wellness – Page 17 – Never Give Up PT

Fear

One of the biggest obstacles you will have to overcome in your quest for happiness is fear. You fear the past, you fear the future and no matter what state of mind you are currently in, you fear it. If you are happy you fear being too happy because you don’t want to be hurt or let down again. If you are unhappy you fear it because you’ve been here before and you’ve read the script. It cripples you.

Maybe you have to change the script. As the author, you can make edits.

“You are a ghost driving a meat covered skeleton made of stardust on a rock in the middle of space. Fear nothing.” Eric Mina.

It is your ego that makes you fearful. You don’t want to fail. You don’t want to be seen doing something wrong. You don’t want to die.

Yet you WILL do all of these things anyway. And when your ego holds you back, tell it to f@#k off. And if it’s another person holding you back, get them out of your life.

Then you will be fearless.

Everything that you want is on the other side of fear.

If you want success then go and get it. What would make you feel like a success? Take a moment to visualize what a successful you looks like.

If you want good health then go and get it. What would make you feel healthier than you do right now? Close your eyes and imagine what a healthier you would do.

Don’t let fear hold you back.

Don’t fear your next struggle. Some of the biggest struggles that we go through, we learn our biggest lessons. Think about your own personal life. Think about a particular struggle. Now think about how you turned it around. How did you do this? What did you learn? Who was there to help you? These are the questions you need to ask yourself often, because it is the answers to these questions that become your armour. You have faced fear before. You’ve suffered misfortune and you have had moments of despair. Yet here you are. Surviving.

So don’t fear what you have already conquered. The chances are you are stronger than you think you are.

I am a Fitness Coach, Personal Trainer, Meditation Teacher studying Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I’m good at what I do because I deal with fear every day just like everybody else. Today I won. Tomorrow I’ll try to win again.

How To Approach ANY Fitness Goal

Dale is absolutely buzzing. Today he just walked 30 minutes to the gym, completed an intense resistance workout and ran home again before he gets ready for his shift. As he showers he reflects back on his workout. Sure, he’s tired before he even gets to work! But there’s also a feeling of satisfaction and an adrenaline that will keep him going long into his shift. He even flecks on the way past the mirror. “Still got it”, he says to himself.

Today was his first gym session in a while and he is following a training programme. Tomorrow he’ll do the same and then his rest days are to complete 10,000 steps. “Active recovery”, his PT demands. On top of this, he promises himself to cut out the midweek drinking. Over the past few months he has noticed that he has been buying more beers to drink after work. It has left him feeling sluggish and unhappy with his weight.

He goes to bed feeling tired but accomplished after today. His gym kit is ready for tomorrow.

Then tomorrow comes. He didn’t get the best night’s sleep. It was warm and he tossed and turned. He ended up on the sofa so that his wife was not disturbed. As he eats his breakfast a whole lot of excuses go through his mind on why he can’t make the gym today.

He feels tired, so there’s no point as it will be a rubbish workout. Maybe he could just drive there and back, but no, it needs to be just like yesterday’s session otherwise he’ll feel like he’s failed. There’s paperwork to do for work. The car needs booking in for its service. The kids need to be dropped off at their activities. He needs energy for other stuff. Maybe he should leave the gym for today and hope for a better day tomorrow.

After work he opens up a beer. He’s starting his workouts again tomorrow so a few cans won’t harm tonight.

A week passes and he has only been to the gym on that first day. Bad night’s sleep has continued due to his alcohol consumption. This has caused anxiety which has led to poor meal choices. He marches on the spot while the kettle boils to at least show his PT that he is getting in his 10,000 steps but most days he is a few thousand away from reaching them.

If only he hadn’t talked himself out of the gym on day 2. He doesn’t even understand why he did. He kind of enjoyed it!

The paperwork for his job will still be there after a workout. The car can still be booked into a garage if he went to the gym. The kids can still be taken to their activities. Going to the gym 4 times a week wouldn’t make his life, his family’s life or his work life suffer. It would most likely have a much more positive effect. And deep down he knows that it isn’t just the warm weather causing him to have a bad night’s sleep. The alcohol he drinks will give him poor quality sleep but eventually his sleeping would become much better if he remained consistent with his training programme. His PT tells him that. The fitness pages on his social media tells him that. Articles on how to approach any fitness goal tells him that.

No matter how good his last workout was or how intense he made it, if he doesn’t do it consistently he will not reach his goals. And his goals aren’t just about giving a flex in the mirror and feeling pumped. It’s about feeling better about himself. It’s about having more energy for his wife and kids. It’s about approaching middle age and wanting to do something about his health now before it gets even harder when he is older.

He will have bad days. Days where an emergency crops up. But his consistent approach means that he can plan an alternative. What he can’t do is stop, put it on hold or promise himself that he’ll start again in January. Work, family, the odd bad night’s sleep, that old niggling injury and the car needing a service will still be there in January. He knows this! But those excuses just keep on popping into his head.

Whatever your goals are, you need to consistently work on a solid plan and stick to it. It could be the best plan in the world but if it isn’t carried out consistently you will not get to where you want to be.

Remember Dale the next time you think about giving your workout a miss. You might even come up with a similar excuse to what he used. If so, do it differently.

Cyborg Boxy

Before the summer holidays if somebody would have told me that my 8 and 6 year olds would have been using sharp fabric cutting scissors and needles to make plushie toys I would have laughed at them.

Firstly, I would’ve felt uneasy at allowing them to use such sharp scissors. Secondly, the lads imagining and creating anything other than a head shot on Fortnite or a rainbow flick with a football seemed quite ridiculous. But of course, that’s my influence. My wife has now shown them how to sew and they’re obsessed. And what a fantastic obsession to have!

I have written about my eldest developing nervous tics over the past couple of years which seem certain to be due to the pandemic and the lockdowns. Jonas is a sensitive lad who comes across as fairly confident with his big curly hair and bold football skills. And his younger brother Finlay, who likes to play the Joker, is equally as sensitive deep down. But people see the confident kid who likes to tell jokes or give a fist pump to the camera as they score a goal. Take away the clown mask and it can be a different story. I know. I was that kid too.

Kids have stuff going on in their heads that we can’t comprehend. They’ve been growing up locked in their homes, not been able to see friends at school or to have any other human contact outside of their immediate family and listening to daily death tolls in the news as their parents left the house in face masks. How many kids will have been thinking “Will my mum and dad be next. Are we going to die?”

Jonas and Finlay have found comfort in creative therapy. Having a focus is important. I’m very happy that they’ve found this skill. I never did. Creative therapy is not really my ‘thing’. But I do have other ways to find my therapy. As a PT it’ll be no surprise to you that training is of great comfort to me. That has been my thing throughout my adulthood. And more recently I’ve found that meditation and using Tibetan singing bowls is extremely soothing. I never really had myself down as a singing bowl type of person. But then, what is a singing bowl type of person? Do we need to pigeon hole ourselves and stay in our box to suit anybody else’s views and opinions?

The truth is that nobody knows what their therapy is until they give it a go. It might be drawing or colouring in, going for walks or joining a fitness class. It might be sewing and creating or it could be meditating. There could be something that you have never ever tried before that gives you a real grounding to your life.

A good PT will help change your body. A great PT will change your life. If I want to be great at what I do then I can’t just bark orders on how many reps a trainee should do each week. Even a keen trainee would only spend one hour a day doing formal exercise. But what of the other 23 hours of the day? What about nutrition, sleep and mental health? That is where the true results happen.

And if my kids can find their therapy I’m quite sure that everyone else can make their very own Cyborg Boxy too. We’ve just got to have a go and find it.

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Hmm. How can I make an interesting article about the thickness of mirrors? How can I make it informative without having you guys fall asleep when I start describing the thickness of glass?

Well, if you go to the gym and look in the mirrors or if you try clothes on in a clothes shop then you might find it rather enlightening. And I’ll not get too technical. Promise.

Leonardo Da Vinci said “The mirror is our teacher.” He was referring to the mirror being used as a fresh eye. When I train a client in a gym I will often look in the mirror at my client’s form instead of looking directly at them. Apart from the fact that it can be off putting having someone (even your PT who you trust) staring at you as you struggle through your set, me looking through the mirror gives me a different perspective on their form. I see things differently. We can lose perspective with the naked eye. Reflections can create new ones, especially with the thickness of a gym mirror which should be above 5mm in thickness.

Due to health and safety, public mirrors must be of a certain thickness and be safety backed. Therefore this thickness can give us a much better perspective of the reality that it portrays. Whereas a domestic mirror might only be 3mm in thickness. This can create a mottled effect on the glass and give a distorted view of what we see, especially in cheap mirrors that are mass produced.

Trainees have often said to me,”I look great in the gym but when I look at myself at home I feel rubbish again!”

This is the reason why. The gym mirror will be a true reflection. Your home mirror is probably a much cheaper, thinner piece of glass.

Artists often use mirrors to get a new perspective of their paintings. It takes away the peripheral clutter and enables the eye to focus on the subject. Training in the gym shouldn’t be any different. Your workout is your art. You have a blank canvas to work on and produce your own work of art. Mirrors can help. Whether wanting to build muscle or lose weight, often looking in a good mirror can give you a much better idea of your progress than the weighing scales.

I’m hoping that, one day, mirrors will become so thick that it will make me look like I have a fringe. But maybe that’s an art that might be a little bit too much of a stretch.

Running Up That Hill

According to English folklore, a giant lived in a fortress on Penhill in Wensleydale. Legend has it the giant would eat flocks of sheep and terrorise the locals. This week I terrorised the locals by taking my kids to a holiday cottage nearby.

I knew that we would do lots of walking in very beautiful surroundings in the countryside on our family holiday to Wensleydale and Coverdale, but I didn’t expect just how breathtakingly beautiful it would be. And seeing as it is August, I didn’t expect the wind and the rain as we attempted a very large, steep hill. It was absolutely torrential as we began our walk up Penhill. And with the wind against us, every step seemed like a huge achievement. I can only imagine what it was like for the boys little legs. Yet they thrived throughout it. As for Lou and I there were a few times we wanted to turn back. But Lou has done this many times before as she grew up in Leyburn. For me, it was my first time. I couldn’t turn back. I had to tick it off the list. The boys wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Penhill is not a huge mountain that takes days to climb. It is probably not even the biggest hill in Wensleydale, but it was enough for us given the weather and a 6 and 8 year old to keep safe. At about an hour and a half from start to the top, it challenged us. And the sense of achievement that I got from getting to the top and back down again in difficult conditions was extremely satisfying. The kids were buzzing at the top. The memory of making their way into the clouds looking down on everything below is a memory just as good as an experience abroad in some exciting new place, city or beach. This was Yorkshire, right on their doorstep.

And I often use hills and mountains as a metaphor for a life challenge. Some are daunting and scary. They seem steep and treacherous. They might be smaller to some people, bigger to others. Every hill or mountain is unique to every one of us. But in our own way we climb each one that we are faced with and it might even take a few attempts.

The Penhill Giant might just be a mythical creature, but there’s an ogre that lives inside all of our heads that is wanting to terrorise us. The only sure way to avoid it is to keep running up that hill.

School’s Out!

The 6 week school holidays is a time that Lou and I have come to enjoy rather than endure. Eventually, now the boys are 8 and 6, we seem to have found a balance to our family time and business commitments. But it won’t be without a bit of stress from time to time. After all, Lou and I still need to work and find those special moments with the boys. I enjoy my work. The gym is my happy place whether I’m training myself or someone else. But creating family memories is extremely important to me.

It’s time to spin those plates and this is how I intend on not smashing any of them…

* I still need to train. That is a non-negotiable that I have talked about in a previous blog. There’s an aspect of attempting to look my 43 year old best. I make no apologies in saying that I enjoy the aesthetic rewards of training. But more importantly it keeps me sane. Training is MY time. Lou knows that this is the case and I’m grateful that she understands. Of course, she will book Yoga classes or find her time too.

* My very first blog was called ‘Shouty Dad Has Gone’. Perhaps other parents know what I mean when I say that, sometimes, our little darlings can only push us so far. We lose it. We see red. Well, I still do at times. I love my boys, but wow, they can have me rocking in a corner some days. Anyway, I no longer feel the need to act like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Kop. I remain calm. Count to 10. Meditate. Cry. Whatever, I remain calm.

* I make sure that I have a support network. Ok, Lou and I haven’t got hundreds of friends inviting us for evenings out or for tea and cake afternoons all too often. But we have each other and we have a few friends who are mostly made up of parents who need to offload occasionally too. A rant to someone other than your immediate family is good for the soul!

* We have made plans. When we do have days off together we don’t want it to get to midday before we actually decide on what we’re going to do. So as well as a week away in a holiday cottage we have planned a few day trips to keep the boys away from the X-box.

* I’ll stay in control of my diet. Just because the kids want turkey dinosaurs and ice cream doesn’t mean I have to. A dramatic change to my eating habits will change my mood. I’ll feel lethargic and less motivated. My above points will also change for the worse if I let this happen. If I allow my nutrition to suffer, other aspects of my life will too.

These are just a few pointers to myself that I aim to stick with to ensure a successful and fun school summer holiday. Maybe you might find some things that are useful to you or you might want to think of your own ideas.

Thanks for reading. Speak soon!

Life, Heat and Catching Up!

Over the past few weeks I have set myself targets as to where I see myself in 12 months time. There’s no stress that I’ve put myself under with it apart from a further education course that I have started which has a deadline. Other than that, I have focused on what makes me happy and what my future self would thank me for.

I guess that’s partly why I have been less active in scribbling down my thoughts here. Any chance I have I have been studying, training or finding ways to develop myself, my business, my family life and my happiness.

But this makes me happy. Right now, writing this. So I thought it was time for a catch up.

I wouldn’t be able to commit to any of my targets if it wasn’t for certain people, or groups of people, in my life. I have spoken before about how my wife had encouraged me to become a Personal Trainer and her empowering spirit for me has now enabled me to become a certified Meditation teacher but also enrol on a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy course. The human brain interests me. I truly believe that if we can control the thoughts in our head better then we can live much happier lives with ourselves. I meet so many people who are unhappy with their physical selves, yet with a different approach to their way of thinking they would realise that they don’t have to be. Wanting change is fine, but only for the right reasons.

My clients inspire me. My online PT app bleeps at me more than a busy checkout isle at Sainsbury’s. I love getting alerts for a new achievement or a message on how their new training program is going. It makes me get off of my arse and get stuff done too!

And I have told my kids before that they are my heroes. Yes, kids should be told that they have the ability to inspire, empower and display heroic acts by their grown ups. My kids dealt with periods of lockdown better than me. My youngest is the brightest and most thoughtful boy. And my latest beaming with pride moment is when my 8 year old played a football tournament in stifling heat and helped his team win the final. 7 games in total and he didn’t stop running. His commitment in the final, even as his team went a goal down, saw him equalise and push his team to victory.

I have wanted to give the gym a miss during the recent heatwave but then I recall my son’s commitment to HIS cause in a difficult, energy zapping environment and got my own training done. It isn’t easy. Winning his medal didn’t come easily to him. If it did, would he have been almost in tears with sheer jubilation at the final whistle? I think not. Similarly, my goals don’t come easily either. But not even doing it eventually makes things even harder. My son tried his best. This time he won, but that won’t always happen.

Surround yourself with triers, empowerers and positive people and if you can give it back to them too.

I must get back to the books now. I have a course to complete. But I enjoyed the catch up. Speak soon.

Change The Formula

We’ve all heard of the expression ‘Stuck in a rut’. Typically I see this with workouts that gym goers perform day after day.

‘Shay, I’m just not seeing any more progress’. This is regularly said to me. In some cases, I have people tell me that not only do they stop seeing progress, but they see regression.

This isn’t new or something that is confined to our fitness. We get stuck in a rut in life too. Our jobs can be like Groundhog Day. Our social life gets tedious. Yes, listening to John in the Nag’s Head complain about VAR for the third time this week gets boring. And our relationships can lose their spark.

Change is not a bad thing. It doesn’t need a whole reinvention of yourself. But it does need a bit of thought on how you can adapt to today’s you.

Last year’s you might have got excited about a 5k run, but today’s you doesn’t.

Your job might have challenged you when you started it 5 years ago, but today’s you isn’t.

Going to the pub at the end of your shift was a way of unwinding ten years ago, but today’s you doesn’t.

And your partner used to love watching a Steven Segal boxset on an evening with you when you first got together, but be careful, they might have changed.

Change the formula.

You’re not stuck. You’re just committed to certain patterns of behaviour because they helped you in the past. Now, these behaviours have become more harmful than helpful. The reason why you can’t move forward is because you keep applying an old formula to a new level in your life. Change the formula for a different result. Love and respect the person that got you here, but have the same love and respect for the future you too.

Thank you for reading my article. Speak soon!

“Hello dear. Do you fancy a Columbo boxset tonight instead of Steven Segal. I read some article online saying it might spice things up a bit.”

Why I Had To Become A Meditation Tutor

Maybe I was meditating as a kid when I didn’t even realise what it was. Did you ever get a telling off from your teacher for gazing out of the class window instead of paying attention to the lesson? Perhaps, in some way, me drifting away from the noise and busyness of the class room during mathematics to focus on cloud formations was my first experience with meditation.

To meditate, you don’t need to sit a certain way or to think about anything in particular. You don’t need to be spiritual and you don’t need to repeat ‘ommm’ if you don’t want to. Adults tell children to stop day dreaming, but maybe that is just their brains trying to get a time out. I think we all need to day dream a little bit.

My practical exam was to guide my wife’s meditation

My first official experience with meditation was about 7 years ago. My wife had postnatal depression after giving birth to our second child and her doctor prescribed medication. But this wasn’t a route that she wanted to take. There must be an alternative to tablets.

We got in touch with a local meditation tutor who did guides on a 1-1 basis. My wife started to attend the meditation guides for one hour a week. She also began practicing on her own and this is when I would join her. This later led me to attending guided meditation too. I was hooked.

The misconception of meditation is that it is an opportunity to clear your head. Yet it is quite the opposite. You fill it will good stuff. Positive thoughts, visualization of a particular journey or of your dreams, ambitions and goals. It is true it is a chance to declutter your head, but it will be replaced with something much more worthy of your thoughts.

As I gazed out of the class room window looking at the clouds as a kid, I was creating shapes with these clouds of me scoring a goal or getting a hug from my mum. Wouldn’t anybody, at any age, want to have a moment of a much more innocent time? That didn’t seem like a waste of time to me then and it doesn’t seem like a waste of time to me now.

We all have goals that we want to achieve in life, but to get through the difficult moments or the sticky patches how are we to actually get them? Do we ever stop to think about a pathway to achieving them? As I say, that’s not to say that you have to sit and chant or be a Buddhist to do it. Having 10 minutes to focus on your breathing and taking charge of your energy each day should be a minimum requirement in achieving your goals.

If I am to assist my Personal Training clients in getting their goals then a part of that process must be for me to enable them to accept themselves as who they currently are. There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest way to self discovery is through meditation. That is why I felt so strongly about becoming a meditation tutor. How can we tell the body what to do if our minds are constantly on high alert?

So maybe you should be gazing into space sometimes and having a little daydream. Put the breaks on. Take a few deep breaths. Ground yourself. That maths equation will still be there when you have finished but it might be a bit easier to solve.

Dirty Fries

Scarborough is a small town. It’s the sort of place that if you go into the town centre you will probably know somebody to say hello to. Train in a gym with almost 3,000 members and the chances are that I will definitely see somebody I know.

Had they seen me in a bar this lunch time they would have found me with a large gin and tonic and some ‘dirty fries’. When I ordered them I imagined some chips with a sprinkling of grated cheese. What I actually got was a bag of potatoes, a pack of bacon and a block of cheese squeezed into a good sized pasta bowl. This wasn’t the amuse bouche that I had visioned in my mind, but it was one my belly was happy to try.

I wished a client of mine would’ve walked in as I slurped the stringy melted cheese into my mouth. If only to keep proving my point. I keep reiterating my point regarding food and weight management…eat it. All of it. If it fits your daily calories, eat it and enjoy it. But there’s a slight caveat. Just one little rule.

If you aren’t going to cut out the low nutrition foods, then you must keep the nutritionally dense foods high. Whether you are very active with fitness goals or more sedentary, keep the nutritionally dense foods high.

You see, I don’t believe in banning food types. If you want to stop off at a bar and order a truck full of McCain’s Chips then do it, as long as your weekly macros are met. Yes, weekly. Some days your carbs might be up, but if you keep the nutritionally dense and high protein foods a priority over the course of the week then your calories and macros will average out. Judging your Journey on just one day will serve you no purpose.

I knew that I could eat some greasy cheesy chips today. I count my calories.

Now, if you read the newspapers you might gasp in horror at the knowledge that I count calories and I also endorse it for others. The one exception being anybody suffering from an eating disorder. In which case they don’t need me, they need professional medical support.

But the media seem to be very negative towards counting calories. Which is interested, because they print lots of other methods such as 5:2, Intermittent fasting and promote large dieting companies who count ‘syns’.

My conclusion is that counting calories isn’t sexy. It isn’t a buzz word or trending on Twitter. And if it isn’t a large company paying a newspaper to advertise their diet or a book publisher paying them to flog Michael Mosley’s new fad diet, then it gets demonized as wrong.

If I go into a shop and see something that I want to buy I will check my bank balance before I purchase it. That’s just simple accounting.

If I go to the carpet fitters I will take the measurements of the room that I wish to have carpeted with me. That is just common sense.

If I take my son to buy a pair of shoes I will ask the assistant to measure his feet first. Efficient.

And if I want some dirty fries washed down with a gin and tonic I will make sure that my meals around this tasty treat are low in calories and high in nutrition. No anxiety or concerns.

I get what I want now and again and I also get to keep my body on track with my fitness goals. And a part of my fitness goals is my mental health, therefore stressing at banning all of the foods that I enjoy is not something that I consider healthy. I have a good relationship with food. I don’t want to feel anxious about being in a social environment and seeing half of the food on the menu to be cancelled for me.

I don’t develope programmes or challenges for my clients if I wouldn’t do it myself. So occasionally doing my own Balanced Plate Challenge works for me. My clients succeed, why shouldn’t I enjoy my own methods too?!

And so it’s time to make my smoothie. With plenty of spinach and fruit in there my body will still know that I love it. And it might even get another bowl of dirty fries again next week!