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Showing posts from April, 2017

Step away from the scale. Why weigh ins and weight loss don't match.

I have a persistant bugbear when it comes to health coaching, and it's this issue of "weight". People are often talking about "losing weight", the number on the scale becomes a focus. "If only I could just get under 65kg" they say. Or worse I see advertised "buy this supplement and you can lose 20kg in a fortnight". I've found myself frequently sitting with a weight-focussed client and asking "if you were 2 dress sizes smaller, fit and toned, but you weighed the same as you do now, could you be happy with that?" You might be surprised how challenging a question that can be. For many people, particularly those who have struggled with weight loss, that number is the absolute key. They can wake up, feeling energised and full of life, slip into those jeans that used to live hopefully in the bottom of the drawer, check themselves in the mirror and love what they see... then they step on the scales, see the number is half a kilo

Newsflash!!!! Functional as F**k is now live

As promised previously ..... My new training programme: Functional as F**k - Building strength, grace and power for effective living is now available! You can get it here on my site as a PDF document.  (and because I love you, there is a little preview link at the bottom of that page). You can get it here as an ebook. OR you can go for the printed booklet right he re I'm really pleased with how the programme turned out. There's an enormous amount of varied training in there - I've picked up programmes before and been slightly disappointed at the small pool of exercises available, and I don't want you to feel like that.  So there's about 18 different workouts in there, most of which have 3 levels of difficulty. There are bodyweight workouts, dumbell, barbell, kettlebell, suspension and a bunch of cardio. They are built into a progressive programme that gradually challenges you more and more as you get stronger over the weeks. The workouts are explained, m

Fairytales from the gym: The Personal Trainer

One of the biggest areas of misconception I have encountered in the gym world is about me! Well, people like me. There's a lot of misunderstanding about who personal trainers are, or what they do, so today, I'm going to clear that up. There are still lots of different breeds of Personal Trainer, which is great because there's lots of different types of people who need training. It's important that your trainer is a good fit for you. While much of this is relevant to many or most trainers, it comes from my perspective , my way of working and my background (as a UK Personal Trainer my scope, qualifications etc vary slightly from that of those in other areas. I'm also using the abbreviation "PT" for Personal Trainer, as is UK practice, hopefully that won't confuse readers from over the pond). A Personal Trainer can write you a progressive programme. Often when you start at a gym, you are given a programme to work with, and that's a brilliant st

Building your nutrition castle.

There's a lot of complexity when it comes to fitness nutrition. Should I be eating more protein? Should I be taking these supplements? Should I be eating after 8pm? How soon should I eat after working out? Can I eat after working out if it is after 8pm? I get asked SO MANY questions like this by my clients, and they often seem a little disappointed when I shrug and say "what would you like to do?" And I'm honestly not being facetious. The truth is, it's very unlikely to matter. For the greatest majority of people, eating at a particular time of day is not going to be the key that suddenly "fixes" their nutrition. Changing your protein shake from one with 8g of carbs to one with 5g is not going to make any impact at all. I like to think about nutrition as being like building a castle. You start with the foundation, and that is the old adage: Calories in and calories out. Consume an appropriate amount of calories for your BMR , activ