Category Archives: personal training

Everyone knows that exercise is good for us and that we should all be doing it regularly but many people are unaware of just how many health benefits there are. Here are some to keep you motivated with your exercise:

- Higher levels of regular activity are associated with lower mortality rates for both younger and older adults.

- Regular physical activity decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly coronary heart disease.

- Both the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK strongly advocate exercise to help reduce the risk of all types of cancer. Colon cancer has been found to be reduced [...]

Everyone exercises differently – whilst some of us enjoy the sociability that a group class or run with a friend brings, others could think of nothing worse and would rather pop in their earphones and head to the gym alone. Whilst I love going to group boxing and HIIT classes, I have always tended to do my resistance training sessions and runs by myself as I find that I’m able to focus better and become less distracted. More recently however I have started training with friends and have found there are many benefits.

Firstly I think it makes a big difference [...]

Recently a few of my clients have signed up to do half marathons and marathons and we’ve been discussing ways to initially get them going with training. 

For many people the mere thought of subjecting their mind, soul and body to an endurance run is enough to make them feel exhausted – and to be frank, who can blame them? For most of us, a full time career and 24 hour family commitments make the sofa and TV remote look far more appealing than getting out to train for such an event. Running a full marathon or half marathon is an [...]

I’ve recently been doing a lot more interval running training in my own workouts to prepare for my triathlon in the summer and have seen massive improvements in my speed and endurance so thought this should be something I write about this week.

Interval training is all about mixing up short high bursts of speed with slower recovery phases which means that it works both your anaerobic and aerobic systems. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these systems, here’s a quick biology lesson: During the high intensity parts of the run the anaerobic system is used and uses the [...]

Many women think that lifting heavy weights will turn them into some kind of bulky bodybuilder. This is hardly surprising when the media suggests that women should be doing gentle, ladylike exercise and using weird and wonderful exercise gadgets to tone and sculpt their bodies. This means that a lot of women tend to believe that they should stick to bodyweight exercises or very light weights to avoid bulking out.

People hugely underestimate just how hard it is to build muscle. Men have about 16 times more testosterone than women and even those who train ridiculously hard at the gym five [...]

Some of my clients have skiing holidays booked for over the Christmas and New Year period and so for the past six weeks I have really been focusing their sessions around strengthening ski-specific muscles to improve their performance and avoid injuries when they’re out there. When skiing you’re on your feet for most of the day and so it’s really important to build up your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves. The best kinds of training to do for your legs before going skiing are functional resistance exercises. You want to try to focus on exercises that involve a whole range [...]