David @ DHPT

Last week I announced on my Facebook and Instagram pages that I was rebranding my personal and group fitness training business.  I thought, seeing as I have a bit of time on my hands at the moment with this lockdown, that I'd explain the reason why I decided to do this - in case anyone was interested. My new company branding 360 Degree Fitness was a company that I started from scratch.  I built it with the help and support of a great many people.  People who probably don't even know how much they supported me.  To those people - my clients, my suppliers, my friends and family, those random people who read my blog posts when I was writing terribly and wondered if I would ever find my own "voice" to write with, I want to say a huge thank you.  I truly appreciate every blog view, every time you liked a post on my social media accounts or share it with your friends and family.  You truly have no idea how much that has meant to me over the years.  ...

So, every day since this lockdown started (except when in the torrential rain) we have gone on a morning family walk.  It's something that I'd quite like to continue even after the lockdown ends as it's good quality family time and gets all of us out of the house as well.   We usually ask each other 4 questions on the walk as a sort of check-in to see how we're all doing.  First, what's one thing that makes you happy today? Second, what's one thing that makes you sad today? Third, what's one thing your worried/anxious about today? Fourthly, how can I help you today?   For us it works as a way to check in with each other, it's a time for us to feel free to talk about how we're feeling in a supportive way where the people we're with can use the time to see if there are ways to help each other.  But most of all it's a way we can air our feelings, frustrations, anxieties, and happiness and feel heard. Today on our walk, I had a proper anxie...

Right now every trainer, psychologist, life coach, herbalist and their uncle have been doing blogs, vlogs, articles, TV Interviews and short operatic musical dramas about how to make the best of this COVID-19 lockdown.  While I don't want to add to the noise out there, I figure if this helps one or two people get through it then it's worth writing. Being cooped up inside can be tough, even for introverts like me.  It brings a certain level of stress into life.  This is before we even get to the prospect of illness, job and financial insecurity, trying to manage kids and animals that are out of routine and stressed themselves, and trying to help other friends and family members who may not be able to manage in this situation as well as us. Here are some strategies that may help reduce the stress you could be feeling.  Firstly, breathe.  In particular, try square breathing.  It's a technique that I've used in the past when feeling anxious.  It's simp...

Over the past few months, I have started on a different training programme than I usually follow.  It has included a lot of walking. And I do mean a lot.  What is the reason behind this shift in focus?  Well, it is to help a good cause and challenge myself at the same time. Three of my college friends and I have decided that we will be doing the Oxfam Trailwalk in March 2020.  We have decided to call ourselves the NOBS - aka the Newlands Old Boys Society. For those of you who don't know anything about the Trailwalk, it is a 50km or 100km walk based in the Bay of Plenty with the purpose of raising funds for Oxfam to continue their valuable work.  We have decided that we will aim to complete the 100km walk.  This is a fairly big ask, especially as the 100km walk has to be completed over a maximum time of 36 hours.   I have never been an endurance athlete of any kind.  As a teenager, I was a fairly good sprinter, and I could stretch out t...

Over Easter weekend, I went on a little trip away.  Two school mates and I went on a fishing trip to the far north of the North Island.  It was great.  We did a lot of driving, camped a lot, fished a lot, did a lot of catching up, and made fun of each other a lot.  What guys tend to do when they catch up after a long period of not seeing each other much. More importantly for me though, it was great to just get away from the city.  For the most part, we were in areas where our mobile phone coverage was iffy at best.  It meant that there was no point in having our phones with us so, for the most part, they stayed in the vehicle.  And I enjoyed the change.  I heard someone say recently that we are so connected that we are disconnected these days, and I thought that that made a lot of sense. Another thing I enjoyed about the weekend was getting out into nature.  I make no secret of the fact that I am a city boy.  Born and raised in the s...

No, I'm not referring to the early 2000's Basement Jaxx hit song.  I'm talking about what your mind is telling you, or more accurately, what you are telling yourself. Our minds are powerful.  The things we have going on in our heads can drive us to achieve great things or drive us to terrible depression or anxiety attacks, and many things in between. One important fact that most people don't really take notice of is that we are the person we talk to most in this world.  Think about it, every thought, every memory, every consideration we make is essentially a conversation with ourselves.  If we tell ourselves that something is impossible, guess what, we usually believe that it is. Now I don't want to make this blog post some diatribe of positivity platitudes.  I understand that just believing you can do something isn't the only thing you need to make it happen.  But I believe that we need to pay more attention to how we talk to ourselves.   ...

Health and fitness have a lot to do with our state of mind.  I'm sure you all by now are sick of me telling you of the mental health benefits of exercise so I won't go on about that today.  But I will approach the subject from a slightly different angle. As much as exercise and nutrition can impact our mental health, our thought patterns and emotions can also impact our health choices.  This may come as no surprise to you - the majority of people I would guess know about emotional eating but if we look a little more closely at our emotions then it can help us to work through these thoughts and feelings and not let them derail our healthy fitness and nutrition habits. First, let's take a look at eating.  It is always useful to see how emotions and stress play a part in our eating habits.  Take me for example, when I am stressed or feeling depressed, I tend to want to eat, and it isn't usually carrots and broccoli that I am craving!  This is useful in...

Last week I wrote about sleeping and how important quality sleep was in reaching your health and fitness goals.  So this week I thought I would write a follow up blog post, giving out some quick tips that may help you improve your sleep.  There are a few things to try and cut out of your routine, and a few things that you could look to add in to your routine.  As with most things health and fitness related, it can take some trial and error to find out what works for you.  SO feel free to try some of the things below and let me know how you get on. Let's start with the seemingly obvious first.  Caffeine before bed is not the best idea for dropping off to sleep quickly.  So some things to avoid in the hours after 4pm (depending on when you go to sleep) are coffee, energy drinks, teas with high caffeine content, really anything that has a decent hit of caffeine in it.   Some teas do not contain caffeine, and a number even claim to aid in sleep q...

One question that I always ask clients when they first start with me (and ongoing over the time we train together too) is how are you sleeping? It is not just a question to fill in the time while resting between exercises, it is an important one to be asking.  How often do you think about your sleep?  Do you think about it at all? Sleep is a vital component of a training program.  It is the time when our body refreshes itself, rebuilds itself.  If you are going through a phase where you are trying to build muscle, it isn't when you are lifting the weights in the gym that you build muscle, it is when you recover after those lifting sessions. The training helps to break the muscle down so that when we rest and the body rebuilds the muscle, it rebuilds it bigger (if following the correct program) and stronger.   Quality of sleep can also influence your success if trying to lose weight.  It does this in a couple of different ways.  Firstly, a ...

Last week I wrote about my struggles with depression and anxiety .  I told you all about the way in which my depression and anxiety manifested themselves, and what I did to seek help to get through the issues I was having.   One element which I failed to mention was the part that physical activity played in improving my mental health.   Being active through my struggles helped me a great deal.  I always noticed on the weeks that I didn't hit the gym or play some indoor football I felt the impact of my depression more keenly, and I was also more anxious.  Now there is a double edged sword with physical activity, especially with depression.  One of the symptoms of depression can be (not always) a lack of motivation to do regular everyday things.   This is a problem when it comes to getting into, say, a gym routine where you are trying to keep to a schedule, as some days even getting out of bed can be a struggle.  This is where h...

This is a tough topic to talk about, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't, what we need to do is to work harder to open up about it.  I'm talking about mental health.  This blog post talks about my journey through depression and anxiety, if this raises issues for anyone, please contact one of the numbers at the end of the article and talk to someone who can offer support. It's men's health week this week, and I thought that this was the perfect time to talk about men's mental health rather than just looking at physical health.  Mental health is just as important as physical health and the two are very often closely interlinked. Before you go and think that I am just talking out of a hole in my head about this subject let me put this out there - I have suffered from both depression and anxiety in the past, and still, struggle with depression at times.  While I never got to the point of having any suicidal thoughts or self-harmed in any way, it was by no me...