David @ DHPT

A client recently said to me that they thought that I would train them even if I wasn't getting paid for it and that it was a nice to work with someone like that.  At the time I thanked them for the comment but didn't think much more about it.  Later in the day I went over the conversation in my head and decided to explain why he was right, so here goes. Our country has a problem with health.  And it isn't going away anytime soon.  This scares me a little.  I read a research review today that said there was a less than 1% chance of halting the current rise in type 2 diabetes levels and getting them down to 2010 levels. Less than 1%.  Do you know how demoralising that is for someone whose job it is to prevent this sort of statistic?  I will tell you - pretty damn devastating.  The worst part of it is that I know I could be helping more people - I have the time and the space. I have made an impact on many lives so far in my career.  Helping people lose weight, gai

Regular exercise isn't just for the young folks out there who want a six-pack to show off when they hit the beach.  As we age, it gets increasingly more important for other reasons. Improving and/or keeping our quality of life is the big one! Yes it does have the benefit of being able to build muscle (and burn fat), but the benefits reach much further than that.  Firstly, the right types of regular exercise can assist with retaining muscular power.  Why do we need to focus on this?  Well as we age, muscular power drops off sharply.  Why do we care about this?   Because it is a key aspect in preventing falls later in life.  Think about it - when we stumble we try to catch ourselves (usually with our non stumbling leg or an arm if we fully trip). When we do this a large amount of force goes through the "catching" limb - without muscular power this limb can just act as a painful cushion, with muscular power it can literally break our fall. Another reason why we need t

I spent last week running, tramping, climbing and sailing around Anakiwa at the top of the South Island completing Outward Bound's Navigator course .  It was both physically and mentally taxing, but while I was down there I managed to learn a few things both by self-reflection and from my course instructors.  I thought I'd share some of them with you. 1. Event + Response = Outcome This one I got from our lead instructor Asher.  At the time I thought it was a simple little equation, but the more I thought about it the more I realised just how relevant it was to both fitness and life in general.  Too often we let events impact the way we feel about things (myself included). If we can re-frame how we respond to events (important point: respond, not react) then the outcomes we can achieve can be a lot more positive.  Remember how you responded the last time you missed a training session because you couldn't be bothered, or how you felt when you last fell off your nutriti

The way you view mistakes can have a big impact on whether or not you reach your goals in both fitness and life in general.  Do you view mistakes as major things in life, or as minor setbacks which you can move past easily?   One thing I continually remind my clients is that mistakes are speedbumps, not roadblocks. Many people start a diet or get back into working out after not doing anything for a while and it lasts a little while.  Then life happens, and they miss a training session or eat something that they weren't meant to.  Then one missed session or "bad" meal turns into another, and another, and before they know it they are back where they started. Why does this happen? I think it has a lot to do with how they saw that initial "mistake".  It happens because they feel that that one less than a perfect meal or missed workout has ruined the entire day, which turns into 2 or 3 "bad" meals or a week of missed workouts.  The more we drift back

Do you treat your training sessions with a reverence similar to a monarchist meeting the queen? How is that working out for you, if you will excuse the pun?  I agree that workouts need to have focus and concentration, especially if you are lifting very heavy weights, but does that mean that we can't have a little fun too? I recently posted the picture below to the 360 Degree Fitness Facebook page and Instagram account . It shows the path of a training run I did recently where half way through my normal circuit of the park, I decided to mix things up and attempt to "paint" the park with my running route. Before you say it, I know, I missed some spots. I don't bring this up for you to say "well done you went for a run", I bring it up to suggest one thing.  Lets try and have fun when we exercise.  I know, strange theory right?  But why not - we are out there trying to improve our health, but that doesn't mean that we have to take it seriously

That is a quote from one of my favourite motivational speakers Dr Eric Thomas.  A high school dropout who was homeless and ended up getting a PhD.  He isn't talking about fitness when he says this but it's very applicable. (Skip to 1:35 if you to skip the intro, but it's worth watching from the start if you have time) Often when the road to our fitness goals gets tough, we turn back to our old habits.  The chocolate finds its way back into the shopping trolley.  We have that extra beer on the weekend.  We skip that early morning workout because we feel like a sleep in. When we begin to see these habits creep in that is the old us rearing its head again.  This is when we need to make a choice about how we move forward.  We need to get past our old ways of thinking before we can get to our new ways of thinking. And it is going to be hard.   Real hard. Proper hard. But will it be worth it? Definitely.   The question is: do you have the willpower to get

I quite often log into Twitter  and try and answer questions that people have on health and fitness.  By far and away the most common question I come across (besides people asking whether or not they should go to the gym today) is individuals asking for help on designing a gym program. Now this is a very open ended question - one that can't really be answered in the 140 characters allowed in a tweet.  But I always have the same piece of advice for them.  Start at the end and work backwards. This one piece of advice is aimed at helping them re-focus what they are trying to achieve. Most people who ask this question (be it on Twitter or to a real life person) tend to think that they just need a "workout plan" and that will be enough.  In one respect that is true - you can get a great workout by following a plan, but in another you will not get anywhere fast. You need to have a goal in mind before you start planning your workouts.  For the majority of people that I wor

In June I'll be having knee surgery (if ACC approves my request) which could see me unable to fully run/train for up to 6 months.  A few years ago (maybe even months ago if I was being completely honest) this would have sent me into a depression that would make Eeyore look like Mr Happy.  Here's what happened and why I'm not feeling too bad about it. I walked into my specialists office thinking that it would be just another meeting where he would say that yeah I injured my knee (again) but it has resolved itself.  I thought that because I'm in no pain despite doing a fair amount of running and other training on it.  This was not the case. He pointed to his monitor which was showing my MRI scan.  The news was not what I expected - torn cartilage with a PCL partial tear to go along with it.  Less than ideal. Long story short this meant one of two possible outcomes - which he wouldn't know for sure until he operated. 1. He would trim the frayed cartilage and it

Accountability is one huge way that you can move towards your health and fitness goals (or any other goal for that matter).  Basically it is a way of keeping you honest and making sure that you are working towards your aims.  With fitness being accountable is a key in achieving your objectives - here are some simple ways you can hold yourself accountable. Group fitness classes... I love group fitness  for many reasons, but primarily it is for the sense of community that they create among the clients that attend them.  The banter, the laughs, working towards similar goals, it all helps to create a community of people looking in the same direction.  There are also a group of people who will keep you honest and encourage you to get your training sessions in, even when you don't necessarily feel like it. Make your goals public... Announce your goals publicly.  This doesn't mean take out an advertisement in the local newspaper, just tell someone who will be genuinely interes

This is a guest post from Tim Spackman a personal trainer based in Auckland who trains athletes for endurance events.  Check out his profile at the end of the post and give his social media accounts a like/follow.  Enjoy the post... _________________________________________________________________________ You’ve signed up with a friend for a half-marathon or been talked into being part of a team for an adventure race. If you’re going to put in your time, effort and money, it makes sense to train smart as well as train hard. Here are 5 things to keep in mind when training for any endurance event. 1. Have a training plan... The plan doesn’t have to be perfect, but some structure and progression around when you will train, for how long and how hard is necessary. A good plan fits in with your life, it doesn’t control your life. If family, or friends are important to you, make sure plan allows for this. A good athlete listens to their body. If you feel like you really need a r

Hello everyone and welcome to the new year! This year will be a very exciting one for 360 Degree Fitness with us looking to help more clients reach their goals in new and exciting ways. Firstly, we will be taking our Tuesday morning lounge workouts and transforming them by including video demonstrations of the exercises.  This will make them easier for you to do at home without wondering whether you are performing the exercise correctly. Check out the video below for our test run that we put together last year. A new workout will be uploaded to our YouTube channel each Tuesday morning.  These are great for supplementing your training sessions with us, and they can be done at home with minimal or no equipment.  Please remember to subscribe to our channel also to ensure you don't miss a video.  We will also be putting out other videos with a variety of subject matter, and maybe even some guest videos from other health providers, so keep an eye out! Being the sta