self belief – Never Give Up PT

Fitness Goals And The Important Little Things

When I enter the gym with a goal, it is a goal with many different aspects. I can’t pin it down. I want to maintain weight management, strength and mental wellbeing. That’s just the same as 30 years ago and will probably never change.

But if I get the little things right, then achieving the above can be fairly straightforward. So, about those little things…

I want to improve my grip. A better grip can lead to personal bests by lifting heavier or for longer. Same with my breathing. If I remain in control of my breathing then it undoubtedly helps with a tough set. I want to discover new exercises and therefore experience new challenges that will put my body under a different kind of stress. These are just a few examples of the little things that, put together over time and with consistency, will get me the big goals.

I want to get a message to anyone who set out a new year’s fitness goal, particularly those of you who have any ideas of quitting. Get the little things right.

Any grand resolution such as weight loss (by far the most requested goal in January) needs all the little things in place and working consistently if you are to reach your goal. And most people who don’t reach their goal don’t reach it because they give up, lose direction, become demoralised and get bored.

So, with what I’m about to suggest, I didn’t mean to get too technical when I start blabbering on about grip improvement. That is a personal thing to me, and, well, I make it a priority to my clients. But there are lots of little things that can be undertaken in order to really tackle those new year’s fitness resolutions this year. So, whatever the goal, here’s a few little tricks to keep you focused.

Write your achievements down. I used to go into the gym with a pen and a notebook to write down new bests for all of my programmed routine. If I had curled for 15 with a pair of 12k instead of the 10’s, I would document it. It works the same for cardio based equipment too. If you have rowed your furthest on the rower in the given time then write it down so that you know your future targets on that exercise. Indeed, with your phone at hand you can write your notes on an app and also take a picture of a cardio machine screen.

Aim to try your best, but know that every gym routine will not be a day of new personal bests. Life just isn’t like that. But also know that every routine is very useful. Footballer Eric Cantona said,”I prefer to play and lose rather than win, because I know in advance I’m going to win.” If you turn up, you are winning, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

Put healthy options at the forefront of your mind. The best way to do this is to create visual triggers. I have recently gone a few weeks without making a fruit smoothie. It has always been a staple for my wife and I every morning, but somehow with pallets of stuff still coming over from England, the Nutribullet smoothie machine had been pushed right to the back of the cupboard to make room for new stuff. Instantly it became out of site, out of mind. The box of Celebrations, however, have lived on the kitchen table all over Christmas. You can try organising your kitchen so that healthier snacks are at hand. Also, don’t even give your gym kit time to get comfortable in a draw. Lay it out ready to pack into your sports bag or put straight on.

Think. Yes, think more. Meditate more. Pray more. Walk and observe nature. Whatever you prefer. Lay in a hot bath, lock the door with a good book (not a screen) and simply have some quiet time. As long as you give yourself time to think it doesn’t matter how you do it. This keeps your focus sharp, rather than the days bogging you down.

And lastly, enjoy it! Exercising towards a goal shouldn’t be a slog. Well, not always. It can be difficult to find the motivation in getting to the gym on a cold, dark morning or evening. And then there’s actually finding the time to get there. There’s no doubt, the gym has lots of equipment and it’s great when you find like-minded people in a class, but if life has got in the way and you don’t have the time or money, then there are some fantastic home routines that can take just 20 minutes without loads of space or equipment needed. If you start becoming frustrated by missed gym visits and feel down on yourself then it is the first sign of giving up on your fitness goals because you are not enjoying it.

I hope these ideas can really help you to stay focused on your fitness journey. Let me know how you get on!

The Year In Review

The One With The Portugal House

The year began with us on the hunt for a house to buy in Sertã, Portugal. We had moved into rental properties in the area at the back end of October, so it was a difficult time to view properties with Christmas looming and two excited little boys. However, in February this year, we bought our home and business property.

It wasn’t exactly the dream home. It was an old farm house with plenty of work to do on it. But it did tick many boxes. It had land so that the boys could play in the forest surrounds and we could create our picnic and meditation areas as lou and I had always wanted. It had outbuildings which we could create rented accommodation, a gym space and a massage treatment room. Our Portugal House was ready to be regenerated into our perfect home.

The One With The Family

The hardest part of the move was fretting over our children’s wellbeing. It had to work for them or it simply could not work for us. They started in a Portuguese school at the beginning of the year. Moving to a new school as the new kid half through a school year is tough enough. But add to that a different language and new cultural expectations, it was massive for them. I’m so proud of them. Their language skills have overtaken mine, even though I’ve been learning Portuguese on an app for over two years and they have immersed themselves into their new lives.

The One With The TV Program

The filming of the English TV show A New Life In The Sun began in February to catch the beginning of the renovation to the ‘little house’ which would be our rental property. This will be aired in January next year. The added pressure of being filmed was difficult and the interviews and filming time frames did make the renovation tough to manage, but there are no regrets. I guess we will call it a tick off the bucket list now that we’ve been on telly!

The One With My Own Personal Mental And Physical Health

The move has come at a price in regards to our mental wellbeing. Physically I’ve remained very active but I’ve done very little formal exercise, which is the type that I really love. But, as I say, this process has been physically demanding so I still feel fit and strong. Mentally, though, not having the time out or the equipment to pursue my favourite pastime has been difficult to accept. It has always enabled me to ‘fix’ problems and I can think much clearer. I know, though, that this situation was always going to be a possibility. After all, literally everything that I had in England was dropped, including my personal training business and gym membership. Starting from scratch was always inevitable and would take time.

The One With The Final Message Of The Year

We wanted an experience that we could look back on and say, “We did it! Look what we achieved!” And so far we are sure getting that experience. It’s come with many laughs and proud moments, but also a good deal of stress and tears too. This experience simply would not be the full package without the lows too. One cannot look back on moments and be proud if there has been no challenge or adversity attached to it. Good things that happen in life, fulfilling dreams and hitting goals aren’t fun or worthwhile if they’re easy. So we chose not to keep things easy knowing that the pitfalls were huge, but the rewards were even bigger.

As we enter another year of working towards our personal, my only advice to my readers are that they take a moment to reflect on what they would like to achieve in 2025. It could be a career move, a financial situation, a relationship, a fitness goal or a trip to somewhere special. Whatever it might be, just remember that there will be tough moments in achieving your goals, but if they’re special enough, then the feeling that you will get once the pieces start fitting into place makes I all worth it in the end.

Have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year. See you all soon.xxx

Don’t Climb Past The Low Hanging Fruit

Being a personal trainer and wellbeing coach I see lots of interesting motivational quotes on my feed looking for me to engage in clicks etc. I must admit, I enjoy reading an uplifting quote now and again and they can often make me think. But it’s important to recognise that, like every bit of advice or literature, we don’t always have to agree with it. We can disagree with it or at the very least question it.

Now, it’s difficult to disagree with the ‘seize the day’ sentiment that many of them focus on. And the one I read this morning about ‘the higher the fruit the sweeter it tastes’ is a reference to reaching for the sky and making each day count. Sure, what’s wrong with that?! Nothing. It’s a pretty standard target for anyone wanting to get shit done for the day.

But I’m going to add my version of it, too. You see, sometimes you just don’t feel like climbing to the top of that bloody tree for the sweetest fruit. Making your way to the tree and picking the low hanging fruit can be all that you can manage that day. And sometimes that might be just enough. You can then at least say that you’ve done it. No climbing for the sweetest stuff, but goodness, as you opened your eyes this morning you didn’t even know if you could leave the house. Praise yourself for the smaller stuff, too, not just the days you feel like climbing mountains and ripping up trees.

I used to enjoy a gameshow called The Cube. A contestant would be locked inside a large cube and given tasks to do in order to win money. Once the contestant had been given their instructions on how to complete the task for each round, they had an option to ‘simplify’ the task for one round only. So once they asked The Cube to simplify that particular task, The Cube would make the task that little bit easier. It could have been, for example, a bigger hoop to throw a ball into.

So, for all of you reading this right now, how many of us have wanted to shout out ‘simplify’ into the universe and hope that just a little part of the day could be a tad easier?

Life can be overwhelming.

So…’The higher the fruit, the sweeter it tastes’ can be changed to ‘We can get distracted when we climb to the top of the tree before we get the stuff that’s easiest.’

Remarkably, despite the things going on around you in the world, there are lots of things that can be made easier for yourself that you have total control over. And if you are feeling like you are burdened by having to climb high each day I would suggest that you take a few quiet moments to think about what small steps you can take to make each day a little easier.

Some time ago I had a trainee that was determined to get his personal best at a bench press. This had been on his mind for a few days leading up to his session with me. He was pushing 120k for 6 reps. Impressive. But he wanted 125k on this particular day. He came into the gym fired up, but also jittery and nervous. I knew that there was a good chance that he wouldn’t achieve his PB that day. He was overthinking it. His breathing was short and not controlled. His form would let him down. I’ve been there before. I went for sheer aggression over any sort of form or finesse. But, with my spotting, I had to let him try.

On this particular day, as I suspected, the sweetest of all fruits were too high. He failed in his attempt. For the remainder of the session, I told him to look at the fruit that was right in front of him.

We picked up the lighter dumbbells, we worked with machine assisted weights, I reminded him of his breathing patterns on his eccentric and concentric phases and we focused on how to engage the core area of the body.

This seemed easier to him. I think, at the time, he might have felt like he hadn’t achieved what he wanted to from the session. But I told him to repeat this session on each training day for the rest of the week until we met up again.

The week after, when he walked into the gym, I knew that he would achieve his PB. He had followed my advice and he was full of confidence. And not only did he reach a 125k for 6 reps, he added two more reps to make it a PB of 125k for 8.

It’s the simple stuff he had to get right. His core focus, his breathing, his foot positioning. He had the strength all along, that was never an issue, but he had forgotten all about the low hanging fruit because that sweet fruit way up high seemed so tempting!

I haven’t got a catchy quote to add to this message, but I would say this…

If you are finding something a bit overwhelming today, take a step back, do the easy stuff first, stay calm, breath, take one thing at a time and simplify it.

Can you believe I actually got my wife to take a picture of me with some low hanging fruit just for this blog?!

I Need Help

I randomly watched an interview from 1997 with Elton John the other day where he mentioned seeing Elvis months before he died. Elton was worried for Elvis with how he looked and wasn’t surprised when he heard that Elvis had died not long after.

Shortly after this news, Elton made a massive decision himself to seek help for his lifestyle. In his words in this interview with Oprah Winfrey he said that he told those closest to him and professionals that he needed help

“I need help. Those three words are so important. And once I said those words I never looked back.” Elton said.

Yet those three words don’t always have to come at your most desperate times. Unlike most of us, Elton John, as he admits in the interview, had wealth and a fame that enabled him to be surrounded by people that told him daily how great he was. His career, selling millions of records, was confirming his popularity. But that could not stop this urge to almost self destruct. He said those words just in time and maybe Elvis didn’t.

It doesn’t matter who we are. Whether we are successful in our job, exercise, meditate or pray daily, have a loving family and supportive friends, become one of the most famous names in the world. The need to say “I need help,” sometimes is important.

But rather than saying them just in the nick of time, perhaps we need to learn to say them more regularly. Maybe we need help with a work deadline or organising an event that seems to have bogged you down. Or it could be something even smaller like asking for help with a bench press at the gym or reaching for an item on the top shelf at the supermarket!

Yes, it might seem trivial, but the burden of always having to come across as so friggin’ perfect all the time is actually a breath of fresh air. And this perfection seems to be something that we have to aim for these days. We have to be seen to be saying and doing the right thing all of the time because we get judged by strangers, colleagues and social media.

The other month I was looked at rather strangely as I said that I needed help changing a car tyre. A man who had obviously had lots of experience in changing car tyres did it very quickly. But for a moment I became quite self conscious that, as a man, I should have been able to do that. But that is, in fact, bollocks.

I have helped rehabilitate Team GB athletes from serious injury, I’ve successfully structured fitness programmes and healthy eating diets for hundreds of people and I’ve supported many people with mental health issues. I consider myself to be quite good at all of that. Sod the society that says that my masculinity is questioned because I can’t change a tyre. I’m crap with a drill as well but I don’t worry about it anymore. I just ask for help from someone who is better at it than me like my wife.

Now, whenever I ask for help, I can feel a tension release from my shoulders. That’s where I feel the stress the most. It travels into my trapezius, my neck and finally my head. And whether it’s a big problem or a small problem, asking for a little bit of help can stop it from manifesting. And when you surround yourself with the right people, it’s amazing how many people are happy to help.

The Easter Egg

Some movie directors don’t just make great movies. They know that what they produce will be a master class, but it is the ease in which they can add their subtle in jokes, social commentary, artistic influences or homages to other bodies of work without distracting the audience away from the story.

Think Hitchcock with his cameo appearances or the use of Starbucks cups in almost every scene of Fight Club. These are known as Easter eggs that the viewer can hunt during the movie. Other hunts to look out for is the use of Tarantino’s very own imagined brand of cigarettes throughout his movies, Red Apple. Or the use of oranges in The Godfather trilogy. If you spot an orange in one of those movies, it is likely to lead to the death of a key character.

Fincher added the Starbucks cups as a metaphor for the corporate influence in everyday life.

These aren’t meant as a distraction maybe in the way that a Macguffin is (I’ve written about that too!), but more of a signature from the artist. It is something that can be detected throughout their work. It is uniquely theirs.

Well, although I’m not in Hollywood and I’m not a famous movie director, I want to be a great in the art of movie making. It’s just that this movie will be of my own life.

We’re all making our own movies. We can create the ups and downs of a drama, the twists and turns of a thriller. We can create the laugh out loud comedy moments and, like it or not, direct our own horror.

And a great director can tell the story and even add in the Easter egg too! But it isn’t about being accepted by others. A good director will create something that they want to create, not what is expected of them. Kubrick, Hitchcock and Tarantino are three of my favourite directors, but have never won a best director Oscar. Sergio Leone was never even nominated.

But what do that all have in common? They are blaze trailers at what they do and not just followers of a common theme that satisfies the masses. Sure, they became popular from making great movies. But them ripping up the genre rule book is what made them great, not because they were trying to be popular. This, it seems, irritated mainstream Hollywood to the point that it overlooked some of the greatest directors of our time.

We can still be great directors of our own lives without satisfying everyone. I’d even go as far as to say that, if you don’t piss a few people off you’re not doing it right.

We need to hire the best actors and extras onto our set. We should experiment with different scenery. We can write our own script. And we can do it all without having to please everyone. But remember to spice things up a little and add your own Easter egg hunt. It keeps things interesting!

Ten Months To The Day

How do we gauge our success? What time limit are we supposed to give ourselves? Do we ever truly see our success? I mean, is it supposed to come in the form of money? Great relationships? A fit bod or thriving business?

I’ve found all four of those at various stages of my life, but I’m also good at losing things, so I take nothing for granted.

But success, what is it? At this very moment in my life I think I had the only bit of success that could’ve made me happy this weekend. Not even Liverpool beating Utd tomorrow could top this one.

At 6:30 this evening we had a phone call from another local business person asking if we had a vacancy for their friends. As I spoke to them, casually flicking through my empty diary, I replied that we could fit his friends in for the evening. In my head I was Jurgen Klopp fist pumping to 60,000 scousers at Anfield. But I stayed calm.

From landing in Sertá on the 31st of October to this day, it has been ten months. We have our first booking. Success.

Success can be going for a walk to clear your head. Success can be scoring goals for fun in the Premier League like Haarland. Success can be having a special moment with your partner. Success can be getting a PB in the gym. Success can be getting your dream job. Success can be buying the Oasis reunion tickets. Success can be winning the lottery. Success can be getting your first guests into your holiday home.

It’s different for everyone. But have a think about what has brought you a little bit of joy today. You might not think that its life-changing, but it could be just the seed that needs the chance to grow. Cherish that bit of success. The more you notice it, the more it happens.

A Subject That Always Sparks A Debate…

This week the UK government said that it wants to ban cigarette smoking in pub gardens, outside nightclubs and around children’s play parks. Now, it would be hard to find a reasonable argument for being allowed to smoke in or around a kids play park, but I’m not sure about elsewhere. Here’s what I think…

I am living in central Portugal. Cigarettes are still sold in cafe vending machines. Supermarkets have Tobacaria shops inside them and even cafe bars attached to them. Doing your weekly shop, stopping for a smoke while downing a beer or wine before loading your car and driving away is common.

I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore but do occasionally vape electronically in private. I haven’t openly smoked anything since becoming a dad and a Personal Trainer. Smoking while doing either of those jobs is not cool. But I don’t begrudge anybody else smoking. In fact, seeing people sitting around a table outside a cafe in Sertá, chatting and laughing in different languages makes me feel happy and truth be known, before I moved here, it was one of the images that I went to sleep imagining. The cafe music, the different languages and the server bringing out olives and wine on a sunny day, all under a cloud of Marlboro is all very European. That appeals to me.

Some of my best memories of holidays abroad haven’t necessarily been on a beach or doing karaoke at an all inclusive, but visiting an art gallery or castle in Europe. And it was always followed by sitting outside a cafe to talk about what I had discovered, either with my family or with complete strangers.

And although in the beer garden at Wetherspoons there was plenty of alcohol and smoking, I never did get onto the subject of how the Duomo bell tower was constructed with its customers.

Ah yes. Wetherspoons. Where you can openly shout about hating foreigners while drinking Belgian beer. After that, you can go for a Turkish kebab, watch American TV or cheer on a few Africans in your favourite football team on your Japanese TV while sitting on a Swedish sofa. In the morning, you can drive your German car and if you have an accident you will be seen by a Spanish nurse. Once you are better again, you can go back to Wetherspoons and shout about those ‘bloody foreigners’ in a building most likely to be funded by the European Union. Just remember to wipe your feet on the way out.

And before you start criticising me for being down on Britishness, Wetherspoons is and continues to be a very big factor in what is the cause of a loss of Britishness on the high streets. The Wetherspoons franchise has slowly dismantled the great British pub. You can’t get your piss stained peanuts from a bowl at the bar while drinking a pint of Best at the local Fox and Hounds anymore because Tim Martin came along with his cheap drinks and all day breakfast.

Traditional pubs are ceasing to exist anymore and for all we can blame smoking bans and energy costs, the fact remains that Tim Martin will always be able to make his food and drink way cheaper than Sandra the landlady at The Fox And Hounds.

‘But what about this new smoking ban, Shay?!’ I hear you all ask. ‘Surely it is better for our health and will be less of a burden to the NHS?!’

Smoking is not the number one factor in what causes the two most deadly killers in the UK (heart disease and Alzheimer’s). In fact, everything else they sell in a pub or nightclub are by far the major reasons. That all day breakfast? The Belgian beer or the pint of Best?

In 2022 there were just over 10,000 alcohol related deaths. Obesity causes 30,000 deaths each year. Food and drink related deaths are on the rise and will soon be above smoking related deaths in the years to come. I’m not saying that smoking is better, but it does seem to be the scapegoat when the government talks about unburdening the NHS.

When I watch UK TV I am bombarded by adverts telling me to eat fast food and drink alcohol. Not only is fast food or alcohol not banned but perfectly celebrated as the stuff we should be doing, promoted on national TV!

So eating and drinking crap in a pub is fine, but dare to step into its garden and light up a cigarette and you’re a pariah. You see, it makes no sense.

When I became a PT I wanted to give a different message to what I was seeing and hearing from mainstream gyms and media. It is also how I’ve continued to work at our health and wellbeing centre in Portugal. The misunderstanding from gyms and the media is that health and wellbeing is all about physical health and wellbeing. But I think a little differently.

If society (or your PT) is constantly berating your lifestyle choices such as what you eat, drink or smoke, then this is not going to be a positive contribution to your mindset or your life. You don’t employ a PT for them to tell you that lettuce is better for you than a pizza, or water is better for you than a gin and tonic. Nor should you employ a PT to tell you that not smoking is better for you than smoking.

Balancing these better for you things and the not as good for you things, for me, is the much better position to be in regarding our mental health. This, in turn, can contribute to a more active lifestyle and produce better physical results.

Smoking ten cigarettes a day instead of 20 is a fantastic start. Having a fortnightly takeaway is better than a weekly takeaway and drinking a few beers three nights of the week instead of five is going to positively impact you further.

No bans. No stress. No guilt. Just small things that we call balance.

So, my conclusion and my two penn’orth in the smoking debate is this…

Keep cigarettes, takeaways and alcohol and get rid of Wetherspoons. Society in the UK will seem like a much brighter place.

Estacionamento

It might seem excessive to be creating a car park (estacionamento) at our property for ten cars. After all, so far we only have one holiday rental home with one bedroom. But we are in the process of readying ourselves for the bigger picture.

That picture involves private parking for our own vehicles, the guest’s vehicle, space for the private gym and massage therapy room and small group training. There’s also an opportunity to expand the holiday rental side with another small building which is probably way down the line. We need to make the first one work first!

Here are a few pics of me clearing some space by the road side and filling it with stone dust. Also, we have recently dug up the stretch of land (with the help of a man with a tractor) which is a football field long and home to fruit and olive trees. It is also a great space for the boys to ride their bikes!

Let It Be

Today was another ‘lifestyle’ shoot with A New Life In The Sun. We decided on a trip to one of our favourite cafes, Cavalha, to get a few shots of us sipping wine and drinking coffee. The long coffee drink in Portugal (as opposed to the espresso shot) is called an abatanado.

It was also an opportunity to film along the Ribeira da Sertá, which is a stunning, clear river running through the centre of the town. We never tire of this part of Sertá. It’s where they held their four day Festa just a couple of weeks ago, it’s where the very safe play park is for the kids, it has cafes aplenty and it is the go to place for when Lou and I want to sit by the river after dropping the kids off at school. Many plans for the day have been drawn out sitting by the river before we head back to our property to begin work.

Lou and I haven’t managed that headspace for a couple of months now though. The boys broke up from school in mid June and they’ve still got 3 weeks left of their summer holidays. School summer holidays are long in Portugal. This will be fantastic when we are established, but this year has been tough to fully appreciate our times together.

Also, filming can become a long, stressful process too! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a box to tick in life. After all, ANLITS is the most viewed programme on Channel 4 in the UK and is repeated on various platforms. Last night I spoke to a previous contributor of the show who moved to Portugal to set up a glamping business on series 7. We agreed that while filming is fun and it will give a business much needed exposure, it can also take up a lot of time out of the day. And when there are the obvious pressures of starting a new life and business abroad to contend with, sharing an ultra stressful day with the world on camera can be difficult.

Our biggest stress at the moment is about getting our first booking for the holiday home. We recognise that we have missed most of the summer and people usually plan ahead when booking such places, so we’re hoping for scraps in September. But I refuse to become too anxious about this. We are brand new. It will take time for people to know that we actually exist. As long as we follow the process it will be fine.

I also appreciate the quote from writer Kahlil Gibran, who said,” Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to to control it.”

I much prefer to think about the future than become bogged down by past mistakes, but it is important to know that I can’t always control the outcome of the future. Sometimes, once I know that I have done my best, I just need to ‘let it be’.

I also remember the Field Of Dreams quote. “If you build it, they will come.”

Although I much preferred the Wayne’s World version!

The next planned filming is scheduled for our first guests arriving. ANLITS, if you’ve seen the programme, like to film this exciting and nerve-wracking occasion for the participants!

My hope is that this next filming won’t be too far away. After all, we’ve built it, surely they must come!

New Balls Please

Held like we’re holding the mixed doubles plaque at Wimbledon, here’s the sign for our Alojamento Local rental property that we need to display to show that we are a registered guest house!

And it feels like we’ve had a few epic matches to reach our finale, but we are officially on booking sites such as Expedia, Booking.com, AirBnB, Hotel.com and Holidu.

It’ll take time for the bookings to start coming as we are towards the end of this summer and most people have probably planned their stays already, but we’re still hopeful for September and the winter months. Also, it’ll be nice to receive bookings way in advance for next summer and prepare the rest of the business!

Indeed, we haven’t won any trophies yet. We’re just a couple of wildcards new to the circuit. But we usually do well when we support each other, making us a formidable doubles team, even if the odd racket gets broken through frustration along the way.