Category: personal training

30
Mar
2021

Heading back to the gym? Post lockdown fitness pending…

If you were a regular gym-goer or group exercise enthusiast before the events of the past year, chances are your training and physical activity levels have changed somewhat whilst facilities have been shut. Perhaps the shift to working from home has seen your daily activity levels drop or maybe it’s a long time since you had any kind of regular exercise routine but the last year has made you think more about the benefits of exercise for physical and mental health and you’re interested in getting started with something a bit more structured once gyms reopen. It may even be that the realisation that we may well be allowed out and about this summer after all has prompted you to make sure you feel and look your best. Whatever your situation, many of us are starting to think about the prospect of upping our training soon and having access to a greater variety of equipment and opportunities to exercise. Before you launch yourself into the gym or classes again, make sure you take note of my top tips below which will help you manage the transition with ease.

15
Mar
2021

Mental Health – Managing Stress and Anxiety

As if life isn’t full enough of ups and downs and complications at the best of times – this last year has provided additional challenges for most, if not all of us. With constantly changing rules and regulations, limited social contact and additional stressors such as home schooling, loss of income, health anxieties and so much more, it’s no wonder that so many of us have found our mental health to be affected. Mental health and physical health often go hand in hand and so it’s essential that we do all we can to take care of them both. Whether you’re after a little or a lot more support with your mental health at this time, this week’s blog offers some things you can try straight away which may help to lighten the load and support you in looking after yourself in these challenging times.

22
Feb
2021

What is fitness and how do we achieve it? Total fitness – home training.

Some of the most common questions that personal trainers and fitness professionals get asked include ‘What exercise is best?’ and ‘How often should I exercise?’ The answer to both of these questions are highly individual and depend on many factors including your individual goals for training, your current fitness levels and other lifestyle factors such as age and medical conditions. There are, however, a number of ‘components of fitness’ that we should be aiming to include in our training programmes and there are guidelines as to how often adults should be including activities that work on each component. With many of us building our own fitness schedules and routines at home for now, this blog aims to give you some guidelines and ideas for what to include and how often.

7
Feb
2021

Training at Home

With gyms and sporting facilities still being closed, we’re all currently destined to take control of our own training. We may struggle with knowing what to do or find ourselves stuck in a routine of doing the same things over and over. This blog explores a few of the options for at-home/outdoor training at this time which may just help you to shake things up a little and challenge your body and mind in new ways.

24
Jan
2021

Habits vs Willpower

Whenever we try to change something that we do in our everyday life – whether that’s starting something new, stopping something we no longer want to do or simply switching the way we do something, we often refer to and rely on ‘WILLPOWER’. As willpower requires effort and energy, however, as soon as we start to feel tired, stressed, busy and so on (which we inevitably do at some point) we automatically revert back to our old, ingrained patterns because they are easier and more comfortable.

10
Jan
2021

Goal Setting Success

The start of a New Year is a time when many of us naturally reflect on the past 12 months and begin to consider how we can make the year ahead just as good, or (in the case of 2020 for most of us), a heck of a lot better! New Year’s ‘resolutions’ often get a bad reputation, associated with expectations of waking up on January 1st a whole new person, with all obstacles from the past year wiped out. Of course, this doesn’t happen and so our initial optimism can quickly diminish and see us falling back into old patterns and habits within weeks or even days.

13
Dec
2020

Energy – Are you running on empty?

Energy:  ‘The strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity.’‘Power derived from the utilisation of physical or chemical resources.’ In other words – we need energy for all of our mental and physical processes and we need fuel to provide that energy. From breathing to thinking to working out to simply dragging ourselves […]

29
Nov
2020

Motivation – Top Tips

Whether it’s cleaning the house, doing a workout or prepping your food for the week – do you ever find yourself looking at the to-do list that you wrote with the best of intentions but now it comes to it you just can’t seem to get going?

15
Nov
2020

Progress Not Perfection

If you’ve ever worked closely with a Personal Trainer, teacher or coach of any kind you may well have heard the saying ‘Progress not Perfection’ as a way of encouraging you to stay consistent in the pursuit of your goals. Despite understanding the clear difference between these two words, however, many of us expect perfection […]

1
Nov
2020

Exercise and Coronavirus

2020… What a year so far! I honestly don’t know where to begin with describing this year, so I won’t even try! The one thing I know for sure is that our health and wellbeing – both mental and physical, have really been brought to the forefront of our minds. In a year of constant […]