So let me first say that this is not my usual post.

Hi all,

So its the middle of winter and people are starting to drop off.  As much as you would like to think that you arent getting slack at all, i think that we are all guilty of succumbing to the winter comforts of sitting inside in the warmth, watching tv and having some winter comfort food.

So as I have said in my previous blog entry, how bad do you really want to achieve your goals?  Do you really want it or do you think that you just want it?

So I have put together some of the main things that normal people do in winter and what you should do instead to make sure that you really do achieve your goals.

Keep Working Out

At this time of year most people will think that because we cover our bodies with layers of clothing that we really dnot have to keep up with their workouts....well because lets face it, we can hide those extra few kilos with clothes and no body will be none the wiser....but then what happens?

It becomes spring and slowly into summer and all of a sudden you have to spend the first 3 months or so getting back to the point where you left off because you were toio lazy to keep working out.

So what you are going to do is keep up with your workouts and keep up with getting your results.  Imagine how great you are going to lookl and feel when spring and summer roll around and everyone is complaining about how out of shape they are....just don't let yourself become one of those people.

Manage your time

We have all hear the excuse "I dont have time to exercise".  My response to that is "bullsh&t".  What you really meant to say was that you cant be bothered to find the time to exercise, or it is not the most convenient time to work out.  You will complain about work commitments, family commitments, holidays etc;  truth is that all you have to do is to make your workouts a priority and you will find the time.

Lets face it, you can get up earlier to do a workout if you really wanted to.  It is not convenient for me to get up at 4.30am to workout, but I do it because it is not convenient for me either to end up unfit, unhealthy and not be able to do the fun things in life!

   If you are serious you will find time.  Also if you are going to use the   excuse that you cant get to the gym when the gym is open....don't forget the hardest workouts are sometimes by using your bodyweight and nothing else.

So stop the excuses and start managing and using your time effectively

Keep up the fluids

So ok it is not 40 degrees and you are drinking loads of water, and because you are cold you don't want to drink your water. Well most people  will use this an excuse and start drinking coffee instead of water or other hot drinks....because it makes them feel good.

Well not you, you are going to suck it up and realize that the body doesn't care if it is winter or summer, day or night...it needs to be hydrated no matter what.  It will make yolu feel better, your digestion will be better, your organs will function better, you will recover better, your skin will look better, your muscles will be more defined...do I really need to go on???

So suck it up people and start sucking down that water during the winter.

Don't Stuff Yourself

What most people do during this time of year is to start gorging themselves on food.  They start eating loads of bad comfort food and when they eat they all of a sudden get the urge to eat 3 times more the amount of what they really need.  They use these foods to make themselves feel good.

What you are going to do.  You are going to concentrate on grazing throughout the day and make sure you are getting your 4 - 6 meals a day and that way you will always feel full and you wont have the urge to stuff yourself silly.

Be smart with your food and don't over do it!  Just realize that you will continue to eat properly.

Keep Up Your Immunity

We all know that during winter people tend to get more sick than usual.  So you are going to combat this with keeping your immunity up.  Firstly you are already doing your regular workouts so that is a given, and that will help a lot.

But you are also going to keep up your nutrition.  You are also going to not get complacent on hygiene.  You will make sure that you wash your hands reguarly, and that you throw away tissues and things like that. 

I know that I may sound likke your mother by saying this, but she does have a point when it comes to keeping yourself free from germs that will get us sick.

Most of all guys, the thing to do is to avoid the temptation of being a slob!  Most people will go home after work to get their workout gear thinking that they will get straight to the gym or their class.  Come on, we all know why people do this...its because they can sit on the couch and go..."I will go tomorrow...its too cold outside now"

Stop being one of these people.  Instead of doing this, take your workout gear with you and instead of going home go straight to the gym or your class.

Stop and identify what it is that stops you from getting the exercise that you need during the winter.  Once you have identified this, then remedy it straight away.

I have said it before, and I am going to say it again....but how much you will do this will depend on how badly you really want it.

What Others Say..

It is easy for me to preach all of this, but sometimes the best advice can always come from other people that are in the gym and still working out day in and day out....so here is a just a few bits of advice from others in my gym on how they keep motivated during the cold weather.

"First is that training has become part of my everyday routine. Simple as

that. I need to train. If I don't I am very moody, and I don't like to be

moody, so I train.

Second is, I don't know about everyone else, but all I seem to do in winter

is EAT!!!! And it is not always the right food, so if I don't keep training"

"YOU NEED TO WANT IT AS BAD AS THE 

NEED TO BREATHE.      EVERYONE CAN REACH THEIR GOALS!    SOME QUICKLY AND 

SOME SLOWLY, BUT EVERYONE CAN DO IT!     NOTHING IS TOO HARD OR OUT OF 

REACH!    YOU JUST HAVE TO WORK HARD TO GET IT!     NOTHING WORTHWHILE IS EASY!"

Now go and get it and tell the cold weather that it can stick around if it wants but it will not do anything to stop you from getting your goals.

Until next time, train hard but train smart. 

Joe

Ok All,

Time for some hard hitting truths people.

I hear it time and time and time and time and time again...well you get the picture.

"I am not getting the results that I want. " they all say it.

The reason most people are not getting their results is because they dont really want them...they only think that they want them.  They will use any excuse to justify why they havent got them.

People, time to man (or woman) the F*&k up and start realising that if you really want your results...I mean really really want your results...you make no excuses for nothing and you do EVERYTHING you can to get them.  

I wanrt you to watch these clips.  Please watch them all the way through and then ask yourself are you really doing everything you can to get your results?? 

Hi All,

Hi all,

Well I wanted to talk about something that more probably than not will offend some....so what else is new I guess

General society may think that we that there is nothing that we can learn from people that are in prison.  Well I tend to disagree.

Granted they have made mistakes in their lives and they do have to pay for their crimes / mistakes.  However, one thing I prersonally am learning from prisoners is that they have a great knowledge in buidling the body to be extremely strong and powerful.  Infact I would say that majority of prisoners are more stronger than any of the pussy, jacked up steroid taking bodybuilders that you will see in any of the current pussy commercial gyms. And not only are they way more stronger and powerful than most people on the "outside" they achieve this without any gyms or real weight equipment......they do this by using their own bodyweight.

Let's have a look at why and how they do this

 

WHY

well in prison your survival really does depend on how strong and powerful you are.  If you are weak you will not survive in prison.  Respect is given to those who have proven that they are the guys who are as strong and powerful as all hell.

 

HOW

Well as you would imagine, prisons don't have the best gym equipment around....in fact most prisons have little or none weight equipment and if they do then they are extremely old.  So how do these guys become insanely strong?  How do they have physiques that would be the envy of any try hard wussy commercial gym goer? How do they posses the strength that would put any jacked up steroid abusing bodybuilder to shame?

 

Well easy, they use their bodies!  What is the point of being able to do a bench press of over 200kg if you can't even pull your own body weight? 

 

Lets just quickly define (well in my opinion) what being strong is.  Being strong is not about having the biggest muscles of anyone else.  It is not bragging rights of how much you can bench press or bicep curl, it is about how quickly and effortlessly you can move, pull, squat, throw, run etc your own body weight.

 

So prisoners use their own body to get strong by doing routines of push ups, pull ups,square, handstands, ab work, flexibility and so on.   You may ask what do they do when they can do push ups all day or the same with pull ups?  Well they use only one arm to do their push ups or pull ups or only squat on one leg or even more impressive they use their fellow prisoners as weights they can lift. 

 

It really sadens me to think that people are so nieave that they think that they can not learn from these pepole in the way of fitness and strength.  Today there are to many "pretty boys" jacking themselves up on steroids to think that they are getting strong.  In fact they are making themselves weaker with every workout they do....why?  Because they never use their one body weight.  They use machines or benches or weight belts or any other piece of crap that the bodybuilding world tells them that they need to use.  

 

So what happens they never work the body to build itself to be able to support the stupidly heavy weights that they try to lift.  They destroy their ligaments, cartilage, supporting muscles and end up down the track leading a life that is full of pain and weakness!

 

Not so with these prisoners, their bodies are being used the way that man was designed to move, and hence they make EVERY PART of the body strong.  These guys will well into their 70's and still be stronger than any of your 20 something steroid abusing body builders.

 

Still not convinced?  Ok last example.  Take a look at the body of a professional male gymnast...especially one who specialises on the rings.  Their bodies are extremely impressive.  They have arms the size of people's legs, and yet they achieve this by using their own body weight and no weight programs what so ever!

 

So if you want to get super strong, then take your ego out and start hitting bodyweight routines. 

 

Hey, if you ever come across anyone who has been in prison, and has a very impressive physique and a lot of strength, the most valuable thing you could do is to pick their brains on how they trained on the "inside".  Heck I would happily pay for this type of information.....that is how much I value it!

 

Ok that's enough from me, until next time

 

Train hard but train smart.

 

Joe 

Hi All,

Hi All,

Hi All,

Hope you are all doing great.

Everyone wants to get fit and healthy....but the problem is do you really know what that means?

Do you really know what it is to be overall fit?  Do you think that a marathon runner has a great overall fitness?  Most people would say yes, and if you did well I am going to tell you that you are wrong.

A marathon runner is only fit to run a marathon.  Have you seen how skinny they are?  Do you ever see a marathon runner with a well built body?  Of course not, they are designed to run long distances and nothing else....what if they had to lift a heavy object at the end of the race?  Do you really think that they could do it?

I am not having a go at marathon runners here, I think that they deserve a lot of credit to be able to do what they do, but I am just using this an example.

Basically athletes are fit for one thing...to do what they compete in and nothing else. And that is fine if that is what their dream and goal is.  But they will never be fully overall fit for everyday needs or emergencies.

Now take a firefighter, these people are what I consider to be fully overall fit.  Same as a SAS soldier etc;  These people need to be able to do everything...they need to work in extremely unfavourable conditions, they need to be able to run, jump, lift, throw, pull, sprint, have incredible endurance...and all the while being able to maintain a clear and focused mind!  This is what I consider fit to be.

This is why I train the way I do, and why my clients go through some extremely tough workouts.  I train myself and my clients to be everyday fit.  They run, jump, sprint, pull, lift, push, go for endurance, I push them mentally and the end result is that not only do they obtain incredible bodies, but they are overall fit and extremely mentally tough.  This is what is going to help them in their everyday life, or if an emergency comes up.

I have been critiscied again and again by so called "experts" about the way I go about my training.  These experts are pretty much scientists....they study how to get the optimum benefit out of the body and how to train each of the systems within the body.  So they tell me that I am only supposed to push people hard for 90sec and then they need to rest for 3 minutes and then they can go again...or some other so called perfectly calculated numbers that they need to work and rest for.

And this is where they have a go at my training, because I dont do it their way!  You know what, these so called "experts" probably have never done anything that they are preaching anyway.   But they have the right to have rubbish my training methods because I dont allow people to rest after 90sec of work.....to those people I say "save your breath and go tell your opinions to someone who actually gives a damn!"

So my methods may be a little unorthodox at times, but they are tried and tested and it works!  When you do something that not everyone else is doing you are going to have your haters....my theory is, bring them on.  The more people that hate what I am doing means the more that it is working.

Ok here is an example of your everyday fitness.  Lets say someone you care a lot for is trapped under a heavy object and they may possibly be over 1km away and you have no mode of transport.  What are you going to do?  Are you going to start running, then stop after 90sec so you can rest for another few minutes and then start going again....and then to finally get there and you are too tired and weak to lift anything?

Or would you rather have trained past your limits every time and know that you are physically and mentally capable of running the full distance and still being strong enough to lift objects?

I am not going to tell you which to choose....but I know which one I would want to have!

So next time someone tells you that they think that they are fit, chances are they are exactly that....they "think" that they are fit! 

I know what I do works, I know that it is extremely hard and most people dont want to do it because it is so hard.  But those that do, are heads and shoulders above 99% of the population in regards to fitness!!

Until next time
Train Hard but Train Smart
Joe

So you all know my take on commercial gyms! 

If you dont know about them well go and have a look at some older posts and you will see what I think about them and all the reasons of why they are basically a load of crap!

So what does the formula at the top mean?  "Commercial Gym + Fitness Test = Joke!"

So I have come across another reason to add to the list.  And strangely enough it is about them not letting people achieve their maximum fitness!  Who would of thought that a gym would let you push to your absolute fitness levels...what a joke!!

I know a woman who is 60.  I will admit that she is not an elite athlete at this age, but she has just done the Kokoda trail (if you do not know what this is then look it up and see how tough this trek actually is), she hikes probably over 20kms each week, riding a bike most days of the week and keeping pretty fit.

So she wants to get fitter so she joins the local gym....who are only to happy to take her money and then charge her extra for a comprehensive fitness test....seemed like a good thing to do to see where her fitness was at....well so she thought.

She goes to this fitness test and they once her heart rate hits 135 they say that they have to stop the fitness test??  What The F*&^

She wasnt even breaking a sweat, told them that she gets her heart rate up to around 170 and it is fine.  But no they say that she is too old to get her heart rate that high.

So way to go on boosting someone's self image and keeping them motivated to go to their gym.  In reality she was probably more fitter than the person giving the test!

If commercial gyms were serious about peoples well being and health and not just about the money, they would encourage older people to get fitter and push them to their limits. They should be professional enough to know when and how to push someone to their limits and when they havent....the problem is that the person who was giving the fitness test was probably not even qualified!!

If you think that every one that works in a commercial gym is highly qualified....you need to think again.  Most of the times they will have no qualifications and if they do they will have no experience!

I believe that age is not a hindrance when it comes to fitness.  Anyone has the capablilities of being fit if they want.

I have people around their 50's in my gym, and I can tell you that they are probably more fitter than 80% of the 20 something year olds that are walking around at the moment.

Todays gyms are a joke.  I see it time and time again with people that go to commercial gyms.  They walk into my gym, tell me how fit they are because they used a personal trainer for months on end and they told them they were really fit....10 minutes later they are struggling to keep going...and the warm up hasnt even finished yet!!

The people in my gym are awesome!  They work hard, I push them hard regardless of their age.  In fact the older they are the more I push them.  They would reach their max heart rate probably several times in our workouts and they are perfectly fine....so why cant other gyms allow older people to push themselves...maybe its because they have such inexperienced people working there that they have no idea on how to push them properly....for the commercial gym it is all about bringing in as much money as possible and spending as least possible on staff....not a good formula!!

I know that this is going to piss off a few people.  But hey, I will always tell it like it is and if I am not offending at least a few people then I know that I am not doing my job properly. 

So if you are getting towards the 50 mark and people tell you take it easy and that you cant workout too hard, then tell them to take a hike and not only will you work hard, but you will show them all up while doing it!

And if your young, you better keep working at your best..because if you dont these people will show you up quick smart!

So until next time
Train Hard but Train Smart
Joe

Ok so you all know what my take is on laziness....well if you dont then let me refresh your memory.

Basically, you either do it or you dont.  There is no in between!  If you dont do it, stop making excuses for yourself to try to make yourself feel better for your own laziness and stupidity....and for god sake we dont want to hear you complain to every person with all of your excuses.

So the other night, I am with a group of people they are watching another fitness weight loss reality show....ok so it was the biggest loser.  

Lets just get one thing straight with these shows.  They are for pure entertainment and nothing else.  And if you think that it is "reality" then you better get a "reality check".  They dictate the show so that it is entertaining.  If you think that a person can lose 15+kgs in a week and it is also safe and healthy then you need that reality check sooner rather than later. 

The other thing that annoys me about these types of shows is that it actually sabotages peoples efforts when they try to lose weight because they realise that they are not losing weight at the same rate as the people on the show...of course they arent....thats because the people on the show arent either....they just manipulate it so that you believe it (but I digress....maybe that should be a topic of another blog )

Ok so the people watching are obese (i was around these people not by choice), have had heart attacks, have had multiple heart by pass surgeries etc; and yet do you think that this motivates them to get off their ass and stop drinking the beer and actually do something about it?  Nope!  But these people will be the first to complain about their health and how sick they are and how it is always someones else fault.

One of actually asked me "how can I lose weight", after talking for 30sec, the response is "Oh that is too hard.  I havent got the time for that.  You dont understand that I cant do that...whinge whinge!" 

But at the same time they are getting all excited about someone else losing weight and doing all sorts different challenges etc;

So here they are watching people changing their lives but to them it is all entertainment.  They dont get that if they want to make the same differences in their lives that they have to actually get off their butt and make some changes and do something about it!  

So when these people are in hospital with their next heart attack (or  6 feet under), I wonder if they are going to wish that they had done something different, or actually made some changes in their lives?  But I guess it is all too hard for them.

It is this mentality that really drives me nuts! 

Seriously, can you get excited over someone losing weight and getting fit and healthy while sitting on the couch downing another beer?  I may be different to others, but I just cant fathom this for the life of me!!! 

What I have to learn is that there will be people in life who will always whinge, they will always complain, they will moan about all their diiificulties....but then when presented with a solution they will much rather lie down and try to seek attention from others telling them it is ok that they are the way that are because of all their problems!!!

These people can not be helped, they will keep our medical professionals in business because they will always be wanting / needing another pill for something else that is wrong with them

So if you are serious about your training, about reaching your goals, about being healthy....then please please avoid people like this.  They will frustrate you and maybe even worse their stinking attitude will end up rubbing off!

So flick these people off as fast as you can and go hit a hard workout and keep feeling great about yourself.

Until next time,

Train Hard but Train Smart
Joe