It turns out that I AM human, after all! I’ve been very busy at work for the last few months. And with the dark (and wet!) evenings I often find it difficult to get out and go running as I know I should. Also I couldn’t face wasting another £30 per month on a gym membership which I won’t use (like I did last winter!). Not to mention Christmas (I said don’t mention…oh what’s the use!).

End result? I’ve put on one and a half stone (21 pounds or 10 kg). My extra fat jeans, which my wife lovingly bought for me ages ago, but which I have flatly refused to wear as they are soooo over size, now fit me nicely. I feel like an over-inflated space hopper.

Not what you expected to hear from someone with a fitness and weight control website, huh?

As I said, at least it means that I am human. Unlike certain internet fitness gurus I could mention….

But now the good news. I know that I will shift the extra weight, get fit and generally get back to normal. I know this because:

1. It was so easy heaping all the fat straight on, so it must be equally easy to burn off.
2. I’ve done it before.

It turns out that you don’t need the latest New Year diet, or a personal trainer, or a super-slimming pill. What has worked for me, and will work again is really simple. All I will do is:

• I will try to do some exercise every day. Somedays this will be the running which I (normally) love. I’m fully kitted out with reflective and waterproof running tops, and two head torches – one to illuminate the path in front of me, the other (showing red) facing backwards to make me even more visible to motorists, although I tend to prefer running on paths at this time of year. If I can’t run (e.g. apathy, no time, lazy, etc) I will try to do some simple circuit training each day. Nothing complicated. Just sets of abs, squats, pressups, weights rotated in sequence until I run out of time (and / or puff). Ideally a minimum of 10 minutes. Can’t usually manage 30 minutes as it’s too hard!
  If all else fails, I’ll go for a brisk walk at lunch time. It’ll get me out of the office. It will enable me to walk off the frustrations of work, and hopefully stop me from murdering one of my colleagues in the afternoon. And it will get my metabolism working. Not as good as a run. But better that doing nothing!
• I will only have a cappuccino where they make REALLY good ones. I admit it. I love having a coffee after work. So many coffee shops…but only a handful are worth having a cappuccino in. So why waste the calories? If I go somewhere where they make a great coffee, I’ll have one. One or maybe two a week should do. Everywhere else I’ll save my money and calories by having a mint tea (approx. 1 calorie, compared to 150 for a good cappuccino!). I’ll also forego the snack that often accompanies the coffee. No more toasted teacakes for me. Chocolate twist? No. If I fancy scoffing something it will either be a small (dark) chocolate bar (typically 100 calories) or a packet of crisps (‘potato chips’ if you speak American!). Either will be around 500 calories less than my favourite toasted teacake, heavenly though it might be…
• I’ll try to drink a bit less – I do love a glass of wine with my dinner, but I don’t need to drink the whole bottle…. I’ll also stop having deserts. NOBODY needs to have a dessert after their meal. They tend to be high calorie / high sugar, and often high fat. Just don’t do it. Simple.
• Finally, I’ll just try and cut down a bit on certain things. Smaller portions of pasta and potatoes. Low fat cheese instead of the real thing. You get the picture.

That is pretty much the plan. As I mentioned, I know that it works. It may take a bit of time, but I’ll easily be back to fighting weight, full running fitness and with a bit of muscle tone in time for Easter (Sunday 8th April, if you want to check up on me!).

I hope that you had a great Christmas, and will have a fit and healthy New Year. If you need a helping hand to get fit this year, head over to www.GetFitFeelGREAT.co.uk and see if I can help! Alternatively, please feel free to email me any time, and I’ll do my best to help.

Last weekend I played tennis for the first time in 30 years. My wife and I are lucky enough to live near a tennis court that is very rarely used. So we went to a supermarket, bought two bats and some balls (for £15 total!) and started playing. I know that they should properly be called racquets, but believe me, when they are in untrained hands like ours, they are definitely bats.

To say that we were truly dreadful would be a considerable understatement. Passers-by initially found it fascinating to watch, until they realised that no one was safe from stray tennis balls…

We had a lot of fun. We got well and truly puffed out, mainly running after balls that we had no chance of hitting, but also going outside the court to collect the balls that went over the fence. They don’t make the fences high enough, do they? Or that’s what our spectators thought!

All this made me think. I’ve been reading a lot recently about the benefits of short, high intensity intervals in training. As a runner, you can never convince me to abandon long runs. They are great for endurance and running efficiency, and I really enjoy running through the countryside in a world of my own.

But short bursts of high intensity exercise (running or other forms) are well known for improving performance very rapidly. And that is just what playing tennis is about. A burst of running as fast as you can, followed by a rest.

Even though I do a fair bit of running, this 1 hour of tennis gave me quite a workout, and the next morning I could feel muscles that I didn’t know that I had. It MUST be doing me good! And it really was great fun. It may not have been much to watch – Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams we are NOT – but we enjoyed it, and it gave us a good workout. What a way to take advantage of the summer evenings!

If you want to get fit, but you feel stuck in a rut, try something different and fun. There are many possibilities – tennis, badminton, swimming, squash… And down here in Cornwall there is Pilot gig racing – rowing in the sea in teams of 6 or 8. If you want a workout that will really stretch you, try rowing! Chances are, you’ll enjoy it so much you won’t even realize that you are getting fitter!

Rob Knowles 27 July 2010

Now that summer is with us – the sun has actually come out in Cornwall on more than one occasion, and it’s only July! – thoughts turn to sport and holidays. What with Wimbledon, the football World Cup, the Tour de France, the wonderful one day cricket internationals (sorry to any Australians who maybe reading this between bouts of sobbing inconsolably) it would be easy to spend all your spare time watching the Sports Channel. And why not?

However, while you are watching, don’t just be dazzled by the skills of the players, and the euphoria of winning (oops, sorry again to the Australians!). Take a little time to observe the physique of the sports men and women. Even in cricket, which many people consider to be a lazy mans sport, you don’t see any overweight players these days. It may look a bit tame if you don’t like the game, but let me assure you that fielders have to have a pretty good 100m time to be able to run after the ball and stop it reaching the boundary. And they do this many times every day. A recent study showed that an average first class fielder ran 15.5km (9.6miles) per day, with many high intensity bursts of running interspersed. This is not a sport for a couch potato!

Even Motor Racing, which on the face of it seems to be the laziest sport of all, is not immune. I know that the drivers basically just sit there driving for a couple of hours (I do the same myself quite regularly…). But racing drivers are different. They have to be at the peak of fitness. When Formula One driver Mark Webber broke his leg in November 2008 he was competing in a charity 250km challenge involving trekking, kayaking and riding a bike. Not the actions of a lazy car driver.

Obviously genetics must come into this at some stage. We are not all given the basic equipment to enable us to ride 3642km on a bike across France in 23 days, however much training we do. However, everyone can get better. With training we can all get fitter, improve our endurance, build up muscle, and burn off fat. It just takes effort.

So don’t just sit there enjoying the sport on TV. Let it inspire you to reach your challenges. The Tour de France might be a bit of a stretch. But what about running your first marathon next year? Or entering a Triathlon for a new challenge?

Elite athletes were not born able to win world records. They trained and trained and trained. Let the great weather and the exciting summer of sport give you the spur you need to improve on your best. You’ll be amazed at what you CAN achieve!

Rob Knowles 6 July 2010