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As with most life-changing events I have experienced, running happened to me by accident. And, despite my physio, Amanda’s, inspiring assertion that I am a “natural runner”, anyone who has known me for any length of time, including myself, remain shocked that I have started, let alone persisted, with this activity. The main reason being that a key feature of my personality is a complete absence of any intrinsic motivation to engage in physical exercise merely for the sake of it (Sometimes mistakenly referred to, by the ill-informed, as laziness). The other reason is that I have a chronic mental illness, punctuated by episodes of depression. 

 

I can easily explain having overcome the first impediment – the personality problem, as resulting from a combination of three main factors.

The concept of cognitive re-framing has a variety of definitions and most of them get a little too bogged down in psychological jargon. I prefer to define and explain cognitive re-framing as teaching ourselves to perceive the same experience in a more positive way. Sometimes cognitive re-framing comes naturally from experience. For example, the first time you ever spoke in public you were probably very nervous. With experience, you can alleviate those nerves by perceiving the experience differently. You may still get a little nervous but you can learn to generate this into excitement and potentially a better performance. Let’s consider some ways we can use cognitive re-framing to improve our health…

This week I’d like to give some advice on how to structure your training sessions. For this purpose, I’m going to assume that you are someone who wants to train for health and fitness, not someone who wants to train for a specific sporting event or for a bodybuilding competition. This advice would work well for someone who wants to train in the gym anywhere from 1 to 4 times per week and get an all-round workout each time they come in.

 

Yes, it’s that time of year again… Silly season is officially OVER and it’s time to stop treating your body like it’s a dumping ground for the World’s worst products and time for a little TLC. Here are my top 10 tips for getting back into training in the New Year if you’ve had a little break from exercising:

 

I was discussing with one of my new recruits, Belinda, about her progress so far. I have to say I wasn’t expecting this response. Sure, Belinda had lost 10kgs in a little over 6 weeks which is certainly impressive – but easy, surely not? This result was made even more astounding considering the weight loss was achieved across a time period covering Christmas and the New Year – traditional blow-out times of the year for many people. When Belinda started her first session she was 159.7kgs. She now weighs 147.3kgs with much more weight loss on the way. Here’s how we did it…