I think I’d make a good Batman. I’m not rich and the Juke is nothing like the Batmobile, although a couple of shopping bags in either boot would be a struggle. My wife complains about the boot of the Juke after every shopping trip but I reckon she’d be disappointed just as much with the Batmobile’s boot. Does it even have one? Does Batman even need 20 ‘bags for life’ bags, de-icer spray, boxing pads and a torch stashed in his car boot?
I don’t have his house either. There’s no Bat Cave behind our bookcase. In fact the biggest secret behind it is that the colour of the wall doesn’t match the exposed wall seeing as we painted around the bookcase. If only lockdown three could have been a day longer we would have got that wall finished.
And I don’t have his suit either. Not unless you include the pyjama onesy but I don’t think that would frighten away the Joker. It’s cosy enough but it doesn’t demand authority. But, still, I think I’d make a good Batman.
One of my favourite past times in the gym is hanging around upside down on the gymnastic rings. It’s a cracking core workout, but my desire to do it simply comes from the fact that it’s rather fun to be suspended upside down! And I thought I was alone in my strange hobby but as it turns out my youngest has a real talent for it too! It takes a good lot of strength to be able to carry your body weight on parallel bars and rings and if you have seen the gymnasts that perform these moves in competition they are super ripped athletes.
I can’t claim to be a gymnast though. My ambition was always to perfect the ‘human flag’ technique until I damaged my shoulder which set me back a bit in my bench press. The bench press takes priority over the human flag so I had to put a stop to that. But my youngest son might just have the knack. At 5, if he continues hanging upside down and doing crazy things that have the other parents in the play park cringing then he could be a very good gymnast. I think we might have to revisit the gymnastic classes. We used to take him when he was two but he didn’t have the attention span for it.
My eldest is a little bit more cautious when it comes to climbing on frames and trees. He tends to keep his feet on the ground most likely kicking a football. But his younger brother will happily swing, jump and lift himself to the highest point of equipment in the play park. I look at the other parents and say “I have no idea where he gets it from”, knowing full well come tomorrow I’ll be hanging upside down in my very own play park at the gym!
I might not have the car, the money or the house but I’ve got a few moves of my own that would make Bruce Wayne jealous.
“Daddy!” My youngest called from the sitting room. I was wiping the kitchen surface down for the umpteenth time today. They’re growing lads so the food prep throughout the day is lengthy. “Look at our new dance!” I went into the sitting room to see some shapes being thrown by my two boys. It’s probably from Fortnite. At their age I was giving it the ‘Prince Charming’ moves by Adam Ant so I get it. In fact, at 43, I still get the Adam Ant moves out after a few G&T’s.
It’s the Easter holidays. We are fortunate enough to have jobs where we can juggle the holidays and our work. The financial loss in our businesses due to lockdowns took it’s toll on us and we can’t justify holiday clubs every day for me to be at the gym and my wife at work, so I’ve been seeing lots of new dance routines this week. Today, I’m with the boys and my wife is at work. In the past it has seemed like we are spinning too many plates and trying not to smash them.
The gym, even when I haven’t got a client booked in, is my place of work. Just by being there and talking to people I can attract new customers and build new relationships. But this week I’ve definitely been ‘daddy’. Due to my online coaching at least I can still do work from home if I need to.
One thing that I can’t do though is train myself. The one thing that has kept my mental and physical health in check for the past 25 years has taken a back seat. Going to the gym is a necessity to my business of course, but it also plays a vital role in my wellness. The gym is my favourite place to be in my free time, not just in my professional time. It’s where I feel at home.
Yet this week it’s at my actual home where I find myself with my kids. To be fair, living in a town which is one of the most visited places in the UK during the holidays is a fun place to be with two young kids. So far we have played football on the beach, visited the amusements and walked along the cliff tops looking out to sea in search of dolphins. Scarborough is pretty cool like that. There’s always something to do with two lively boys.
Hearing their calls of “Daddy” still surprises me. I sometimes take a moment to think to myself, ‘they’re talkin to me! I’m a dad!’ It gives me a feeling like nothing else to think that I am their daddy. I’m a lucky man. And not training myself in the gym for a couple of weeks is well worth it. After all, to be what I want to be inside of the gym I must be the best person I can be outside of it. The foundations of success comes from the 23 hours outside of the gym. Being the best husband and dad is now my biggest goal in life. Master that and the rest is easy.
The Easter holidays have been planned in my workout programme, of course, so I have accounted for this. As long as I stay active and my nutrition stays stable, not going to the gym isn’t going to disrupt my progress. My body needs a rest sometimes. I’ve just finished six weeks of strength and power training so this couple of weeks will be a perfect break until I begin a hypertrophy cycle. It’ll get intense again. So giving my body a rest is important.
But there was a time where this would have freaked me out. Not going to the gym to train myself would have left me feeling flat. I would have felt like my progress had been stalled or totally derailed by not training. I now know that this isn’t true. I can not only rationalize this, but I know that it is in my best interest to put the weights down from time to time.
As much as I know that staying in the best condition in the gym is important to me, watching the latest floss dance from my kids is the most enlightening thing that I can do. It’s moments with my wife and kids like yesterday at Piglets Farm near York that will stay with me. The next gym visit is a vital component to my wellbeing but will always be secondary to creating memories with my family. I no longer have to spin so many plates, I simply just put them to one side until I’m ready to spin again.
My job as a PT is made much easier from me having the experiences of many of my clients. I’ve got the qualifications but what really allows me to guide my clients is my ability to delve into my own past and draw parallels with them. Along with the many coaches that I have worked with in the past, I also became pretty good at coaching myself.
I have had the anxieties about my body. Am I too skinny? Am I too fat? I need more muscle to be accepted. I need to eat better but I like kebabs after a few pints. Should I try fasting? My friends inject steroids so I should do the same? I want results but can’t be bothered to workout this week. I might as well give up on my goals.
I have felt almost every emotion there is when it comes to my training and my eating habits and I still keep finding new things out about myself and my personality. Perhaps the journey is meant to keep surprising us all. But now, if it is a negative discovery or a challenging one I am now confident in knowing how to solve it.
One particular challenge seems to be one that I hear from people that I speak to often. We seem to choose a relatively harmless food to scapegoat. I’ve thrown certain foods into the wilderness, too, so i can empathize.
When we are deciding what we can or can’t eat during a diet we go through a process which is often a distorted version of reality. This presents an exaggerated response or conclusion. Therefore, the reason that you are over weight must be because of the banana that you eat every day. The issue has been simplified to suit your case. The banana has been demonized because it is easier to do than focus on your alcohol intake or the amount of fast food you eat each week.
Fruit can get a bad rap at the best of times because it is high in sugar and I also made the arguement to myself that the apple, grapes, the banana I ate each day was the cause of unwanted weight gain. I didn’t want the copious amounts of beer and takeaways on the weekend to be the issue. I sacrificed the fruit. The fruit didn’t impinge on my lifestyle. Had I addressed my drinking and fast food choices, it certainly would have done.
The truth is the reason for my weight gain wasn’t the banana at all and nor was it the drink or takeaways. I realized that no food was the enemy. It was me and how I abused food that was the real issue. Having a drink with friends or a fast food meal didn’t have to stop. A daily banana didn’t either, of course. But it was the amount of food and drink that I was consuming that had caused weight gain. If I consistently put more calories into my body than I needed each week then I would see a slow increase in my weight.
Every successful client of mine will still enjoy a slice of cake with friends or a beer in the pub. Occasionally, they might have an unplanned event within their day which meant they had to ‘grab and go’ at their local Gregg’s or chippy and they’re doing it guilt free. Because what surrounds all of these acts are accountability, hard work and a positive relationship with food.
You don’t need to scapegoat a banana. Instead of blaming a banana at a 100 calories, see how you can make positive steps in reducing your overall daily calories to suit your goals. When you start banning foods you have an unhealthy attitude to ‘good’ foods and ‘bad’ foods. You beging to resent the process and often resent yourself for sometimes choosing the ‘bad’ food. This leads to further depression about your weight and binge eating due to your ‘failures’.
Choose a banana, just not the whole bunch. Choose a slice of cake, but not the whole cake. Choose fish and chips, pizza, apple, water, choose loads of veg with as many meals as possible. Choose a cheese sandwich on white bread but don’t use the whole loaf or block of cheese, choose a chocolate but not the whole tin and choose a beer, just not the whole keg. Choose life.
I never really had a problem with losing my hair. Perhaps when I first realized that I was receding as a teenager I panicked and tried shampooing my head with olive oil a few times but, as I say, I wasn’t overly concerned so I soon stopped as nothing happened anyway. Had I come out of the bathroom looking like Captain Caveman I might have carried on. Instead I persisted with the balding Kurt Cobain look.
But something happened to the baldies in the 90’s especially for those older than me and has probably still made a difference to the attitude of society in the UK. In a fictional London market place called Albert Square walked in the Mitchell brothers. They were two bald, burley, no nonsense characters in soap opera EastEnders that had the bald men if the UK snipping off their comb overs quicker than you could say ‘Get outta my pub!’
Being bald was accepted. Even David Beckham ditched his mohawk for the shaven look. Before you knew it walking down Briggate in Leeds looked like one big Right Said Fred convention.
Also back in the 90’s something else happened. Not only did the media have a big influence in us seeing baldness in a different light, but they also pointed out Princess Diana’s cellulite on the front page of a Sunday rag and in doing so made not just Diana with an eating disorder paranoid but millions of other women feeling insecure too. All of a sudden just as men ditched their comb overs, olive oil and toupees, woman began to buy magic creams and cover up. It’s like a disease had been discovered on a papped Diana. And if a Princess who stayed very fit and active with access to the best foods, gyms and treatments had cellulite what were the rest of the female population going to do?!
Yet cellulite, just like baldness, is a pretty normal thing to happen. In fact, again just like men balding, cellulite can develop just after puberty and genetics can be a factor too. Some treatments can be found but with varying degrees of success and very active people can get cellulite. The skin losing it’s elasticity in older age can make it more noticeable. And it is probably only you who cares about your cellulite and is self conscious about it. And if it bothers anybody else then hit them around the head with a rolled up News Of The World.
We can do some things to change our appearance. If we are unhappy or unhealthy then you can do something about it. But worrying about the things that we can’t do anything about is pointless. Yes, I could have a hair transplant and fair play to anybody who has, but I am me. Other than a false tan in winter then I am who I am. Learning to live with yourself is one of the hardest things to do. Respecting yourself and how you look is where you need to begin when you want to change something about yourself. Change comes from believing that you are already beautiful. Changing yourself when you don’t even like what you are is very hard.
I never became a PT to shame people into needing to exercise. Instead I wanted to tell people “You are fabulous and how can I help you in becoming even more fabulous?!”
And if I can dance around my bedroom butt naked listening to ‘I’m too sexy’ then I’m certain that you can too!
It’s pleasing to get the feedback from my client’s workout whether it be an online programme or in a 1-1 session. This morning was no exception. The message I received from a trainee 5 minutes after a 1-1 session was “that was much better than a bottle of wine”.
It’s great to know that my trainees are enjoying their workouts. After all, if we enjoy it we are more likely to create a consistent routine regarding our fitness and meet targets. And the science doesn’t lie when it comes to exercise. People enjoy the effects of it for a reason.
Even after 20 minutes of vigorous physical activity the brain releases a stress hormone called Gamma Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) which promotes relaxation, sleep and triggers seratonin production. The ‘feel good’ chemical dopamine is also released. Indeed, the comparison with wine is ironic in that alcohol will do the exact opposite and actually inhibits these chemicals from doing their job.
The physical benefits of exercise has been well documented since time began. But I believe that if we entered a fitness programme with our mental health as the priority then our physical needs would be met too. For example, other than a possible sarcoplasmic pump after resistance training, your body will not develope from just one workout. It needs several weeks, months and years to achieve muscle gains, better movement or sustainable fat loss along with balanced nutrition to accompany your goals. However, just 20 minutes of a fast walk, a run, a HIIT routine, spin class, jumping up and down or even sex can produce the chemicals and hormones in your brain that can make you feel calm, relaxed, happy and energised. Add these 20 minutes up and by the end of the week not only have you got a brain that is producing GABA at the rate of a Nestlé factory making chocolates but you are also enabling huge contributions towards your physical goals too.
And talking of chocolate. It’s main ingredients in dark chocolate especially is cocao which has large quantities of natural GABA. I don’t ban foods for my trainees. Together we will talk about their nutrition and find ways of improving things in keeping with their goals. I want happy trainees therefore chocolate stays in the menu! And GABA is also found in cruciferous veg such as broccoli and kale, so as long as there’s plenty of that on your plate then a bit of chocolate to sweeten the palate is not going to break your goals.
The bottom line is this… exercise can be the hardest thing to begin. You are tired and a workout is the last thing you want to do after a hard day at work or with the kids. Working out at home is a drag, you’re not motivated enough and a PT or the gym membership is too expensive. You can’t afford it. But when you look at the benefits of what it can do for you both physically and mentally, can you afford not to?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
Never Give Up PT 