Before February the 22nd I had an amazing existence. I was loved my many, my home was like a Disneyland for exercise where I had an abundance of world class facilities and an outdoor playground that was the envy of many of my visitors. I could see my influence everywhere which made people happy. It was easy to see why I loved Christchurch. But after February 22nd all of this changed.

It was hard to comprehend the damage to my world. The abundance I was so proud of had quickly disappeared; to be honest I didn’t even know where home was at first. So many of my gyms, cycle routes, sports fields and walking/running trails had been wiped out. My support network was dwindling by the day with many Personal Trainers’, coaches, facilitators and instructors having to leave town due to their own tough circumstances. It was so hard, but the hardest part of all was that many people forgot about me. For years I had been there to help people through their stressful times and in this time, one of the most stressful times ever, I was lost in all the uncertainty. What was I to do?

Sure this was a tough time but I knew people needed me. The term ‘Rise Up’ became popular so like every other Cantab I knew I had to focus! My network of fitness leaders created innovative ways to get me back into full steam. Thanks to these amazing people I was popping up in all types of places and although there were now limitations on how I was done, new locations, temporary gyms and different pathways and trails, I had people smiling again and helped them have a few moments where life felt normal.

As people started paying me more attention, I slowly came back into people’ lives. It was a small snowball at first but the momentum grew, I was starting to have a positive impact again. Most importantly people were spending more time with me and while a few were focused on getting rid of that ‘quake weight’ just about all of them loved the stress release I gave.

February the 22nd shook my world upside down but when you drive around this weekend and see me everywhere you can be reminded of just how great it is to live in this amazing city!

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You might be wondering “why is the fitness guy talking about relationships?”. Wait for it, my fitness spin is coming. One of the world leading thinkers in relationship counseling is a guy called John Gottman, for over 30 years Gottman has done research into what creates a great relationship. He’s got so good at understanding the behaviors of both good and bad relationships that he has an over 85% success rate of predicting if a couple will stay together by watching them communicate for only five minutes! Now that is mind blowing.

In one of his many great books, The Relationship Cure, one of the concepts he talks about is the ‘emotional bank account’. The idea is that in our interaction with our partner we can be putting in or withdrawing emotional credits with them. This idea got me thinking (the exercise stuff is coming). When you are with your partner how do you build connection that puts positive credits in each other’s emotional bank account?

For so many couples, time together means getting a DVD and sitting in front of the box next to each other. While I know this can be easy way to relax maybe you could look to add exercising together as a way to build stronger connections. It doesn’t have to be hard core training, it could be you head out the front door and walk around our beautiful city together while having a nice conversation. Or you could create some fun games where you work together to beat your team score.

While exercise isn’t normally considered to be important for a relationship if you can look to use it to create shared experiences as a couple that create strong emotional deposits you’ll be heading towards an all-round healthier life.  

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Why would I struggle to write about office fitness? I don’t think 99% of people who work in offices would ever do exercise within the working environment. To me there is nothing worse than seeing a youtube clip of a trainer showing you how you can use you office desk as a tool for a great workout. Sure, some people may sometimes get a few tricep dips in at lunch time but I can’t ever see a workplace where people stop at 10am and everyone does max press ups off the printer. 

Maybe I need to define what office fitness is in a different way? When we think of the physical self and look at how office spaces are designed we see that there are going to be big problems for the body long term due to the what the objective of office design is: to make you productive at working for long periods of time. Maybe the better definition of office fitness could be: How to protect your body from the pitfalls of office design. 

This question leads us down a path where we look at habits that are causing damage to our body in the office. An example would be sitting with bad posture for long periods of time. This is a massive problem for so many people, ask any physio about how much damage this is doing to peoples backs. 

If you recognise that sitting with bad posture for long periods can create major problems for your back you can try to create change to avoid this. You could ask your employer to invest in a posture friendly quality chair that helps with your position, put a ‘posture sticker’ on your computer screen that would remind you to brace your core every time you see it, set alarms on your phone every hour that reminds you to get out of your seat to walk around for a minute or so to move. 

This is only one example of many that could help you look after your body more in an environment that is working against it. Take the time to have a look at what your workplace is doing to your body and implement a plan that protects it. Your body will thank you for it. 

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This will be here on the 20th of Jan.

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To me it’s almost like a simple maths equation, let me explain. In a normal month during the year you may go out with friends every couple of weeks, have drinks after a weekly game of sport and once a month there’ll be a big occasion. In these social activities you may sometimes go a little too far with your eating and drinking but it doesn’t happen often so it doesn’t have a negative impact on you. If we go to my equation we would say that you had seven social ‘temptation’ occasions per month.

When December comes around the social calendar seems to multiplied, all of a sudden you are going out four nights a week for events where the temptation is higher because they are all about celebrating and someone else is paying! Now instead of going out seven times a month you are going out sixteen times and if anything the social occasions have a higher temptation rating. No wonder it’s a losing battle that you wake up from a couple months later wondering how you had ‘let yourself go’.

I know that the numbers I have used here probably won’t fit for everyone but you get my drift. The good thing about the “normal month”  is that we only expose ourselves to a certain amount of temptation, at this time of year our exposure increases rapidly. So what can we do to avoid the January blues?

If you are really motivated to get to January in a healthier state, spend time and consciously choose your social temptation times. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be social, it’s just try to choose the times when you will let you hair down and the times when you will have a quiet one and leave early. By doing this wisely you may find that January blues have become a thing of the past.

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This lesson seemed to stick with Steve for his whole life. Throughout the rest of the book there are many examples of how he put such a high priority on creating beauty in the whole Apple experience.

When I was reading about Steve’s fence experience it got me thinking about the physical self. We live in a time where so much of people’s energy goes into making the outer body look amazing. Billions of dollars are spent on beauty products, extreme diets and other fads which focus on making the outside body looking great. I get why this happens, we want to look good and we are constantly confronted with our external body’s reflection. But what if you could see the reflection of your inner body and you understood the difference between a healthy body and an unhealthy one? Do you think you would be happy with your inner body?

If we break down the body into the inner and outer, for most people they spend an unbalanced amount of time of making the outer look great while they don’t put much thought into how their actions influence their inner. If you identify with this maybe you should try to balance this out as you inner is just as important as the outer. Some would say that it’s even more important.

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Last weekend we had the final 5k run day. The coaching team and I were like proud parents as all the crew managed to cross the line with big smiles on their faces to complete their 5k runs, we were extra proud that none of them stopped for the whole run!

In creating Get up to Five we really focused on making it an achievable programme that built people’s believe in their ability in an environment that provided support, education and was always fun.

The week before we did our 5k run we had our last seminar. This was a reflective session that focused on reinforcing the lessons that they had learnt over the past eight weeks. Before the seminar I thought I knew what most of the benefits were and could predict the responses from the crew, but the very first response from one of the Get up to Fivers was a benefit that I had never thought of.

Stella, a friendly determined South African lady put her hand up and said. ‘I’ve finished something. For so many years I’ve signed up for gym memberships, weight loss products and brought exercise equipment telling my friends and family that this was the answer. They had learnt to be dismissive of these short lived fads as I never followed through. For the first time in years I have completed a fitness goal I have set out to do’. She had hit a note with many of the others as the whole group started agreeing and sharing their similar experiences.

Some of you may have heard of the term ‘personal credibility’. In my mind this means that what you say you are going to do and what you actually do is shown in your actions. For people who are trying to create change in their lives they often promote what it is that they want to become, this will often come from an inspired moment of motivation. But almost as soon as the words leave their mouths they aren’t doing the actions. This has negative impacts as it can make them feel like a fraud.

Maybe a better way to approach change is to be realistic and set small targets that you know you can achieve based on where you are right now. Express small steps and build your personal credibility from there. You could also find environments that will help you be successful based on where you are right now, like www.getuptofive.co.nz ;-) 

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Most of us can relate to this situation; you sit down at night after dinner and start to watch TV. You’re engrossed in the latest programme you love and then the ad break comes on. Suddenly Temptation exposes itself and the game for control begins. Temptation starts by planting the seed in your mind, ‘something sweet would be good right now’. You try to battle back ‘I shouldn’t as I’m trying to lose weight’; Temptation doesn’t give up that easy, ‘it’s ok, you can make sure you eat healthy tomorrow, it won’t hurt’. The battle continues but eventually you find yourself moving towards the cupboard and grabbing an excessive amount of junk food because temptation tells you ‘well if you are going to do it you may as well make the most of it’. The battle is lost and you are going further down the path to an unhealthier you. 

So what is a strategy that we can use when temptation shows its ugly face?
One effective strategy that works well with food is the delayed response strategy. Let’s look at our previous example: The ad break comes on and temptation hits you straight away. The first thing you need to do is be aware and acknowledge that temptation is there. Once you have done that allow yourself to have the temptation that you desire but under one condition: Firstly, you have to wait one hour and secondly you have to eat a low energy, healthy, small snack first. This way you know that in an hour from now you are allowed to have the junk food.

An hour goes by and your body has had time to digest the healthier snack alternative, you find that you no longer desire the food you were craving so much an hour earlier. You go to bed feeling better about yourself and your body is in better condition because you made a healthier choice.  

The delayed response strategy is one of many healthier ways that can help you deal with the times when temptation hits you. By practicing it you will get better at winning the battle which will help you to make healthier choices. 

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