Looking Back, Looking Forward

I hope you had a good Christmas and looking forward to having a healthy and prosperous new year.

At this time of the year it's good to look back and reflect on what you have achieved in he past 12 months.  This is an important exercise to do as this helps with maintaining motivation, looking at the goals that have been achieved in your lives during the year and can mentally pat yourself on the back.  Also you can see if there were any goals you didn't achieve or could improve on.

With this information you can use these as a basis for your new goals or choose completely new ones  you can set yourself for the new year.

It's important to set yourself goals in order to help stay focused and achieve what you want.  If you don't then you will just flounder around and dreaming.

The main difference between someone who achieves their goals and turns their dreams into reality and those who just dream and wish is goal setting.

Be careful not to set yourself too many goals as this won't help you stay focused and you run the risk of failing to achieve anything by the end of the year and will lead to demotivation.  Choose no more then 3 goals and stay focused.

Check regularly how you are doing and making sure you are moving forward and not stagnating.

Make sure your goals are S.M.A.R.T (see below) in order to help fully to focus you and achieve your goals.

So enjoy the rest of your holidays and here's to a fantastic 2019.

The Best Things in Life Are Not Always Instant

It seems that we are all living in an increasingly fast paced world where our patience is getting thinner each year.

I'm sure you've noticed it too, out while driving and getting beeped at the lights for not going the second the lights turn to green, or a fellow customer behind you in the shopping queue tuts when they feel you are spending too long at the checkout.

Modern technology has developed an environment now that we expect everything to be instant.  We have e-mails rather than mail, fast food delivery to our door rather than going out to a restaurant and  'Google' rather than having to wait until the library opens and look it up in a encyclopedia.

This expectation of instantness I've found has spilled over into the world of fitness and sport.  Everyone it seems wants to lose weight instantly, forgetting it's taken years to put on the weight and therefore will take more than a few days to lose, or become a world class footballer after only one session.

I see quite a few people coming to my classes and they try to do the advanced movement, even though I've offered them the easier version as well. But they don't want to do the easier version, oh no they want to do the hardest version, even though they either have never done a fitness class before or it was years ago.

Then I don't see them again as they thought it was too hard.  They didn't appreciate that some of my clients have been doing exercise for years and have 'earned' the right to do the more advanced movements as they started at a lower rate and slowly progressed to where they are now.

But some people are so impatient that they want to by pass all the hard work and the sense of achievement after so many failures and be a better and stronger version of themselves before they have even started.  Such a shame as if they realised that somethings in life such as getting fitter, takes time but it's so much worth it in the end as your quality of life increases and you become a stronger and better version of your present self, both mentally and physically. But because they give up so quickly they are greatly missing out.

I always remember my old karate instructor telling us that nothing of worth can be learnt in an instant
and anything of any true value takes time to develop but it will be worth it in the end.

Somewhere along the line I think our society has forgotten this.

Exercise may help increase Lifespan with those with Cancer

According to a review of 71 studies researchers wrote in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that those patients who got active after being diagnosed with cancer had a higher chance of living longer than those who didn't.

Researchers conducted a meta-analysis to see the link between exercise and cancer deaths and found that patients who followed the government guidelines of performing a minimum of  2.5 hours of moderate exercise a week had a 27% lower chance of death by cancer then those who didn't.


They also studied the general population and found that performing the recommended exercise guidelines reduced the chances of dying from cancer by 13%.

The authors of the study concluded, "Our study supports that current physical activity recommendations reduce cancer death in both the general population and cancer survivors.  We infer that physical activity after cancer diagnosis may result in significant protection among cancer survivors."