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What makes you laugh?

People who think when it comes to fitness and diets the way that works for them is the only way and that if it isn’t ‘optimal’ it’s no good.

The thing is we’re all different, different jobs, lives, bodies, appetites, minds. So whilst something may have worked or not worked for you, that doesn’t mean it will or won’t work for someone else.

Equally, whilst something might be ideal, it isn’t always going to be practical or sustainable. I mean if we did absolutely everything that was optimal we’d never have time or energy or money to do anything away from health and fitness. So in reality you need to pick the things that are most going to benefit you.

To see someone else doing something different from you and assume it’s not going to be as effective or beneficial is short sighted.

Equally going to a PT who suggests all their clients do exactly the same thing in terms of diet and training is probably not going to be effective, as again it doesn’t take into account people’s differences.

For me the confident assertions people make online when they feel like their way is better as if they are experts tends to show their lack of knowledge more than those they comment on.

When do you train?

Are you more of a night or morning person?

When do you prefer training – morning or night time?

I always preferred mornings, I hate waking up but once you up and moving it feels genuinely great to be done before most people’s alarms have gone off. Knowing you don’t still have to train later is nice if your day gets busy and stressful and it gives you a boxer kind of energy (once you get past the first few weeks when you might experience a mid morning slump!).

But getting up is hard and I have to admit that now I don’t have to to teach I struggle so evening sessions happen more often. They are good for clearing the stress from the day and giving you a chance to shake off anything that’s maybe put you in a bad mood. It eats into your evening though so I’m not totally keen. I’m not really a night owl.

I also really like training at lunch time. I’m lucky I have access to a gym in my building at work, so I can pop down, train and get back up to the office in my lunch break. That breaks up the day and gets me away from my desk, although it’s really hard to get it done when you’re having a busy day and it becomes easy to put it off.

When’s your favourite time to train?

3 Wishes

You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?

1) To be 10kg lighter?

So would you actually want this? On face value it would be great, to immediately be the size you would ideally like to be. But, without the process and learning the healthy habits to maintain this new weight how long would you be able to maintain it for? One of the things about losing weight in a sensible managed way is that you learn good habits and that helps you keep the weight off.

2) To not want to eat chocolate and all the good stuff?

If we didn’t love the taste of chocolate or whatever food we crave wouldn’t it be easier to manage out diet? Well yes, but then we’d lose the enjoyment of eating those foods and having the really good deserts when out. What we might gain in one respect would be lost in others.

3) To be able to run fast?

To suddenly be able to run a distance in a great time sounds great. But part of getting to the point where you hit your time goal or get a PB is putting in the work and feeling the sense of achievement when you then hit that goal. Just being able to do it easily might be nice but you’d lose that goal that pushes you to keep improving and try and work past stumbling blocks.

My point? As much as we might think it would be great if we could skip the hard bits of the process when it comes to our diets and fitness and just get to the goal point, very often it’s the process itself that teaches us the habits we need to learn and provides the most satisfaction and sense of achievement. The things we think might make our life easier if they just came naturally might also remove some of the joy from things. As much as I might still be tempted to ask the genie for 3 wishes would it be in my best interest?

Mental Health Day

Where is the fine line between using exercise to assist your mental health and it starting to affect your mental health?

I know many people (myself included) who at some point found that exercise helped improve mood, anxiety symptoms, depression and just general sense of well being. A common thing you will hear amongst regular exercisers after a session is ‘I needed that’.

And it’s proven that exercise is very beneficial for people’s mental health and well as physical.

It can become the opposite though. A bit like an effective drug, it can in cases become addictive, where the idea of not training has a negative effect on how a person feels.

I know myself I often feel worse about myself in general if I have a spell of inactivity and I’ve known people fearful of taking a break because it’s the thing that helps them.

The issue when this becomes the case is that it makes it hard to cope if you get ill, injured or have something that truly prevents you from training.

Tuesday was World Mental Health Day. As part of days where we look at how we can improve our mental health it’s also useful to understand the wider picture and how some things (like advice about exercise) aren’t always black and white. If you do struggle with not being able to train, to the point where that affects you negatively, as opposed to being able to train helps you, it’s worth taking a moment to consider how you can tackle this.   

4 Things I’ve Learnt

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I couldn’t pick one so here’s four instead:

1) ‘Go grab life’. Last week Nicky Newman, someone I never met but followed on Instagram passed away from stage 4 breast cancer. For 5 years after diagnosis she campaigned for breast cancer treatment and care with this message. None of us know how long we will be around or what will happen in the future and you can’t wait until the right time to try things or go places. Essentially do things that make you happy, big or small.

2) Pay attention to people’s actions not words. It doesn’t really matter if someone says all the right things if what they do doesn’t align with this.

3) You don’t always have to be kind / helpful / nice. This one’s hard because I’ve always tried to be these things, including when people don’t reciprocate, but honestly some people who consistently just behave like idiots do not deserve your energy.

4) Just because they use big words doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. OK this is less advice and more something I’ve learnt. Over the years I’ve realised that often all those words and bluster just hides the fact people don’t really know what they’re doing and equally plenty of people who are experts in their field are maybe just a bit rougher round the edges when it comes to communication. Same as in the gym when you first enter the weights room and are intimidated by all the super confident people who seem like experts and as time goes on and you learn correct technique you look at them and think hmmm … your really going to hurt yourself one day!

Small Changes

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

I came across this question the other day, and to be honest when I first set up a blog I just planned to write about myself and my own fitness, almost like a diary.

Over five years later it has developed into something that I hope is a bit more useful. I still write the odd post about me and what I’m doing (it’s cathartic right!) but I try to make the majority of posts about nutrition, training or mindset with either advice on how to overcome common problems or discussion about why certain fads or methods do or don’t work. I try to keep posts to around 300 words a time so they are quick and easy to read for people.

My blog has a modest reach (around 1,370 followers) and I share the posts on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. For the first few months it had a handful of followers and they were all friends who I’d asked to follow me, it’s gradually grown overtime, hopefully because some of those posts have been useful and made people think I could be worth a follow for future useful content.

That’s what I hope my blog provides. It makes me no money, but if every now and then one post teaches someone something useful to their fitness journey then it’s made an impact. As fitness professionals our aim is to help the people we train make positive changes to their health and lives. By also writing this blog I can hopefully spread that net of small changes a little wider (beyond people I know, have met or trained) and as the blog (hopefully) continues to grow it can hopefully also help create more positive changes to more people’s fitness journeys.

Second Half Report

On Sunday I ran my second half marathon in as many weeks. I set myself the challenge in January, wanting to get decent times and push myself. It ended up just getting both done would be the challenge.

The problem with such a short gap is that your legs were just about at full recovery when the second run came around. It meant I went into the day pretty much not knowing how it was going to feel. My body had also only just shifted that fatigue you get after a big run.

It was much hotter this time round, even at 9am. By mile 2 I felt like I was burning even with factor 50 on and I felt dehydrated by the first water station which is unusual as I can often get round a half with a few sips of water at each station – I could have happily had several bottles of water at each one this time round! I got cramp in the top on my right calf again and I’m pretty sure it was dehydration.

Manchester is flatter than Birmingham which helped a bit, as did the knowledge that I’ve recently done the distance and so could, in one way or another, do it again.

Again I was ok for the first 3, even 6 miles. Hitting the 11 km mark at around 1 hour 20. If I had stayed on pace I could heave finished in 2 hour 30. The lack of training and hang over from Birmingham though meant maintaining that pace just wasn’t going to happen. The cramp kicked in around 14 km in and I couldn’t shake it fully. I managed to walk it off a bit but it kept creeping back in so I had to keep walking it off. I slowed dramatically and introduced a bit of strategic walking, getting in at 2 hour 56 in the end.

That being said, I completed one of my goals set out at the start of the year, not exactly as I planned but I did it nonetheless. Now it’s time to decide what I want to do for the second half of the year. Hopefully now that the cough is starting to ease (it’s there still but much better) I can train properly again and either look to improve my time at this distance later in the year or look to try a different challenge all together.