Uncategorized

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.

Joomla 3.3 stable version will be shipped with 5 main features and will raise up the minimum requirement for PHP to version PHP 5.3.10, keeping Joomla 3.3 th…

JA Extension Manager component is free Joomla extension for Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3. It's used to manage your Joomla extensions easily: remote installation, …

JA Social Locker module is the best choice if you want to boost your campaign, it helps increase traffic to your site via Facebook, Twitter, Google plus by e…

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:

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:

This feed URL is no longer valid. Visit this page to find the new URL, if you have access: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=210594579032998

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:

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.

This Saturday is the inaugural “Accidental Runners” 5km event. I have organised this event to provide a supportive and encouraging first step for inexperienced runners to move into social and perhaps, eventually, competitive running. It is targeted towards novice runners and clients who have never competed in a running event before. Some of my more talented clients will also be joining us to support and lead the newest of the “accidental runners”. This means there is no better time to write a blog with my top 10 tips for preparing for an event: