Client Success Story: A Tale of Two Runners

ByJarrat Wood

A Tale of Two Runners:

This weekend I had 2 representatives in the Sydney Running Festival – Matt and Nigel. I wanted to relate their stories as neither of them would confess to being ‘natural’ runners but over time they have both become runners, and excellent runners at that! It’s a tale of two runners that can inspire anyone to improve and do something they have never done before and we begin with Matt:

Eating for Health Vs Eating for Weight Loss

ByJarrat Wood
Eating for Health Vs Eating for Weight Loss
 
Recently I have had many discussions with clients regarding their nutritional habits. As usual, most of these discussions centre around weight loss but with a recent, new twist. I am finding that some people are becoming a little confused by what is healthy and what is low in calories so in this article I strip the confusion back to the basics. 
 
We need to eat for 2 reasons: No. 1 is to consume all of the vitamins, minerals, fibre, carbohydrates, protein and fat that is essential for our body’s optimal function; No. 2 is to fuel our body with sufficient energy to complete all tasks sufficiently. The best place to start for anyone looking to refine their diet in regard to either of these 2 aspects is www.eatforhealth.gov.au. Here you will find the Australian Dietary Guidelines based on an extensive review by Australia’s best doctors, dietitians and research scientists. The recommendations were updated just this year (2013).

As a Tough Mudder I Pledge That…

ByJarrat Wood
As the pledge was read and repeated like Wedding vowels, with earnest and gusto by the 600 odd participants in the second wave of Mudders about to embark on the 18 kilometres of mud, obstacles and some say torture on a hot Sunday morning, you could excuse the four of us for not stopping for a moment and think – what did we just sign up for? Our decision to take on the super-human Mudder course began in August.  Adam, Mark, Tom and myself had a discussion in the office one day and the next minute we were entered as ‘Heavy Ten’, in reference to the state of a thoroughbred race track after the maximal amount of rain it can endure before the races are abandoned. When we approached Jarrat to tell him the good news, his eyes lit up, for Jarrat this meant one thing, an excuse to make them feel more pain and strain than normal.

The Difference Between Osteopaths and Physiotherapists

ByJarrat Wood
This is a question I am asked almost every day and it’s one I find really difficult to answer. The main difficulty lies in the fact that to answer this I need to generalise what it is that osteopaths do and what it is that physiotherapists do. The other thing I find difficult is defining what it is that physiotherapists do, seeing as I didn’t actually study it myself and so most of what I know about them comes only from what people have said to me based on the times they have been to see a physio. 
So based on what I think to be true, here are what I believe to be the similarities and differences.

A Word On Motivation

ByJarrat Wood

Recent discussions with clients have lead me to revisit the importance of goal-setting and planning. You have probably all heard of the SMART principle which states that goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. When I conduct Certificate IV Fitness Courses this is the principle that we teach our students to use for developing goals for clients. This is a great system. It’s memorable and easy to apply and you can cross-check your goal with each of the 5 points to ensure that it is an appropriate goal. Once we have a goal set we can then work backwards to develop a plan that will deliver the client to the goal. Where I have found that this principle runs into trouble is when the goal does not provide sufficient motivation for the client to undertake the necessary changes in their lifestyle to achieve the goal. So our goal can be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound but if motivation is poor then our goal can easily slip by. Which brings me to my concerns over the word “motivation” and our reliance on someone or something providing the motivation for us?

An Accidental Runner

ByJarrat Wood
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.

Cognitive Re-Framing: Let’s Change the Way We View Key Health Habits

ByJarrat Wood
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…

How to Structure a Training Session

ByJarrat Wood
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.