Category: Exercise Instructor

Winter Mood

Do you find it harder to exercise in winter?  I do and I don’t think I’m alone.

On one hand there’s less of a desire to go out and do things like sit in a pub garden and so I should have more time to dedicate to going to the gym, but equally when it’s cold and dark the urge to stay at home is strong.

Less sunlight and colder temperatures can certainly make people feel more tied and less motivated.  Light subconsciously boosts a lot of people’s mood, obviously in winter there are fewer hours of daylight so it’s not uncommon for us to feel more fatigued during the winter months.  Beyond that, cold and wet weather and even snow can make getting outside to exercise harder, when the weather is particularly bad even travelling to a gym may be difficult.  So whilst actually getting up and doing something would probably make us feel better, getting started in the first place often feels like a much bigger obstacle.

Now in the past, when training has just been so habitual I did it without thinking, this seasonal change had minimal effect on how much I did.  But in recent years it’s become much more of a notable thing for me.

The solution of course is sill to work on making exercise a habit rather than something you need to be motivated to do.  Like going to work or brushing your teeth, tings you just ‘do’ no matter whether you feel like you can be bothered or not, when training becomes a habit the weather won’t matter.

For me that means planning it in, making dates with people to do stuff and putting sessions in my diary like appointments so I don’t end up putting it off, as I do this I know I’ll start to rebuild those routines back into my week so how much I feel like training won’t matter, I’ll just go do it.

What Healthy Is

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Being healthy is not:

Being a certain weight

Being a certain size or shape

Being ripped / having defined visible muscle

Being able to run a distance in a certain time

Being able to lift really heavy weights

Eating really strictly

All these things can be a result of being healthy but in themselves they are not indicative off being healthy.

I know people who live incredibly disciplined lifestyles and look in great shape. They are undoubtedly fit. That doesn’t mean they are healthy.

You can be in great shape but have difficulty managing your training and beat yourself up if you don’t stick to your training schedule and feel like you must do a certain amount each day.

You can be in great shape but beat yourself up for eating certain foods or having some time off from your normal diet, or find yourself being careful on nights out to avoid causing damage to your fitness.

You can have an Instagram worthy routine and lifestyle and find yourself turning down social events because it would interrupt that.

Equally you can be a little bigger than you’d like and eat a more rounded diet and still be fit and healthy, and importantly healthy in more way than just one, because you know that not doing things perfectly doesn’t matter.

That’s not to say I think being overweight is healthy. If you don’t do any exercise and eat too much that is likely to lead to health problems and not be healthy.

We don’t have to live to an extreme though and a balance where we eat well and move (preferably in a way we enjoy) to allow us to feel good and enjoy life is probably the healthiest way to be.

A Less Articulate Google

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

So I like taking these blog prompts and trying to answer them in line with the purpose of my blog, i.e as a personal trainer.

So, the last thing searched for was reviews for a restaurant in the old town of Trogir, because I passed it yesterday and liked the chairs, but really even I know you don’t eat somewhere based on the chairs. The reviews were good by the way so I’m writing this blog from there and it’s lovely, busy, atmospheric as it’s right in the maze of Old Town streets so you can people watch and they have a set menu which I think is great value and so far the starter was lovely.

But back to my blog. My aim with this page is to try and answer the sort of questions I think people often Google regarding their health and fitness. How do you lose weight, tone up, what sort of training should you do, when, how often. I listen to clients, class members, family and friends questions and I try answer those over time because if they are thinking it so are slots of other people.

You know when you Google something and you type in a few words and the rest of the question comes up and you realise that random thing you didn’t know but wondered is something lots of others have clearly also asked? Fitness questions are a lot like that and there are lots of things that people might be scared to ask because they think it should be obvious but the fact is those things aren’t obvious and lots of people do wonder the same thing. That’s why I try and talk about common questions and themes here to try and be a little bit like a less articulate Google!

What you Enjoy

I’ve been really quiet on my blog the last few weeks, a bad infection completely took me out of the game. I’ve barely been able to eat let alone train or anything else!

Just before I got ill though I went canoeing. Now I have never been in a canoe before- a combination of not being able to swim and being terrified of water always stopped me, but I said this year I would try new things and push myself outside of my comfort zone so I went for it, and I’m glad I did.

It was actually a lot less scary and more fun that I expected (once I got the hang of left and right and kind of how to steer anyway).

I was also a pretty good work out if my back muscles are any kind of indication the next day. At the time it was a bit knackering – It wasn’t something I was used to doing and it was a hot day so towards the end ( I think we travelled about 13km) I was flagging a bit, but it was also fun and pretty and the concentration of what I was doing kind of made it not feel like exercise.

One of the things we get caught up with when training is doing things we think we should do. As in training should be lifting in the gym, running and so on and if we aren’t doing those things we aren’t keeping fit and healthy.  There are lots of activities, like getting out on the water, joining a sports team or joining a walking club though that do constitute exercise but it can sometimes feel like it’s masked a bit because they also count as our hobbies.

The thing about doing things like this though is, that unlike just going to the gym, if we enjoy them they’re a lot easier to stick with.

If you do keep finding yourself putting off joining the gym or going for a run but there’s a hobby which you really enjoy and want to do more of which is also physical, a good starting point would be taking the pressure off yourself on what you think you should do and instead actually do the things you take enjoyment from and let the results come that way.

YouDon’t Need to be Crazy

What you see on social media in terms of fitness content is massively distorted.

Most people who post things about their training are fitness professionals, obviously they are doing it to try and help people.

But when they ae in the gym training every day, well it can create the impression that you need to be in the gym training everyday.

Now it’s not practical firstly, PTs who work in fitness free time are firstly going to have more ability to train every day. They are literally in gyms every day. Fitting something in is easier when that happens. Also if you teach classes, well you are going to do some exercise on those days and get paid for it, so.

For the clients of said PTs life is very different. You don’t have the same incentive to work out every day, probably less easy access to equipment and to be honest you probably don’t have the same desire to train that much, and to be honest, that’s ok.

I used to train every day, more than once most days, teach 14 classes a week minimum, run. Now to be honest I go to the gym maybe 4 times a week, run a couple of times (when I’m not laid up with the cough!) and teach twice. I couldn’t post hardcore videos of me training daily if I wanted to!

My routine now if far more realistic for someone who has an office job for 40 plus hours a week. I don’t want to kill myself trying to do everything anymore.  Want to go home, put my pyjamas on and watch Only Fools and Horses sometimes.

When you judging your own progress, how hard your working compared to other people you see online it’s useful to remember that most of those have an invested interest in training as much as they do- they get paid to do it in some form or another, it’s their passion, and that’s great.

You don’t need to be all in like that to get results though, to be fit and healthy or lose a few pounds.  You can make some changes and do a bit more and enjoy it but not be doing absolutely crazy shit every single day.

Therapy or Therapeutic?

Ask a lot of people who are into fitness why they train and you’ll get an answer that refers to mental health. There’s been a massive shift in recent years from people training purely for aesthetics to people training for how it makes them feel.

Exercise is a great stress relief, moving more literally releases endorphins, it can improve confidence, possibly get you outdoors and getting fresh air. So yes training can be incredibly beneficial to your mental health.

Viewing training as what your body can do and something that makes you feel better makes exercise a positive action rather than a form of punishment, where you train to eat more or change your appearance and size.

What exercise isn’t though, is therapy. It can be therapeutic of course it can. If I’m a bit stressed or anxious going to the gym or for a run can help alleviate the symptoms. If i don’t train for a few days I can feel the difference to my mood, largely because I actually enjoy the time I’m running or lifting, it makes me feel good, is a break from whatever is going on and a chance to blast some music and focus on me.

But exercise can’t replace therapy or solve actual problems. If training is literally the only thing keeping you sane or making you feel better it’s time to look at the issues exercise is acting as a sticking plaster for. The issue when you get to this point, is if you can’t train for whatever reason, you end up feeling terrible. When you feel like training through an injury because that would be better than how you’d feel if you took some time off, or rest days sound like a terrible idea because even though you’re knackered and burnt out a day off would make you feel guilty.

The benefits of training for mental health can’t be denied but we always need to remember that for it to be a benefit it needs to complement our life rather than dominate it, which means knowing when to rest even if you really want to train, when to pull back, when to take it easy and then appreciate what you are still able to do when you can train.

International Women’s Day 2023

Rather than being a day where people post pictures of women with hashtags hopefully there will also be posts focusing on this years theme (if you’ve read my blog for a while you’ll know every years there’s a theme).

This years International Women’s Day is about embracing Equity. So what does that mean?

For years women have campaigned for equality – being given the same opportunities as men. But equality relies on us all starting from the same point to begin with. In reality that doesn’t happen. It’s not just that girls and boys tend to have different experiences growing up and face different challenges to one another but even amongst women we all start from different places and have different levels of advantage or disadvantage and that means even two women given the same resources won’t be on an equal playing field to one another.

The idea of equity is that to create equality we need to ensure people have what they need to succeed. People with past advantages may need less now than their peers and rather than that being seen as unequal it should be embraced to allow others the same opportunities they have had. Of course beyond International Women’s Day this message counts for all. Where can this fit into the world of fitness though?

Gyms can be intimidating places, especially for new people, people with injuries, those coming back from illnesses, people starting back again after a long hiatus. For people who for whatever reason might need to take more tests, modify their movement, need a little more help in whatever way. Male or female it’s the fitness community and instructors / PTs role to help anyone who doesn’t feel like they’re in a position to just start exercising and provide the tools and a safe environment for them to train in a capacity that works for them.

International any day can end up being lip service but days creating actual conversations that help people think about things in different ways or consider different ways of thinking of things can have lots more benefits to a nice photo and a hashtag.

5 Fitness Facts

  1. If you don’t train at all at the moment exercising once a week is a 100% improvement, start there and build up.
  2. To get stronger you need to progressively overload the muscles and that doesn’t just have to be by adding weight. You can increase reps, number of sets, length of workout, adjust tempos, reduce rest periods (increase intensity) or change training frequency.
  3. What you do outside the gym matters more. Walking, moving about and your general daily activity will burn more calories than the most intense hour in the gym.
  4. To lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. If you aren’t no amount of supplements, protein shakes or specific meal timings will help. They are tools to fine tune a diet, having tools but no base material to work with is pointless.
  5. Chocolate, crisps and takeaways aren’t bad for you. Whilst less nutritionally valuable, if you are within your calorie target, eating them won’t affect your progress and mentally will probably help you stay on track.

Being Kinder To Yourslef

This week I’ve only trained three times (about 30 minutes), run three times and taught two classes. That’s not much for me. This isn’t because I’ve been lazy (well not totally) works just been a lot.


I’ve also not really paid any attention to my eating. Some meals I’ve prepped and taken with me to work (perhaps 60%) but others have been more convenience.


These two things combined have left me feeling a bit sluggish. Logically I know it’s stupid. I’ve still done about 5 hours exercise and statistically I’ve eaten vegetables more times than I’ve eaten chips. But I’m sometimes guilty of very much being an all or nothing person.

One bad week won’t undo months of hard work in the same way one good week won’t immediately turn you into an Olympic Athlete. The brain, however, isn’t always a muscle that reacts logically to events.


When I feel like this I often instinctively think, right I need a really ‘good’ week next week and I’ll do every training session planned and eat perfectly and not eat cake and so on and so on.


But, this isn’t good for me either. We are only human. We need to know that when we have weeks where we do a little less or eat a few too many calories it’s ok as long as we don’t let it continue for too long. I know that if I feel ‘fat’ because I’ve not had a perfect week of eating or training then there’s something wrong with my own mindset towards my body. Nobody can be perfect all the time and trying to be just sets us up for failure (and there we have that never-ending circle of feeling bad about ourselves).


Of course this is easier said than done and writing this doesn’t mean I suddenly feel great and healthy and happy with how I look today. Knowing something isn’t logical and not letting it bother you are two different things and overcoming those little demons in your mind isn’t always easy and even when you do overcome them sometimes they can creep back in!


But I’m not fat – a ‘bad’ week hasn’t made me fat. I’ve put a little weight on recently, yet in faculty I’m fit, I’m healthy and I’m in a much more positive position than I was. It’s ok to have a little wobble at times but we need to be kinder to ourselves in terms of our own expectations. Because if someone else outlined my week to me as their own I’d be pointing out all the positives, but because I’m looking at my own week I’ve focused on all the things I haven’t done.

Most people are kinder to others than they are to themselves I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person reading this to need to be reminded of that.