David @ DHPT

In most team sports, speed kills…the opposition that is. I can’t think of one team field based sport where speed is not a game changer. If one team is fundamentally faster than another they already have a huge advantage. Many coaches of sporting teams want to develop faster athletes (myself included). There are some however who are not sure how to go about doing this.  As such, I thought I would shed some light on the issue and do my best to help anyone who would like to get the jump on the opposition (either athlete or coach). Of course, if you just like reading my writing then I’m OK with that too.  What is speed? Speed can be split into two broad categories – first, there is top speed (maximal velocity for those sports science geeks out there). This is essentially how fast you can run when in full flight, think Usain Bolt at about the 60-metre mark in a 100-metre race. This is important for track athletes but less so for team sport athletes. It's nice t...

As a personal and small group trainer, I often find myself repeating the same advice over and over again. While there are many other aspects of health and fitness that are frequently discussed with clients I find myself coming back to these 5 pieces of advice time and again. So if I had to choose my five most common pieces of advice, these would be them… 1. Have some patience... Losing weight takes time. Especially if you want to lose weight and keep it off. You can lose weight rapidly but this usually involves diets with extremely low (often dangerously low) calorie intake and excessive exercise. Whilst the weight may fall off in these programmes, often it comes back again because the low level of food intake and the high levels of exercise are not sustainable long-term.  A more sustainable way to approach weight loss is to look at a gradual reduction in weight over a longer period of time. By taking your time to lose the weight, it makes it more likely that you will keep...

Over the weekend I managed to get out with a couple of mates and get an outdoor workout done. This answered the question that had been nagging me for a week or so – what should I write about next? My thought went something like this: the sun is shining…spring is here…summer is on the way…which means outdoor workouts for those who like to try and mix things up. A long train of thought but I got there, somewhat clearly (I hope). Summer is a great time to get out of the gym and get some fresh air while working out, so in case you are struggling to decide where to go or whether it is worth it, below are some options for you. Beach Workouts Beach workouts are tough. I have to be honest and put that out there before I even go into this paragraph! The resistance provided by the moving sand makes everything difficult, you’ll know if you’ve walked any reasonable distance on loose sand. It gets tough pretty fast. As such, I would recommend that less is more when it comes to beach workouts ...