Nutrition and training. That’s only a small part of what you have to get done this week.
Lets face it, you’re here to smash goals and you’re are a goal getter. If I give you too much information towards your nutrition and training it might complicate it and make it all too overwhelming with everything else that you’ve got going on.
Life.
So at the beginning I give the most basic principles.
Principles that only require small changes but will have the most beneficial and positive impact on health, nutrition and training.
Here are 3 for nutrition, 3 for training and 3 for mindset.
Nutrition
1. Cook with either organic butter, coconut oil or light olive oil spray:
Vegetable oils and olive oils go rancid under heat, meaning they lose their chemical compound under heat and can cause inflammation inside your body. Use olive oil on low temperature or as a salad dressing.
When there is inflammation in your body your immune system has to react to bring inflammation down. If you can avoid it your body will have more energy to focus at work and will have more energy to function optimally.
2. Prepare your meals and you will get more time back:
I often hear the excuse I don’t have time to cook or prepare my meals. Think of it this way, if you’re at work and all you had to do was walk to the fridge, grab a meal, eat it and then get back to work how much time would that save and how much more work could you get done compared to walking to the cafe and then stressing about what to choose?
3. Start small:
You don’t need to make big changes to make a big impact. You want to create a trail of kicking goals and sometimes smaller changes is better for that. It can be quite as simple as if you’re not eating enough protein, for a whole week you’re going to start having a small portion of protein at each meal.
Once you’ve done that you can move on to the next thing with nutrition that will help you with your goals. Choose one thing at a time and then move on to the next.
Training
1. Train with a stop watch:
It holds you accountable to your training and automatically makes your training more measurable and trackable. Think of it as your private personal trainer. You have to stick to your rest time assigned and then GO when it’s time to go and rest when it’s time to rest.
Your rest times will dictate the way that you train. If you don’t have any rest time then your workout becomes more of an endurance workout, if you have interval periods of rest time then your workout becomes for of a high intensity interval based workout and if you have more rest time than that becomes more beneficial in developing your strength.
2. Know what your training goal is for the session before going into your workout:
You want to walk way from your training session with confidence, knowing that you got done what you needed to get done. Whether that’s to get stronger on a particular exercise, progress on learning specific technique for an exercise or simply getting into the gym and smashing your workout to the best of your ability. Knowing what you need to get done and then doing it builds confidence.
3. After your training set quickly determine what you did well and what you could do better:
In training you are always striving for progression, after you’ve completed your working set, in your head quickly determine what you did well and what you could do better next time and apply it.
For e.g. if I’m doing a DB chest press aiming to build up my chest – I might be thinking after my set “Ok great the weight is challenging enough for the rep ranges but I feel I could of recruited and activated my chest more instead of relying so much on my arms.” So the next set I will focus more on that.
Mindset
1. Have fun but still train like an athlete:
When you’re learning a new exercise or undertaking something more challenging you’re not always going to get it right the first time. That’s where you can have fun with it and anticipate that you might not get things right the first go and you can make that fun. When you get it right, then you can start focusing on training more efficiently and training harder.
2. Attack your training similar to how you attack your work:
If you’re successful at work use that as an anchor to how you can approach your training. At work there would have been times where you’ve had to shut everything off and focus on finishing off the task at hand and at work there would have been times where you would of have to get things done under pressure.
How you achieved your accomplishments in your professional career are very similar to how you can achieve your accomplishments in training.
3. Tie nutrition and training to your highest priorities:
Everyone has a different set of priorities and goals. If you can tie in to how nutrition and training will benefit your highest priorities and goals then you will be inclined to find ways to make time for them.