How to get a "healthy balance"

Think about the consequence before the action.

Everything in moderation.

Stand on the outside and look in to gain perspective.

Make one change at a time.

Enjoy simple pleasures.

Make decisions right for you by you.

Work to live don't live to work.

Slip off the wagon then jump back on without hesitation.

Move and think in equal amounts.

Get enough quality sleep.

Easy to write it all....Personal trainers are human too, that elusive balance is of course what keeps us in work but also what we yearn for us. In fact seeing it all day every day as people try and fit everything in, in the right amounts for them only compounds how rich the nirvana of a balanced, soul filled equilibrium can be.....

One of these days i'll get really annoyed ;)

Brighton and Hove city council

PO Box 4680

Worthing

BN119GR

25th July 2011

PCN: BH59169776

Served: 21/07/11 on vehicle MA02 XAX

Dear Sirs,

I am perplexed as to why after buying a valid ticket for my vehicle I returned within the period I had paid for to find a ticket on my car.

I can only assume it was because I had to weigh the ticket down with coins to prevent it from blowing off the dashboard.....a previous “offence” I have had to cough up for twice before after closing my door and the gust taking the ticket off the dash.

This time I believed I was acting cunningly after you rejected my contest on the last occasions even when I sent said blown ticket in to you for validation I am now at a loss of what to do without the sticky backs you used to supply.

I am sure the sticky backs probably save you a huge amount in the parking revenue empire you have built....however, taking additional revenue from these kinds of “offences” seems just about as unreasonable as the blood sucking housing benefit tenant you are supposed to be paying rent for in the flat I worked my balls off for yet now covered her rent for the 6^th month on the trot.

I can assure you as a personal trainer I don’t earn enough money to pay for her, my own mortgage, these ridiculous parking charges I feed your meters with every time I pull up to a clients house throughout the day AND fees in these tickets you insist on issuing me for contraventions that seem to bypass any kind of personable filter you, your computer or your beautifully handpicked wardens could have implemented. Who by the way all seem to have skipped the class where you taught the value of integrity, communication and how to use a hairbrush.....or was that another cut you had to make.

I hope that this puts a smile on someone’s face today as I have enjoyed writing it, although for the £25 its going to cost me I would have preferred to say it to your face but your office has shut, another cut I suppose?

Cold heartedly right back at ya

Kirstin Ahmed

A plan

As a child I knew every alleyway and cut through in my neighbourhood. I knew how to get the 2 miles home from town through back gardens. I was an intrepid explorer. I made tunnels from chairs, clothes pegs and blankets. I made camps in hedge rows and up trees. I bunked school to climb the church roofs, in fact roofs were a theme for a few years with the tennis courts clubhouse and the parks toilet block being particular favourites.

As I tumbelled through my teens exploration became synonymous with freedom to roam. My hood grew and by the time I was driving it became enough to "go for a drive"....an aimless foray into town, country and beyond.

Young adult hood saw a move out of England as the need for freedom really took grip. It never seemed a concious choice to not make a plan, I had no idea why I was going nor what to expect. Looking back it seems innane, but im sure then I would not recognise the person I have become.

As an adult I have rooted, I still loathe the word "plan"

From a PT's point of view

As an experienced PT I hear a lot from my clients past and present. Relationships flourish in our intense 1hr sessions and we expose snippets of our lives to one another. Sometimes the mundane like how the day has treated them, sometimes the vaguely bemusing like the pros and cons of why someone would want to travel on the train daily to and from London or the unbelievable world of the novo riche and their value system, the cut throat world of sales, the back stabbing office politics or the passion filled voice of the environmentalist/lobbyist/teacher or entrepreneur.

I marvel at how different people place importance in such varied pursuits dictated by their family status, beliefs, financial constraints and religions.....I suppose I am the only constant in these peoples diverse profiles. I look through my lens observing how they operate, listening to them, supporting and motivating, trying to work out what psychology will best achieve results and build confidence in their physicality....the one area they so often all fall short in.

It led me to seeing how so many people just need a leg up, just a tiny little lift, a bit of safety net just for them. On a daily basis these people usually provide this for all the other people they support and encourage to grow and deliver around them....but this hour, this precious time out of their “real loves” is all about them.

And this body that carries them to and from the London train, the shops, the office and the 5 bed mock tudor electronic gated eye sore....day in day out....they neglect....and don’t trust, have no control over, rules them.....it’s a cycle on repeat I see over and over again. People come to hate themselves because of the way they look on the outside and forget to look on the inside to look for the beauty.

The first and best lesson that a good PT or anyone who wants to help a friend in this mindset is to listen. Listen to the words between the lines. Work out what the root of the problem is...just like when you feel pain, it is often not the site of injury. A person like this does not just eat a chocolate hobnob because it’s there, he or she will be punishing themselves, having a fat day, sad/happy, in sabotage mode, going to throw it up, etc etc.... Each of these reasons needs a different solution; it can sometimes take me a while to unpick all this information. I get many red herrings along the way and people can be intentionally misleading when they feel under threat by someone who is looking for a new method of approaching life compared to what they are used to.

I lose some along the way....it’s the way it is. I do try my best with everyone but it simply won’t suit everyone. Most of my successes come from people who have hit the bottom and are on the rebound. For one reason or another they have finally realised that the way they have been going about trying to make changes isn’t working for them and they are open, completely open to seeing an alternative route.

For me to work my skills to the best effect I demand complete trust in my methods and approach. This can take a little time to earn....again I may lose some along the way here. It happens because people are not quite ready to be influenced.....but for those who make the distance and trust and work hard, they get all they want and more for the rest of their lives.

Now I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I know that what I do is pretty powerful and I hope that this vague account goes some way to demonstrating that.

Running with wolves....part 3

Husky sledding in the Arctic goes down as the purist, most life affirming, soul satisfying combinations of passions rolled into one titanic experience that any dog lover could have.
I know dogs, I know dogs well, I know all kinds of dogs, I know dogs alone, in pairs and in packs, Ive run with them all, old and young, for years, dogs love to run and I know why (see running with wolves part 1). Yesterday they embraced my company....yet again unconditionally....although this time I was not the pack leader. From this angle I saw through a different lens, they exposed their infra structure, their vunerable underbellies, their magical sense of eachothers strengths and weaknesess, precise timing, speed, intuitive reactions, convincingly infinite power combined with a spirit that seemed impossible to dilute.

I was just a bystander, someone to provide reason to charge like a well oiled machine powered by redbull through the Arctic, a resistive force to load the sleigh down. 5 dogs pull a wooden sleigh carrying up to 2 humans, one stands and "drives" the other sits. The Sami will tell you shifting your weight from one foot to the other whilst standing on the back of the sleigh will steer it. This is not true. The dogs are finely tuned to eachother and have done this a bazillion time before thus despite which way you lean they will drive you the way they know or want. Invariabley this can cause some confusion at the human end, it would seem processing instruction from human to dog is not something I am used to being challeneged on. However once I gave over to it I had the full richness of the experience. Being driven by the dogs was blissful. The serenity, power, concentration, hard breathing, warm exhalation vapour trails streaming from their mouths, frost forming on their whiskers and eyebrows, tails straight out behind them as they pull and pull and pull hard every single paw revolution being important as it cycles through and presses the earth and rebounds with elastic recoil over and over. Their bodies contort with the force they generate against the harnesses in a bid to tug harder and drive forwards with more acceleration. The pursuit for speed is relentless, even after 90mins they were wild with anticipation for the chance of more running.

They are lashed in an X formation, the Sami ties an old dog with a young one at the front and back of the pack. The middle warrior seemed the steady one, a little grouchy, but as much of a workhorse as the others. At the front were the smart strong dogs, leading the way, stopping first, intuitively leading us all despite my initial protestations. The rear two were pure energy balls, leaping a foot in the air and yapping the minute we stopped, their bodies were almost entirely bent as the speed their back legs were driving us forward was faster than the harness allowed their front legs and thus the entire pack to travel at....yet the never once eased up, its almost as if they didnt mind being practically folded in half for the slight glint of hope that the pace may increase whereby they would be perfectly placed to take up the slack and power forward at a pace that was much more preferable!

They were small, all of the dogs, but hard, at a guess not much more than 5% body fat and ranged in colour....I fell in love with the black and brown young one at the back of our pack, who I struggled to not cuddle back when he jumped up at me and rested his head in the crook of my arm. His ears were folded forwards and he drove like a beast, character over brimming....id have given him my last rolo but the Sami seemed very strict;)

How NOT to run 13.1093787 miles!

*Do not think that even though you spend all day running around town and down you are fit enough to wake up and get a decent time running a half marathon.

*Like you could have in your 20's.

*And lacked any foresight.

*Do not get seduced by your ego. You have nothing to prove to any client who wants to see you suffer for all the hours of physical exertion you put them through....even if there is a last minute spot available.

*Do not let your competitive nature override your voice of reason....after all Pheidippides the Greek died whilst trying to complete one of these in full.

*If you ignore all of the above you absolutely must mask the fact you have rendered yourself practically disabled to all those you train.

*After all you would only make the very sensible types of training decisions you strictly expect and prescribe for them....

*1hr 47mins 32secs

Sometimes I ask myself....

Q: You hit and kick people in the head for a living right?

A: I used to get a small payment (larger if I won) whilst I was fighting towards the end of my career. I hung my gloves up in 2004 when I was 30, these days I just teach. It was unfortunately no way near enough to live on and I always maintained a full time job. There isn’t a great deal of money in the sport, particularly for women in the UK. If you can get onto the world stage it is a slightly different story although even then there are still very few full time female athletes.

Q: What kept you going in what must have been a very male dominated sport?

A: Luckily for me I am the kind of person who doesn’t really mind what others think of me or what others are doing around me. Often as the only female training I generated interest, some was useful as it meant I couldn’t shrink into the back of the gym unnoticed and had to perform every single session. The more chauvinistic or amorous attention I generated only fuelled my training to a more intense level to prove what I felt I was worth.

Q: So what does it feel like?

A: Full body mastery is one of the best feelings in the world. Kickboxing is a gruelling sport you have to be ultra fit, walking around in real life with that kind of aerobic capacity and musculature made me feel powerful from the inside out. I felt in control of my life and stable, I felt that knocks in life couldn’t penetrate me, more importantly I felt calm and peaceful....without wanting to sound like a hippy I imagine it to be as close as ill ever experience to a zen like state of mind.

Q: You must have to detest your opponents?

A: It’s easy to see why everyone thinks this to be. Take a look at the sport, the fighters involved and the very nature of the competition. Yes of course it hurts when you get kicked or punched, more so in your mind than through your body’s pain receptors. You are vexed that your opponent managed to outwit you to land a scoring blow on you, or that she found a way through your defence, or caught you out with a trick combination that you fell for. But you absolutely mustn’t lose your cool calm composure or show pain flicker across your face or get mad, you must stay in control keep your poker face and work out a tactical counter to score winning points back. As soon as you get angry and bring hatred amongst other emotion into the ring you will have shown her your hand and lost technical control and it won’t be long before she unpicks you. It is a fundamental winning rule of the fight game.

Q: What happens next?

A: As with any athlete who has given their life over to a passion I found it hard to walk away from the ring. I teach a women’s kickboxing class and run a project called Skilled Company with my friend where we open the boxing gym up for free weekly for 90mins to local youths who have been causing anti social behaviour and are known to the police. It is immensely rewarding on so many levels and I feel blessed to have finally found such a productive and effective release for my passion.

Kirstin Ahmed is a fulltime personal trainer based in the Brighton area. To contact her or find out anything more about women’s boxing and kickboxing go to www.brightonfit.co.uk

Old days, new times...

OK so it’s not exactly the Kung Fu crane stance I’m visualising every time I adapt it into a workout, but for me working from all resources is important. If that means moulding an exercise or improving the pattern of muscle recruitment to achieve my outcome then I will.

In 1984 when I first saw Miyagi in the crane stance standing on a piece of wood sticking up through low tide in the movie Karate Kid I marveled at his physical mastery. It could be argued it was that very image burned into the back of my mind which drove me to become a competitive kick boxer.

The pose in its natural state isn't exactly a devastating technique; in fact it provides merely an element of mystery as to your next attack which could be a quick stance switch mid air (as indeed Daniel did to deliver the winning front kick to his opponents chin) or simply a well defended rest bite for you. What I have found it most useful for is teaching balance, poise and timing.

I practice this pose on flat ground, can execute it in the ring if the judges have their glasses on and I’m looking for some flash points, on rollerskates, balance beams, bosu balls, etc etc.... There is often a constant in exercise, in this instance it is some variation on a one legged static pose. Everything around me can change, but I will execute a perfect pose.

Over 20 years have passed since I first started moving like this and I still value these basic movement patterns. It’s how I learnt and continue to remind myself of my musculoskeletal structure, its limitations and how far I could push to make them less and less and less limiting.

Balance is not a tool that is employed often enough in our macho world of strength building and aerobic capacity in my opinion. It’s easy to see why when you look at how stability training (ie pilates) and breathing through poses (ie yoga) are marketed. But if you were to consider movement to be a form of play or a function we should all expect from our bodies would you look at it differently? Our bodies have yet to catch up with the urbanisation of our world, why expect anything different than to walk around shaped like the chair we sit in all day?

Piste off ski

I have a heightened sense of personal space. I know about this, have done for a while, I’m ok with it. I pretty much always accommodate for it in my day to day...but skiing I have noticed does not allow for this. It puts me, as a beginner, in a mild state of panic when I hear the crunch and swish of some competent snow gliding colourful cloth wearing thermal base layering born in an igloo type lines me up to for a glamorous and slick double shimmy and leg bend overtake in a majestic swoop and curve...damn him for being so fine and perfect...why doesn’t he realise I need the entire width of the piste to maintain a vertical posture and complete silence please.

Snowboarders although carrying the most offensive tag to most skiers just by their very being, to me provide a slightly...marginally...less annoying existence. As a snowboarder carves the piste he makes more of a scraping noise. You know it’s going to be a teenage boy or a middle aged man usually, neither group I seem to find a problem speaking my mind to, and that he will either be completely masterful and just an annoying tw*t or so past it you feel sorry for him anyway so feel like leaving him alone to cope with hair loss and middle aged spread is bad enough without exacerbating his misery.

Due to the difference in the approaching scrape noise pitch I can calibrate my internal "annoyometer". A skier of the aforementioned proficiency scores highly enough to get me to stop in my unbalanced tracks and wait for him to pass in the manner of someone who is so vexed they cannot even muster the words to communicate that. Oh but he knows...I throw such a steely glare and pose stridently across the piste until he passes, ashamedly, that only someone with no sense of personal space who was so oblivious enough to me as to enjoy the beautiful sunny snow filled mountains couldn't pick up on that aggressive body language.

The snowboarder receives a slightly different handling. Firstly as previously identified he will be at a disadvantage in life so to be so harsh seems unfair. And secondly it’s not his fault he choose that outfit, it seemed fashionable in the darkly illuminated shop where the bass was so fat he couldn't feel his own heartbeat.
In these displays of piste disregard I try and simply carve around his random tracks sometimes it works, sometimes I have to completely change my planned turn, which affects my course enough to wobble me enough to get my knickers in monumental twist until either I or he give each other the death stare or fall over laughing.

As for lift queue etiquette or general orientation and traversing around resorts with huge bits of heavy moulded plastic to one's feet it would seem that no-one adheres to normal social conduct and gliding into a complete stranger is perfectly acceptable. As are body parts that need airing/warming/deblistering or wageling along with general acceptance of erratic movement.

Apart from all of the above, I’m not quite sure what I expected, I mean what exactly is normal about flying down the side of a mountain on bits of carbon fibre dressed in colourful and ill-fitting clothing (note the camel toe, both male and female) with gay abandon to what is often a very demanding serious and responsible daily existence?

Faking it...

Recently I discovered the faux blogger. Even more recently I discovered that some people make full time very well paid jobs from this. My word how do they sleep?

A faux blogger is one who blogs to drive traffic to his site by including well used google search terms in his diatribe, rather than because he has something informative, passion filled or useful to share with the world.

As well as annoying me (admittedly not hard to do!) for his shallow deception he steals my audience! So to the Faux blogger and all your kind I say......



And to my 3 followers....I thankyou

The easier way to the new you.

Lets be honest....we all know a leopard can't change its spots, added to which how tired are you of reading the same old trite which you bust a gut (pun intended) trying to adhere to for the first 6 weeks of each year before you fall off the wagon and console yourself with sofa surfing and a few kitkat chunky's?.....

So with that in mind here's my plan for registering a more active lifestyle in your daily routine:

*Carry stuff up the stairs individually when they need to be taken up
*Skate/cycle/run/push or generally move in a way other than steering your car's wheel to get the kids to and from school/dance/cubs/swimming....delete accordingly...god look how active the kids are;)
*Go to your mates birthday, get drunk, dance, embarrass yourself....wake up the next day and leave it behind you without regret, smile inside, flush your bod with lots and lots of water, and don't eat junk.
*Plan some meals even if in your mind and shop for ingredients. Cook before you get hungry. Shop for food before you are hungry too. Make enough for leftovers and serve plates pre-loaded before you bring them to the table of the correct portion size and don't go for seconds. Store leftovers in portion sizes and use them for meals when time is tight.
*Eat desert at restaurant's if you want to, also at friends dinner parties and other social occasions, don't beat yourself up about this, enjoy the freedom, learn to recognise it is an infrequent event but not a treat for abstaining generally just a less common than before occurrence.
*Pitch exercise sessions carefully, make sure you don't go at it like a mentalist and cause yourself pain. You wont return. This would be an example of a typical new yearalist.
*If you make a bad meal choice or fill your face with chocolate just move on, don't buy a carrier bag of crap for the rest of the day telling yourself you'll start tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes.
*If you're really anti exercise you may want to consider an alternative to gyms...something outdoors, anything, could be a better place to start. Do you know your surroundings? Can you pick two country pubs and walk the footpaths between them?
*Get a dog and be a good dog owner.
*Don't drink at home unless entertaining.
*Join that club/team/game....seize the day.
*Goal setting works for most people, once they have started a program of activity. If you are pre-active spend some time thinking about what you would like to be like...look around you at friends, role models, partners and notice who moves the way you want to move, who looks to have the confidence you envy or the swagger in his stride, who feels comfortable with their physique and happy with their balance. Most importantly find people who understand moderation and sustainability. Look at their lives, see how it differs to yours, see where they fit the activities in that you think you cant. They can do it, so can you.

Addidas Mi coach review

Not best known as a fan of faff I dubiously set up the Mi Coach on my laptop. Id say my computer knowledge is of an average standard, perhaps my patience is slightly lower than average....however this task in itself presented me a few difficulties. The instructions that come with the product are vauge and assumptive, but with the help of someone a little more patient and a couple of huffs later I managed to acomplish the synchronisation.

My first run with it was what Mi Coach calls a free run where i was able to specify what data from a list of about 8 variables i wanted to collect. The foot pod is based on a stride sensor rather than a GPS and although I didnt have to enter my stride length it seemed to record the overall distance impressively accurately when I checked it on google maps later.
I noticed whilst running was that even though I didnt have a narrative in my headphones I knew my run data was being collected which in itself somehow pushed me on pace wise! It inspired me to program the thing for a coaching run.

Navigating the Mi Coach site was testing and there didnt seem to be a comprehensive nor user friendly help section, what i decided to do was use on of the pre programed race plans to work on my 5k time. The structure of the plan was brilliant I really really liked it.

Mi Coach bases either or in combination (I havent sussed this yet) your heart rate and stride rate on coloured zones. You go from blue to green to yellow to red zones with incresing intensity. Each run has a variable proportion of colour in it depending on your program specifics. You choose the narrative voice from a list of about 10 (too cute for my liking) and plug your MP3 player into it and off you go.

The narrative fades your music to zero when you need to change your pace and commands "speed up to green zone" for example or "slow down to blue zone" and then your music continues. You get a notification at a quater, half, three quaters and 5 mins before the end of your run.
I thouroghly enjoyed running like this, I never once had to look at a watch on my wrist, which I often find distracting as it seems to break my concentration plus I have to make some sort of mental calculation with the data. Having a simple "speed up", "slow down" or "maintain" command really worked for me.

Synching the unit with the laptop post run couldnt be easier...you just plug it into the USB on your computer and it engages automatically, and directs you to the Mi Coach site where the data you can view is presented either graphically or numerically. Although once again finding what you need on the site is challenging I thought. I managed to stick to the plan for 97% of the time which Mi Coach told me was excellent...I hope i dont let her down next time! ;)

In short its great having someone in your ear pacing you, Mi Coach is light, small, portable and im very much a fan of the coloured zones rather than the raw data being the parameters to work within. Where I would suggest this product could do with improvement is the site navigation and useability

Festive spirit

My lovely friend Clive was out canoeing last weekend and saw this lot between the piers....oh how we laughed!

Natural movement

Being born has a few positive and a few negative outcomes in my opinion; You have life ahead of you, the joys and secrets of wisdom to discover and a path to create for you and those around you as you choose, not to mention the wonders of parenthood, falling in love and all that jazz....;)But lets get things into perspective from someone who relies on her body for a living and in recreation...none of this would be possible without a fit lean healthy physical self to carry us around in. And how much more perfect a body could you be gifted with than the one in which you were born? Unflawed, completely mobile, balanced, injury free and toned.

Most of us then choose to spend our lives in a manner that causes a reduced range of movement around what were mobile joints, pick up injuries and muscular imbalances due to repeated movement in an isolated plane, a weight gain over and above what our skeleton was designed to carry placing further stress on our joints and organs etc etc....These are some of the negative factors to consider in being born! Birth of the spirit generally means a speedy death to the healthy body....

So the answer to me seems clear. Move. Any way you can to start with and over time start developing a sense of proprioception, coordination and balance. Once you have started growing these more physical but still subtle branches of self you may want to consider movement patterns that you were born to do, that you still can do, and probably feel more natural to you than anything you have actually ever done!

If you consider the upright body it has 2 points of contact with the ground through your feet. There are hundreds of joints in the total body, however the main joints in an upward movement from the ground are the ankles, knees, hips, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and neck. Each joint has wrapped around it various muscles which control its position depending on the tension of each muscle group. You can begin to see how the total number of positions the body can form through various permutations of muscle tensions around joints almost infinite added to which movement from one position to the next causes an exponential growth in the number of patterns the body can flow into. And for yet another layer of movement permutation the manner in which one moves ie slow or explosive further increases the possibilities of movement.

As you begin to explore your body's mechanical range make sure you start with some basic movement patterns, test walking on all fours for example and notice where you feel your weight is centered. Most beginners will load the legs almost exclusively and brush the ground with their hands as they traverse for the first time in this manner. But with improvement in muscle tone, balance and coordination you will find that after a small amount of time spent learning your own ranges it will feel much more comfortable to walk on all fours loading each point of contact (2 hands, 2 feet) equally.

You will notice using this position as an example the tension around your core and how if you arch your back slightly up from the ground you can engage your core more. You will notice if you rely more heavily on your hands that you can lengthen the spine but you may not be able to traverse as quickly until you have built up more strength and power in your chest and shoulders. Or that the range of movement around your shoulder joints can determine the cadence of your hand strike on the floor. Other people may find the muscles in the front of the thigh to be the limiting factor in the amount of time spent in this position, the burning sensation from the build up of lactic acid simply being too much! Or the softness of the skin on their hands prevent them from the "ape walk" for too long on rough terrain.

Each pattern of movement has its own limitations and progressions but thanks to mother nature has constantly changing boundaries depending on how you train. In my opinion building strength and fitness has a place, a place of insurmountable importance in the health of the human body. Yet you will always be limited by the range of movements you can perform if you do not engage in joint mobility and flexibility work to maximise the gains you make muscle building. Being fully mobile and flexible is key to promoting a pain free and balanced body.

Think about moving like a child or animal does, play with your movement patterns, climb, jump, swim, roll, twist, sway, crawl, throw and leap. Introduce yourself to your inner child!

Running with wolves....part 2

Pepe and I have a new running partner in Ruby a 2 year old collie cross.
Ruby is every bit the character filled ball of energy that you would expect from a young collie. Added to which she is also Pepe's girlfriend, which is probably best discussed on a "inter-species canine loving" type blog rather than here but pertinent to the fact that he pretty much lets her get away with anything she wants. This usually involves high volumes of repeated barking and charging simultaneously at him in an attempt to engage him in play. Pepe is a wise old dog and pretty much knows what these runs entail....undue expenditure of energy is not in his game plan, god forbid he were to lark around and play with his young bit of fluff rather than missing a juicy sniff or pee stop.
Today for some reason was different.
Ruby was a delight for both Pepe and I....she fell into a perfect trot pace from the outset. When the paths were narrow either Ruby or I led, at broader points I had Ruby to my left and Pepe to my right both half a step behind me. Today I didn't run with music like I usually do, our breaths were rhythmical and it felt good as we worked hard up the hills and through the woods. The air was still and thick, fog still in some places, particles of moisture formed little breath clouds as we exhaled. Each of us helped the other through the run, sometimes Ruby would pace Pepe and I, and sometimes she would hang back to provide him with moral as I carved out our pace and direction. Running with wolves....whatever the pack....is one of the single most raw and pleasurable experiences I know.

"No impact".... try aqua jogging

You've picked up an injury, perhaps you've run in bad footwear, or on poor ground, maybe you had an accident or are rehabilitating a bad back. Either way all signs are pointing in the direction of low or no impact sporting pursuits to avoid further damage. There are options; pilates, yoga, cycling and rowing to name a few but you want a creative, fun and exhaustive exercise session, something a little different to chop up the monotony of your injury rehabilitation. And the answer is.......run through water, the weightlessness of it takes the load off the joints and makes it low impact. Ideally you should run through water at shoulder height to provide enough support for your entire body, and better still wear a float belt to ensure proper running form. These vests or belts are made of a buoyant foam and come with an adjustable waist. The buoyancy belt should fit snugly so that your head and mouth stays above the water without tilting the head. A belt or vest will also help to support your lower back to provide good posture for running.

Once the vest or belt is secure, head to the deep end of the pool so that you are suspended in the water without your feet touching the bottom of the pool. Look straight forward and not downward. Make sure you do not lean too far forward. Instead, concentrate on having a good posture with only a slight forward lean. Mimic your land running form. Toes should not be pointed, but relaxed and flexible as in running. Focus on keeping a high leg turnover rate by driving the knees as in land running. Aim for a turnover rate of 76 to 80 cycles per minute (cpm). Due to water resistance, this would be equivalent to 88 to 90 cpm on land. Swing your arms as you do on land and keep them close to the body. Keep your hands closed. Do not cup or scull with the hands as this will tend to over exaggerate the upper body movement, avoid any bobbing......have fun!

The way of the homo sapien

Humankind gradually evolved during the Paleolithic era. Paleolithic hunting and gathering peoples ate primarily meat, fish, shellfish, leafy vegetables, fruit, nuts and insects in varying proportions.
The Paleolithic diet (also known as the paleodiet or the caveman diet) is a modern diet that seeks to eliminate diseases of affluence from contemporary industrial society, by replicating the dietary habits of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. By this we usually refer to type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, because they ate mostly lean meats and plants and frequently engaged in intense physical activity.
So the theory goes that since the homo sapien appeared about 200,000 years ago our metabolic requirements haven't changed that much despite the obvious transformation in our lifestyles.
Try typing paleolithic diet into a google search and see how popular the movement has become....everyone from dieters and athletes through to the office worker and mum at home are trying this one. Its reaching Atkins proportions!
Personally i love the fact that people have recognised how to improve the foods we have to eat and are moving in the right direction to fix it. What needs to happen now is an equally popular yet much more sustainable safety net diet plan needs to be promoted to catch the people who fall off the paleolithic wagon and provide a stepping stone for those who want to try it. As i see it,the problem is that unlike the first homo sapiens food for us has turned into a pleasure rather than a functionality. Meaning we place emphasis on the way it is prepared, tastes and presented. And lets be honest a huge hunk of meat, with a side serving of grains aint exactly nuvo is it?
So its sustaining the diet which seems to be the problem, mostly the problem with most diets. Id like to see it not being called the paleolithic diet but instead something like "the way of the homo sapien" or how about "nutrition for humans" I think we should be re-educating the kids with this stuff....when the hell is that food pyramid going to go? everyone's been talking about it for over a decade....but no ones got the gumption to screw the dairy industry and come to mention it the pharmaceutical industry either. Anyway staying on the topic of the day the following is a list of the dos and donts of the way of the homo sapien:

Meats and Eggs
Meats (including seafood) and eggs are perhaps the most important components of the Paleolithic Diet. Ideally, the animals from which the eggs and meat come from are fed a natural (to the animal) organic diet. That is, chickens have access to greens, insects, etc, as well as grain. Cattle eat grass and other pasture greenery. Fish should come from the wild, or at least be fed what wild fish eat.
In any case, meats should be free of breading of any kind.
Loren Cordain (The Paleo Diet) believes we should seek out low-fat meat sources, while others disagree. His reasoning is that today's meats are much higher in saturated fat so we should seek out low fat meats and then supplement with fats from other sources.

Vegetables
Vegetables are encouraged, although some versions of the diet except green beans and peas as they are legumes. Some versions simply say that if it can't be eaten raw, don't eat it (though this doesn't mean that it must be eaten raw, only that it should be able to be eaten raw). Potatoes and other starchy tubers (e.g. cassava) are not allowed.

Fruits
Fruits are generally allowed. Audette (NeanderThin) advises that people who need to lose weight should limit consumption of high sugar fruits. He allows juices in limited quantities. Cordain suggests avoiding juices altogether and limiting dried fruits.

Nuts and Seeds
Nuts and seeds are generally allowed, though Cordain suggests that those who want to lose weight limit them to four ounces per day. Note that peanuts are legumes and NOT allowed. Audette doesn't allow cashews since they can't be eaten raw. Unsweetened almond milk and coconut milk are often used as substitutes for dairy.

Oils
Though authors vary on recommended oils, basically the consensus seems to be that the oils from allowed plants are fine. Olive oil, nut oils, and flax seed oil are universally endorsed. Cordain recommends canola oil, but not coconut oil. Fish oil supplements are often recommended.

Beverages
Cordain is much more lenient about beverages than Audette. With Audette, it's water and tea, and limited quantities of juice - specifically no coffee and no alcohol. Cordain anything other than water should only be drunk in moderation, with the following recommendations.
•Diet soda (very controversial in the Paleo community from what I can tell)
•Coffee
•Tea
Also, although in one place Cordain says alcohol "should be limited to an occasional glass of wine, beer, or spirits", in another place in the book he defines moderation as:
•Wine - 2 4 oz glasses
•Beer - 1 12 oz serving
•Spirits - 4 oz (which is more than is recommended by anyone else, Paleo or not)

Chick pea climax

I promise this wont become a cookery corner....but seriously versatile chick pea usage HAS to be documented!

1 can chick peas
2 average sized sweet potatoes
2 onions
garlic
pepper
chili flakes
paprika
cumin
basil (dried)

Chop it up, chuck it in a roasting tray with a little olive oil at about 200 degrees for about 45mins. Done

Brighton personal trainer

Brighton's secrets

Due to the nature of my work I have been extremely lucky to see parts of Brighton that others may not see...parks and gardens that only residents have the keys to, back gardens, farms, building developments, offices, private gyms, and the hundreds and hundreds of houses from which I've trained people...
This is the way I've always preferred to work, I'm not sure I could manage turning up to the same place of work everyday, let alone be confined to the training limitations gyms and health clubs impose.
Occasionally I'll stumble across a new gem of a training facility that is public, these happen less frequently the longer I live here. And yet the city never ceases to amaze me. Last month I found a step sprint session on a section of the under cliff pass I had never even known existed.
I was under the impression the pass ran from the Marina to Saltdean only. It happens that there is a small (1km) additional section running from Telscome cliffs to East Peacehaven. At the end of which are the best kept training secret around: 186 concrete steps leading to the top. Cool:

Olympics 2010

News update on Brightonfit's inaugural garden olympics:
On the 3rd July 2010 13 brave olympiads turned up with about 100 of their friends and families for support (A rather amazing number of whom had bad legs, backs and necks thus preventing entry!)
There were 8 events spread between the outside track and the two indoor arenas.
4 of the events were purely physical ranging from climbing the garage wall to dragging a punchbag with a rider on it down the garden.
1 was logistical.
1 was a coordination test.
1 was a test of visual dexterity
and 1 was a mental agility test.
The diversity of olympiads was beautiful; a 6ft5" 55yr old gardner, an english student, a gym bunny, and a couple of chancers....
The crab race was the first event. It brought all competitors together at the start of the games after which they were split into groups. The start was staggered and olympiads were behaving sportingly:



At the first corner, a few olympiads began josteling for position:



And from then on the day brought out the competitive streak in everyone. The drag and ride prooved to be the deciding event for the leg muscles of a few the next day or two. The winner (in an amazing 9 secs) was the half man half machine Gareth Edge:



Caber tossing took place in a shaded corner of the stadium, but the judges were no less vigilant and measured to the millimetre each and every toss that got a white flag:



...And just when everyone was nearly spent....they had to collect in arena 2 for some flexing of a very different sort of muscle in the mental agility test:



Machine man took first but a galent second place was awarded to Chris Angell:



And as the day drew to a close many of the "injured and wounded" raced over to Gareth telling him they were going to de-throne him next year....lets see how their injury rehabiliataion goes first eh?
Well done to all who took part competing, serving food and drink, MC'ing, cooking, judging and playing music to help make the day a really good laugh!

Yummy things

Who would have thought being a veggie would make you want to cook? Veggie's eat a bland diet full of pasta, cheese and lentils dont they?....NOT SO!
The free life nutrition plan ive been following for the last couple of years has taken its next turn...these days its no meat, fish nor wheat and the only dairy involved is that from a bottle of milk with a green top (raw milk)
Mainly still issues around morality for me on the meat and dairy thing, but the wheat thing has stemmed from an interest in the paleolithic eating movement thats growing in popularity of late...more on all that in another post.
With such constraints on what Im willing to ingest it became immediatley apparent that my familiar methods of procuring food were not going to be as possible and I have found myself having to organise my time a little more efficiently if it was going to work.
Lunches out of Tesco's is not really an option unless you go for a bean salad...they've got some nice one's in take out boxes but its soooo boring after a couple of days. I have made some corkers though and i thought id share a couple of my favourites.
I enjoy flavourful, heavily spiced foods. I also cannot cook following recepies so the following may turn out slightly differntly from mine if followed as the amounts are very approximate:

Spiced parsnip nut burgers:
1xsweet potato
3xparsnips
1xfresh chilli
1xstick lemon grass
mixed spice (smallish teaspoon)
1xbunch corriander
4xcloves garlic
2xred onions
2xlarge bags unsalted mixed nuts
salt & pepper

Fry onions. Add crushed garlic, chilli, lemon grass and let it all soften. Peel and dice potato and parsnip and add with a small amount of water. Cover and let roots soften and water evaporate entirely. Crush the nuts in carrier bags with a hammer and add with the mixed spice, salt and pepper. Let it all heat through before you add the corriander. Take off heat and whizz it up with a hand blender then make the mush into burger shapes and place on a baking tray. Makes about 6 fat burgers.


Root vegetable and olive mash:
3xred onions
2xsweet potatos
5xparsnips
5xcarrots
1xsmall turnip
1xtub black pitted olives
5xsundried tomatos in olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1cm cubed root ginger
1xstick lemon grass
1xfresh chilli
mixed herbs
1xbunch corriander
1xbunch parsley
sprinkle of cinnamon
small teaspoon nutmeg
salt & pepper

Fry onions in oil with garlic, lemon grass, chilli and ginger. Add diced potatoes, parsnips, carrots and turnip. Add water and cover until veg are soft and water has evaporated. Add sundried tomatoes, mixed herbs, cinnamon, nutmeg and olives. Heat for a while before finishing with all the chopped herbs, salt and pepper. When its all a mush blend it with a hand blender, if you want a soup instead of a tapenade texture then add water. Makes enough for 10

Brighton loves you

The main reason I found a place that I could call home in Brighton lies in its unspoken rule of inclusivity. I moved here when i was 21 and potless, I had a few bags of stuff and a Renualt 5 and worked on a farm in West Sussex.
Back in those days the only thing I cared about was being free, and that meant having a motor!She was a banger, I don't recall what was wrong with her but by the time she made it to Brighton the only way she would start was a rolling start or a jump if she konked out on the flat.
I was strong and powerful in spirit and would never hesitate to charge down hills with the driver door open and my hand on the steering wheel building up enough speed before I hopped in and flipped her into 2nd gear....but when it came to flat starts I often found it hard to build up enough speed to do the same.
To this day I recall the pivotal moment of the start of my love affair with Brighton was in one of those flat starts, early one morning on my way to the farm when some fella stopped his car at the lights I was stranded at and helped push my car with me. My exact thoughts were "How refreshingly unassuming people seem here, it doesn't seem to matter in this city that I'm some ragamuffin" I just wasn't used to it, Southampton is quite a different kind of city! Not a big deal you may think but its kept me here for 15years!
And from the farm a side step into the gym; an extension of the love of movement and physical prowess. But most importantly a place where everyone is stripped down to their bare essentials. What I mean by that is that millionaires rub shoulders with musicians, black people with white, gay with straight and men with women. Its a melting pot where the only interest in all the threads of the all inclusive Brightonian demographic is that of fitness. Yet again a place that I can call home, somewhere that I can be myself and grow and learn irrespective of what society sees me as.
I think we all love that, there is a commonality running through our band of merry warriors that unites us all. Yet again its beauty lies in its unassuming unspoken (none of them read this anyway;) acceptance. Portrayed perfectly by an old kickboxing instructor of mine: We were sitting next to each other at a show and I remember saying to him "That blokes shit isn't he?" to which my instructor said "No he's great for just getting into the ring"

Dat evolution aint it?

This is a burnt foot. It is mine. I'm not going to bang on about my barefooted misdemeanours apart from to say Ive learnt not to run on boiling tarmac!
More interestingly for anyone remotely paying attention to these rants is the selective evolution occurring past and currently in our urbanisation.
Bare feet in all mammals, and I suppose creatures, were designed for locomotion. But not to carry us across tarmac, to carry us across undulating and less compacted surfaces like dirt packed ground and grass. Even rock surface seems more forgiving to the barefoot than the tarmac on a blistering day, its covered in nooks and crannies offering ridged foothold and little bits of shade...and its not black like tarmac sucking up all that heat.
So we have shoes and so we evolve like our paths of transit.
But I went running with Pepe...he was also shoe less, as he often is!
And I thought how many hundreds of miles must we have run together over hot tarmac historically and I have not given his poor little foot pads a second thought through my shod and so cushioned view....I'm glad I burnt my feet.....as the invisible inscriber would say "I learn best when there is pain within the teaching"

What's underneath Hove park?

There's something odd going on. I'm pretty sure of it.
When i first moved to Brighton in 1996 i didn't notice Hove park. Not because it was any less attractive than it is today....in fact it took until 1999 that the magic of the park really took grip of me. Firstly the park seems to have its own ecosystem which generally looks upon outdoor exercisers more favourably than most of the other public spaces in Brighton. Something to do with it being slightly submerged but also the air seems much stiller and peaceful. Secondly the place is beautiful with a diverse range of seeds, grasses and trees tenderly manicured by the gentle park keepers.
The way the park is laid out it means that as you drive down the Old Shoreham road which is the only trunk road that bounds the space you see only a small tip of the park. In fact it extends North of the road for about 1km and is so large its split into 2 smaller parks within itself. I suspect that this is why until they built the disgusting playground and crammed the bordering roads with mummies in their 4x4's the park revelled in a surprising level of peace and tranquility.
And then the disruption began:
In the Summer of 2007 large sections of the path around the park were cut open for underground inspection, the process looked unnecessarily protracted....given my vast experience in the length of time such an inspection should take!
Next,in the autumn through spring the whole of the path was cut up section by section as some kind of pipe and/or cables were laid. Yet again a job that could only be done at the council's unique goeth sloweth paceuos!
And now for the past 3 months squares of 10x4ft of tarmac in the now patchwork path of the park have been dug about 10ft deep and the earth prevented from falling into the cavern by boarding up the walls of the hole way above surface level to form a mini pit. Each pit has a metal barrier fence around it and each of these sites has a security man absolutely bored out of his brains sitting in his car or a chair next to the hole day in day out. Ive a feeling the security is 24hr although i have not been there after nightfall so am not sure.
I know that the wires under the path connect Hangleton to Hove, which in itself seems odd as it would have been a much shorter route to connect the two places with wire in a straight line through the park or around the park under the road. And why would 2 places need connecting anyway? what would happen if a railway line or river divided these places. Surely each area gets connected to the grid indepenant of the other? So why is this urban myth being punted around? what is Hove park hiding? What are the security guards securing?
I think the parks unique ecosystem, the Goldstone rock (The rock the devil threw right next to one of the currently secured pits)and the continual excavation under the guise of ground works are all linked....Theres some kind of magic under Hove park....

Primal

Bare
Foot
Running
Its the way forward
There are some things that don't need an urban evolution.
Quite a lot of things actually....but where money can be made Nike know no bounds! The advantages and theories behind barefoot running are heavily documented, for some of us it holds pleasure and challenge and for others it never will yet what i simply cannot quite believe is that for years the fitness industry has been blinkered from this wealth of information by the sports shoe aggressive marketing ploys.
In coaching courses we are taught to teach running techniques that were sold to us by these capitalist pigs....strike with your heel, send shock waves through your body in a way it is not designed to withstand and cause damage to the knees so predictably that if you don't at least have an arthroscopy on both knees as a regular runner by your forties you'll be a runner's anomaly!

The hound and I around

WEATHER: Overcast and threatening
SEASON: Spring
TIME: Lunchtime midweek
PURPOSE: None
RESULT: A number of unanswered questions arose
CONCLUSION: Attempt to resolve questions and pay more attention to surroundings in future

The first thing you notice at the moment is the colour of the lagoon water in West Hove. It looks like liquid rust, its been this way for the past few weeks:


Although doesn't seem to be affecting the wildlife:


On the prom I noticed the fishing and/or sailing club AKA 'private late night drinking den' has finally bought some fishing boats in a transparent attempt to mask its real purpose:


A paddle boarder is spotted, having tried this a couple of times last summer I thought rather impressive considering the swell today:


Pepe sights prey:


But gets left for dust as his arthritis prevents him from moving around too fast:


Used to being faster than 'em all i decide he must feel demoralised and in need of a warm sofa so we turn tail for home....not before spotting a bit of wood that can only have been used for one purpose:


....THE END

Kettlebell snatch....park stylee

Picture this: its a lovely crisp sunny morning in the park and you're training with your PT whilst your dogs roll around on the grass together....when all of a sudden a random dog walker grabs you from a full on frontal pelt across the grass shouting his head off at you....!

You may be surprised to hear that this story is actually true, and happened in a local park only a few hours ago:
If it were possible to accuse someone of dog species racism it would be this man and his walking partner. As classic small dog owners they don't take an interest in understanding larger breeds, because for whatever their own reasons they are fearful of them. When a dog they are scared of interacts with their pet they often ask you to call your pet away. When you are in the middle of a tabata series, kettlebell in hand stopwatch carefully being monitored and a bad taste in your mouth left from last time this couple shouted at you, you tend to not pay much attention to being ordered to control an animal who is playing around and would be hard to collar even if it was making a nuisance of itself!
So we continued to exercise despite being told to stop doing our "silly little exercises and do as we were told". These people are the same "don't cycle on the pavement" lot in my mind, so I suppose they don't stand much of a chance of me abiding them. However, i managed to just about keep my rather gobulous gob shut on this occasion and we continued to train.
Finally the bloke was so frustrated at us ignoring him in front of the woman he was trying to impress that he came steaming over and physically grabbed my client and tried to rip the KB out of her hand, shouting at her to listen to him!!!
Like the tightly coiled spring I am (haha) I grabbed him from behind and restrained him giving her time to place the KB down and step back from him. A lot of "argy bargy" ensued until finally they moved on and we ended our session too distracted and pumped to continue....
The very fact that I have to share my air space with such a pathetic excuse for a man makes me extremely irate. Moreover that someone has such little comprehension of boundries and acceptable behaviour within a community is very worrying, id have hoped these unstable bullies would have been filtered by the system a little better into secure units or on medication. And the fact that he is the sole carer of a helpless animal is even more disconcerting.....and breath!

Thanks for showing me how to fix stuff Dad

My Dad is cool. Everyone used to tell me that growing up....of course i never thought he was very cool at all. My Dad always used to embarrass me as a child, yet somehow between teenage years and adulthood he became the coolest person i knew. I proudly display many traits and characteristics of my father as an adult....most of which i feel are completely reasoned logical views! I thank my Dad for most of my physical prowess, I'm sure my Mother wont mind me saying that, as well as a knack....all be it the way of the cowboy...for DIY.
Today my Dads hoover malfunction checkpoint list came out of my mental filing cabinet when i finally reached breaking point with my Panasonic upright. For weeks now its been loosing suction, today it just flattened the brush of the carpet hair. So Ive run through:
1:Taping all holes in the hoover bag up
2:Then replacing the bag
3:Cleaning the filter
4:Chucking it around a bit (a personal amendment to Dad's list....an improvement I feel)
5:Unscrewing the bottom bit and sitting cross legged on the floor amongst various biscuit tins full of screws, bolts and other bits and bobs.

And there it was dangling off its little post....one of the belts had slipped off....simple as that. Thanks for showing me how to look for stuff like that Dad x

Thanks to "dare to evolve"

....And Shane's clip of a Nike advert which i think speaks volumes to us all!

Top 15 most memorable training sessions

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

1 = Undercliff path runs before they widened the path meant that when the tide came in, waves would crash against the wall and arc up in the air over the path until they came crashing down. You would run in ankle deep water anyway but trying to avoid being totally annihilated by the wave overhead by timing sprints through the arch of water overhead on thin parts of the path was exhilarating!

2 = The classic Rocky training session that all local fighters know as "Wilson ave steps" The first time i did these was with a club id only been fighting for a little while, as usual was the only female in the club, and i was young...all of which meant i had something to prove. And i did 10 continuous sprints after running up Wilson's avenue and back down with the other fighters....but it was one of those killer sessions where so much pressure was on the performance i almost lost myself i had to dig so far within!

3 = Kicking practise with Roberto the kid! Rob was a 16yr old black belt karate kid who used to help me with accurate kicking techniques. In this session nearly 10years ago practising a spinning hook kick he accidentally planted (or did i walk into?)his big toe firmly in my eye socket, leaving me with the strangest colour black eye I've ever had!

4 = A session conducted by a friend of mine training for the tough guy competition where after 40mins of non stop kettlbell circuits we ran along the stones on the beach 1mile and back through the sea at waist height fully clothed in winter at dusk in the rain with a strong rip tide. Me laughing uncontrollably and hysterically at the cold water and ridiculousness of our session.

5 = In a kickboxing class trying to get one of my most promising and diligent 16 stone Albanian participants to understand the meaning of pulling his punches by sacrificing myself in the ring!

6 = Running, or attempting to, in 98% humidity and 40 degree heat in the monsoon season Darwin. The most extraordinary feeling of drowning in a sauna whilst outside!

7 = Trail running in Kavos, Corfu at dusk alone loosing my way and getting stuck in the hills for hours where the local rumour was that the Albanian Mafia hide out after swimming across. Fear like I've never known. Legs cut to smithereens by bramble as i scrabbled in blind panic to eventual freedom!

8 = Performing a weight lifting exercise in a gym before i had any lifting experience moons ago which caused my right shoulder to dislocate. Gym staff tried to pop it back in but finally called an ambulance to take me to the Royal Sussex for gas and expert manipulation.

9 = The very first time i was running up at Hollingbury fort on a crisp sunny day and saw the panoramic view extending from Ovingdean to Worthing and out to the isle of Wight, feeling alive and strong, reminding me of my life spirit.

10 = Repeatedly cycling down King George the VI avenue, known locally as snakey hill as fast as humanly possible trying to set off the speed camera at the bottom (nope....not once, despite breaking the 30mph limit)

11 = The London marathon. New socks id bought myself for race day with extra cushioning around the heel meant my shoe fit 1mm more snugly than it had in any training session, so that by half way a liquid filled blister had formed across the whole sole of my foot making foot placement unsteady as the fluid sloshed around the blister. And by 18miles it had popped, on both feet, so that i was running on raw flesh for the last 8miles....that day i learnt a lot about grit!

12 = Without question running into the sunset "in the zone" along Brighton's seafront is one of the most amazing feelings in the world. Calm serenity, beautiful nature and the warm late summer sun gently beating down on your back as you carve out step by step the way to your soul.

13 = The day i bench pressed my own body weight for 10 reps was a day and a half! No one was there to share the moment....

14 = The winter of 2008. Evening sessions were taken up by 3 clients back to back all on long distance running programs. The seafront became my enemy as night after night id spend 3 long hours running in sleet and hail with them. When hail hits your face at an angle with ferocity it hurts. When it is combined with spray from lashing seas it becomes hellish.

15 = A sparring night at an old semi contact club in Fareham way back in the day; 4 grown men sitting on the floor wasted from sparring. Me standing in the centre of the dojo asking who was next....oh how we all laughed and laughed, the scene was just so ridiculous.

Squirrel sandwich....any takers?

Its been 2 years that Ive been on a self titled "free life diet". It translates literally and is based more around the ethics than the nutritional advantages. I have not been fastidious, but on the whole nothing more than avian (game and pigeon only), aquatic critters (non farmed) and rabbit has passed my lips in the protein department. I do not subscribe to free range poultry partly due to reading the tractor diaries as well as the conflicting information i have found on what qualifies as "free range" Neither of which lead me to believe these birds fulfill my "free life" criteria.
The obvious missing component in my diet has been the allowed foodstuff's made up by roadkill. And over these 2 years i have tried numerous times to get my head around that, the closest i got was meeting someone who told me of a roadkill dinner party group, which i was hoping to become a part of but never chased up.
Roadkill needs to be collected very soon after impact and drained of the blood that can lead to the meat becoming poisonous if left pooling and coagulating, and i have no idea how to tell whether a hit was recent enough....
Despite the missing component i have noticed that a free life diet is quite easy to stick to once the principles are assimilated, provides me with enough energy, and as a meat eater gives me enough of a sense of consciousness to rest easy at night! My concerns would be to ensure that my high volume of fish consumption doesn't concentrate mercury etc...in my body to too high a degree so i may look to monitor this in the future. And also that i find enough variation to stick to the eating pattern that id like to see me though the rest of my life.
I will of course blog the day i manage to stomach said squirrel sandwich!

Friend, therapist, lover or are you looking for a trainer?

The following is a list of what I consider important credentials when searching for or assessing your current personal trainer. It is by no means exhaustive and in no particular order....

1: Is your trainer qualified to a nationally recognised standard which meets or equates to at least a REPs level 3? And do they belong to a national umbrella type organisation to recognise this for example REPs or the NRPT (national register of personal trainers) And if so, they should hold public liability (and personal indemnity) insurance to cover them for the manner in which they are training you.

2: Before you start (ed) any physical training a good PT will sit you down and run through what can be quite a varied initial assessment but should at least include a health screen to determine any familial health issues, current personal health profile including any medication you may be taking, injuries or mobility limitations, any historical health concerns which may be relevant, your blood pressure and resting heart rate, some kind of body composition analysis, some kind of fitness test, possibly a strength and flexibility test too. You should be asked to complete a PAR-Q form and your trainer should take a note of your details including someone to contact in case of emergency.

3: If your trainer is experienced and established in the fitness community expect them to have strong links with osteopaths and physiotherapists and to know when to say "I dont know the answer to that" and use their support network. Expect them to have good healthy relations with other trainers and know that they meet or talk regularly to share training tips, coaching advice etc... and that building and sharing knowledge is the key to promoting health and fitness as cognitive training not just physical.

4: Your trainer should know that RUN (Blachington road, Hove), The JOG Shop (George st. Kemptown) and SHEACTIVE (North street, Brighton)are really the only places to purchase adequate footwear for first timers for any kind of fitness program. By all means repeat buy from another shop, but for the first time the advice and meticulous attention to detail these guys pay to your footwear selection is unsurpassable.

5: The relationship you build with your trainer is special. Sometimes it can feel like a therapy of sorts; and in fact studies prove that having someone to listen to you and bounce ideas off whilst moving your body aerobically is an extremely effective form of counselling. But be careful with this delicate balance, as although your trainer is aware of these ramifications they are ultimately providing a physical training service to you. And it needs to remain as such to maintain a working healthy effective fully functioning relationship. On the flip side you need to be aware not to balance things out too much, so if you find that your trainer has become more of a friend than a professional to you need to start considering whether it is worth revising your relationship. For the relationship to work optimally it needs to be made clear that your trainer is providing you a service, that there is no option for a cup of tea instead of a session when you are not in the mood, that you dont regularly see your trainer pissed out on the town, that your trainer doesn't regularly lament on the difficulties in their life/relationship/work etc... Your trainer should be a friendly trustworthy informative motivational coach who listens well and provides empathetic and non judgemental personal support.

6: If your trainer has competed or raced at any level in his or her sport they will have an edge over one who trains for passion alone. That edge is purely and simply a psychological experience that they are able to tap into and translate to you when building programs or helping you prepare yourself mentally for your own fitness goals. This becomes relevant predominantly when you yourself are training for a particular event, so ensure to look for a trainer who has "been there and done that" so they can help you train to gain the psychological edge for that sport which is the main advantage at "show time"

7: Make sure you pick a trainer who is interested in learning. Whether its talking or training with colleagues, going on courses, reading and writing papers, going to talks, seminars, shows, masterclasses etc... they need to keep up with the ever changing advice, methods and equipment on the market. At the moment its all about high intensity short duration blast type workouts; does your trainer know what tabata training is? how to use a kettlebell? what functional strength is all about? can they combine these things with other facets of fitness training and maintain a balance or have they got sucked into a fad?

8: A good trainer should be able to take you into the middle of a flat field with no equipment what so ever, not even a watch, and supply you with a creative fun exhaustive and inspirational session of the top off his/her head. In my opinion ;)