Taking Action.
We’re not all superhuman and at different times in our lives we are fitter, more active or even healthier but as I mention your own fitness and health must be in the top 3 of your priority in order to have a positive relationship with food, gym and most importantly our health.
This applies to us as coaches too and in this blog I share my first hand experience of what non prioritising your health can do but also how you can take action. I would say this is a very vulnerable post and for the first time in a long time share my personal experience about me, my training and my health.
I need to give you a back story to help understand the impact and know that as coaches we are human too and feel the same pain, same struggles and same emotions as you.
We struggle at times with what we eat, we struggle at times with taking no action, we struggle at times not lifting what we used too and we struggle at times managing our own health and fitness. We don’t have those superpowers.
Roll back the clock to covid 2020 , I can undoubtedly say that it was the hardest time of my 10 year entrepreneurial journey. I know it was hard for everybody, and it really was. There is absolutely no doubt on that. I feel that many of us who haven’t run a small business through that time, may never comprehend the real damage and scar that it has left. Not only the instant impact but the follow on in today’s society from business owner to in the eyes of the consumer.
There was an immense amount of pressure that continued for years, still to this day… I feel this lead me to burnout.
I was burning the candle at both ends, I was trying to run a small business with the challenges that came with Covid and look after my health at the same time, both physically and mentally.
I done it, until I couldn’t.
Eventually doing too much of anything can be bad for you. One day, the abuse I put my body through with mental stress and physical stress become too much. It gave way and my back blew out.. the worst thing about it was that, I actually hadn’t started my training session. I literally went to pick the bar up from the floor and it gave way.
What was it?… to be honest I never got it scanned as the NHS has bigger problems at the time. They were inundated with COVID patients, but I knew I had a problem from my past. This was the second time it had happened.
I suffered with Sciatica at the ripe age of 21. I had problems with my L5, S1 disks and when I did get it seen to the very first time, I was told I would never deadlift again. This was after 2 hours of Clean & Jerk at a weightlifting club with too much weight and too much ego lifting. I could do the weight, but didn’t understand the importance of technique. What 21 year old would. Stupid me. But in my defense, I never had any coach tell me to fix this or fix that, which is sad but this is why, especially now, as a coach, I lead by example and if I think something is too heavy for you, I will tell you. The good thing is it doesn’t happen often but you might even hear me ask you ‘ do you want to continue lifting like you are or do you want to improve and stay injury free‘.
After years of playing football to a fair level and making the switch to the gym a combination of imbalances and not looking after my body, it had probably given me the warning signs in the past and I just didn’t see them (and no one told me about them either) and that Weightlifting session was the trigger. That’s why I’m picky when I coach pointing out the things like ‘bellybutton’ or ‘ankles collapsing’ for example.
I know what contributed to it. Although my imbalances that caused it, the weightlifting and no coaching was the trigger. However I want to point out that it wasn’t an acute injury, it didn’t happen there and then on the spot. It was chronic, it happened over a period of time. That was just the final straw. Which is important to know, many of you many suffer from small niggles here and there, and this is why technique is so important. You don’t want to get to that final straw. We want the most efficient way of doing something, so why do not want to continue being efficient? (Rhetorical question)
I think it was the June of 2020 as I was turning 30 and I was in the best shape of my life. I was thiicckk, I was strong, I had abs, I was a powerhouse (picture below) I was physically that fit that I wanted to set out the goal of 2021 to finish in the top 500 UK fittest men as I had finished something like 548th the previous year and train for an Ironman, soon realised absolutely not. It looked great on paper. I felt so fit, that honestly when I walked, I thought the concrete could break underneath my feet. I could run any distance, I could lift any weight, jump any height. To put this into perspective and give you some numbers, I was 77kg at 5ft 6.5 I could Squat 160kg, Bench 120kg, Snatch 100kg, Clean & Jerk 120kg, Run and Row 5k in 20 minutes, do 75 Butterfly Pull Ups unbroken. My Fran benchmark was unbroken and I think 3:03 or something like that. I just felt like the incredible hulk.
…but at the blink of eye this happened and I spent the next 3 years rebuilding my body. My fitness was taken away from me.
1 of those years was getting back my mental strength. For those of you who knew me at the time, you knew nothing could break me, I was so mentally tough that I believed I could fly. One of the flip sides to an injury is post injury depression. I don’t like to use that word, but combine that with keeping a business alive and I certainly fell into that category. I’m not looking for sympathy here, I am telling you because it’s relevant. The psychological warfare every day was damaging. You may even experience it in a different light, through work, limitations or whatever it might be.
You guessed it. Weight gain here we come. I think at my peak with muscle I was between 77- 79kg it never changed that much, within that year I become I think I remember around 84kg but I was now packing on a lot of excess fat. I had love handles. Hated them. Damn, I sound like a diva.. but the reality was, I allowed my health to decline. I made choices, mostly bad.
I couldn’t train like I used too, there was no way I could get back to those lifts and that shape I was in. I look back at the photos now and I think wow if only I had looked after all aspects of training more than I was.(insert longevity here and the lessons I try and teach you through my own philosophy) Anyway, I spent the next 2 years on and off training but I learnt how to realign my body using the deeper core muscles and learning to stand up straight again 😂.
I found it really hard, couple this with day to day stress of managing the business, managing people and trying to manage my life I was just chasing my tail but I done it on and off to maintain my health, I knew nothing was going to come out of training in terms of PB’s and new maxes. I was just ticking over, and avoiding injury but I ate like a fucking pig. It’s probably how I dealt with the ‘trauma’.
Almond croissants, dairy milk chocolate, fat juicy salt beef bagels you name it. I was even drinking in the week, maybe a beer or two and I would definitely start a bottle of red of the weekend. If you know me, like really know me, you’ll know that isn’t me in the slightest. I was uncontrollable. Just at that time, that’s how I felt I wanted to deal with all these things going on and it’s really not me. I might have a drink a couple times a year, and that literally might be 4 beers across an evening.
For the guys who came to the Retreat in Croatia, they can vouch for how much I can eat as they witnessed how much I am capable of eating. I can eat around 5-6 meals per day and still feel hungry. One thing you have to factor in here and doesn’t get spoken about much is how active I was a child. Sport was a huge part of my childhood. We often compare ourselves to others, and a lot of us were not heavily involved in sports as children, we learn it later in life but we want the same rewards as those who have training age. It’s not right, set real expectations on yourself.
So anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to get my head right and I did and got back to good health, good training, it was still on and off but I was riding the wave and put my energy into growing my own vegetables. Fun fact you might not know about me is I have an allotment.
Now fast forward to June 2024. Round 3. Sciatica hit me again. How? I think I stopped doing the basics. The basics work. They are the foundations. Something that contributed I think was, overstretching. I completely over done it. This doesn’t mean that mobility is bad for you.. but remember too much of anything is bad for you. I worked on the realignment, I worked on the core and then when the pain was gone. I neglected the ‘basics’ and went for the heavier and fancy style stuff.
I have pictures of me literally lob sided and I was unable to stand up straight. I couldn’t even touch my knees if I bent down. If I sneezed the nerve pain was unreal.
The only relief I had was when I sat down. That summer (July) I had a holiday to Italy which we drove too (yes drove 20 hours but funnily enough it was cheaper than flying and renting a car, and a fantastic experience). We got back and I knew this had to stop.
I have dedicated the last 15 years of my life to helping people live healthier, fitter and more fitness fulfilling lives and I wasn’t practising what I was preaching.
I knew I had to get my shit together, I knew I had to be injury free and this became the goal.
You may have even looked at me and thought, I looked physically fit and was in good shape, now whilst my training age might have carried me through some of that, it wasn’t entirely true. I wasn’t in great shape mentally or physically.
… insert what I wrote last week – I blocked out time for training the same way I block my calendar for appointments/ sessions.
The first couple of weeks, I literally trained twice a week and I started to feel great again.
That’s it. I didn’t want to over do it and feel drained.
Having experience in the industry how I eat is pretty good anyways apart from a sugar overdose (I like Lindt Dark Chocolate, Nutella and Chocolate digestives)… I prioritised protein intake and have roughly anywhere between 150g-200g a day depending on how hungry I am.but I started the training part and naturally I improved on what I was eating.
I ordered myself some meals because I was ‘tight on time’ and prioritised paying for the convenience so I could have time elsewhere. I had to give something though, the sacrifice for making time is taking time off other things. Mine was the social element of maybe grabbing dinner out every Saturday evening. We cut that back in half. Using that cost towards the convenience that I needed.
By the way, these are healthy nutritious meals with around 500kcal/ 40-50g protein per meal.
My typical eating day now is –
Meal 1 – 3 eggs scrambled, salmon and sourdough & Coffee
Meal 2 – Simmer Meal & Coffee (consisting of at least 40g of protein)
Meal 3 – Simmer Meal (consisting of at least 40g of protein)
Meal 4 – Cut of beef.. usually Steak, apple, nuts
Meal 5 – Yogurt & protein powder to make a nice dessert style meal.
As I said I prioritised protein intake and have roughly anywhere between 150g-200g.
You have to remember these photos are recents. They aren’t throwbacks.
The good thing is I don’t smoke, I don’t drink (usually), I don’t buy coffee out, I grow my own veg in summer and don’t eat out too often.
My other activities were walking to Tesco every day to get sunlight and I slowly built training to 3 days, and every now and again I can creep in a fourth which feels great when I do it because now I have overachieved….and brick by brick I build the foundations and got my health back.
Why is this important, because I wanted to regain my health so I made time. I took action.
Why do I share this with you? Because I want you to know we are all human and we all have the same struggles, so If I can share how it worked for me, maybe there is something in this that you can take and it can work for you.
I done this every day for 75 days. Why 75 days? because I found someone I listened to over covid on a podcast who had this free program that gave me the inspiration for 60 Day Strong that I introduced to the gym later on. I didn’t need to the program. I didn’t even need the accountability but actually what kept me going was I had to take a progress picture every day.
I bounced out of bed every morning even at 4am for work because I wanted to see the progress.
I made my own version, as I wanted it to work for me. I wanted it to be realistic not like some of this nonsense you see on Facebook or Instagram. I set it up so I have no chance of failing.
So next time you listen to a gymrat on social media telling you they meditate, cold plunge, read 3 books and sauna before breakfast and tell you you have to train morning and evening just know they are talking shit (I have done the cold plunge before and I highly recommend, I felt sharp as fuck!).
I decided what I could manage –
No alcohol
Workout 3 x per week minimum
Get out for a walk every day/ daily steps.
Hit 150g protein minimum
Get up at the first alarm
And I done this for 4 week straight, the only variation I added was I introduced eating 1 meal out every other week and I chose Sticks & Sushi because I regained control.
Now this isn’t a quick fix and a promise of shredding loads of weight, it was about taking action and it’s the tool I used to hold myself accountable (I was motivated by the pictures).
Personally I feel that many of us could do this, all year round and introduce the alcohol if you felt you wanted to at certain events but for others it might not be necessary.
The reason I tell you all this is not to boast, it’s purely to show you that we are all vulnerable.
We all have the same struggles, we all want similar things, and we all want to know how.
Fitness/ aesthetics/ performance isn’t measured by what you do in your workouts every day, it’s measured by your daily habits over a number of months but even better if it’s years.
The thing is we all do know how, it just needs to be broken down for us. It needs to be simplified. But we can only do it when we’re ready upstairs and by upstairs I mean between the ears. Don’t chase a timer, don’t chase reps, don’t chase round. Look at improving your daily habits. Every day for a long time.
I tell you these things because you know me, I am not trying to sell you anything, I am not endorsed by anyone or anything. I am telling you because if you are struggling, I have/ am/ was too and I need you to hear the truth about approaching fitness. I share it with you to help you improve your health and/ or your relationship with fitness.
So I hope that by me sharing my struggles, you can find an answer or find peace in how to achieve or how to view your health and what you can do to improve it.