get too technical. Promise.
Leonardo Da Vinci said “The mirror is our teacher.” He was referring to the mirror being used as a fresh eye. When I train a client in a gym I will often look in the mirror at my client’s form instead of looking directly at them. Apart from the fact that it can be off putting having someone (even your PT who you trust) staring at you as you struggle through your set, me looking through the mirror gives me a different perspective on their form. I see things differently. We can lose perspective with the naked eye. Reflections can create new ones, especially with the thickness of a gym mirror which should be above 5mm in thickness.
Due to health and safety, public mirrors must be of a certain thickness and be safety backed. Therefore this thickness can give us a much better perspective of the reality that it portrays. Whereas a domestic mirror might only be 3mm in thickness. This can create a mottled effect on the glass and give a distorted view of what we see, especially in cheap mirrors that are mass produced.
Trainees have often said to me,”I look great in the gym but when I look at myself at home I feel rubbish again!”
This is the reason why. The gym mirror will be a true reflection. Your home mirror is probably a much cheaper, thinner piece of glass.
Artists often use mirrors to get a new perspective of their paintings. It takes away the peripheral clutter and enables the eye to focus on the subject. Training in the gym shouldn’t be any different. Your workout is your art. You have a blank canvas to work on and produce your own work of art. Mirrors can help. Whether wanting to build muscle or lose weight, often looking in a good mirror can give you a much better idea of your progress than the weighing scales.
I’m hoping that, one day, mirrors will become so thick that it will make me look like I have a fringe. But maybe that’s an art that might be a little bit too much of a stretch.
I set myself a little challenge when I hit 40. I didn’t mind turning 40. In fact I feel at ease with the ageing process. We are born, hopefully we live to a good age and then we die. Job done!
It’s the ‘living to a good age’ bit that I wanted to get right. I was pretty good at being born, so my mum said. I reckon I’ll give dying a good go too. But the middle bit I had to start getting right. It has been widely reported that the human body shows signs of decline at 40. So if this is something that happens whether I like it or not, I wanted it to be on my terms. I’ll age my way.
It is around 40 that our metabolism starts to slow down. This means it is easier to put unwanted weight on. To combat this I developed a regular resistance training programme that means I am burning around 3,500 calories per week at rest. The benefits of this is that I’m not constantly dieting. I’m strict with my nutrients and macros for 80% of the time but for the other 20% it is play time!
Also at 40, we begin to shrink. This is actually due to a form of bone disorder called kyphosis when the spine starts to curve. The old person depicted on the road sign didn’t follow a strength programme. Had they done, their back might be much straighter and they might not have a walking stick. Our bones begin to weaken and an effective strength routine can create bone density in older age, not lose it.
At 40 we develop more digestive issues. Indigestion, constipation and ulcers are more common. I used to dodge the fruit and veg in my 20’s and 30’s. The phrase ‘you can’t outrun a poor diet’ is very true, but when I was younger I didn’t believe it. I could eat whatever I liked and had no stomach illnesses and belly fat wasn’t a problem. But as I approached my late 30’s I started to believe. I had to change my attitude towards what I ate and fast, but for someone who enjoyed ten cold hotdogs out of a jar and a bottle of wine every night it wasn’t easy. Training my brain and changing my habits was just as important as what I do in the gym.
Now, at 43, I feel fitter and stronger than ever. I suffer less injuries and less anxiety. My performances in the gym have improved year on year in recent times and I’m pleased with my aesthetics. Aesthetics are important to me. They always have been but at an age where hairs sprout from strange places and hair disappears from where it should be, being in control of my appearance where I can be is particularly satisfying now.
So the challenge that I set myself when I turned 40 was to improve my physical and mental state even though the evidence is stacked against me. It means that I need to work harder for it. I have to believe in MY process, not the ‘ageing process’ I read in Medical Monthly.
My process. My fight. My life. And I’m bloody loving it!
So, what have you got planned this week? What steps have you put in place to make sure you get stuff done?
I’m not the type that expects us to be on the go all the time and we MUST be always busy with something. I enjoy down time with a series on Netflix or watching about five episodes of Come Dine With Me in one night (I know, we’re odd). But to comfortably manage the down time, it’s good to have a plan of action for the stuff that needs to get done first.
It is Sunday evening. To be honest it’s got to that time of day where I’ll be happy to get the kids to bed and lay on the sofa in my under crackers watching people slate each other’s dinner parties. But before I do, I just need to give a little thought to my week ahead. Planning a packed lunch for tomorrow will only take ten minutes. Sorting my gym bag out, 5 minutes. I don’t book onto gym classes but if I did I’d do it right now before it gets filled up. I know the days and roughly the times I will train. My diary is sorted for my appointments and I’ve discussed what the family activity will be on Wednesday when we all have the day together.
I’m not the best organised person. I’m quite laid back with my approach to planning. But I know that I need to give myself a kick up the arse sometimes so that, come tomorrow, I’m not left rushing about because I didn’t bother to give any consideration to the days ahead.
Just having an idea of my week ahead can ease my cluttered brain. Things happen. Curve balls are thrown and as Robert Burns once said, “even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. But it is much more difficult to stumble through an unplanned day than it is to fix or rearrange ones that didn’t work out.
Anyway, I’m not getting any planning done, Come Dine With Me watching or under cracker wearing right now so I’d best be off to do a bit. I’m overseeing over a hundred kids at a summer multi sports camp tomorrow so I’ll quickly make my sarnies and get some rest before the proverbial hits!!
Me trying to decide on my Take That undies or my Batman briefs for slobbing on the sofa to watch tele.
Never Give Up PT 