Blue Monday and beyond

So we are at the third Monday in January, the bank balance is low, its cold, still dark in the mornings. Christmas and new year are a distant memory and the resolutions we made with such enthusiasm are taking a back seat. No wonder this day is considered the most depressing day of the year.
Some good news though things get better, after all if this is the most depressing day it can't get any worse! We are still only 19 days into the year that's 346.25 more opportunities to make the right choices. Here are a few strategies to keep you on track.

1. ASK FOR HELP
This is the one most of us have trouble with. Every January I see it, people coming to the gym with so much energy, its infectious it rubs off on others the place is buzzing. Then they hit a wall too many machines, the choice of classes, "do I do weights or cardio or both? What's a kettlebell? How does a Bulgarian bag work?"Add in conflicting advice from web sites, magazines, friends and general and you have a recipe for confusion.
Don't worry most gyms don't think of the users as an inconvenience in fact they employ people to answer questions and talk about training. Fitness instructors and personal trainers love training so much they make it their job and they love to talk about training.

2. STAY MOTIVATED
Its your goal, you chose it, nobody else its all yours. Only one person can make it happen....you. Its something personal that you spent ages planning it and wanting it, so why are you finding it hard to get motivated? A technique I often use is to close my eyes and imagine how good its going to feel when I hit my goal and get excited about it, often that's enough to refocus my mind and find that energy to keep going. If that doesn't quite cut it you can try it from the other side. I remember how I felt before I started. Think of why you started remember how you used to feel.
Either way get fired up! You can't get there if you don't have the drive to do it.

3. SET MARKERS
Setting smaller goals along the way is a great way of checking your progress. It let's you check your on the right track and helps keep you motivated. Smaller goals snowball into bigger ones, every one you hit gives you a little more confidence that your going to make it all the way.

4. ENJOY THE PROCESS
Every goal is a product of the process it took to get there, you can't go to work in the morning without doing certain things. Getting out of bed, having a shower, leaving the house, getting the bus they all add up to the end result of you arriving at work. Some of these things may not be pleasant. Getting out of a warm bed on a cold morning and waiting at a bus stop in the rain are two of my pet hates but I still do them. I know that the end result is something that I love doing and that outweighs any discomfort I feel.

5. REALISE ITS GOING TO TAKE TIME
Everything takes time, we live in a world where things happen quickly. Unfortunately things don't happen quickly enough for some people, don't get disheartened. Athletes develop over years in some cases decades, nobody ever started off a world champion. It takes hours of hard work, all the time there is a risk that person will give up before the goal has been reached and all the work up to that point will be lost. Those who don't give up, who stay the course even when it seems like little or no progress is being made are the ones who reap biggest rewards.

Hopefully these techniques will help you break through those barriers that sometimes creep up.

Responsibility

 "If it is to be, it is up to me."
Right there is the most powerful 20 letters in the world. Every day we take action, we feel hungry we make a decision to eat, we take actions based on that decision. We get up, walk to the kitchen get some food and eat it: job done! All of you reading this will have done it at least a few times in the last 24hrs.
That is a very basic example of responsibility. You decide to do something and take action to make it happen. So if we can do this hundreds of times a day for smaller every day tasks why don't we do it for bigger ones? All of a sudden bigger decisions become someone else's responsibility and so does the success or failure of the plan. Nobody changes our socks for us, we do it ourselves. As a trainer my responsibility is to develop the best plan for an individual to educate and motivate them to achieve their goals. No matter how much they want me to I can't lift the weights, swim the laps or run the distance for them they have to do it themselves.
 Responsibility leads to decisions, decisions lead to actions, action leads to changes, changes lead to success, success leads to even more success! It's an addictive thing, it makes you feel good about yourself and it all starts it taking responsibility.
If we are honest with ourselves we quickly come to realize that nobody put a gun to our head and made us eat the burger, that cigarette didn't light itself and then jump into our mouth as a form of political protest. We made that happen in the same way we chose to get out of bed and go to work. It's only when we start to take responsibility that we can change the negative behaviors and start to make the best lifestyle choices.
Start making the changes today, start with something small go to the gym instead of having a coffee, bring healthy food into work instead of buying a ready made sandwich from a coffee shop. What ever you do it's all up to you!

What counts as a success?

I was in the middle of a session with a client when I was asked a question, nothing unusual about this I get asked questions all the time. However this was slightly different from the usual “how do I get bigger arms?” or “what should I be eating?” This was a question that actually left me a bit stumped. My usual answer to a question like that is “I don’t know but I’ll find out.” It’s a bit of a catch all but it does lead me off in new directions. It motivates me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and to develop new skills that will make me a better trainer. However this was the first time in a long time I really had to think about the answer. It seems strange but the question affects not just my business and training philosophy, but my ultimate goal as a fitness professional is.

I was asked how I define success with a client….

Let me just take a moment and talk about what exactly makes me feel successful.

Like most people when I started my career, I measured success very differently than I do now, paying my bills and surviving was enough to make me happy.  However that quickly passes and in order to be motivated beyond the mundane you need something to strive for to keep yourself happy and motivated.

Achieving my goals, most certainly makes me feel successful I’m happiest when I work to a target and I can’t help but getting excited about the sense of achievement and fulfilment I get from reaching and surpassing a target. I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years and my clients have been about as diverse as you can get I’ve covered the full spectrum from world class athletes to brides and business men who just want to do some boxing to de-stress, often in the same working day!

Nearly all achieve their goals, which is rewarding. This sense of achievement ensures they go away with a smile on their face and makes me feel proud of my work.

But if I’m 100% honest it’s that’s not the best feeling I get, it’s when I get to make a difference with my clients.

One of my first clients I worked with when I moved to London was a computer technician in his mid-30s who hadn’t been serious about exercise since he finished playing school boy rugby nearly 20 years earlier. He was overweight, bad posture, low self-esteem and by his own admission in a bad way. Over the next 2 years we worked on every aspect of his training habits and lifestyle. It was a gradual process building his training plans and resetting bad habits. Then as we were chatting about his goals last year he said to me with a new found confidence, “I’ve been thinking lately, I don’t need you as much anymore.”

I know a lot of trainers who would be heartbroken by this but in fact I was actually quite proud. My mind immediately jumped back to the very first session we did in the gym, where 10 kettlebell swings would leave him gasping for breath and looking at him now where he was doing 100 in under 2mins. I instantly realised he was right I hadn’t just changed his physique I had also given him the knowledge and ability to maintain it.

My view of success changed at that moment and although hitting targets is still the most important part of it, there is something more now. It’s not enough to just hit somebody’s goals and send them away happy. I now aim to educate people as to what they need to do to stop them from falling back into their old habits.  It’s an incredibly rewarding feeling when you meet a former client, and they still look good and talk to you about your training methods and how they are still using them.

For me that’s how I measure success now.

Febuary 2012

Well January is now over and Febuary has started with loads of potential, i have a few interesting things happening this month including my olympic lifting certs in the first weekend of the month keep coming back to see how I get on.

Cormac

Great year!

Well 2011 is near its end and I was thinking about how things have changed for me in the last year.

2011 started with me being reminded why I do this job, back in January my best friend and one of the most inspirational athletes I’ve ever met Rosemary Tallon was competing in the IPC world athletics championships in Christchurch, New Zealand. For both of us this was the culmination of 2 years work and training, as she recovered from major surgery in 2009 to compete in both shot putt and discus. Due to a questionable change in classification she was unable to perform at the level that had made her the world number 1 shot putter in 2010.

In February and March, I explored the first of some new training methods I was to learn last year. I have been training with kettlebells for a number of years, but this was the first time I got serious about doing some kettlebell sport training. It proved to be an interesting learning curve and pointed me in a few new directions about how I train both clients and myself. At the end of March I completed my Advanced EKI certificate, big thanks to BJ Rule for taking us through the course it only took me a week to recover so he was going easy that day.

In April I decided to take the plunge and try some I had only seen on YouTube, when I started I couldn’t quite anticipate the effect it would have or the impact it would make. So much so that it was one of the main reasons for me starting this blog. April, May and June were taken up by my Bulgarian Bag certification and that really was an amazing journey, take the time to read my experience of it. It hasn’t just lead me to new skills but has sparked a whole new attitude in my training philosophy and reminded me just how much I loved a big physical challenge. Tommy Mathews and Steve Nave were both excellent, and a big thank you goes out to everybody who made that weekend so special.

I took a holiday in July and in August I was moved to a new flat.

In September I finally decided to get a website, I had been toying with the idea for a while and finally took the plunge since its launch in mid-October it has become a great tool to let people know about me and what I do. The site is growing all the time and my site and twitter feed are getting more popular by the day. September also marked my return to martial arts training. Since I was 7 I’ve been training in one form of martial arts or another and in September I discovered a bujinkan dojo in London that suited my working hours. It has been 10 years since I trained in that art but it has probably been the biggest influence on my training the art teaches you to use whatever works best at the time and not to get set in one way of thinking, hopefully I can live up to that ideal.

In November I was introduced to power clubs and I’m really looking forward to exploring this training method more in the New Year, but first I have a little project. In December I began preparation for my Olympic weightlifting instructor’s cert. That happens the first week in February and I’m already building up to it.

2011 was an amazing year for me, my business grew, I developed as a trainer and things just keep getting better and better. I want to thank everybody who made 2011 so good. I’ve been planning 2012 already first up is Olympic weight lifting in February. There is a lot more to come in 2012 so keep watching and thank you for reading.

Happy New Year.

We really are what we eat!

I want you to think a little bit about why we eat, not what we eat, but why. I’m not talking about any psychological motivation but the most basic reasons why we eat. Food is an important part of our day, we can’t survive without it so it’s pretty vital, and in fact it’s pretty much the same category as breathing.

Most of the food we take in gets used for two things either fuel or repair and growth. Let’s start with fuel, most people will agree that your body is an amazing machine it’s a piece of engineering that surpasses anything manmade that has ever gone on land, sea, air or beyond, and when you think about machines like the space shuttle, the SR-71, a nuclear submarine or a Ferrari Enzo you suddenly realise just how incredible it really is. We have all dreamed about owning that sports car some of you may have actually owned one, so think about the care it takes. Think about how you keep it clean, keep the engine serviced, about how it feels to dive and how good it feels as you pull into the petrol station to fill up and people’s heads turn to look at you and your lovingly cared for machine. Now I want you to think about getting out of it, walking up to the pump and you have a dilemma do you go for the premium unleaded which is going to burn cleanly, keep your engine running smoothly, give you more MPG and improves its overall performance or do you reach for the petrol, that leaves carbon deposits in your engine, pumps out soot and burns off in a few miles and makes you go slower? Bit of a no brainer really.

The other main use for food is repair and growth. Our bodies go through a constant process of renewal. Bones break down and regrow, our muscles are constantly being damaged, repairing and growing and our hair and nails continue to grow for our entire lifetime.  Although we can re process some of the materials we still need more and that has to come from an outside source. That source is our diet. When you think about that for a moment you suddenly realise that the old adage “you are what you eat” isn’t so much of a cliché after all. Again think about the sports car, what exactly is it that makes it so special? Is it the shape of the body or the power of the engine or the way it makes you feel? In reality it’s a combination of everything. When we look at a high end sports car the first thing you notice is how well built it is. The quality of its parts is really what sets it apart from the standard models.

With all the money you have spent on the car and your emotional attachment to it you’re going to take care of it. After all you may have it for 5-10 years so it needs to last.

Oh hang on our bodies are designed to last a lifetime and unlike cars when something goes wrong replacement parts aren’t always an option.

Like anything in our life with our food we have choice, but that choice goes beyond taste. It affects our health, our physique and ultimately our happiness. So before you make that choice ask yourself do you want to be made from the best of everything, run on quality fuel and performing at the highest level you can, or would you rather be slow, inefficient and not really getting anywhere?

You decide!

Website

For the last month I've been a little bit distracted and haven't given my blog as much attention as I really should, but thats about to change.
Rest assured for the last month I have been working hard and here is the result.

www.cormacquinnpt.co.uk

Have a look this will give you more info about who I am and what I do.

Enjoy.