gym – Page 6 – Never Give Up PT

Do You Know What Your Problem Is?

Your fitness journey is a problem. Make it your problem.

Ok. So before you criticize me for being all Negative Nancy on you, let me explain.

This problem is not a bad problem. If you think of a mathematical equation, a riddle, a puzzle or a science experiment, these are all set to challenge us but are also something to solve.

To solve this problem there are no time limits.

I was asked today ‘At what point will you be satisfied with your fitness achievements?’

I think I answered probably by 70 years old, but that’s incorrect. To a certain degree I’ll never be completely satisfied. I want to keep on learning, developing, defying the ageing process and become stronger. To do this, my fitness journey needs to be my problem that I can succeed with, fail with, become really pissed off with, cry and laugh with.

Some logical decisions have been made to help me continue succeeding, but there are the ones that must be avoided and that is comparing myself to others. It doesn’t matter what Big Dave from sales is deadlifting. He’s a good 20 years younger than me, genetically blessed with quads of steel and is performing in the next Pro-Am bodybuilding contest. That’s HIS problem. I’ve got my own.

The only young whippersnapper I’m comparing myself to is my 30 year old self. I want to be ahead of him. If, as I get older, I’m still ahead of him then I’ll be a bit closer to cracking the code. One thing that I know now that my 30 year old self doesn’t is that once you crack a code, there’s a whole new challenge to engage with. The problems stack up. There’s a bigger puzzle at the other side of the door. He doesn’t know that and it immediately puts me at an advantage, despite my age, because I’m prepared for it.

My health is important to me, but maybe not in the same way as you might think. I won’t live my life just to stay alive. But I will live my life to enjoy it way into my later years. It is rare that I see an elderly person and think ‘I want to be like that when I’m their age’. Instead they give me more reason to get my ass to the gym. I don’t want to struggle when I walk or run. I don’t want to have weight issues that cause breathing difficulties and bad knees.

And, unashamedly, I want to look the best too. I want to be confident in my clothes. I don’t just want to be strong I want to look strong. Be it at 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 years old. After that I might quit my gym membership and just watch Loose Women all day. I’ll decide on that if and when the problem arises.

What I can’t do, then, if I aim to achieve all of this, is give up on my problems. What’s the alternative to giving up on the gym? If I aren’t happy with my progression in my fitness goals then I’m certainly not going to be happy if I sack it off. The answer lies with the willingness to solve the problem and persist.

My favourite Einstein quote says,’It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer’.

To really begin to solve problems we must really dig deep and keep trying to find answers. If we quit, the problem is still there, it’s just that now it becomes an unsolved pain that we have to live with rather than one to embrace and celebrate after another success. And the success, no matter how small it might seem, is another piece of the solution.

We don’t have to be smart, we just need to never give up.

What Does ‘Shocking The Muscle’ Actually mean?

Shocking the muscle is a term that I have used many times myself and, despite the physiological inaccuracies, I’ll use it again within my career. However, muscles don’t exactly get ‘shocked’ into growing. If only we could quickly grab a couple of heavy ass dumbbells and complete one curl for our biceps to say,’Whoa dude you got me good that time. How big do you want me?’

Training for muscle growth requires adaptation cycles that create new stresses to the muscle. Through repeated exposure to a certain exercise or training programme the body adapts. Once the body adapts, you need to ‘shock the muscle’ by creating a new stimulus that compels it to adapt and grow. And so the cycle continues.

So this is why the term shocking the muscle becomes overused and misconstrued. A shock refers to a sudden, surprising experience or event. And as anyone in the natural bodybuilding game will tell you, there is nothing sudden in muscle growth. In fact your muscle doesn’t need a surprise party. It needs a well thought out plan that you commit to almost every day for months and years until it understands what it needs to bring to your party.

There is a difference between the maintenance resistance trainer and the adaptation resistance trainer. 95% of trainers in the resistance area of the gym are maintaining their current physique, which is great by the way, yet I’m not convinced that this is their goal. Shocking the muscle to most people is doing a set of deadlifts because ‘I haven’t done them in a while’. Give it 5 minutes and I guarantee they’ll be curling again. They’ve ‘shocked’ their muscle enough for this week.

Like I say, getting to the gym, maintaining muscle and staying active is great. But you must understand that being in a room full of people lifting weights to me is like a roofer watching people try to fix their own roof. They might eventually get a roof, but the drips will appear shortly. So a maintenance job is all good and well until you find that what you’re getting isn’t what you wanted.

Since moving most of my business online I have found out that, for most men in particular, they don’t want me to be physically stood next to them in the gym. Regular gym goers already have a decent grasp on their form. But what they didn’t understand and why they approach me is to help them create a progressive programme that takes them through adaptation cycles. They didn’t know how to shock their muscle onto another level. Many of these guys have impressive physiques too, but the more experienced they are in the gym the harder it is to create extra muscle growth… especially with stagnant workouts that they’ve done for years.

It’s not always about just keeping the rain out, some people want thatched roofs, skylights and solar panels. And for that I’d get a qualified roofer.

Muscle And Aesthetics

If you currently follow a fitness programme the chances are one of the goals on your list will be to look your best. That’s totally natural. Hitting the gym to be fitter and stronger also has this great bonus of actually making you look your best. And if you train with the purpose of muscle hypertrophy then you might even prioritize the aesthetics over the health benefits. Either way, training can be fun when we start to see things happen to the body as it can make us feel more confident about ourselves. In fact, I fail to see a single negative aspect of exercise. It literally ticks all the boxes.

But a massive tick for lots of people is the box titled ‘aesthetics’, AKA ‘looking damn fine’, AKA ‘smokin’, AKA ‘sun’s out, guns out’. This type of training is commonly known as muscle hypertrophy and recently I read an article about the muscle parts that are seen as the most attractive and appealing. It focussed quite a lot on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest and Hulk Hogan’s biceps and I’d like to add my own entries there with Beyonce’s rear and Jack Grealish’s legs. But I’m pretty sure that most of my readers are not movie star bodybuilders, WWE wrestlers, global pop superstars or Premier League footballers. So I’d like to address hypertrophy and which muscle can look the best for the every day folk. After all, we don’t all have time or money for an in-house PT or a fully equipped home gym to train in everyday to acquire the hypertrophy that our celebrated friends have.

Firstly, it is important to point out that your genetics are different from the next person. Your body will be able to adapt to something much easier that someone else but they will have different qualities to you. Therefore going to the gym to blow up your shoulders five times a week won’t progress them past the sarcoplasmic (pumped) stage if you ignore the rest of your body… especially the stuff that you are particularly good at!

So this is where you need to begin. Start with the stuff that you enjoy and are already good at. Your mate might have big shoulders because A. It’s their favourite body part to train or B. They are helped along by freaky genetics that enables broad back/shoulders. If your friend’s dad needs to enter a door sideways then there’s a very good chance that they will too. Add that fact to what is their favourite body part to train and they will end up with pretty impressive shoulders. But that doesn’t mean it is where you will excell. You need to find your own niche.

Your friend will still need to train the rest of their body. If they don’t, their genetics and well worked delts will look odd if they have underdeveloped legs or chest.

For natural muscle hypertrophy for aesthetics, you need to train every body part. But even if you can only manage three gym sessions a week there’s gains to be made with the correct planning and nutrition. In a one hour session your focus should be hitting high reps on as many muscle groups as possible for more than half of it and then you can focus on your best bits on a series of isolations. If it’s your chest, then do dumbell pullover to flyes supersets. If it’s your legs then perform leg extensions to lunge supersets. Not only would you see progression in your underdeveloped areas but the muscle groups that you naturally excell with will keep you wearing t-shirts or shorts well into December.

Play to your strengths in every session, but make sure that you do the other stuff first. Compounds that hit every muscle will compliment your best bits. Compounds increase testosterone,muscle and bone density, regulates fat distribution and red blood cell production. So the most attractive and appealing muscle group that you have is the muscles that you are the most adept at working…as long as you’ve put the ground work in on the rest!

Personally, my shoulders are my trophy muscle. They stand out nicely in a T. But as I said earlier, this is helped by genetics along with my calves which have always gained attention since playing football as a kid. So training these areas are pleasing to me because I see rewards instantly. I give a nod to these muscles regularly because I like how they make me look, but I know that I can’t ignore my other muscle groups even if it means performing my least enjoyable exercises. And despite being a PT I have many.

Aesthetics is something that we don’t always want to talk about as Personal Trainers. We’re supposed to be promoting the physical health benefits and the need to exercise for our mental health has been well publicised in recent years. But if you see muscle development and you feel pretty damn good about yourself because of your aesthetic look then don’t be ashamed that this is what you trained hard for. Looking good helps your mental health too! So give a little tense and a pose the next time you walk past your mirror. No-one is looking!

Fail Better

As a kid I had this unhealthy attitude towards winning and losing. Losing to me was failure. I hated it. But then winning didn’t feel like the best thing in the world either. It felt ok but the negative emotions that I felt during defeat was far stronger than the emotions I had at winning. For years, I was a sore loser.

It didn’t help matters that I also found it difficult to get over a defeat that was out of my control. When the football club that I supported lost it could easily spoil a weekend. So supporting Liverpool in the 90’s gave me many miserable weekends.

Without realising until I was much older I now look back at my old self and wonder what opportunities I missed out on, just in case I failed. Did I not study hard enough during my GCSE years because of the hurt I would put myself through if I didn’t get the grades I wanted? Did I avoid wanting to be noticed at football so that I never had to be told that I wasn’t good enough? Did I miss out on job interviews or promotions because I didn’t want to be judged and told ‘no’? I’m sure many of us reading this can relate to how our younger selves handled these types of situations.

I’m determined for my kids not to go through the same turmoil as me. I want them to succeed in life therefore I need them to fail sometimes. I now know that the biggest learning curve is when you are having to deal with disappointment. Rather than be scared of failure, I want them to appreciate that it happens. It will be inevitable at some stage. Winning is good, but knowing how to do it after bouncing back from defeat is even better. If they can learn to manage their feelings of failure and know how to put it right now, their path to success is much smoother in later life.

In my career I have spoken to people who still sound like they hold that fear and cannot handle disappointed.

“I’d never go to the gym so there’s no point in getting a membership.”

“I’ve got a bad back so I can’t lift weights.”

“My doctor says I need to lose weight but I like eating XYZ too much.”

“I haven’t got time.”

These are all examples of excusing themselves in order to avoid disappointment. And the truth is that they will have had a gym membership before and they will have tried to diet, but their fear of not seeing results has made them quit.

The results are a big problem. We put events in our lives as either success or failure. Did I fail at English GCSE because I got B/B instead of A? Did I fail at football because I was scouted by Leeds City Boys instead of Leeds United? Did I fail in my job because I made a senior instead of managing the whole facility?

I have achieved many things but perhaps sometimes I expected too much too soon which put greater pressure on me. And much like the people I speak to, their expectations are too high. It seems easier to quit than to manage such extreme goals. Their comfort zone of not trying anymore feels safer than having to face defeat.

And yet, actually, there is no defeat as long as they have a plan, stick to it and trust the process. Results worth getting cannot happen in an instant. It does take time and it can be difficult. Sometimes, even feeling like they’ve failed will be there. It has to be there as part of the process. But that’s only because they are human and no matter what successes they have along the way it will always be the one setback that stirs the emotions the most. Using that setback as a springboard to further success is the key. Fail better.

Perhaps Dr Seuss says it best…

“Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best. Wherever you go, you will topple all the rest. Except when you don’t, because sometimes you won’t.”

Momentum

There are periods throughout the year that we might find ourselves taking a couple of weeks away from the gym. This might be due to going away on holiday or other commitments have temporarily taken priority. For me personally I decided to take two weeks away from gym training because of the Easter holidays and I wanted to have fun with the family. I’ve remained active but there’s been a few days where my nutrition has suffered. That hasn’t been down to chocolate eggs, however, as I don’t particularly like chocolate! But I have not controlled my diet so much and allowed for extra calories on occasion. Like I say, I wanted to have fun with the family and not sweat over whether a cheeseburger will destroy 25 years in the gym.

I like to keep things real. It’s how I PT and how I live my life. I am a 43 year old who is happy in their body, feeling and looking better than 20 years ago and who can be honest about when to hit the gym hard and when to let go now and again. I am not a bodybuilder, I am not training for a photo shoot, I am not a professional athlete and I am not the next Spiderman. My cheeseburger won’t need to have a cameo appearance through the lycra. I am, first and foremost, daddy to two little boys.

And although I like to train hard I like to acknowledge why it is that I train in the first place. This past two weeks I have been able to walk long distances, play football in the park and eat food that I wouldn’t usually eat. If we can’t identify or we forget why we do it, then doing it in the first place is so much more difficult. Remember why you do it and write it down if you have to.

During a strength phase I can train up to two hours a day, five days a week. I reckon I’ve lost almost 20 hours of training this holiday. In a two week period, however, the research suggests that I have lost no muscle mass or aerobic capacity. Studies show that we can lose 5-10% of our endurance capabilities after 3 weeks and yet I’ve been much more aerobic in the past two weeks than I would have been in the gym anyway. Simply put, as long as I go back to the gym with a plan on Monday, physically I have lost nothing.

But here’s the problem for so many. After a holiday or any significant time away from the gym there’s no plan in place. So what becomes more important than what we lose physically is the loss of momentum. This leads to further inactivity, less aerobic capacity and muscle mass. Mentally, picking up from where we left it before an illness or a holiday is the big test and even the first session can be a little rusty with form and tempo. It could take a few sessions to get back to how you felt previously. Lifting a few weights was never going to be the difficult part about training, but doing it correctly with the right attitude was.

But if you have a plan and promise yourself a day to get back to your training then you will once again create the habits that you had before your break. You’ve lost nothing but a bit of momentum. Remember why you do it and find it again.

I Have No Idea Where He Gets It From!

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.

Easter Holidays

“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.

Scapegoating

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’m Too Sexy

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!

https://www.trainerize.me/profile/nevergiveup2/?planGUI

GABA

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?