David @ DHPT

One of the hardest things to deal with when trying to get fit is feeling like you aren't making progress.  This is often a product of looking at the scales and not seeing them move very much day-to-day.  There's more than one way to judge progress, however.  I thought I'd give you a few of my other favourites to use. The first one that comes to mind after the scales is a tape measure.  It seems obvious but it isn't one that many people use - maybe because it's easier for someone else to measure you than it is to measure yourself.   However, if you have someone who can measure you then I would advise you to take advantage of this.  It doesn't have to be a thousand different measurements, you could just use a couple if you wanted to.  The main ones that I recommend are hips, waist and chest.  But you can go into more detail and take neck, calf, bicep, thigh and even more measurements based on your goal and how much time you want to spend gettin...

One of the best ways to make progress towards your health or fitness goals is to exercise with regularity.  I often tell my clients that consistency is king when it comes to moving the needle on their performance and health.  If you're struggling to get into a regular training rhythm, here are some tips that may help you out. 1: Schedule your day This one seems pretty obvious but it's surprising how many people don't do it.  Even I've been guilty of this at times.  One way to ensure that life doesn't get in the way of your workouts is to put them into your calendar (both your personal calendar and your work one if appropriate).  By blocking out the time it will both remind you that you have an appointment with the treadmill or squat rack and it will also prevent other people from requesting meetings or planning other events during that time.   2: Get your work in early This one follows on nicely from the first point.  If you can, schedule your wor...

Usually, you read about people needing to care for the environment rather than the other way around.  But in this case, I don't mean the environment as in the ozone layer and the ocean, rather the environment you live in and the people around you - your home, work, school, friends, family members, colleagues and so on. When we are trying to get fit, lose weight, put on some lean muscle, or reach almost any goal related to our health and wellbeing our environment plays a huge role.  What you surround yourself with really matters.  Let's start with the people around you.  You may have heard motivational gurus say that you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with.  I am not sure that is entirely true, but who you hang around with does have an impact on your health and fitness. Are the people you hang out with most always hitting the gym, choosing healthy places to eat when you all go out to dinner, getting to bed at a reasonable hour, do yo...

So the title of the blog might seem a little bit like clickbait but the truth of the matter is that we don't comfort eat 'just because', there is always a reason.  The simple reason is that we are addressing a need or emotional requirement with a coping strategy.  Is it the healthiest one in the world? Probably not, no.  Does it work in the short term to comfort us and reduce stress?  Most likely, yes. So, in a nutshell, comfort eating is a short term answer to a chronic issue - stress of one sort or  another.  This might be physical stress as a result of an injury, work stress resulting from a boss breathing down your neck about finishing that report, emotional stress following a fight with a friend or loved one or really any other form of stress you can think of. We don't have a healthy strategy to cope with the demanding situation we are put in, so as a result, we turn to an unhealthy coping mechanism - food, usually the saltier, fattier, sugarier the be...

The story of the tortoise and the hare, it's pretty much required reading for toddlers and young kids worldwide.  As we all know (if we can remember that far back), the tortoise wins the race due to its slow and steady pace and not giving up when things got tough.  While the hare essentially went hell for leather and blew out before getting to the finishing line. Does this sound familiar when it comes to your health and fitness?  Or the health and fitness of someone you know?  Massive push when summer rolls around and then back on the doughnuts and pies by February?  Great commitment to get into the suit or dress for a wedding and then let all of that good work go to waste after the photos have been taken? If it's sounding like you, don't stress.  It's a common issue facing people trying to reach fitness goals.  And if you reached your fitness goal and now hitting the gym every other day isn't something you particularly care about, cool, this blog isn'...

Health and fitness are often perceived, and even promoted as an all or nothing prospect.  We regularly get shown images of fitness models with captions underneath promoting a mindset of no pain no gain, or advising people that if they aren't all about the fitness lifestyle then they aren't going to get results. This is not true. You may not get results as quickly as other people, you may not get to the same level of fitness or body fat percentage as someone who is completely on point with their training and nutrition, but to say that if you aren't perfect all of the time you won't achieve anything is just incorrect. This blog post is about taking a different approach, a better approach.  No seriously, that's the approach - just try to do a little better.  Just a little bit. Instead of changing your usual breakfast of a bacon and egg pie and a coffee from the local bakery to a fruit salad with Greek yoghurt, or an egg-white omelette and a glass of celery juice, how a...

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.  ...

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...

Something I see a lot on social media is people stating that they're going to get fit or lose some weight for summer.  This is a perfectly reasonable goal.  Except I often hear it in late November or early December. That might work out fine if you're living in the United States, but here in New Zealand, that time frame is cutting it pretty fine, especially if you want to lose a significant amount of weight/fat.  These things take time. It's generally considered a sustainable goal to reduce your weight by 500 grams per week.  This means that if you want to lose 5kg for summer, then it will take you about10 weeks.  Using this formula, if you start in November you won't have enough time. You also need to take into account that this is a best-case scenario.  You won't hit your nutrition plan and training program perfectly each week.  Some weeks will be better than others.  So this timeline is likely to be stretched out even more.  Especiall...

These days there's an overwhelming pressure to be results focussed.  It can relate to your job, to the sports team you follow, to your schoolwork or university study.  Whatever the situation, it seems that results are all that matters sometimes.  Well, I'm going to say something that may shock you, but when it comes to fitness, don't focus on your results. That's right, I said it.  Don't focus on the results. Instead, focus on the process.   If you focus on the outcome measures, you can easily get discouraged if the results you are expecting don't come as soon as you want them to.  However, if you focus on what you can control - the process, then you can identify the progress you are making, no matter how small.   Think about it, if your goal is to reduce your body fat and you work really hard for a couple of weeks, but you jump on the scales and there is no change how would you feel? What about if you adjusted your measur...

There are thousands of different training and nutrition programmes available in the fitness marketplace.  Dozens of gyms in each city around the world.  Hundreds of different personal and group fitness trainers in your city or town alone I would think.  So many people are understandably unsure when it comes to choosing one program, gym, nutrition or workout plan. I have trained a lot of clients over the years, and there is always one thing that has worked time and again.  It isn't sexy, it isn't fancy, it isn't complex.   It is consistency.   The clients who make the most gains in their health and fitness are the ones who turn up day after day, week after week, year after year.   These are the clients who succeed.  Yes, they have time off when recovering from injuries or illness.  Yes, they go away on holidays.  Yes, they have off days.  But the difference between them and the ones who don't get such great res...

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.   ...

That is a confronting question to ask, I know.  But I think it's an important one nonetheless.  As we get older there's a tendency to slow down a little.  We tend to exercise less, or certainly with less purpose.  We enjoy those sweet or fatty foods a little more often than we did previously.  We're less active in general, we sit more, move less, and carry more weight than we used to. These things are understandable, as we get into our 30s and 40s, and older, we have families, full-time jobs, busy lives.  Fitness often just isn't a priority.  This a common trend for many people, and it's understandable to some extent.  But here's one thing for you to consider if you find yourself in this position.  We all pay for our health in one way or another, it is just where and how we pay for it that is the variable. Some people pay earlier, up front.  They join a gym, keep walking, watch what they eat (mostly), hire trainers.  They r...

Well, today is the final day of Bloguary and I have managed to successfully blog each and every day in February.  It has been a very rewarding process, I have found some days tough and some days have been easier, but overall I believe it has been worth it.  For the final day, I thought that I would share the ways in which Bloguary has been like a fitness journey.  So here we go... Some days are easy, some are hard... Like I mentioned above, some days were easy.  The blog posts not only came to mind quickly but the actual words flowed well once I got writing also.  This is similar to completing your workouts and eating to your plan each week.  Some days you will be on fire and things will happen easily and without stress.  Other days you will turn up at the gym and have to grind out a sub-par workout that was harder than it should have been.  This is OK, just turn up, put in the work, and the results will come.  It isn't always going to b...

Some people may not be aware of all the benefits that come with having a personal trainer.  They may also shy away from the rates that personal trainers charge (I'd like to think I am worth my hourly rate to be honest).  So here are 5 great reasons why you should hire a personal trainer. 1: We keep you safe... As a personal and group fitness trainer, I am a bit of a stickler for technique.  In fact, I am huge on it.  Great exercise technique not only makes exercises look good, but it keeps my clients safe as well.  There is nothing that scares me more than seeing people working out in a gym or local park and performing squats with knees caving in or push-ups with huge arches in their backs.  I can just see the injury potential.  To be honest, good technique is hard to judge for yourself, even if you are exercising in front of a mirror.  Having someone who can look at your technique from all angles is very useful, especially if you are not exp...

With the recent cold snap that has hit us, I thought that I would write today's blog post about keeping your motivation up over winter.  Winter, just the thought makes some people feel cold.  It also makes people think of things like sitting in front of a heater in a nice warm house, sleeping later in the mornings tightly tucked up in bed, and eating comfort foods to keep us warm. Unfortunately, while these things may be great to think about, they aren't always the best things for helping us to reach our health and fitness goals.  So how can we avoid the dropoff in our exercise habits that can come with the darker mornings and evenings of winter?  Well, here are a few tips to help you combat this. Firstly, you could get a workout partner.  To be honest, this is a tip that can serve many purposes no matter what time of year it is.  They help provide motivation, accountability, and energy when you aren't feeling like training on a particular day....

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...

Weight loss or more correctly fat loss is one of the most common goals that I come across as a personal trainer.  In today's day and age, we are more sedentary than in the past.  There is also an abundance of calorie-filled food and beverages available to us at a moments notice, often without even leaving the couch.  With this, it is no surprise that a large proportion of us are overweight and want to lose a few kilograms. Most people who are overweight will have tried a diet at one point or another.  Many of them will have lost weight, and I would venture to say that most would have put it back on again.  Many diet programs out there are not sustainable long-term, or just aren't suited to everyone, and as such are hard to keep at for any reasonable period of time. There are plenty of options too - the Meditteranean diet, intermittent fasting, ketogenic diets (low carb) and many more.  The options are myriad and often contradictory in what they offer....