‘Oh shit.’ I muttered as a van slowly slid down the hill towards my car with me and the boys inside.
I would usually wince at my curses if I were in the vicinity of the kids and tell myself off for using such language. Tonight, however, it’s a wonder it wasn’t something stronger.
Within a split second, which seemed to happen in slow motion, the van uncontrollably came closer to the car. It would do a considerable amount of damage to the car if it hit it, but I was confident that me and the boys would be safe. My wife, though, was the one pushing our car up the hill! Any sort of collision, considering the cars revving hard up the hill and the sliding cars coming down it, could have been very serious to anybody on foot.
Luckily, and what seemed to be just a couple of inches away, the van managed to stop as I continued to rev my car up the hill as my wife, now with a couple of helpers, got my car onto a flatter surface.
The journey back from taking our boys for their swimming lessons had turned into quite an adventure. A journey that should take 10 minutes took an hour and a half.
That evening, along with my long list of Google questions such as ‘Schools in Santarem’ and ‘Houses for sale in Santarem’, ‘Does it snow in Santarem?’ entered the search history.
Next year will be the year that I move with my family to Portugal. The weather isn’t the biggest motivation, but last night it did nudge up a few places on the priority list.
I used to like it when it snowed. I have lovely memories of snowball fights and building snowmen as a kid. But as a grown up, I only like it on a greetings card. Snow means a loss of earnings and near misses with vans.
It also means I don’t get to the gym to train myself as much. Of course, the snow doesn’t play a huge part in this. It might cause a day or two of disruption but I have a long list of work and house chores that need doing and, generally, the lead up to the Christmas week represents a rest period to my regular training schedule. And although January would usually be the green light to get stuck into my schedule again, a week away in Portugal in the first week of the new year will give me extra time to enjoy my ‘bulking’ period.
After all, who can go to Portugal and not try a pastel de nata or two?
Ah social media. As much as I love it, I hate it too. For all the good advice that we can find out there, there’s the bloody awful stuff that can be misleading and potentially dangerous.
Let’s take the latest weight loss pill that entered my feed recently. Take one a day and watch the fat roll off, apparently. Oh, and you don’t need to exercise. The ads have always got before and after pics as evidence of course.
The problem with before and after pics on advertisements are…
A. Did this person genuinely lose weight through taking this pill or were they actually just on a calorie deficit?
B. How long did this transformation take? Because I’ve seen timelines that are either impossible or would need a dangerously low calorie deficit to get there.
C. Anybody can get a generic before and after pic from the internet. Does this person even know that they’re being used in this ad?!
As far as a magic pill goes, the ingredients are probably harmless. It might be mostly caffeine and therefore make you feel like you’ve had a shot of espresso. But the real dangers are the idea that you don’t need to exercise if you are taking them.
Pills, drinks, vibrating attachments to bellies and bums and fad diets are all contributing to the ever increasing obesity levels in the western world. The reason for this is the idea that’s given that it is some sort of short cut. A fast track trick for a firmer tummy.
I’ve been in the industry for too long to know that none of the above work. And whatever you choose to put into your body or attach to your wobbly bits it isn’t going to work unless you move more.
Moving. That is exercise. Staying active and eating a balanced diet works. That is the key.
And if you have been given the advice from a PT that you need to run marathons, pump iron everyday or sign up for the next Tough Mudder, that’s bull too. You just need to walk or run a bit more, join a few fun fitness classes with friends, lift a few weights and keep moving.
Although weight loss, fitness and muscle hypertrophy can be a science, the basic principle is simple…
With my work done for the day (it’s never done, but) I sat down to eat my lunch and decide on what I should do with my afternoon. And with our house about to be put up for sale, I decided that doing something that would give the house a fresher feel would be a good start. Certainly a better start than watching Steph’s Packed Lunch all afternoon!
Hmm. But where to begin? I had a timing issue here. I had to begin something that I could finish before I picked the kids up from school, so painting their rooms, a job that will need doing, wasn’t going to happen today.
So as I placed my empty dish in the kitchen sink and looked out of the window, my answer was right there in the garden.
I’m no green fingered gardener. My wife is responsible for the pretty things that grow out there. But I’m pretty good at ripping things up and tearing things down. And at the side of the garage was a huge big tree like climber that I had been meaning to wrestle for some time. In fact I trimmed it down a year ago after the neighbours complained that it had started to grow inside their part of the garage.
I must admit, any day that I miss training at the gym I feel guilty. I can reason with myself, however, when I consider my NEAT activities. I have explained NEAT previously in my articles, but a brief summary of this is the Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Any movement that you do outside of your usual training schedule is classed as NEAT. This can be from breathing, walking and, well, ripping down trees.
I’m confident that I remain quite active even away from the gym. Barring a couple of hours on an evening watching a football game or a movie then I am rarely sedentary. Therefore, my NEAT is alright.
And it’s amazing how tough a day in the garden can be! When my wife and I begin to plant seeds for vegetables or create new wildlife areas during spring time I have muscle soreness that most gym exercises don’t produce. This makes it just as good a calorie burner as a steady paced treadmill run for an hour.
So the bottom line here is don’t despair if you haven’t made the gym today. There’s lots of stuff you can do to keep you going.
It’s almost a year since I published my first article. Before I started, I wanted it to be engaging for the average person who had goals and aspirations whilst juggling work commitments and family life. After all, that person is me! Along with doing the breakfast routines and finding school uniform and organising my work diary for the day, I also wake up thinking of a new PB at a bench press or sticking to a healthy nutritious meal plan. It excites me to think of stuff that can improve me physically and mentally and listening to squabbles about Pokémon cards from my boys can be tedious. So I sometimes switch off to think about my own personal journey.
‘Shouty Dad Has Gone’ was my first attempt at blogging. Like a singer who hates listening to their own voice, I haven’t read it since it was published so excuse the mistakes. I hope I’ve improved!
My idea for my blogs was to empower people into a fitness routine that not only worked on physical health, but mental health too. Every day I see new faces in the gym and I know that they’re in for a long long journey because their attitude to fitness needs to be addressed. Most people quit. But if they learn to develop their emotional side to their training then they have every chance of succeeding in their journey. Maybe, perhaps, my articles might have resonated with some of my readers at some point. I dunno. But I do know that those who work with me find success because I focus much less on the perfect squat or bench press. As impressive as these lifts are, these alone won’t achieve what they are looking for.
Happiness, self worth, acceptance and a balanced life all start in the head, not the barbell.
So I wanted to write more than just a fitness article where I would describe rep ranges, time under tension and training splits. These are all important, for sure, but as I say it means nothing if you aren’t inspired to begin or see it through.
It means that, in writing my blog, I began a journey of reflection myself. It made me think. For example, if I had not written anything for a few days, I would reflect on my life and what I had done with it in that time. And I found that there was always something to think about and write about. And actually typing out those words allowed me to either feel a sense of achievement, gratitude or a need for improvement in certain areas. This is one of the reasons I recommend journals and thought diaries. I find that it can help.
So here’s to another year of blogging. I hope that you, the reader, continue to enjoy my ramblings and you feel inspired too.
My wife and I had the perfect chance for a weekend without the kids. It is my birthday on Monday and their grandparents had offered to take the boys to their house so that we could celebrate my birthday with a meal out or an evening at the cinema.
It’s rare to have an opportunity for a ‘date night’ or to have any significant time together so it was very tempting. But I didn’t want it to happen this weekend. I wanted my wife and two boys with me.
It’s perhaps a cliché thing to say, but when my wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday I said ‘my family with me’. At 44, other than a new pack of undies or socks, my desire to unwrap expensive things or something new and exciting has gone. Undies are exciting. Yes. I have reached an age where a new pair of undies without any holes thrills me. And I’m happy with that.
As a kid I would open up a birthday card and a tenner would fall out. After pretending to not notice the money and instead read the verse of the card I would thank the person and then look in shock as I eventually found the ten pound note which had dropped into my lap. It was an awkward moment. I was always very grateful for people’s generosity at birthday and Christmas time and I still am, but sometimes the bestest gift you can receive is the closeness and love of your family. You can’t buy it.
Seeing as my birthday landed on a school and work day this year, we decided to have a ‘birthday weekend’. We like to extend our celebrations. For example, Eurovision is watched from the semi finals throughout the week with flags on the walls, not just on Saturday’s finale. And daytime Christmas films on Channel 5 are starting to get recorded already for us to binge on a November Sunday.
Our boys love a celebration. It usually involves cake and pizza so why not?! And for Lou and I it involves wine, so we love a celebration too! But it wouldn’t have felt right to send them to their grandparents this weekend. We played Monopoly, went for a coastal walk to the local pub for a few games of pool and managed two movies with copious amounts of food. And I was allowed to open a present before the big day too! Seeing as I complain about being cold so much, the boys had decided that a fluffy house coat is what I needed. Once they were all partied out, they went to bed and I could pop open a bottle of fizz. The coat stayed on.
As I write this I’m feeling a bit knackered myself and my birthday hasn’t even arrived yet. So I don’t think there’s going to be much celebrating tomorrow. Maybe whilst they’re at school, I could have an old man nap to find my energy for the week ahead! It is my birthday after all.
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the TV adverts are all of a sudden looking a lot more Christmassy this week. It seems like one minute I was collecting sweets with my two little devils and then the next minute I’m buying my box of Bounty-less Celebrations ready to open on Christmas day!
Oh how holiday consumerism flies.
And for 54% of the UK at least, what will be around the corner not long after a repeat of Morecambe and Wise will be the new years resolutions. A quarter of those resolutions will be health based, but only 9% of new years resolutioners will continue into the new year with their goals and actually achieve what they set out to do.
My theory is that when January arrives there has been very little planning involved in starting a fitness goal, if any at all. I can’t imagine many programs or meal menus being created over an episode of Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. In fact, due to the upheaval of the previous two weeks before January starts, it is probably the hardest month to commit to in regards to health and fitness.
So what is the best time?
Now is the short and easy answer. Today you can get a gym membership. Today you can write down a few healthy nutritious meals ideas and buy the ingredients for them. Today you can read an article like this and think ‘What am I waiting for?!’
What are you waiting for? My guess is that you don’t see any point in starting now seeing as silly season is just around the corner. But if we do the math then you might feel differently.
There are 57 days until New Year’s Day. So even if you take two weeks off of training over the festive period that’s 43 days left to train.
But you don’t need to train every day. Let’s be sensible and meet around half way. If you trained 3 days a week at an hour each time from now until a Christmas break, that is 18 hours.
One hour of light training can burn 200 calories per hour. Times that by 18 and you have burnt 3600 calories before the Christmas break.
One hour of vigorous training can burn 600 calories per hour. Times that by 18 and you have burnt 10,800 calories before the Christmas break.
These estimates are without the additional ‘after burn’ effect that you get, especially through resistance training, where your body will still be burning calories during the recovery phase.
Not only do the numbers look impressive, but the whole package does.
* You have already built up momentum before January arrives
* Beginning different eating habits straight after such an indulgent period as Christmas is extremely tough
* If you wanted to hire a PT, this time of year is good and you might be able to strike a deal. January can be a bit pricier during their busier months such as January.
So if you’re looking to get started on a health and fitness journey and you find yourself saying “I’ll wait until January”, think again. The sleigh is waiting for you now. Your journey can begin today.
The bright shiny object is a term that is used particularly in business, but can be relevant in many different situations in life.
It is the belief that, although you have put a plan in place, a new venture or interest catches your eye that attracts you to it. This new thing being the bright and shiny object. In the psychology field they have even called it a syndrome (Shiny Object Syndrome, SOS).
It can often be derailing to our original commitments and the extra cost and time devoted to the shiny object begins to affect a plan that was actually already working rather well.
In the gym I see it daily and, make no mistake, the shiny object is as alluring to me as for anyone else. But I have trained my mind to move on and stick to the plan as difficult as that might be sometimes. So let’s give a couple of examples of what it means in our health and fitness goals and our diets.
Case 1. The Inconsistent Trainer.
This is the shiny object that often tries to put me off of my stride. And it did for Jack. Jack had committed to the gym four times a week to follow a program plan by his trainer which would eventually see extra muscle mass and a leaner, aesthetic physique. He was fully focussed, made the investment in time and money and, after a few weeks, began to notice subtle changes to the way he looked and felt.
His program continued to be challenging as he progressed through the different phases of training, but after 3 months a friend had started to send him YouTube videos of a few different fitness influencers. They became Jack’s new, bright and shiny new object. He wanted to try the sort of techniques and ‘kick ass’ moves that would quicken the process and reach his results in less time.
He began only loosely following his program as he diverted from it during his training to try the new stuff that he had seen from the influencers. He no longer practiced conventional deadlifts. Instead he was keen to master the Jefferson deadlift, which was described as ‘quad killers’ by the influencer. However, whilst the Jefferson might be a useful lift for many of their subscribers, for Jack it put pressure on his spine. Over time, he began to suffer with lower back pain. His PT advised him to stick closely to his original plan, as he still needed to master the original deadlift before trying different variations.
Jack became frustrated. He understood what his PT was saying, but the pull of an influencer with thousands of followers was too much of a draw. Surely they knew their stuff, he thought. And of course he was right, they did know their stuff, but they didn’t know Jack. However, Jack decided to stop the services of his PT and try to pursue his own routine.
As the year progressed, Jack went from having moments of motivation where he would manage to get to the gym four or five days a week to not managing to get there at all for weeks at a time. Either through injuries or simply feeling demoralised, Jack didn’t reach his goals. He ditched his original plan designed specifically for him for the bright shiny object. He found that one influencer would tell their audience to do one thing and another influencer would tell their subscribers something totally different. Jack’s consistency and motivation had gone.
Case 2. The Yo-Yo Dieter.
Jill had promised herself that she would lose some weight and started to be more careful about the food that she ate. Having a sweet tooth and grazing throughout the day meant that she had put on a certain amount of weight that left her feeling lethargic and uncomfortable about herself.
Jill decided that she would download a calorie counting app to keep a check on the amount of calories that she was consuming. She didn’t want to be too restrictive, so along with meal plans of some of her favourite nutritious meals, she allowed herself some of her more indulgent treats a couple of days a week. Jill knew that, as long as she could track her calories, she could remain in control of her portions and enjoy her efforts to lose the weight that she wanted. After a few weeks, Jill felt that she wasn’t so tired all the time and she decided to join a local running group and also began enjoying long walks with her partner.
After 6 months of the positive lifestyle change, Jill was talking to a friend. They were discussing weight loss and it was apparent that her friend had lost a considerable amount of weight. Jill’s friend told her that she was on a diet which allowed just 800 calories a day and, although she felt too tired to exercise from the lack of energy, she was losing lots of weight each week.
Jill had been happy with her progress, but her friend’s impressive story had made her wonder if she could do the same. Jill concluded that, due to the darker cold nights setting in, she wouldn’t want to go running anyway. Plus, if she can make the sort of progress that her friend did, she could hit her target weight for Christmas, 6 months earlier than she’d expected.
Jill started the new diet. But it wasn’t long before her energy fell and she quit the running club. Her mood changed too. She felt snappy with her partner and didn’t want to attend special occasions because she was unable to eat or drink the same as anyone else. She lost weight quickly, but she wasn’t happy. Eventually, she would have binge days and this left her even more frustrated as she felt like she was failing.
Jill came off of the diet and tried to go back to her original plan. This proved to be more difficult than she’d expected though as all of her positive habits that she had worked on had gone. She found herself grazing and eating all of the wrong things again. Despite having bouts of motivation, Jill has not found the consistency that she had once enjoyed.
Summary
In both scenarios, Jack and Jill had found something that worked for them and their lifestyle. There is nothing wrong with what a friend might be doing differently or what an influencer might suggest, but what Jack and Jill were doing was successful to THEM. Yet something new and exciting swayed them into boycotting their plans. The very plans that were working.
Alterations, tweaks or little changes to a plan are fine as long as it is exactly that…the plan. Nobody wants a training program to stagnate or a nutritional menu to become boring with the same meals each day. But the foundations in which it was first created need to remain the same.
The bright shiny object will always have us wondering and the newness to try alternative methods is intriguing, but take it from someone who has had his fingers burnt on many occasions before becoming a Personal Trainer, it will often end in derailing our good work and possibly even ending it with nothing in return.
I find myself talking about it more and more with my wife. Within my circle of friends the subject keeps cropping up. And for my clients it is often a topic of discussion.
Age. Or the ageing process.
Lately I’ve found that a couple of stubby beers at 4% and a couple of glasses of wine on an evening is fairly excessive to me lately. My younger self would be calling me a lightweight. I’m happy to be a lightweight.
One too many these days can leave me feeling rubbish and it can ruin the next day. Long gone are the days of me partying on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights as a twenty something. It didn’t bother me then.
But as I got older my body gave me a little tap on the shoulder and told me to slow down. If I didn’t, it would let me know by feeling ill for the next 24 hours and, whether through having young children, running a business or simply just having a zest for life, I didn’t want to waste a day being so hungover that I was missing an important day. And that’s another thing you realize when you get to a certain age. Life’s too short. Sure, at 20, a day or two having duvet days due to excessive partying doesn’t seem to matter. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.
Age can’t be ignored though. The ‘whole life ahead of us’ thing at 20 seems like a much shorter route when you reach middle age. We do feel and think differently with age. Attitudes change. Aches and pains appear much more. We can’t escape the process. But the key here is this…we don’t need to accept it.
Dying. That’s what we all need to accept. But we all hope that it will be when we’re very old and we’ve lived a long and happy life before we get there. Being shackled by getting older, being defined by age, this is something that doesn’t have to be accepted.
I rarely teach fitness classes now, but when I did I promised my participants that I would give them what they came for. They deserved a top quality delivery that helped them towards their goals. A class on an early Tuesday morning would attract older people as opposed to a class on the evenings where it would bring in a younger demographic. However, I rarely changed the exercises or the intensity in the morning to how I would approach an evening class. I found that there were many people in their 70’s who were very capable of keeping up with a lively barbell class just as the younger group could.
If I slowed the music down, created easier exercises and spoke to the older people like they were some ‘old dear’ in a retirement home, then they would, over time, become the old dear in a retirement home.
If you tell someone something over a period of time there’s a good chance they start to believe it. Also, similarly with the body. Under perform it and the body gives in to what it has been taught to do. Underperform.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” Jon Kabat-Zinn.
When your body begins to tell you something about ageing that you should know, you need to listen. The waves get higher as we get older. Instead of regressing to the toddler’s paddling pool in defeat, I’m going to try and ride out those waves. For sure, sometimes I’ll fall into the sea. But if I keep the challenge interesting, fun and with set goals then I am giving myself a chance to thrive as I age.
There’s no doubt that there will be tweaks to be made as we age. Wear and tear is real! But the earlier we can strengthen muscle, bones and joints, the easier it is to deal with general ageing wear and tear. If we fail to address these issues early enough then the body, through the ageing process, will pick up on them. I’d recommend listening to your body before it happens.
The only certainty in life is death and in the western world we are living longer than ever. This is great. However, it means that in many circumstances, our chances of living the final 20 years of our lives with any meaningful quality and dignity are decreasing.
When we reflect on our previous week, month and year, we will often find patterns to our behaviour. Some behaviours add to positive outcomes but some can be negative and impact us greatly. Indeed, the positive things might get unnoticed, while the negative stuff gets pushed to the front of our mind.
Currently residing in Scarborough, I’m holding personal training, meditation and CBT for anxiety sessions as well as remote coaching to create happier, healthier futures to children and adults.
Reflection is good. It will not only assist us in our own lives but it can be a welcome trait for those around us. I might snap at my wife or the kids, for example, but if I am capable of reflection then I can put things right, apologize and do better next time.
So how can reflection help with lifestyle changes in relation to your health and fitness goals? Well, it might surprise you that you do this all the time. You have the cognitive capacity to think, process and act on everything you do in your daily life. But how much of it sticks is usually where the problem lies. Sometimes we end up thinking about a hundred things at once. Our moments of reflection just whiz on by without us really being able to act on them. In the end, nothing gets done.
Unless, of course, reflection becomes a conscious act. As each day goes by, this act will become a subconscious habit. This habit can lead to better decision making.
Bestselling author John Maxwell perhaps says it best when he said, “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine.”
Each day you are capable of finding the new norm. A lifestyle that you find fulfilling. It’s the little things that you can reflect on each day. Day by day, little by little, changes happen.
There’s a magic number of days that psychologists and lifestyle coaches often cite as the amount of time it takes to create a positive habit (or get rid of negative ones) and that is 28 days. After this time, research shows, we have trained ourselves to be consistent in our new behaviour.
And, as a Personal Trainer, I find the 28 day rule quite accurate in our approach to our health and fitness. You see, we think that we just need motivation to reach our goals. And whilst a burst of motivation can be helpful, we cannot rely on it. Motivation is a fleeting emotion. It doesn’t last 28 days. Therefore a little bit of strategy is needed.
To find your new norm, firstly you need to stop creating problems. They exist only in your head. If you find yourself doing this, call yourself out in it. Write the problem down if you need to with a set of solutions next to it. Do this daily.
Start a thought or mood diary. Never dismiss writing down your thoughts. This helps with reflection and it keeps you on track on the days that those bursts of motivation escapes you.
Plan ahead but don’t plan your year or your whole life. Just your week or the next day or two. Whatever feels comfortable. Again, write these plans down. It could be when you schedule your exercise times or plan a menu. Keep it where you can see it. As an online PT I keep all daily tasks on my app so that my trainees are alerted each day.
You have a new opportunity each day to change something that you don’t like and to add something positive and meaningful to your life. Act on these few ideas above and start today in finding a new norm.
Believe it or not, I’ve trained my brain to like this green stuff.
For 8 years I’ve been training people in helping them towards their fitness goals. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…
1. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had. Sure, it sounds cool. Training people in something that I’m passionate about is fantastic and I get to hang around gyms and talk about football and train myself. But I also need to stay business minded. It’s about getting clients and keeping them. Keeping them by setting goals and working towards them. Their results represent my abilities as a PT and my own performance, whether with a client or training myself, will be watched by everyone else. It’s intense.
2. What a client achieves physically isn’t even 50% of their goal completed. They might think it. Great! They’ve lost half a stone. That’s good work. But how do they keep it off? And, now that they have achieved a weight loss target, do they actually respect themselves any more? Do they like themselves? Fitness is more than a PB, a marathon run or a weight loss goal. It’s how we begin to perceive ourselves. It’s respecting yourself enough to WANT to eat nutritious foods, not just because you have to. I have to make people believe that they’re worth hitting their goal, otherwise it’s just going through the motions. And eventually, motion without emotion comes to an end.
3. Chain gyms don’t care about their freelance PT’s. Ok, let me explain this one. The floor managers of these gyms might, but if you think anyone sat in Pure Gym Towers cares about a PT then think again. And why should they? If you are a newbie freelance PT the sooner that you can get into your head that you are now a business person the better. You are a contractor on their premises. It’s tough at times. You pay them rent and they can still call the shots on your business. If you leave then they’ll just replace you. But the sooner you understand that the sooner that you will either a) learn to suck it up or b) find a niche at an independent gym, online or in your own premises.
4. I needed to stay relevant to people. Over the years and with a change of gym in a new town with a pandemic to deal with, I stagnated. So in the past couple of years I started doing different courses to become equipped with reinventing my PT work. Now, armed with new qualifications, knowledge, an online training app and new business ideas I have kept myself and my business fresh.
5. I have to stay grounded. If I believe that I am the oracle of fitness then I’ll look silly. I’m not. Nobody is. If I don’t know the answer to a question then I’ll be honest and do my research on finding the answer out. People respect that.
And the most important thing that I have learned is that respect goes a long way.
Never Give Up PT 