Smart Training

My business strapline is Train Smart, Eat Well, Feel Better…..In an age when we all have access to fitness trackers, smart watches, and thousands of apps it is easy to be caught up in the technology and forget about how we actually feel and how well we are performing for whatever it may be – life, a sporting endeavour, a one-off physical feat. Whilst high-level sport has proven the benefits of constant monitoring most of us are not heading for international sporting stardom and would be well served to spend a little more time listening to our bodies. Training hard doesn’t always result in the greatest gains and in fact can hamper both progress and wellbeing in the short and more importantly the long term. We need to be clever with our training and be able to stop when we need it.

As a trainer, I spend a lot of time trying to help educate my clients to understand the importance of rest and recovery. For those dedicated to training, it can be difficult to take rest but it is as important as the exercise without a doubt. You cannot bank workouts by doing 3 a day and then none for the following 2 days, it just doesn’t work. You will overload your body, risk injury and progress will be slow or non-existent. Why do people do this? Lack of time, trying to fit it in while they can but what people don’t often appreciate is that each of those 3 workouts cannot be performed at an optimum level to facilitate change. It is better to do 1 workout properly and with full gusto and then to make time on the days when you think you don’t have any, even if it is to do a shorter session.

Exercise can become a compulsion and an unhealthy one at that. I exercised for a sport in my 20s and 30s – I had a goal and training was not optional if I wanted to achieve it. In my 40s my priorities have changed. I am still competitive and want to be the best ……but now it is the best that I can be and I am getting more comfortable with that every day but it doesn’t come easy. I ask a lot more questions of myself nowadays and analyse my training more but not with a watch or a tracker, I think I know my body pretty well, and with that comes the power to adapt my training as my body needs. If we stop listening to how we feel how can we learn where the limits of our performance lie and if we don’t know that how can we ever achieve ‘our’ best! Train Smart, not more……

Brooke x