training – Page 7 – Never Give Up PT

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.

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?

The Strength Phase

I walk up to the barbell. The calluses on my hands are stinging and my thoughts take me back to a similar lift I performed some 20 years ago when I put my back out. My deadlifts have vastly improved since then but the psychological games in the strength phase always seem to bite. Its not my favourite phase of my programme. The body and the mind take a hit. Repeating a moderate weight over and over is much easier for my body and brain to take. The pump is rewarding too which is less noticeable with a 3 rep set. I’m not a power lifter so I sometimes try to talk myself out of the the strength and power phase of the programme. How important can just a two or three rep set, or sometimes even just a one rep set, be to my goals of building lean muscle? Surely my body needs reps. That’s what the popular articles say. But what does the research say?

There’s a belief that, to make muscle grow we need to rep a weight (considered to be around 70% of a 1 rep max) for 10-15 reps. But that is just a small part of what we need to consider before we can stimulate real muscle growth. Otherwise all we will achieve is a pump (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy) which will only look good for the changing room pics after your workout.

Bodybuilder and auther Christian Thibaudeau writes…”The main purpose of heavy lifting on the basics when your sole goal is to build muscle mass is to improve the capacity of your nervous system to send a strong excitatory drive.”

This means that the stronger your nervous system signals are, which are developed through low and heavy reps, the better your performance will be in your hypertrophy phase of training. Planning a structured progressive programme can vary depending on time of year and lifestyle, but the fundamentals always remain the same. We must go through a process that stimulates the nervous system, produce growth hormone and increase testosterone. If you have these in your quest for muscle Hypertrophy, the process will be much more rewarding.

Staying In The 10-15 Rep Range For Too Long…

You need to keep reminding your body what you are asking of it. Stale workouts are the gym equivalent of ‘blue balls’. You are stimulating the muscle without ever reaching a climax. Tempo, technique, various positions, intensity and length are absolutely essential to the process to get the desired results.

Your body stops responding to the so called hypertrophy rep range and this is where results begin to slow down or stop altogether, especially for the regular gym goer. The more experience you have and the more you have worked your muscles, the more savvy you need to be to wake them up again. They’re bored, you’re bored. Have you noticed any significant growth to your muscle recently? That’s why you’re pressing and curling, right? It might be time to change your phase of training if you haven’t. Remind your muscle why you are at the gym.

The Best 1-5 Rep workouts To Do…

Movements that require multiple muscle groups to work at the same time are known as Compound exercises. The main ones are bench press, deadlift, squat and rows. You might not even include these in your usual hypertrophy workouts in their conventional form but they should definitely play a huge part for improving nervous system signals in a strength phase. These compounds will develop your overall technique in other movements too.

The sore hands, the extra aches and pains and the psychological games that You Vs Bar will give you will be worth it in the end!

Just One Stomach Flu Away…

Do you recognize the title?

The line ‘I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight’ comes from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. Its a most excellent film.

The line comes from the fact that the character believes she will hit her goal weight from either vomiting or not eating. It is true she will lose weight, but this will only be temporary. So here’s what we know…

The National Science Teachers Association in the USA use this line to teach about biology and body image. This is because it is one of the biggest false beliefs amongst dieters and for those with eating disorders such as bulemia.

When we become ill with a stomach bug our body’s need to try to eliminate the virus so we begin to vomit or have diarrhea. Everything we lose during this illness, which usually lasts 24 to 48 hours, is fluid. Your body, at this stage, has no desire to lose fat. In fact only when we begin to be more active and are eating again will the body want to lose fat.

The line in the movie was funny and in context with the story, but it amazes me how many people I speak to who also get bodily fluid and fat confused. Indeed, hitting a target weight is hitting a target weight however it is achieved, but I feel that it is important to understand what it is we are losing from our body’s to meet this goal.

Just like a car, you need to put fuel into a car to make the car move. To move it uses up the fuel that has been put into it. Your body goes through the same process and, perhaps we could take the analogy a little further. When we speed up, travel for longer distances or carry more passengers in a car it takes more fuel from the tank. In today’s fuel prices I’m not sure that this is what you want to be doing, yet it is exactly what we need to do to burn fat.

Of course your body is much more complex than a car and how much fuel (calories) you put into your body and how much fuel you use throughout the day is difficult to measure. You don’t have a fuel gauge. However, a sensible approach to calorie and macro counting can be useful for a short time until you develop a consistent routine with your nutrition. This enables you to identify what and how much you should be eating to meet your goals and, yes, if you enjoy chocolate, a glass of wine and eating out that should be allowed too! But if you have never counted then how will you know how much of it fits in with your goals? I wouldn’t try to fit a carpet if I hadn’t measured the floor first.

We often mistake our fitness abilities with the numbers on the scales. If we see those numbers as a secondary issue and focus firstly on our ability to move better, walk and run further, lift and push heavier and accompany this with a balanced diet, then you will soon get the numbers on the scales anyway. But to focus on the scales first and your fitness secondary will leave you like a hamster on a wheel occasionally coming off to nibble on a carrot. Take on an exercise routine that you enjoy, choose meals that are nutrient dense and allow for the foods that are not as nutritious within your daily calories and work with a professional for accountability. Get off of the hamster wheel.

Losing weight is absolutely fine as a goal if that is what you want to do, but it’s the finer details that are what actually accomplishes this goal. Going to the toilet, being ill or even sweating only means that you have lost water from your body which will replenish again when your body has recovered. Hitting a target weight should be due to a commitment of a healthier, enjoyable lifestyle that enables you to see past the weighing scales.

Your challenges and targets should be fun, not one that depends on you getting ill to achieve it.

A Place In The Sun

Derek and Joan love Spain. So much so they’ve just put an offer in for an apartment in Andalusia situated at a purpose built community for British ex pats. They sit outside in the plaza at the local Irish pub eyeing up the fish and chips on the menu waiting for the call back from the estate agent, Juan, with some good news.

My wife and I are watching A Place In The Sun. There’s a hint of jealousy towards Derek and Joan. It’s almost April and despite a couple of days where I ventured out in a T-Shirt last week, it is now snowing.

I have a coat that I threaten to pack away into the loft each year around this time but it certainly got an outing today as I went to take the kids to school. No exaggeration it could be 20 years old or more. I bought it when I thought I could get away with the Liam Gallagher look. Now when I wear it I feel like Peter Falk as Columbo. Old and disheveled. Every time I wear it I find a different pack of rizzlas from the early 2000’s.

Although no official diagnosis I’m certain I have SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Disorder). But maybe I just hate cold weather. I mean, I don’t suffer with my mood when it turns from Spring into Summer. I just suffer from being warm to bloody freezing!

Some people like winter time and the events that happen during that time. But trudging the streets in fake blood asking for sweets, burning the effigy of a man whilst eating toffee apple, hearing Noddy Holder scream those immortal words long before it’s Christmas or trying to stay awake for Jools Holland’s Hootenanny isn’t my favourite times of the year. Walking along a sunny beach, cranking up the BBQ and sitting in the garden watching the sun go down are a few of my favourite things which all happen to be during the summer time. In fact, the only negative I can think of to a British summer is that the footy season has ended. There’s always Wimbledon I suppose.

Without a doubt a massive mood lifter to me is going to the gym. Training has kept me right for years and I’ve stated many times I think that finding a life that focussed around the gym saved my life. I once felt aimless, useless and soulless. The gym made me feel the opposite. Until I became a husband and a father, the gym was my life line.

I did some growing up in the gym. I had many ‘give your head a wobble mate’ moments. In my first proper job I had to stop off at the shop to buy a couple of whisky miniatures to down before beginning my shift a few times. It was that or a panic attack. Slowly, however, the gym became a much bigger influence in my life than any quick hit.

I developed a routine over time which meant that I went to the gym before I started work. It meant extra early starts but I felt fantastic walking into the office and the rest of the day couldn’t bring me down. The gut wrenching feeling I sometimes had as I woke up was quickly quashed once I began to train. But there was always a telling sign to my mood each day and that was the weather. The colder and grey it was outside, the more difficult it was to snap out of a low mood. If the sun seeped through the bedroom curtains in a morning, the easier it was to start my day.

My little boys help me get through a bad weather day too. I’ll stand in the cold rain all day to see Jonas score a goal. And I’ll happily build a family of snow people with Finlay to see his chuffed freezing face at the end of it. Plus, their early morning starts and them needing me for breakfast and school prep ensures that I need to get my arse in gear straight away, whatever the weather!

The weather forecast doesn’t look like I’ll need to shove my Lieutenant Columbo coat into the loft just yet so I will brave the last bit of cold before I’m able to blow up the paddling pool.

Oh, and just one more thing…Derek and Joan had their bid accepted.

Will The Real PT Please Stand Up?!

Kerching!!

Did you hear that? That’s the sound of another cheap gym selling cheap Personal Training.

I’m not surprised that, what was once a list of PT friends on my Facebook page, are now calling themselves Lifestyle Coaches, Personal Coaches, Health & Wellbeing Coaches and Holistic Wellness Coaches. Anything that avoids the term Personal Trainer.

From my experience the nationwide gyms are exhausting the term Personal Trainer, employing people ‘in training’ towards their qualifications and charging the gym member a small fee whilst paying their PT minimum wage. The experienced and savvy PT rarely charges by the hour, instead setting a price per week that includes session planning for the hour and other physical activities for their client throughout the week, messages and calls, nutritional guidances and (where necessary) emotional support. This means that their prices are higher than what the gym offers.

Sometimes I pop into the Poundshop to buy a dustpan and brush. Cheap and cheerful can be good! I’ll only be sweeping up guinea pig poo with it. It might not last too long, but hey, it’s a quid! But if I’m going to the gym because my doctor tells me I’m obese or because my sciatica is keeping me awake all night, cheap and cheerful isn’t good. Poundshop PT isn’t good.

It’s no wonder that many fitness professionals are staying clear from the PT tag.

It would be a very short PT session if I told someone how to lose weight. Eat less, move more is essentially what it entails. And I use weight loss as the example because around 80% of people who come to me have that goal. I’d gladly give that advice for free, I’d find a different career and the UK would be full of men with their shirts off in summer drizzling half a bottle of cooking oil on their six packs. But it’s much more complex than just eating less and moving more.

Even Sandra, who is shamed every week for not hitting her target at Weight Watchers knows this. Don’t you think she would be losing weight if it was so simple as eating less and moving more? She feels unsupported and frustrated going to an outdated dieting institution so she joins the gym and they offer her PT for £12 an hour. They sit her on an ab crunch machine and tell her to cut out every single bit of food that becomes comforting during her low times. The cycle continues.

Personal training should be the occasional call or message during the week asking how your client is. It should be giving advice on different ingredients and recipes to try. It should be about advice on how to schedule extra time for themselves away from the kids and work. It should be about creating accountability, setting achievable goals, producing consistent and relevant workouts, making exercise fun and being the one face in the gym your client can rely on.

Calling myself anything other than a Personal Trainer takes me away from the absolute joy of seeing a client accomplish their goal, whether it be a personal best or a longer term goal. Even online, when I get the bleep to inform me that another goal has been met I give a ‘yesss!’

It means a lot to my client so it means a lot to me.

I’ll never not be a Personal Trainer. So when I’m old and on my death bed put your ear to my mouth and you’ll hear my last breath be,”squats and deadlifts, squats and deadlifts”. And if you see Sandra, pass it on.

Trying Not To Make A Hash Of It

I’ve just finished training at the gym. It was a tough one today as I like to start the week heavy after a couple of days rest. I can feel that my blood sugar levels are low and I will need to eat when I get home.

My drive home was filled with meal ideas, but I had a big problem. Over the weekend, due to two kids birthday parties, lots of driving my family around to various errands and a great barbeque at the in laws, my eating habits had become a case of grabbing what I could here and there and plenty of it. The chips at the kids party that I snaffled into my mouth as none of the parents were looking were delicious but having had a Full English the day before I felt that I probably should try and have something a little less fatty and greasy. Anyway, young Joshua from class 9 shouted ‘those chips aren’t for you!’ so that put paid to anymore chips.

Also, it was Mother’s Day on Sunday. My wife had baked a cake to take for a mum. So after my three cheeseburgers and potato salad I ended up with a huge slab of sponge cake for dessert. Undoing the jeans belt isn’t a done thing at your in laws so I waited until I got into the car. I knew that tomorrow would have to mean some sensible meal choices.But then tomorrow came.

I’m not one for actually sitting and eating fruit. Sitting in itself would be a massive achievement on a morning getting two kids ready for school. So my wife and I have a good routine for getting in our fruit and veggies first thing. We invested in a Nutri Bullet some time ago and it’s been really useful to us. This morning in went a banana, spinach, blueberries, oranges and protein powder before I went to the gym. A good start. But by the end of my session I needed food again. The problem was that the meal ideas were not good ideas considering my weekend meals.

Weekends (or any time away from the norm) is usually a time where we can relax the diet or have a few extra treats without guilt. We should never feel bad about a little over indulgence from time to time. But it is important to attempt to readdress the balance when we can. My go to food on a weekday lunch time is quinoa and mackerel. It takes minutes to prepare and I can quickly eat it and continue my work. But my brain kept taking me to all of the weekend food I’d been having!

I was determined. Down came the tin of mixed beans from the cupboard. These are another staple in my diet. And to my delight, right at the back of the cupboard was a can of corned beef. Now, it’s not an exaggeration to say that it is not something me or my family eat. In fact, I can’t remember eating it since I was a kid and my mum rustled up a corned beef hash. But there it was saying,’Pick me! Pick me!’

So I did.

A bowl of mixed beans and a few slices of corned beef would do the trick. It was a compromise. I had the healthy stuff in there mixed with a can of processed cow meat resembling dog food.

‘But what’s this?’ I thought as I held the can aloft like the FA Cup. It was a key to open it up. Had I been transported back to the 80’s? Had it been in the cupboard so long that it actually WAS from the 1980’s?! Surely we have tin openers or ring pulls for this sort of thing these days. Reluctantly but feeling a bit Hangry by this stage I began to use the key. I wanted that processed meat and this bloody key wasn’t going to stop me.

I got to the half way mark of opening the can. It was a slow process. At one point I tried squeezing the can to see if the meat would slop out at the open end. It didn’t. It remained solid. But now the bulged can became so much harder to open. Eventually, I had managed to open it without any cuts or too much swearing. I could have my mixed bean and corned beef lunch at last.

Corned beef is processed of course and it isn’t the type of food you should be eating too much of for it’s quality protein value or it’s vitamins, but there’s worse things that I could have gone for. It satisfied my mind when what I had given my body for the past 48 hours was white bread, oil and fat. Corned beef was actually a better option! And I had to start somewhere.

For the past 15 years I have carefully planned my eating habits to include the type of foods that experts and headlines say that we should avoid. It’s not just the gym goals or the aesthetics that are at stake, but we must consider our overall health. I know that I can’t live off poor nutritional foods for this reason, but I also know that I can balance the occasional poor nutritional food choices with the foods that are considered highly nutritious.

I want an occasional beer without running to the scales. I want to enjoy a family meal with cake for dessert. I live in Scarborough. The locals would hunt me down if I banned fish and chips! These meals can be enjoyed with the right attitude and a healthy relationship with your food. Sometimes we are so busy trying to fix our physical issues that we forget how to work with our mental issues. And yet if we can beat our anxieties around food I know that the physical issues are so much easier to fix too.

It might be another 30 years until I have to go through the trauma of opening up a can of corned beef again, but at that moment it scratched an itch that had been left behind from the weekend. Now I can move on!

In Case Of A Zombie Apocalypse

If I have to run from a zombie in the event of a zombie apocalypse, I now know that I have a good 12 minutes in me at an average pace of 10.8 km per hour. I think I can outrun a zombie, although it does depend on whether it would be an original George A Romero slow type or a zippy kind from the remakes. But with the cost of petrol at the moment I’ll take my chances on foot with either type of the undead. Like I say, I now know that I can outrun them.

This morning I did the Cooper Test. Something that I didn’t consider when I set up my Fitness App is that while I’m sat at home in my undies watching Corrie on an evening instructing everyone else to do these fitness tests that I would have to do them too. I really should have thought this through.

I’m joking of course. Well, half joking. I don’t jump out of bed on a morning thinking ‘how far can I run today?!’ Instead I jump out of bed thinking ‘what can I lift today?’

Most of my own training involves resistance. I firmly believe that to get the most out of your fitness journey you must do what you enjoy and what you are good at. For me, my motivation comes from a hypertrophy and strength programme. My goal is to be as strong as I can be and remain lean. I don’t necessarily need to run to get that. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.

But in telling myself that I am avoiding the bigger picture and the bigger picture (hopefully) isn’t a zombie apocalypse, but the ageing process. I’ve written and spoken about the human needs to run, swim, climb, lift, throw and push. The human body has evolved to be very good at these things and denying my body any of them will potentially cause me issues in older age. Like it or not I need to experience running. What’s the point in lifting a PB deadlift if I can’t run for the ball as I play football with my grandkids? Training should include functional and practical stuff too.

I use the 80/20 rule for my own fitness. 80% is the training that I enjoy and excel in and the 20% is what I have to do and what I might not enjoy so much. It’s a decent compromise.

I vary my workouts with phases so I often ‘rep out’ and do supersets and circuits throughout my programming so I rarely just lift a weight for one rep and then scroll Facebook for ten minutes. So I know that I have good fitness levels. And in fact I used to be a champion runner for my school, although beating Pete Slowbottom in 1994 doesn’t count for much now.

I’ve only ever done two official Cooper Runs before. Both were fitness tests for the Army and then to become a PT. I passed with ease and I have no problem at taking on any fitness challenge or trying out any sport. But it doesn’t mean that I like every aspect of fitness or like every sport. It was reassuring to know that I could still get a good score in my latest Cooper Test though.

If the zombies take over the world, I’ll be way in front of most of the population…for at least 12 minutes anyway.

If I can’t outrun a zombie my plan B is to pretend to be one

Top Tips For Overcoming A Plateau Through Progressive Overload

Progressive Overload is a technique used to avoid training plateau and to meet set goals. Whatever your goals might be it could be that this needs to be incorporated into your schedule as this can enable you to become stronger and more flexible, increase endurance and make you feel pretty good about yourself which will keep you interested in going back for more!

Here’s my top 10 tips for Progressive Overload…

1. Add extra weight. Probably the most common way of Progressive Overload is to add more weight to the bar once you have mastered a certain weight. Be careful not to rush this though, there are other steps you might want to take first…

2. Add extra reps. If you feel comfortable after a while with a set of 16’s for 12 reps then challenge yourself at 15 reps.

3. Add extra sets. You might have benched X amount for 12 reps and 3 sets for a while now. Adding an extra set, just like adding extra reps, is adding volume to your routine.

4. Reduce rest periods. You don’t have to time yourself or have a stop watch, but being mindful of how long you are resting can help. Reducing your rest will challenge your next set.

5. Run instead of walk. Whether on the treadmill or in a park decide on an interval routine such as Fartlek training to mix things up.

6. Increase endurance. Make your workouts longer. If you have been used to a 30 minute routing then add a little bit of extra time on.

7. Slow the reps down or Time Under Tension (TUT). Your downward phase of a bench press is the eccentric phase. This increases the pressure on your muscle for each rep. Lowering a weight for 3,4,5 or more seconds adds better technique and good progression.

8. Add a different exercise. Its not advised to change your whole routine with every gym visit. You need consistency for your body to learn and adapt, but throwing in something different along with your current programme can help you come through a plateau. Challenge yourself with a Cooper run or a deadlift PB for motivation.

9. Perform supersets. Instead of doing a bicep curl routine and then a tricep routine, complete sets doing both together. So as soon as you finish your bicep curl for 12 go straight into 12 skull crushers.

10. Add an extra training day. If you are currently training 4 days a week, move to 5 days. This could be something that you do just to overcome your plateau as it might not suit your lifestyle in the long term, but you might also find that it does and you enjoy fitting in an extra session!

The general rule is that volume should come before intensity. In other words, adding more reps, sets or lowering rest periods should be done before adding more weight. With any progression, ensure that you are happy with your current form before advancing. There’s no point adding more reps or plates to a poor set of bench presses.

Contact me for further advice on your goals and ask about my training app for more workout ideas!