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  • 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).

  • Excellence is Not an Act, But a Habit

    ByJarrat Wood
    Some of you may recognize the title of this article as a paraphrased quote from Aristotle. The full quote attributed to the Greek philosopher is “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” It resonates with me as a personal trainer as day in, day out I see clients who are very good at what they do regularly and conversely have a weakness in the elements of their training they choose to ignore. This can be explained away quite simply as human nature. We have a natural tendency to avoid activities and/or exercises which cause us discomfort or are difficult. We also have a natural tendency to de drawn to the activities and/or exercises which we are good at and are comfortable with. This can be exacerbated in a gym setting where other people are watching and of course, no-one likes to feel embarrassed.
     
    So if we use Aristotle’s great wisdom and apply it to our training we need to start developing a habit and over time excellence is a very real possibility. Some would say it is even inevitable with enough time and effort. In this way a weakness can become a strength and something we don’t enjoy can become very enjoyable. This all comes down to planning and having a training schedule that deals with your strengths and weaknesses appropriately to achieve excellence. This week, I share the core components of my own training plain as a guide to how to do this:

  • Progression In Training (Science Meets Art)

    ByJarrat Wood
    Simply put, progression in training is where we apply a stimulus to a client and an adaptation occurs. This adaptation may occur in any aspect of a client’s fitness. We then apply a new stimulus and another adaptation occurs. Rinse, wash, repeat. It’s a simple process that can easily be over-complicated by some personal trainers. We also know that applying the same stimulus once the initial adaptation has occurred will lead to the same result (homeostasis). This is why someone who trains regularly but with a monotonous program will stop progressing. A new stimulus is required. It also why I often quote to my clients: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. We don’t treat other aspects of our lives in this way so why should our fitness be any different.

  • 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…

  • 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.