Patience

This week has been a reminder to not try and do everything.

I’ve done a fair bit this week but still feel like I didn’t do as much as I’d have liked. I’m reminding myself though, that I need to listen to my body. Thursday for instance, I was knackered. I’d done a tough Bootcamp and a step class on Wednesday and on Thursday I was fatigued and hungry.

If I’d have tried to push through and do something Thursday I’d have probably ended up even more fatigued today and eventually my body would have forced me to stop. As it was it felt harder at Bootcamp today!

I think I need to realise that it will probably always feel like we could do more, but being sensible, building up and sticking with it will be loads more effective than going hell for leather now and burning out quickly.

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.

When do you train?

What’s your favorite time of day?

This question was posed by WordPress today so given this is a fitness blog I’ll rephrase it, what’s your favourite time of the day to exercise?

Mine is morning. Now I hate getting up in the morning, my most committed relationship in the world is with the snooze button to be honest, but, once I’m up I love training first thing.

You just throw something on and go do it, nobody looks ‘put together’ in the gym first thing, and then once your done you can go shower, get dressed and feel smug for the rest of the day because you’ve already trained. I feel like when I train in the morning I just feel more positive and alert throughout the rest of the day. It’s so much easier to put training off as the day goes on and things pop up that you need to do, so when you’ve already done it before the day really starts you’ve just removed some of the pressure from yourself.

I do train in the evening, and more often than not at lunchtime, but I find both of those times never feel quite as good as morning sessions do. In reality lunch time is the most practical time for me because we’ve got a gym at work so I do tend to go quite frequently, but when work gets stressful I find myself skipping the session. I also try to limit the type of things I do because I need to be showered and back at my desk within the hour so whilst it’s a convenient options it’s not optimal. Evening sessions often leave me not ready to sleep and also when I get in from work I’m hungry so it throws out my eating a bit.

So the best time to train for me varies, and I’m lucky I can train either before or after work or at lunch time, but the time I always feel best for getting up and doing something first thing in the morning.

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.

The Easter Hangover

Have you left the Easter weekend feeing like you over did it? Be it too much chocolate of the Egg variety or too much alcohol or maybe a bit of both (I’ll be honest, unlike normal me, I’ve had little chocolate this weekend but did wake up Sunday swearing to never drink again).

There can be a real temptation the day after a heavy weekend, or even just night, when you feel like you’ve over indulged and ruined your diet, to go all out healthy the next day. You know the one. i will eat nothing but leaves and drink nothing but water and run 50 miles each morning and meditate and lift heavy things and sleep for 12 hours a day and I will do this for the rest of my life to atone for the 500 extra calories I’ve convinced ruined my life over the weekend.

This in itself makes us feel worse in reality. We won’t stick to it for more than 23 minutes and then come 10 am when we’ve succumbed to a biscuit with a cup of tea we are kicking ourselves again at our obvious lack of willpower.

The fact of the matter is if you ate chocolate until you were sick or stayed up until 5am and spent yesterday in bed you might not feel very smug today. Smug is a bit of a dull feeling though and in actual fact if you just get back to normal today and eat your normal amount of food, drink plenty of fluids, train as you normally would, get some steps in you’ll actually feel pretty much back to normal by the time you go to bed. Maybe a little bit of extra fresh air would be beneficial if you do feel particularly rubbish.

Extremes rarely work. You have to have a very particular mindset to be comfortable sticking to very strict regimes for long periods of time and even if you are able to, it will often be at the cost of doing things you’ll enjoy. Balance, as so many PTs will say, is key. The problem is when we feel rubbish about ourselves our brains tell us that really strict will probably bring quicker results and when we feel rubbish that’s appealing. It actually takes quite a lot of willpower to override that little voice in your brain and just try and get back on with trying to be a bit sensible when you feel like that.

If you can today though, just try to be normal and not beat yourself up about any over indulgences.

Should you Train When Ill or Injured?

Above the neck – OK

Below the neck- No

Chest Congestion – No

Hacking cough – No

Upset Stomach- No

Fever – No

Slight cold- OK (this Might temporarily ease congestion)

Runny nose- OK

Slight sore throat- OK

Hungover- Maybe (but you might be better to rest)

Injured with swelling – No

Injured and in pain – No

Injured but you are able to avoid using affected area- OK

Ideally when ill, injured or hungover you’ll rest and recover, but if you do feel like you need to train for whatever reason try and consider your intensity, what you are doing and modify where you can to avoid training having a negative impact on your health.

Anxiety and the Gym

When people think about anxiety and the gym we normally think about how anxiety can make it hard for people to get started, go to the gym or a class for the first time or start something new. That’s a valid topic to discuss because the unknown and uncertainty can be anxiety inducing to many of us at the best of times.

Another impact anxiety can have on your training that maybe gets overlooked though is how it affects your concentration. Now it can be argued that people with anxiety are incredibly good at concentrating, it’s just it tends to be on whatever is causing anxiety which isn’t a great thing to be hyper concentrated on.

This has two effects, firstly, it reduces the ability to concentrate on what you actually want to concentrate on at that moment. For instance in the gym, whilst some people might find working out a good distraction from whatever is causing anxiety, others might find that they are too affected by the anxiety to fully focus on their workout.

This might often be the case when the second effect of anxiety comes in play, the physical effects; a racing heart, increase in body temperature, headaches for instance. These symptoms can make it very difficult to focus on what you should be focused on or to settle down into your training.

I often find that if I’m doing something such as teaching a class, exercise can reduce my anxiety, probably because I’m having to think about what I’m doing. If I’m just training in the gym for me though, and I’m anxious about something, particularly if it’s just happened or is ongoing, I often find it much harder to fully get into a workout and my intensity reduces. Of course there’s an argument that just getting into the gym and doing something, even if it wasn’t exactly what you wanted, is still a positive and probably still has many benefits. If you find yourself thinking this sounds familiar to you though, maybe consider having little strategies to work around this up your sleeve, attending a class, training with a friend, a play list that always calms you down perhaps.

Ultimately, we are never going to be able to avoid having bad days, so understanding how your own mind and emotions work and how you can best work with them rather than against them is the best way of managing your training when these things hit.

2023 Goals

If you’re looking to make changes or set yourself some challenges for 2023, it isn’t enough to just want things to change, you need to work out what actions you need to take to make those changes happen.

Here’s a podcast all about goals, what, why and how…

https://anchor.fm/heather-sherwood/episodes/Goal-Setting-Your-Why-and-How-e1pver7

Training in 2023 will be Hybrid

Pre Covid not many gym goers seriously thought about training at home.

Things like Les Mills on Demand and Peloton existed of course, but by and large people had physical gym memberships and went to gyms and classes week on week. The home based apps were considered by many an ‘added’ extra to a workout routine.

Lockdown changed that. We had little choice during that time to embrace online classes, training at home or outdoors and many people invested in fitness equipment.

For some of us it was only really a means to an end. I found training at home (beyond running which I did anyway) hard in terms of space and also in terms of maintaining focus. Some people found it liberating though. Saving time on travelling, finding it easier to fit in around work and child care, many people found they didn’t see the point in going back once gyms re opened.

Beyond that, whilst many people did still want to return to actual gyms, they found that new working patterns where they still worked from home, or did for at least half their week, it wasn’t necessarily practical to return to the gym (or at least not every day) especially when their gym was closer to their place of work.

So where do we stand coming into 2023, the year where we can probably say that habits, which at the start of 2022 were sill a bit up in the air, have settled?

Hybrid membership options need to be where gyms start to focus I think in order to retain memberships. Memberships where there are online offerings for days people want to train at home, or flexible memberships where people not planning to use the gym all week could opt to pay less for a reduced access (there’s already student memberships at university gyms and off peak memberships available in many places so it would just be tweaks in access required), maybe even more reasonable PAYG options.

Currently workouts are a bit like streaming platforms – depending on what you want to watch you might need Sky, Netflix, Disney and more to watch everything- if you want to train at home and in the gym you need a gym membership and in most cases also an online app for home workouts. If more gyms started to provide a more robust hybrid option where the online wasn’t an after thought (I’m sure there are some out there already on this wave length) they could look to solidify their membership base and overcome the shifts that are occurring in where and when and how people train.

What trends do you see coming in relation to training in 2023?

What should you look for in a PT?

There’s lots of ways you can work with a PT now: one on one, small group, online programming, apps. Beyond cost, what do you look for when deciding who to go to?

Maybe it’s location, if you want to train in person that will be a big factor; but it could also be their specialisms, experience, how fit they look, how comfortable they make you feel, the recommendation from people you trust or their client testimonials.

All of these things are valid reasons, ultimately you’re picking someone to work with based on things that are important and relevant to you is key, and here’s where I think the most important factor in looking for someone to work with comes in.

Do they get ‘you’. Specifically can they understand your pain points, identify how they affect your fitness and help you work around them?

We all have some sort of pain points, whether you think it or not, Some may be more obvious than others.

If you deal with depression or anxiety, that’s going to have an effect on how you train. Shift worker, busy mum, student; all these things can affect your training and diet.

Whether your issue is with fitting in gym sessions in the first place, struggling to focus during sessions, struggling to pluck up the courage to go to the gym or anything else in between; what you want is a PT who can understand that issue and help you with that.

Because in reality getting a gym plan is useful. Having someone tell you what to do in the gym gives you focus. A good PT will programme your sessions to incorporate progression and work specifically towards your goals.

All of that is useless though if it doesn’t work around your pain points. A good coach doesn’t just give you the right exercises for you, they understand the obstacles you face and look at how you can overcome them. That has an effect on what they have you do.

That doesn’t mean they have to have lived your experience, of course that can help but it’s not essential, but they need to be willing to listen, pin point the issues their clients faced and think about how to incorporate solutions into workouts.

If you struggle to stick to workouts or get results, a plan and a coach who can help you work around yourself and the things that keep tripping you up might make a difference. It might not make fitness feel easy but it might make a difference to your results.