Feedback, it comes in many different forms.

We can get it from ourselves, how things feel, how we are the next day.

We can get it from our opposition if they identify a gap in our technique.

We can get it from coaches, friends and spectators as they observe our performance.

Whichever way you look at it, we are constantly receiving feedback in many different forms. Some feedback we may like other forms we could happily do without.

When working with clients, it is easy to start to think that our entire job is putting together programmes for people and taking them through their exercise plan. Just as we expect our clients to plan out their time in order to attend their exercise sessions, we need to plan out our time so that we are allowing enough space to gather feedback on how the plan is going.

By keeping up with our clients and inspecting what we are expecting of them in terms of completing their exercise sessions, we are able to ensure that they have the best chance of achieving their results.

At present, I am training without a coach. This means that I am lacking the extra input from another set of eyes. What this means for me is that I really need to make sure that I am listening to my body and recording as much information as I can.

I have found that when I am not getting any feedback, I tend to keep going with the same routine. When I keep going with the same routine, I tend to find I don’t adapt or change very much. It’s like that old adage, “do what you have always and done and you will get what you have always got”. Given that my goal is to get faster, that kind of approach isn’t very helpful.

Just as goal setting is a crucial step in putting a plan together, so is putting aside the time for feedback. Without feedback, we have no way of knowing how we are progressing towards our goal.

 Recently I have started using a training diary; I have found this to be really beneficial as a means of honesty checking. Within the diary I record all of my exercise sessions, the duration, intensity and how they felt. I also record how many hours sleep I have had and what I have eaten for the day. Without this diary, I would have no means of comparing progress or troubleshooting any problems that I may encounter in terms of results or training.

I am in the first week of using my feedback diary and will keep you updated with how I am finding it and whether or not it ends up being tucked away in a draw somewhere for years to come.

Whatever I end up doing with my diary, I will always recognize the importance of feedback and will actively seek it as much as I can.

What experiences have you had with feedback?

What kind of feedback do you respond to and where do you get it from?

Too much of a good thing is never enough…or is it?

It’s an age old adage and one that can be used in lots of different contexts.

When training for a marathon, you spend a lot of time on the road. As you would have learnt through your studies with NZIHF, we need to ensure our training is specific to our goals. Given that my goal is running – it would make sense that my training involves running.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love running. If I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t be putting myself through marathon training just for the sake of it. The issue I have is that running isn’t the only sport I am into. I love all types of training whether it is individual or group, indoors or outdoors, weights or cardio. I just enjoy getting out there and doing things. The unfortunate problem that I run into is the fact that I like to ‘have my cake and eat it too’. This causes problems in the sense that, whilst I enjoy doing group fitness classes and playing tennis, it probably isn’t that beneficial for what I want to achieve with marathon running.

There are so many articles and websites out there documenting what is the best new type of training and there are so many differing opinions on what is the right volume and frequency of training, how do we know what is appropriate for us?

I tend to let my body decide for me what the right amount of training is, although I am not always the best listener!! No pain, no gain is not always the best advice in my experience. I have made the mistake of going for a long run in the morning and then trying to back it up with an intense hour game of netball in the afternoon, I did it, but the pain in my legs and the drop in performance in my speed session the next day were not worth it.

I now plan out my week of training and I know which sessions I need to be completely rested for and which sessions are a bit lower intensity. For me it comes down to what I am wanting to achieve. I have to continually ask myself, is this helping me to achieve my goal? If not, is it worth doing?

There are so many different activities that we can be involved in and so many opportunities to be active, it seems as though the options are endless. How do we know what is best for us?

How do we prioritize the activities that we participate in?

How do we know, what is right for our goals?

How do you decide on what the right level of activity is for you?

On the Road Again…

It’s funny what songs and thoughts pop into your head over the course of a long run. Dependant on the length of the run, I tend to get a lot sorted by the time I return home from my training session. You often hear of people jokingly saying that they ‘solved the worlds problems’ when out for a long bout of exercise. Given the solitary nature of running, it’s easy to see that a lot of thinking goes on for some whilst for others it provides the outlet that they may need to clear their head.

When I was out running yesterday, I got to thinking about exercise and how completely individualized it is. How we come to be involved in a particular sport or type of training can be completely random, you see something you like and give it a try. Or, it can be the opposite, and come about through your surroundings. That is, you may live on a farm whereby your reasonably active lifestyle necessitates you to be reasonably active. You may even come from a sporting family. I am part of the latter two groups, but that’s not to say that I haven’t tried things just because they looked cool too!!

Whenever somebody starts a new exercise plan or physical pursuit, it’s always interesting to see what is driving that new action. Is it because they have a physical job and are finding that they are getting really sore and tired at the end of the day? Is it because the kids are finally off their hands and they want to lose a bit of their baby weight? Or is it because they are training for a specific event? Asking these questions is crucial as it enables us to understand what their motivation is and it also gives us some back ground on their timeframe.

At the moment I am training for my sixth marathon on October 30^th. I have found that having specific times to achieve for different training sessions has been really helpful, not only in motivating me, but also in keeping me on track and honest in my pursuit towards my goal of the elusive 3 hours!!

We know there are different drivers for physical pursuits. In historical times, physical pursuits and fitness came about through necessity rather than desire and I found the story of the origins of the marathon to be particularly interesting in this respect. Pheidippides (530 BC–490 BC), an Athenian herald, was sent to Sparta to request help when the Persians landed at Marathon, Greece. He ran 240 km (150 miles) in two days. He then ran the 40 km (25 miles) from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon. With the word "Νενικήκαμεν" (Nenikékamen, "We have won") he collapsed and died on the spot from exhaustion.

Here’s hoping the conditions aren’t too hot in October and I don’t suffer the same fate as Pheidippides!

What motivates you to exercise and why do you do the activities that you do?

We only have to wait a few more weeks until the winter equinox on June 21 strikes. The days will start to get longer again as we creep our way back into the warmer, summer months; it still feels like an age away though. When the daylight hours pass whilst you’re inside all day at work and it’s dark by the time you get home, it’s dead easy for the winter blues to kick in. For some the winter blues can get pretty serious, so much so that in 1985 an official diagnosis was given to those affected by symptoms that included tiredness, fatigue, depression, decreased activity levels, overeating (especially carbohydrate dense food) with associated weight gain, crying spells, irritability, trouble concentrating and body aches.

Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression and tends to occur and reoccur more commonly in the winter months when the daylight hours are fewer. SAD seems to develop from inadequate bright light, with those suffering recording very low blood vitamin D levels. Testing vitamin D levels is now one of the ways used to diagnose the condition. Researchers have found that bright light changes the chemicals in the brain, exactly how continues to be studied. But statistics taken from the American population show that about 20% of adults have some (but not always all) of the symptoms of SAD.A fifth of New Zealand’s population base would be the equivalent of nearly all those living in the South Island. In fact, people living in New Zealand are very vulnerable as the incidence of SAD increases for people who are living further away from the equator. Although for countries like Greenland, Canada and the Antarctic that are geographically further away from the equator than NZ, SAD seems less prevalent where there is snow on the ground.

Light therapy for about four hours per day, ten times the intensity of ordinary domestic lighting has shown to help combat the low vitamin D levels in the blood and improve the other SAD symptoms but how can you help as a personal trainer? Can you help to stave off SAD as well as the other long list of conditions that includes diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, obesity, coronary heart disease? Well, maybe you can. Maybe you can integrate some light therapy into your client’s exercise programme? Maybe you can educate and motivate them through the winter months, keeping their spirits high until the longer light filled days arrive.

Many of your clients will be leaving home in the dark and returning home in the dark; would some of them be able to swap their evening session for a daytime session instead? If your client could take a flexible lunch break and see you for an hour at some stage during their working day, you could potentially conduct their warm up outside, use stairs, walls, courtyards to deliver elements of their workout or move the entire workout outside and have for instance an al fresco boxing session.

Knowing that regular exercise positively affects mood, mild depression, sleeping patterns and weight control; keeping your clients engaged and achieving mini goals throughout the winter could be the key to balancing out the affects of SAD. You could write a specific ‘winter programme’ that replaces a few of their mid week evening sessions with some weekend day time sessions. Maybe swapping a few indoor exercises with some outdoor alternatives. How many can you think of? With skipping ropes, dyna bands, dumb bells, swiss balls, stretch mats, med balls and of course good old fashioned body weight, what could you do in 45 minutes? Making some small changes to way you work with your client could make a massive difference to them. You’d be up for that, wouldn’t you?

I went to the Exercise and Sport Science Australia conference in April  and I thought I would share one of the more controversial topics for us to discuss!

The ActivityStat Hypothesis comes from the idea of Homeostasis where our bodies have the ability to regulate our internal environments so that we maintain our set level. Things such as Blood Pressure, pH, temperature, and blood glucose levels all fluctuate but are continually brought back to an appropriate level, without us having to think about it. The idea of the ActivityStat runs along similar line. We try to maintain energy homeostasis by three feedback pathways 1 – monitoring and regulating energy intake 2 – energy expenditure 3 – energy surplus. Energy expenditure has been looked at closely. Our overall energy expenditure is made up of three parts 1 – Basal Metabolic Rate 2 – Thermic effect of food 3 – Activity thermogenesis. When thinking about exercise, we are looking at Activity thermogenesis which is again broken into 2 parts 1 – Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) (such as standing up and walking to the printer) 2 – Exercise. The ActivityStat suggests that if you increase the amount of Exercise you do you will therefore decrease the amount of NEAT you do to maintain your ‘energy expenditure homeostasis.

There have been a number of studies in support of this idea. The ‘Earlybird’ study in British children showed that overall energy expenditure showed less than 1% variance between all children when some children had planned 30min exercise sessions at school and others had none. There is also some evidence that women who are underfed during pregnancy have inactive babies and those women who have high testosterone levels during pregnancy have active babies.

This is just a hypothesis and there could be a number of arguments against, which there have been. However, if it is correct we need to think differently about the type of exercise interventions we use with people if we are trying to increase their overall energy expenditure. Obviously this does not take into consideration the other positive effects exercise does have on the body, but it could be something to consider when working with people who are trying to loose weight.

Maya is the answer to all our prayers. She’s only sixty bucks and can accompany you anywhere where you’ve got a plug socket, TV screen and Nintendo Wii console. She is your virtual personal trainer and does away with all the time consuming hassle of getting to know you, asking hundreds of questions around your desire to become fitter and healthier. She will simply ask you to select the exercise programme you’d like to follow, how long you’d like to do it for and will give you the option of choosing from over 500 workout options. Knowing that you’re likely to have a pretty busy schedule, she also lets you decide how many times a week you want to exercise. She won’t waste your time going into any detail about your medical history or injury profile and won’t embarrass you by asking questions about any medication you’re taking or put you on the spot by asking if you’re a dirty smoker, she’ll simply leave it for you to decide whether you’re feeling well enough to exercise and have you judge when it feels too uncomfortable to go on. I can’t remember what my doctor told me about exercising with high blood pressure, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Maya will keep it ‘fresh’ and motivating for you by offering you yoga, kickboxing and strength training workouts and don’t worry if you’ve never done it before, Maya will provide you with correct exercise techniques and pep talks as you go to help push you through, even if that old shoulder niggle starts to flair up again. She builds time into your workouts over the many weeks that you decide to switch her on, to let you enter your various girth measurements. I’m sure we’re all nifty enough with a tape measure to know how to do this right without sucking in too much, pulling too tight, or making up numbers. She’ll then pump this data into a graph that can show you your progress to date. Unfortunately, I can’t ask her how she intends on making sure my progress continues, or whether the progress I’m making is in line with my goals (hang on, does she know what my goals are? Did I tell her that bit?), but we can select our own programmes anyway and make it as easy or as hard as we like.

One of the great things is that if you get bored of exercising at home in the same front room you eat your dinner in; you can simply select a different virtual environment to work out in. So Monday you could be in a dojo, Wednesday chop it up a little with desert scenery and Sunday go Urban. If Maya starts to wear you out a touch with the same upbeat personality, that after a restless night and work deadlines to meet you could do without, just invite a few buddies around to help dilute her a bit. Although it would be quite cool to have a ‘mojo’ rating for the session so that just like the volume, you could adjust how beamy her smile was and turn it down a few notches for days when you’re just not at your best. I might suggest that to Nintendo. Perhaps they’ll include this function in version II. Anyway, you and your buddies could select the group exercise programme and have an 80’s two piece aerobics session, provided you can push the sofa and coffee table back far enough to accommodate three or four extra people jumping around to Chaka Khan. But then Maya wouldn’t know if you didn’t show that day and certainly wouldn’t call to make sure your lack of motivation was just a blip. There’d be no intervention strategy to get you back on track, leaving you free to just cruise along dipping in and out of exercise whenever you felt like it. Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that what I’m doing now? Do I just need to change my attitude or do I actually need a real person?

I reckon that the two biggest relationships we have in our lives are the ones we have with our partner and the one we have with our employer. They’re big because of their significance, because of how all consuming they are and because of the impact they have both when they’re running smoothly and when things aren’t going so well. If you have a job that you really enjoy and it gives you everything that you're looking for, you almost look forward to the Monday mornings and happily spend extra time working through little conundrums over a late night coldie. Similarly, if you and your partner have a rock solid relationship and you know that your number one fan is with you whenever you want them, armed with all the things that put a smile on your face, many of life's other troubles pale into insignificance. But what are the qualities that we are seeking in both these huge relationships and are there any correlations between the two?

Never have I felt so totally out of my league than the day I sat watching the London city bankers starting their working day. It began with a power walk along the West Bank, presumably to get to a really important meeting. Ladies were striding out in their sharp, tailored, pinstriped skirt suit, fitted blouse, patterned stockings and a pair of running shoes! I imagined their court shoes were tightly packed in their briefcase alongside the cheese and pickle sandwiches and the morning newspaper that had been skim read on the train. They all had the same stressed, preoccupied look about them. The early starts, huge hours, almost unachievable targets, overambitious KPI's, competitive work colleagues – must have combined to create an intense, volatile work environment. The pressure must have been so high that it would have made the office tension almost palpable. However, they all looked like it satisfied them, fulfilled their needs and gave them happiness. They looked highly capable and you could see the extrinsic rewards for their efforts and achievements in the shape of an iphone and a Rolex watch. Would these high-energy, driven City Slickers be attracted to the same qualities in their personal relationships? Would they naturally gravitate towards fiery, temperamental, impulsive partners where shouting and door slamming were commonplace? Would they need the extreme highs and lows to feel ‘alive’ and the volatility to remain interested? Perhaps this would fulfil their needs and give them happiness.

Compare the city slicker to the guy whose alarm wakes him up every morning at the same time. He routinely prepares for work doing the same things in the same order at the same pace; he goes to work to do an eight hour day where more time is spent sharing his experiences and giving support to his colleagues than burning himself out hitting targets. I wonder, is his stable, dependable, secure, working environment an indication that his personal relationship would be too? If this guy was called ‘Brian’, and the door slamming City Slicker was called Vicky, could you imagine them in a healthy happy relationship together? Would it last?

If we are the same person at work as we are at home, it should be safe to assume that we would value the same ethics and attributes in both our professional and personal companion. I feel that both employer and partner need to support our values and allow us to achieve our own goals. If there’s a pull in a different direction, surely the fight becomes too tiring to comfortably continue.

My theory is that no matter how the relationship functions, in order for it to be sustainable there must be an equal exchange of some description taking place. If both parties are putting enough in and both parties are getting enough out, that would at least be equal. On top of being equal though, I think that this exchange of commodities needs to be in the same currency for the relationship to have a potentially long shelf life. If Vicky gets paid shed loads and gets a big bonus when targets are hit, that rewards the massive hours, stress and effort in a way that satisfies her. If Brian's rewards for his commitment and hard work are a friendly working environment with healthy team culture and job stability, then for him that would be a fair exchange. If you put Brian in the City, he'd get eaten alive; maybe he wouldn't even be tempted to go in the first place. Give Vicky Brian's job and she’d be bored out of her brains in no time. Would their motivators prevent them from settling into a long lasting and fulfilling relationship with each other or with each other’s jobs?

Maybe the secret is to first work out the rewards you want to get from the relationships you have. That then helps determine who you end up with and what you end up doing. However, we often don’t truly know how we want to be rewarded until we end up in a situation we don’t like. The packaging is sometimes misleading and it might take a few rough breakups until we ultimately find a relationship that rewards us with a currency that we can spend.

I’m yet to be persuaded that the sciences should be any more worthy educationally than PE and would happily debate the issue until the true numerical value of infinity was calculated.

Most of us withstand somewhere near 11 compulsory years of maths where theorems and laws and principles are drummed into us to a point where we can regurgitate Pythagoras’ Rule at the briefest of glimpses of an isosceles triangle. What a waste therefore, that since graduating, I haven’t ever had the need to apply this rule in any personal or professional situation – except perhaps to answer a particularly pointless pub quiz question where the quiz master himself got a little tongue tied over terms that hadn’t passed his lips in decades.

I knew how to set up and analyse the dots produced by a ticker tape timer machine during my physics lessons and eventually got my head round algebra and differentiation through sheer repetition and bully tactics employed by various teachers keen to raise their student grade statistics. It seems pointless to have spent such a huge chunk of my childhood learning lessons that have rarely been useful in any capacity in my adulthood.

My PE lessons were different. I can still vividly remember my brilliant Scottish PE teacher who had super long, perfectly manicured, red polished finger nails and an accent that the whole school loved to mock. She was harsh but very fair and instilled in every child in every lesson the principle of teamwork. She would push the talented to extend their skills and encourage and support those who were less gifted to be proud of always achieving the best that they could. She would sometimes pair the sportos up together so they could go into battle for top dog supremacy, but more often she would pair up a more accomplished pupil up with a less accomplished pupil. Her brief was consistent in that she would expect the more accomplished pupil to give feedback, encouragement, support and praise. The less accomplished pupil had to listen and show improvements. Little did we know at the time that we were being taught more than how to execute a perfect forehand or backward roll. We were learning how to give and receive constructive criticism, to show patience and solidarity and I know how useful those skills have been for me subsequently in both a personal and professional setting.

During one PE lesson we were learning the technicalities of the 4x100m relay. We were on a special athletics track that was a small coach trip away from my school. It had a 400m tartan eight lane running track, with white lines denoting start and finish areas for set distances and the infamous ’box’ within which the baton change over must occur. We had had about 20 minutes of walk through, talk through, before we launched into the real deal. Six relay teams of four runners representing various degrees of fitness, ability and apathy all took up their positions. The clapper board sounded (vaguely representing the Olympic starter gun if you were hard of hearing) and the race was underway. Changeovers were smooth, the cheering was loud and by half way, it was clear who the top three teams were going to be. They crossed the line in quick succession leaving the remaining three teams to grunt it out. There was a clear losing team and by the final change over the fourth runner was so far behind she was watched by everybody along every inch of that final back straight. For her it must have been the longest 100m of her life. Her legs filled up with pointlessness, embarrassment and public humiliation and she stopped running. She cursed and sulked all the way to the finish where she met a pretty fierce Scots woman. “Don’t you dare give up. Don’t you dare let your team down, they are depending on you and they need you to do your very best for them and if you can’t do that for them, then have some pride and self respect and do the very best for yourself”. Our teacher spent the next 15 minutes turning our athletics lesson into a lecture on self respect and self worth and teamwork and responsibility and co-operation and forgiveness and resilience, qualities that I don’t see being taught often enough. Qualities that permeate through every strand of the life long tapestry that we weave as adults. Qualities that help shape us as people and citizens and friends and employees and spouses and parents. The longevity and impact these lessons have are so profound, a piece of paper in the form of a 'qualification' to recognize them seems insulting and massively insufficient. Yet, if I could send every child to a school where the emphasis was on these sorts of lessons, I would gladly flush the academic examinations process down the toilet and replace it with: English lessons that are used as vehicles to teach respect and self expression; Maths lessons that help to show the value of sharing and equality; Religious education that develops self belief and humility; PE lessons that give students a sense of belonging and an understanding of how their efforts affect the outcome for the entire team.  Wouldn’t that be more meaningful and useful than understanding Algorithms? and what a bunch of capable people we would have helped to shape.

How many times have you heard someone say that they “don’t eat meat because it’s cruel”? With my most recent experience, it was swiftly followed by “and we don’t need meat anyway.” I tried vegetarianism at the age of 13 for a few weeks because some other girls in my class decided it would be a cool thing to do. Unfortunately, I’ve always enjoyed the full gambit of red, white and sea meats and haven’t yet succeeded in placing morality before my own rumbling tummy. The longing I have for a bacon sandwich after a few weeks of abstinence tells me that I couldn’t voluntarily be a vegetarian for any significant length of time. The way Adam hunted down his first feed of lion and chewed up the red meat with his fine set of purpose built gnashers, suggests that we weren’t supposed to be anyway. However, I’ve concluded that vegetarians who are so on the grounds that the farming methods used to provide meat is cruel, are probably making the issue much worse by not eating any meat at all.

As omnivorous beings, we like to be able to walk into any supermarket and buy large quantities of meat for at best a very cheap price and at worst a very reasonable price. This keeps our food bill relatively small allowing us to have more disposable income to spend on the fun things in life. This quest for a bargain becomes even more pronounced during harder times and certainly during a recession putting pressure on the farmer to provide large quantities of meat very cheaply. To do this, he has few options as cheap meat can only really come by using cheap farming methods. It may be cruel, but it’s the only way to provide the consumer with what it demands.

In contrast, free range meats seen mainly at farmer’s markets are more expensive, because the farming methods are more expensive. Free range will continue to be more expensive the less the consumer purchases – which when times are hard is much more likely. So here lies the problem – if vegetarians who don’t eat meat on the basis that it’s cruel, bought free range and organic meats instead, the prices of those meats would start to come down. As soon as those prices fell to an affordable level where other fringe consumers could make a shift, the prices would fall even further, competing in the same market as the bulk meat factories. If consumers were buying less from the bulk meat farmers, it would force a rethink in their practices and change their farming methods – which whether you are a vegetarian or not would have to count as a successful outcome. By eating no meat, the only people buying meat are those who like it cheap and plentiful, further fuelling the system and allowing the wheels of the ‘cruel’ farming factory to continue to turn. We have seen this happen with free range eggs – more people are now buying them, so the prices have dropped substantially making it more affordable to more people. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to achieve this on a slightly larger scale with meat?

Despite my rumbling tummy taking precedence over most things, I would be very willing to stop being part of the problem and to contribute towards being an active part of the solution.

My recollections of Christmas are quite powerful and often when I think back to my happiest childhood memories they involve the Christmas holidays. I remember the excitement of dad coming home with a Christmas tree and spending hours dressing it with anything and everything sparkly, getting giddy from the smell of brandy pouring out of mom’s slightly imperfect looking Christmas cake and my childish naivety that the presents, the food, our guests all appeared from some magical place. Despite my older brother unveiling the truth about Father Christmas when I was five, I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I continue to hang on to the possibility that he might still be real and wonder whether this is the year I come face to face with Santa at three in the morning as he’s squeezing his way down my wood pellet fire flue. If it is, I shall be asking him what on Earth happened in 1986 when he broke my heart and forgot my politely requested Barbie esque horse drawn carriage (that came with a scaled down chocolate brown stallion that stood tall at16 hands and looked all glossy and strong). I opened up nothing of the sort that Christmas morning. In fact, I opened nothing that I liked at all and cried for hours! Thankfully though Auntie Kath saved the day with something totally cool and with 28 Christmases being celebrated in the Northern hemisphere, the cold, dark winter nights added something special. The possibility of snow, the street lights glowing through the nights, the smell of mulled wine wafting through the markets, it all starkly contrasts the summer warmth of a southern hemisphere Christmas. How wonderful to now relax in the sun and make the most of every minute of the long days and to feast from the barbeque and swim in the sea. Although, ultimately, Christmas is a religious festival that marks an extremely pivotal moment on the calendar of many faiths, it should also be a time for family, for friends and for sharing. A time where you shouldn’t unwantingly be on your own and in my view a time where the normal rules shouldn’t apply. It’s ok to eat too much, to drink too much, to sleep too little, to give heaps and to accept gifts for doing nothing but just being you. That’s what all helps to create the long lasting and happy memories. I feel that it is also ok to loosen the noose around physical activity and to break free from the shackles of guilty exercising and to simply indulge in all the things you can’t get at any other time of year. I don’t think that a visit to the gym on Christmas day should be allowed; in fact I would love to see my own gym close its doors for 24 hours at least. It is a public holiday after all and those days were made for making or being part of long lasting memories.

My research in practise (no not standardised, randomised, double blind trials referenced to all and sundry who would condition my research topic to an 'acceptable' hypothesis and then allow it on the basis of scientific rigour to be adopted into a publication which by it's mere history allows the isolated finding to become undisputed fact - another brick in the tower of tripe that to date hasn't worked), my collection of the odd experiential piece of knowledge followed by some critical thinking dessert leads me frequently to one conclusion.  Those of us with weight problems (and health problems if you would like to include an even larger cohort) suffer more in this environment, have a higher dependency than others on food (beyond its consumption as a fuel), and have been more poorly conditioned to cope.  Fundamentally, we 'chose' the donut over the apple almost every time unless, on a given Monday, we have gathered all our 'independent fortitude' and decided to eat only apples from now on.  Tuesday's forecast by the way is for wind, rain and multi-coloured sprinkles.

I often see and take part in discussions on nutrition.  And, invariably, those discussions spin from the issues of the overweight to informational issues.  That is, we start talking about 'what' an overweight person is, then the 'why' becomes centred very quickly on either poor information, mis-information, not enough facts to act on (more research required please on the Vitamin C content of the rind of an orange grown on the south side of the western most hills in the tropical north when al Niño is present) or low and behold - a lack of will power.  I actually prefer the 'lack of will power' chat over the others as, again in my experience, knowing what to do is very very far away from actually doing it anyway.  Our challenge is not one of information (and if it was, yeha, easy - let's educate the problem away), but one of behaviour - and when you talk behaviour you then get into a very difficult arena where most scientists are happy to strip off their white coat and promptly head home for a red wine, venison and of course some greens.  Leaving us.  The practitioners, the heathens of the academic world, the people who prove if that fact is indeed robust or not - that is, if it contributes in some meaningful way to helping someone in their efforts to live well.  Being left in a galaxy far far away from facts we must then proceed with the unravelling, in partnership with a client through mere consultation, the lifetime of conditioning that brings them to eat the donut.  We then proceed to fearlessly explore that galaxy of personal facts defining the challenges in environment, thinking and conditioning in order to support the client to establish and maintain an apple eating regimen that will eventually improve and likely save their lives.

Ours is not an easy job.  To 'shift' all this we must, in lieu of quantum societal change, help one person at a time realise they are not an island.  Help them define and explore how they are connected to their world.  Help them cut loose from the ties that bind them to the things that hurt them and avoid the weather that brings that folly to their doorstep.  We work tirelessly to align their health with their expectations in circumstances often of pain and at times disillusionment.  We continue to work amongst the rubble of islands because that is still how most of us are encouraged to think.

This week, take one of your clients who struggles with their weight.  Put a donut in one hand (even better if it's warm) and an apple in the other.  Ask your client which they think they SHOULD eat?  Ask your client which they WANT to eat?  Realise in order to help you will need to know more about behaviour than you ever will about food.  Then partner your client in an investigation of their environment and discuss the good and the unfortunate with them until through the storm the dawn begins to come. 

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.  Most of us are looking to break chains not understand metal.  Good luck and thanks for being a practitioner in today's challenging world.  I hope one day we will, as aware and sometimes weary practitioners, seek out training more often in the skills of counselling and behaviour modification so that we can help clients practise loving what is good for them.

At first there wasn’t enough information about the quality and quantity of the foods we were eating. Certainly not enough research or evidence to substantiate the claims being made. Now it seems as though the pendulum has swung completely the other way and there is information by the bucket load. This information can be so conflicting in parts that it’s become harder deciding what’s good and what’s bad; what to ignore and what to take seriously.

Like eggs for example. Do you eat eggs? The yolk as well as the whites? Some throw the yolk away, worried that it’s too high in cholesterol and saturated fat both unhelpful whilst trying to maintain a tip top waistline. Some only eat the whites thinking that the protein will help make them bigger and stronger. Others say breaking an egg up into two parts affects the significant vitamin and mineral content that it offers. The egg is a great source of all the B vitamins, in particular vitamins B12 and B2 (riboflavin) and a useful source of folate (helpful for pregnant women or wanna be mums) It is also an excellent source of iodine, required to make the thyroid hormone, and phosphorus, required for bone health, a source of selenium, an important antioxidant and provides some zinc, important for wound healing, growth and fighting infection. So would you consider it bad for containing saturated fat or good for saving you from taking your daily multivitamin tablet?

What about apples and peaches and carrots and beans? Do you eat the skin and scoff the lot, or meticulously remove everything on the outside? The skin contains the highest portion of fibre. Fibre is reported to help control weight and guard against certain cancers – colon cancer in particular. You would therefore think that eating an apple in all its glory would be the better option. But in this day and age, agrichemicals are a massive part of the fruit and vegetable growing industry. Herbicides and pesticides are sprayed onto crops to keep weeds and insects at bay. This helps to increase crop yields and therefore more can be sold and more money can be earned. Without peeling fruit and vegetables or at the very least scrubbing them with even more chemicals, we are apparently opening up our temples to carcinogens and free-radicals both of which speed up the onset of cancer. If I were your client, what advice would you give me?

This list of food dichotomy is growing longer and longer. More recently chocolate was added; high in fat and sugar but apparently eating it releases endorphins that make you feel happy. It also contains antioxidants and is reported to help lower cholesterol. So do I eat it or not?

Tuna is low in fat and high in protein – somewhat of a super food in some fraternities. But the tinned variety can be very high in salt which can lead to high blood pressure and other cardiovascular complications. Trace elements of mercury have also been linked to tuna and other varieties of fish, resulting in the Food Standard Australia New Zealand organization having to release a statement on safe consumption. Here’s a link to their website if you’re keen to read more http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/).

Red wine can reduce cholesterol and help to lower blood pressure, which for me suggests that I should be regularly tucking into my favourite grape. But if I over do it, I could be encouraging sclerosis of the liver. Where is the fine line? Do you chance it and enjoy it or avoid it and miss out?

And so it goes on and sifting through the food hype to find the truth could get all too time consuming, but when your clients, or your family and friends ask you questions about the best way to improve their diet, what do you say? Do you throw everything you know at them or give them the truth as you see it, hoping that you’ve interpreted it correctly?

I sometimes feel that we live in a country where criticism is more fashionable than praise. Even when the All Blacks win a game, the media still have something negative to say.

Surely we cannot forget the overwhelming feelings of pride and motivation when our parents praised us for doing things well or our teacher gave us a gold star! As a parent I sometimes find myself repeatedly telling my daughter to stop playing on the couches, don’t talk back to me, tidy your messy room and do your homework! Man what a naggy Mum I sound. No wonder she doesn’t do it. It’s amazing that when I change the way I word things and praise her for the good things she has done, she becomes an angel.

Believe it or not, this too relates to adults. Ok, so we don’t need gold stars (although some of us still like them), but praise and encouragement from our boss, family, friends and even our own kids, can have a huge effect on how we feel and act.

As a trainer, it is vital to commend, praise and give positive encouragement to help keep members and clients focused, motivated and to build their self esteem.

I remember when I was being coached for a triathlon. I was dreaded ringing my trainer because I had missed quite a few sessions. I expected her to tell me how detrimental this would be with my race being so close. She was quite the opposite and reminded me how hard I have been training, what’s in the past is in the past and it’s never too late to get back on track. Wow…..I was motivated all over again.

Think about how you talk to your clients and question whether you are really giving them positive praise and reinforcement, or whether the ‘what not to do’ statements are taking over.

I know that you can spend a lot of time creating the perfect C.V, you get the layout right, you check and triple-check for spelling and grammar errors, and make sure that you send it to the right address.

You research what to wear to the interview, do a drive by of the club so you know exactly where you’re going on the day of the interview and Google the interviewers’ name.

Can I ask you do to one more thing? Know who you would recommend as referees, and talk to the referees before giving out their names and contact details.

If you have put the age-old phrase ‘referees available upon request’ on your C.V, good on you.  This phrase allows you to choose the referee that suits the occasion best. I know that I would name different people for a fitness role than I would for a recruitment role. By choosing the appropriate referees, I’m giving the interviewer a better chance of getting details about me that are relevant. I’m also giving myself a better chance at getting the job by giving a referee that I can be confident in.

It’s also a professional courtesy to your referee to call them first. Pre-frame what the role is that your applying for and let them know who the interviewer is.  Bonus points if you can tell the referee when to expect the call from the interviewer. You’ll enhance your reputation as a professional, while keeping in contact with previous employers.

It’s these small things that can set you apart from other candidates.  Being the best really can be about doing the little things extraordinarily well.

In the early days of studying a heath and fitness qualification, I decided that a great way to learn more was to get myself a personal trainer and start training properly to see if it worked! My goal was to try and look more athletic and at the time, thought the best way to do this would by losing 4kg and toning up.

I met with a trainer who had been recommended through a friend. I expected to do a pre-screen of some sort by ticking a few boxes, having a few measurements taken, do a hideous fitness test and then get taken through a workout. I was very much mistaken!

We sat down in a private room and started by chatting about my day to day routine and what brought me to the gym. He talked about his background and really took the time to get to know me. By then, I felt quite at ease telling him about my personal health and the niggling aches and pains I occasionally experienced.

Soon we delved into topic of my goal. He asked me to describe what I meant by looking ‘athletic’. I was a little stumped with this question myself. I found it hard to explain the picture in my head and just assumed he understood what I meant. The point he was making was that his perception of athletic compared with mine could be quite different. He needed me to describe my vision.

It suddenly dawned on me how easy it could be for trainers to misinterpret things. Unless you truly know what a client specifically wants to achieve, it will be impossible to negotiate an appropriate training plan. It’s all about the trainer and client working out how they are going to measure and programme for the desired outcomes.

We decided that I would bring in a picture of how I wanted to look before he started to put a programme together for me. Funny thing was, when I showed him my ideal shape, he explained that I would need to PUT ON 4kg in muscle, not lose weight! We did some hypertrophy training and regular cardio and soon I was well on the way to my new look.

The moral of the story is that in order to truly understand someone’s goals, we have to get a clear understanding of what they mean. Goals need to be prioritized, broken down and discussed in detail allowing both the client and the trainer to determine whether it’s realistic, achievable and how they are going to measure the outcomes over the desired time frame. In short, these are called SMART goals and they are a great tool to use when screening and questioning your clients.

S =  Specific

M = Measureable

A=  Achievable

R=   Realistic

T=  Time

I’m not saying that we need to get all our clients to bring in a picture, but unless we ask them specifically what they want, we can’t get a good idea of how to programme and get them the results they desire.