It`s official

So if you have read this blog before you may know that I have been completing a Master’s degree in exercise physiology (rehabilitation). I decided I wanted to offer some more background on myself. My education started when I undertook an undergraduate degree in sport and exercise science. I then undertook a post graduate diploma in education and I am a qualified P.E teacher. I decided during that diploma that I wanted to work for myself and have other people work with me. I also wanted to use the knowledge and experience I gained from my undergrad and exercise/training background. Teaching is great and I enjoy it but it ultimately I want to flex my mental muscles. For me training and coaching people is what I enjoy. It requires me to really educate my clients otherwise I am doing them a real disservice.  Basically for me when I come home from teaching children I don`t read journal articles about child development. I read articles about exercise, health, disease, rehab and performance improvement because that is my passion.

So I spoke with my partner about enrolling for the Masters course and she supported me. The Masters required me to complete it via distance education whilst performing over 500 hours of volunteer work experience in different clinical fields. Due to the university being in another state I was required to organise all of my placements myself. All whilst trying to fit in work, training and living in general. I was required to log all of those hours and to date I completed nearly 700. I flew to the university twice interstate. One time I was very sick with Glandular fever. I had a swollen spleen and liver and to be honest was not in a healthy condition. 

 

This post isn`t so much about what I had to do, but who was there for me. It is important I feel to thank those around me. I am commonly said to have the emotional back account of 2 cents, but I need to express my gratitude. First my partner who always helped me and supported me. Never has someone been so thoroughly assessed and tested before. Even when it got hard and trust me it really did. Those that point out that university is easy either didn`t put in, are a genius or haven’t yet done it. She made dinner when I spent 14 hours writing assignments or studying, she was my test subject and often my rock. I rarely waiver in many of my pursuits but this made me question what I was doing. She pushed me frequently citing the phrase “Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering”, Theodore Roosevelt.  She is like the ocean lapping at the shore she never seems to hit hard like a tidal wave but consistency keeps going. I took my lead from her and just kept going. I would also like to thank my family and friends. Particularly my mother and step father who were also test subjects and would test me for hours on end. Also my inlaws who were also a big support during those days. I thank my friends who have put up with and continue to put up with my “I was reading” or “the other day”.  I would also like to thank those that jeered me and yes there are always detractors. At first you made me angry but ultimately how can I practice patients and humility without you. After all challenge is how we grow like it or not. I thankyou as well. I won`t forget my Nan and Pop always behind me.

Google scholar has a phase “stand on the shoulders of giants”. In my case I do, even though those giants don`t know it. These are the people that are my giants and though I could stand alone I could never stand as tall without them. Thank you.

My next step is the board acceptance application process and to open my own practice. I am looking forward to for the next step knowing the last few years were worth it.

Flip the switch.

                   Motivation is a very interesting and a unique emotion, in fact I would say that it is almost a phenomenon. Some people seem to be born with it while others only seem to have it for select moments in time. It’s something that’s hard to find and easy to loose and for some it can only be found in groups. It is something that can be tied to emotions, confidence and above all else aspiration and strength.

                  Motivation reminds me of money in some ways. You see motivation can be a real source of pleasure or pain. It can help us achieve great things or sometimes it can make us feel worse than when we started. It is important to be motivated, but the biggest problems occur when it comes to the inspiration of the motivation. If the wrong thing inspires you, it can lead you down the wrong path. For example say you are motivated to get active and the thing that inspires you to do it is to lose weight. That is all well in good for some, but for most people this will lead them down the wrong path.

                  I am sure most of us out there have fallen into this trap of eating well and exercising for a few months while weighing ourselves each week. It starts out great with slight loses in weight but eventually that stops and the very thing that originally inspired us to be motivated starts to bring us down. Off course most people will tell you that there are many changes that happen in your body when you are getting healthier and weight loss is never the biggest or most important change.

                Factors such as muscle gain can affect your weight. You may have still lost weight that week but because muscle weighs more than fat when you get on the scales or you see is negatives. When anyone is in that frame of mind other changes such as toning and loss of inch’s all seem to fall to the wayside. Now that is just one example of bad motivation I am sure there are many others out there.

               Now I should add that having a positive motivation doesn’t necessary guarantee you will succeed. It will set you up with a stable base but there are still many other obstacles that will come between you and your goal. Motivation is like flipping a switch, it works both ways. So weather you have flipped it to get healthier or improve at you particular sport they both generally require complete lifestyle shifts that can be hard to maintain.

               I know I may be repeating myself but I am very serious about this. The important thing to remember is that it’s not uncommon to not always feel like training, or eating clean. At times like this we all need to start saying “I’ve flipped the switch now I have to keep the light on”. I find the reason why people don’t do this is because they don’t hold themselves accountable. The excuse is always something got in the way or someone led me astray. Long story short nine times out of ten you can find a way past this. That`s when we come back to keeping the switch flipped.

              There are very simple ways to combat this kind of thinking. The first thing I would recommend when you flip on your switch is to write down your goals using the S.M.A.R.T acronym (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely). Specific relates to what is it you want to achieve and the more detail you use the more likely you will be to achieve the goal. Most people say to me,”I want to lose weight”, followed by my reply “can you be more specific?” really what they want is to reduce fat. I have a specific goal of lifting more than an 80kg snatch and 110 clean and jerk to go to nationals. You will want the goal to be measurable otherwise how will you know if you achieved it? I am measuring mine by kg`s. You might measure yours by cm/inches. Is it achievable this and realistic tie together well. I can realistically hit my goal this year within the time frame I set. If you’re an 80kg female setting a goal of losing 60kg this isn`t realistic or achievable without losing a limb or two. Timely is a favourite of mine because it can be hard on your own to set a time for something you aren’t 100% sure of. My goal is to be achieved by the 7th of October. Remember that you can have smaller goals tied into your overall goal in business sometime KPI`s is the buzz acronym, key performance indicators. I set smaller goals based on the above principles. So should you.

                Record things or situations that can get in the way of reaching those goals it is just as important as setting yourself a realistic goal. Writing these things down can provide perspective and you can brainstorm ways to overcome them. This goes a long to keeping the light switched on. It is so important to set yourself up for success. If you have even a small amount of motivation embrace it and focus on it and it will grow. Once you have the switch flipped keep the light on by using the two methods above. If you have any questions email us at therandomandthefit@hotmail.com

Life`s a garden dig it.

               On this blog I often talk about aspects of fitness and health. Eating is included in these broad categories. Do you know where your food comes from? I mean really have any idea? I have been worried when I hear children answer the question of “where does milk come from?” with “a carton”. People don`t know remotely where their food is coming from. Now to be fair I wouldn`t expect most people to know with absolute detail where all of their food comes from. But one sure fire way to at least build an appreciation for farming, food and get a little bit of exercise is to grow your own fruits, vegetables, herbs. Now I know that not everyone lives on some form of land with soil and space easily accessible. That though is no excuse, many options are available from pots/window gardens, community gardens or just using the ground that you live on.

                Gardening has a variety of benefits and yes the possibility of saving money is one of them. For my partner and I we like to get to grass roots in many different ways and gardening is one of them. We try to grow a variety of our own vegetables. For some reason growing your own food just seems to taste better and no I don`t mean the organic vs non organic debate. The reason the produce tastes better is the X factor flavour, I think that flavour should be called satisfaction. It is more satisfying to put in the work and have even a moderate payoff. Gardening also seems to be good for mental wellbeing and I think it relates to satisfaction of seeing something you have put the work into giving you something back.

                Gardening though isn`t all sunshine and butterfly`s it takes a bit of work. Working in the garden especially if you choose to use limited machines and chemicals can be a bit of hard work. I think though it is important to note many of the cultures of the planet that live the longest farm with some methods from the past. They still get out there and pull up their sleeves. As you will see below the picture is of our garden, not huge but it`s ours. You can see the before we have left it to over grow a little bit.

                The during shot is after I have taken a shovel and turned the soil to aerate it a little bit after pulling out all the old plants. I have also raked up the weeds and spread the soil a bit more even.

The final shot is after I have seeded the garden with peas and alfalfa. I have done this because both return nitrogen and other nutrients back to the soil. I will turn them into the soil again after the peas and alfalfa has grown. I then added horse manure and raked that evenly and then added sugarcane mulch to help protect the soil/seeds and slow weeds growing. This took me about 90 minutes in the rain. The important thing to remember is the preparation pays off with better harvests. Quality soils lead to quality produce. So get to it start a garden you will appreciate farmers and where your food comes from much more.

Breaking the habit.

            Recently I read a piece of information that I found interesting but unsurprising. Our days are affected by habits by up to 40%. This is according to New York times bestselling author Charles Duhigg. I am not overly surprised though, although I am not sure how he came to this conclusion and I haven’t read his book yet to find out yet. But it did get me thinking that`s nearly half of our day controlled without thinking. Habits can rule our lives and they can be for better or for worse. This relates really well to something I have working on. 

We need to understand that leading a healthy lifestyle often is based on habits. What we do, how we do it, why we do it. Now you notice that I say lifestyle not diet or exercise because I believe that to be healthier you need to let new habits reach every corner of your life. Not just diet and exercise but also during everyday activities. I bet some of you are reading this and are saying “Yeah I have a good diet and I have a healthy lifestyle sometimes”. Most people will share this opinion. When I talk to them about this they immediately begin to rattle off the foods they eat and list the exercise they do. I nod and listen and usually ask “what did you eat 3 days ago for dinner” often the person stops and thinks and says tentatively what they had or answer they don`t know. Humans have a remarkable way of remembering things differently to the way they actually happened. Be it a trait of the brain that doesn’t see reason to remember every detail, or possibly it’s a defence so you don’t remember exactly how bad it really was. Either way I find the only way to get a clear picture of you everyday life is to put some old fashion pen to paper. 

I tell everyone to track their food and exercise daily. Not only does it give you a clearer picture of your everyday lifestyle but it is also an integral part of creating good habits. Once you identify the bad habits you can change them to good ones or even remove them completely. A good habit could be anything as simple as carrying around a water bottle to get you into the habit of drinking more water. And habits like these cost you nothing and can be sustained long term. I have had many clients tell me they have read so many books and done so many “diets” but they never developed habits. When they hit an obstacle or lost motivation old habits rear their ugly heads. Which brings me to what I have been working on. 

                Weight loss and healthy living is not rocket science it should be simple providing that you haven’t got any medical complications. That is right ,simple I put that out there. Books and programs often are based on buying further products to make the company more money when what you really want is to be told how to do things right. You want steps to achieve an outcome. Well now I have developed a daily checklist for you. Things on this list are based on improving aspects that you may not be aware of. To give an example when you go to the shopping centre where do you park? I would bet you try to find the closet park to the door. Well in the checklist there is information to help you improve your N.E.A.T (non- exercise activity time) Doing things everyday like parking further away is a way to do this. By the way did I mention that this list is FREE. Yes FREE, I would like you to give it a go and see if you have some improvement in the way you feel, look, act and think. How do you get this list? Simply subscribe with your email and first name to the subscription box on the blog http://therandomandthefit.blogspot.com.au/ Go now get the list print it out and use it daily to create new better habits.