With working in the personal training and fitness industry, I feel like I’ve been involved in a lot of discussions recently about New Year’s fitness goals and resolutions. This made me think about just how effective, useful and motivating resolutions are for people. Obviously New Year’s resolutions aren’t all about health and exercise goals but I’m going to focus on talking about those that are. I really think it depends on the type of person you are as to how helpful they are for you. Some people find it really motivating to have a goal to work towards and it [...]

Last weekend I completed a brilliant postnatal exercise course in London. I was really excited to further my knowledge in this area to help me work better with my postnatal personal training clients. As there’s constantly new research being conducted in this area, I was amazed at just how far things had come with regards to postnatal exercise – there really is a huge amount that can be done through exercise to enable postnatal women to function optimally and feel great both physically and mentally about their bodies after having a baby. 

I love working with postnatal women as it’s amazing [...]

A few weeks ago I bought my new favourite piece of exercise equipment – a slam ball! For those of you who haven’t heard of one, it’s a sand filled medicine ball that doesn’t bounce when you throw it to the ground. I was a little sceptical at first as I wasn’t sure how versatile it would be but it turns out that there are hundreds of exercises that you can do with it that work your legs, arms and core. You can use it for standard resistance training as a weight or can turn your workout into a high [...]

There is a common misconception that doing endless crunches and leg extensions will result in fat loss around the abdominal region and an incredible six-pack. Sadly it doesn’t quite work like that! There is far more to core strength training than spending an hour at the gym on a mat doing the typical exercises that most people associate with core work. Recently core training has become synonymous with abdominal training and the media play on this to attract people into buying the latest magazine etc with articles and programmes that will promise to transform a flabby tummy into an impressive [...]

The TRX has to be one of my favourite pieces of equipment to use both with clients and for my own training. All of my clients love TRX training – it’s fun and allows you to perform exercises that you couldn’t do with any other piece of equipment. The TRX was originally used in the Navy SEALs and is brilliant tool to develop strength, balance, flexibility and core stability. This type of suspension training uses your own bodyweight and gravity to do hundreds of different exercises and allows you to vary the difficulty and resistance depending on how you position [...]

As many of you would have seen in the news in the last few days, a 12-year study by the University of Cambridge has found that inactivity causes about twice as many deaths in Europe as obesity does. They found that 676,000 deaths each year were due to inactivity, compared with 337,000 from carrying too much weight. Although inactivity and obesity frequently go hand in hand, the researchers found that the greatest risk of an early death was in those that were classified as inactive, and this was consistent in not only obese people, but those who were of normal [...]

Normally people’s main aim when beginning personal training or exercise is to lose weight, whether it be a few pounds or few stone. A surprisingly high number of people nowadays have become completely obsessed with constantly weighing themselves and reaching their ‘goal weight’ and in doing so often forget about other improvements that have been made through training. 

There is a big difference between weight and body fat. Weight simply tells you the sum weight of the whole body’s components (muscle, fat, organs, bone, fluids etc) whereas body fat gives you a percentage of the amount of fat that your body [...]

I told myself before I went away on holiday to Crete recently that I would have a complete rest from exercise for the 10 days that I was there. After all, when you’re training hard regularly it’s really important to give you body a rest sometimes in order to avoid overtraining and injury and give your muscles the chance to repair themselves. For the first few days of my holiday I did little else but lie in the sun, swim in the sea and eat and drink endless amounts but by day 3 I started to feel sluggish and was [...]

Stress is one of the biggest causes of excess fat, along with bad food and alcohol. Even if you’re eating a healthy diet by avoiding sugar and eating good fats etc, but you’re stressed, you will still be more likely to have a chubby tummy. 

When we become worried, angry or tense, a stress hormone called cortisol as well as adrenaline floods through our bodies. The adrenaline keeps us alert and the cortisol prepares our muscles for a fight or flight response to the danger. This gives us an immediate burst of energy which can be used to either confront the [...]

HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is the ideal workout for anyone who has a busy schedule and finds it hard to fit in time for exercise. Research has shown that you can achieve far more by doing a 15 minute HIIT workout three times a week than by jogging on the treadmill once a week for an hour. High Intensity Interval Training involves alternating between very intense bouts of cardio based exercise and low intensity exercise. A HIIT session consists of a warm up period of exercise, followed by three to ten repetitions of high intensity exercise, separated by medium [...]