David @ DHPT

Life is busy, and it seems that it just keeps getting busier.  This can make focussing on eating healthy meals seem like a lot of hard work.  But there are things you can do to make it all a little easier on yourself. One thing we do in our house is visit the farmer's market each Sunday.  For one thing, this greatly reduces our fruit and vegetable cost.  It also helps us buy produce that is in season, rather than paying high prices at a supermarket for goods that are imported or out of season.   Having a regular trip planned like this means that there is nothing to think about - on Sunday, it is market day.  So we just get our produce bags and head out.  We usually buy the same items each week as we tend to cook a lot of the same meals which helps as well.   My wife and I also have a shared shopping list App on our phones which allows both of us to add items that we need to get, which makes our supermarket trips efficient also....

Gaining strength is a common reason why people join a gym.  Writing a good strength workout is not as simple as it might first seem. There are many different ways to split up a strength workout.  Each has its benefits and its drawbacks.  Each can work well for specific goals, but you need to know these costs/benefits before choosing a split.  Before we get into the main part of this blog post, let me say this, If you find a split that works for you and you are getting results then go nuts, you can't argue with results!  But for myself and my clients, I prefer to write full-body workouts where they are appropriate. You can split a program into body parts (often called the bodybuilder split) such as chest and shoulders on one day, legs on another day (never skip leg day!), and back and biceps on another day.  You can have a push day and a pull day (e.g. squats and bench press on a push day, deadlifts and cable rows on a pull day).  You c...

Often people will decide to get fit and jump straight into a gym membership, personal training package, or bootcamp program.  This is sometimes done without much thought about how each type of training will suit them.  They might go along with a friend or relative because they have raved about it for a while.  This can sometimes work, but it can also be the wrong setup for their personal needs.  So here are a few questions to ask yourself before joining a training program or gym. 1. What is my goal? Often this will be to lose weight, but what if you want to get really strong?  Or gain muscle mass?  These three goals have very different training and nutrition needs.  A personal trainer would be able to help you with all of these goals, but a bootcamp is not the best setup for gaining a whole lot of lean muscle - the training programs are not usually designed for this goal.   The same could be said for the strength goal - and I mean powerl...

Core exercises are important for many reasons.  The core is essential in most human movements.  It gets used in the following ways: transferring power through the body, stabilising us as we move, bracing and protecting us when moving heavy stuff around, and in many other situations too. I'm sure most of you know a few core exercises, they are fairly common knowledge really - planks, various crunches, medicine ball twists, and the like.  But if you're looking to add some extra options to your core training, here are some great exercises that I use with my clients to really get their cores firing. Pallof Press - This is a great exercise for working the anti-rotation element of your core - basically the act of preventing your body rotating.  You get a little bit of light chest and arm work with it too as a bonus.  It looks deceptively simple, but when you select the correct band, it will light up your core.  Give it a try next time you want to add some va...

A while ago I wrote a blog post about how I'd been diagnosed with diabetes and the steps I took to battle that diagnosis.  I thought it was time I wrote about why it's important for everyone to keep an eye out for the signs of diabetes (and pre-diabetes) so that they can get on top of the condition before it gets worse. Firstly, what is diabetes?  According to Diabetes New Zealand , "Diabetes is the result of the body not creating enough insulin to keep blood glucose (sugar) levels in the normal range.  Everyone needs some glucose in their blood, but if it's too high it can damage your body over time. In type 2 diabetes, either the body doesn't produce enough insulin, or the cells in the body don't recognise the insulin that is present.  The end result is the same: high levels of glucose in your blood." Having high blood sugars over a significant length of time can lead to complications affecting many different body parts such as your eyes, kidneys...

Too often we look at only one measurement when it comes to our fitness goals.  When looking to lose fat for instance, we take weight and only look at the scales to judge our progress.  But there are a lot more measurements that we can look at.  For most people fat loss is a huge goal so I thought that I would focus on this, if you'd like another goal discussed, send me a message through my website and I can write a separate post about your preferred goal. For those who can't afford the cost/time of getting expensive scans to judge fat loss, there are some basic measures you can observe to see how you're tracking towards your goal.  Firstly there are the scales as mentioned above.  Scales are great at showing us a trend, but on their own they're a poor judge of fat loss - they vary with water loss, water retention, time of day, whether we've used the toilet, and more.  So if you can only use the scales, then make sure it's at the same time of the day eac...

Exercise is great at any time of day, but for me, I like to get my training done early when I can.  There are a lot of pluses to getting it in early, here are just a few. Getting your workout in at the start of the day means that you are more likely to get it done.  At the start of the day, for most people, your day is fairly open in terms of time commitment.  Sure you may have work or study, but those are always around.  Towards the end of the day things tend to crop up that may derail your plan to hit the gym.  After work drinks invites, sick children who need to be picked up and looked after, having to work late to make a deadline, feeling sick yourself, feeling exhausted from your day at work or school, the list goes on and on.  Getting your training session in before your day really starts is a great way to ensure that you get it done. Another reason to get a workout done early is the feeling of accomplishment that you start the day with.  It...