Author: Jarrat Wood

Everyone loves doing a personal best (PB). It doesn’t matter if it is lifting weights, running, swimming, riding. It’s a great feeling that you have just taken your body to a level which it has never achieved before. What maked this blog so special is that as we age a lot of us start to feel like a PB is not attainable. I don’t like this mindset. I like the old dog that wants to learn new tricks. I like the attitude that says you are never to old to change and I like an attitude that knows that your body will adapt to any new stimulus you put it through and its response can be remarkable given enough time and the correct progression strategy.

Nigel is one of my clients who has such an attitude and last week he ran a 5km PB of 19mins 50secs at the age of 40! This is he how we did it:

You might recognise the image above from your favourite social media platform. This image went viral and was a demonstration by Melanie Ventura about how easy it is to fake a before and after shot. You can read about how Melanie did this by clicking here. 

Also this week a friend of mine (thanks Kelly) wrote an enthusiastic and well constructed rant regarding the (health and) fitness industry.

“Rant: The fitness industry promotes a sort of body fetishism that produces a strategy for narcissistic survival and supposed emancipation, but that is simply bringing about a ‘cultural revolution’ that reproduces the very worst features of the constrained and superficial civilisation that the industry seeks to criticise. Fitness is not about youth and sexiness. It’s about fitness. Stop showing me sexy people who happen to have abs and can lift their foot above their botoxed face without sweating. Show me someone who can do their first triathlon, or who has put off osteoporosis for another 10 years.”

The unfortunate truth is that this argument is one that I find very difficult to refute.

Recently, Belinda reached another fantastic weight loss milestone of 20kgs. This was achieved in less than 3 months. In my opinion Belinda has done almost everything conceivable to assist in her weight loss in a healthy and graded manner without risking injury or excessive dietary restrictions. It is a great achievement and one I thought deserved to be shared. I interviewed Belinda and here are her own thoughts behind her weight loss success:

Milo of Croton was a wrestler of note who lived in the sixth Century BC. It is said that the great wrestler once lifted a 4-year-old bull on his shoulders, roasted it and ate it all in one day. Impressive, no? What I find most impressive about this story is how Milo was able to train and develop the strength to carry the bull. The tale goes that every day from when the calf was born, Milo would go out and lift the calf. As the calf grew so did Milo’s strength. Modern sport scientists would call this a perfect example of progressive overload in training. No doubt, modern day animal activists would probably have something to say as well! It is amazing what can be achieved when the sum of years of training is accumulated. Recently, the performance of two of my clients gave me pause to reconsider that we all have to start somewhere but eventually everyone can achieve great results over time.

After years of training for distance running and triathlon as a teenager I developed a repertoire of training sessions that improve cardiovascular fitness rapidly. It’s now thirteen years later and I still can’t believe that the fitness industry is so far behind sport science in teaching people to apply basic principles to improve their cardiovascular fitness. The sessions I learnt in the 90s are still some of the best and well known methods to improve aerobic fitness. Here are the 4 basic sessions that EVERYONE should be doing to improve their cardiovascular fitness:

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Last week Belinda went past the 30kg mark. She cruised past it in fact. 4 Months and 30kgs gone. I’ve blogged about Belinda before so she is familiar to most of you (you can read more about her weight loss journey here). Here is an update on what we’ve seen and experienced from the 20kg mark to the 30kg mark. 3 Fables to celebrate 30kgs:

Your Health is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

I watched a fantastic TED Talk during the week on Success. The crux of the message from the talk is that the biggest contributor to success across a wide variety of fields is grit: the ability to be both resilient and perseverant in your field of choice to attain the highest level of competency. You can view the full talk here. 

This talk had so many parallels with my approach to health I had to blog about it here:

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I could not wait to write this blog post. It’s been a pretty exciting weekend:

One of the great perks of being a personal trainer is seeing people achieve something they never thought they could or would. This weekend I experienced that feeling no less than 3 times. Stavroola Anderson and Nigel Janson are two clients of mine who took part in the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon on Sunday Morning and Claire Moran has been working with me to improve her speed to increase her chances for selection in the NSW State Touch Football Team. Claire had her final trial on Friday and I received the first of my 3 excited text messages from her on Saturday: