One month since self employment, challenges, and life in general.

So it's been just over a month since I packed in the old 7:30-6 and became a full time personal trainer and I have to say I think it is the best idea I've ever had. I am more focused now, than I have been for a very long time. I have more energy, more spring in my step.  I am smiling more than ever and I am happier than I have ever been. It is amazing what giving up your job that you loathe can do for you.

I currently have a mix of PT and Pole clients and all of them are at different points in their progress, which keeps me on my toes to make their workouts as fun and as interesting as possible.  The last I thing I want is for their hour with me to become samey. So I'm continuously researching ways to keep things interesting and it keeps it interesting for me too.  I tend to try all new exercises out on myself first, so I can really feel what's working where, which in turn helps me to explain it better to my clients. It's a win win really.  I am also very blessed that my clients are enjoying it, and keep coming back. They work hard and they make me very proud indeed.  Suffice to say, this is the best move I ever did and I love my job so much that it's really not work any more.  There is no, 'oh god I need to do this that and the other', it's more 'ooh right, that could be interesting, let's give that a try'.  Everything is brighter and generally more positive.

My eating patterns have been a little squiffy of late, and I have fantastic sweet tooth cravings again but I think this is due to the increase in my own training.  I am now able to train three times a week on pole techniques etc so my strength gains there should improve no end as well as regaining my confidence with tricks and inverts. I have also fallen back in love with running, probably helped by the fantastic weather we've had the last two weeks.  On top of that I'm doing some strength training (either at the gym or at home) three times a week and I've also added in 20 mins of flexibility every day while doing vocal exercises which is something I had been meaning to do but could never justify the time with the pressure of the day job. It is amazing the sense of freedom I now feel.

So with the running comes the challenge that is in the title of this 'ere blog.  My bestie decided that, with all this running I'm now doing, he would throw down the gauntlet and challenge me to join him in the Nottingham Half Marathon in September. 

After talking to my physio and being further along the rebuilding road from injury than I thought I was, the physio has said there is no reason (unless my knee says otherwise during the training) that I can't do the half marathon in 22 weeks time.  He also, after we initially thought June was too soon to attempt a 10km, has cleared me to do 10km at the start of July, again on the proviso that if my knee plays up I cease and drop back to where I was comfortable with my training and slow the increase in distance down.  The important thing that I needed to hear was when he commented, 'You are a fitness professional and you know your body better than anyone else, I trust your judgement to be sensible.' A timely reminder that I can't push it too hard and that we all need to listen to our bodies as they will always tell us when something's amiss.  He's a top fella.  And it's true, if I push my knee too fast too soon and the IT band irritation kicks in, I can't work.  I won't be able to demonstrate exercises, it will take at least 4 weeks for my knee to get back to full functionality so that I can demonstrate squats etc and at the moment the last thing I need is to not be able to work. So I'm being very sensible and I've managed to increase my distance to 4.35km without incident. *touches all available items made from wood*.  I am getting my own back on the best bud, and he has to join me in a obstacle course race. I'm thinking it might be too mean to get him to do the Spartan Beast (a half marathon with obstacles) but should he wish to embrace the challenge he's welcome to join me.... *throws down my own gauntlet*.  I will be running the Nottingham Half for Breast Cancer Campaign in honour of my cousin Mads who is doing well from her fight against breast cancer.   And as usual I'll be running the Race for Life in July (this is my 10km race, possibly with CJ again or if she's unable to make the same race she'll be running the Cardiff 10km RFL) and I'll be posting the links to the sponsor pages soon.


As for life in general, all is good.  I love my new career and have had a great session with one of my new clients this morning.  She's done exceptionally well and was happy to give everything a try once.  I absolutely am in love with life at the moment.  I have some pole niggles I need to work out, still having issues with my confidence in my inverts that I really need to punch through and get to grips with (pun intended).  But otherwise, I am having a ball.  Next step is to start the bootcamp training sessions up in my local area, although I have since discovered that the seafront is awash with people doing bootcamps, so forest based bootcamps for my clients it shall be, should be fun either way.  And hopefully I'll be doing some cover of classes for my local leisure centers.

As always, be kind to yourself, you rock!

Krissie
xx

O Brave New World...

I was going to title this blog 'When one door closes...' but to be honest, it's me who has closed the door to open a great big french window on a brave new world.  So to say when every door closes another opens would be slightly misleading in the context of this post.

Farewell desk job!

Today I have handed back the keys to my lonely office.  I have taken all my posters down, packed up my posessions in three large boxes and removed my kitchen gagetry from the corner, where they have been for the last 2 and half years.  As I cleared out the office this week, I found things that I had brought with me from the last office that I'd not looked at in all that time. Needless to say, there has been a lot of decluttering going on, and I have found it so very cathartic, almost as though I am cleansing the stress that this place has imbude upon me from my whole system.

While the job has been great in terms of money and experience within the office and the Higher Education environment, it has also been slowly sapping all the joy out of the bulk of my day.  I have to be honest, I had come to seriously dislike the person it was turning me into.  I suppose I have learned that to be happy, I do not need material things that a well paid job will bring.  I have more spring in my step now that I know I will be helping other people change their lifestyle habits with food and exercise; that hopefully some of my passion for fitness and activity will rub off on those who employ me to beast them in the gym/outdoors on a regular basis.

Here's to making it memorable :)

For years, while I was on this journey of re-self discovery, I strived to find where my happiness lay and I think that it is something all of us, at some point in our lives, will go through (not necessarily the weight loss but definitely the seeking of happiness).  I honestly thought that by losing some weight I would suddenly turn into a happy person and be completely content with my life. And for a little while it did and I was.  Once the inital 'yes I'm now a normal weight' honeymoon had worn off, I realised that I was still as miserable as sin on the inside.  No matter what I was doing, I was just desperately unhappy.  Now I had to look less on the surface and start really doing some hard work on the inside.  And that was when the lightbulb moment hit. Work was making me unhappy. Every day I would whine about things that had happened at the office or that someone had done that, while to me common sense said otherwise, they had done the exact opposite.  I realised that I was at the head of culture change in an environment that didn't necessarily want it. Now for those who know me well, you will know that change is something that doesn't frighten me in the slightest.  If it did I wouldn't have lost the amount of weight I had, and I would be still sat on the sofa indulging in 6000+ calorie meal on a Friday night.  I had to accept that while I embrace and welcome change, others view it with distrust and in some cases distain and no matter waht I did to help make the change easier to swallow, it was fought against in such a way that the anger and frustration was directed at me on a continuous basis.And that was where the unhappiness stemmed from. While I know their anger, frustration etc wasn't about me as a person it got to a point where it had become too much.

That still makes me grin like an idiot

This realisation that change was the over arching factor, lead me to look at what change I really needed to make to find my own happiness.  After a set to with a colleauge one summer and really assessing what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be in life, i realised I had to sit back and take stock.  And I think that is something everyone must do at somepoint in life.  Whether it instigates a massive life changing event or just allows us to continue on the knowldge that we are excatly where we should be is neither here nor there.  The important thing is that we are able to accertain that we are happy or not. If we are happy, more power to us, and if not then a change, on some scale, needs to happen.  For me a big change needed to happen.  I needed to find my bliss, something that would make me wake up looking forward to the day, not filled with dread and loathing. And boy have I found it.

I start officially on Monday (April 8th) when the final website goes live (only 16 months after I purchased the domain) but I'm already excited. I have 3 clients already, and a few more that are meeting me to see if I'm the trainer for them.  And while I have been offered jobs at gyms (and big gyms at that), I don't think that is the path for me.  I joke a lot about wanting KrissieKirby.com to be a global brand name.... but what if it was?  I may as well give it a shot, because what do I have to lose? Nothing really, but everything to gain. And I have never been one to live by 'what if'.

So the door on the office has closed, and here I am, hands on the push plate, ready to throw open the french doors on a brave new world.

This should be fun, hard work and long hours, but fun.

Be kind to yourself, as always

Krissie
xx

Slip not slide

Argh, I slipped!

This weekend I over indulged.  I freely admit that this Easter Weekend was a time where my brain and I fell out and emotional/boredom eating won out.  I haven't eaten that much chocolate in a long, long time or drank that much cider and though I enoyed consuming every last morsel at the time, by late Sunday evening I was sick of the sight of chocolate.

And sometimes we need to have that binge, that blow out weekend where we say 'to hell with it, I'm in this mood and I need this and this'.  That's fine.  In fact, that's only human.  The trick is to recognise it and stop the slip becoming a slide.

Get thee behind me Sugar monster!

Pandora was back with her usual snipes too. And my skin has told me what it thinks of the extra sugar in no uncertain terms, and thought I had the intention to do lots of working out my poor, tired, brain just didn't want to.  So, in true fashion, I sucked it up like a grown up and I put my trainers and kit on and headed to the gym early Saturday morning, for the first time since February (I can't wait to get in there more now the main bulk of studying is over).  And I felt MUCH better for it.  Sunday OH and I, with a bevy of polers and pals, all sauntered off to the local wetlands centre for a long walk, and much silliness followed by the feeding of a LOT of ducks.  Again having done some activity I felt a great deal better, and being out in the sun was much needed.  It does make a difference when you spend half your time couped up.

Yesterday I intended on going to the gym but found the programme I had written for myself was doable on the equipment I have at home. So a full 1hr 30 min session with long stretch was done and the gym room cleaned ready for my first clients next week.  I also gave myself a stern talking to and reminded myself that although this weekend had been over indulgent, it was just one weekend out of 52 and that I obviously needed to cave to emotional eating.  March proved to be a tough old month with Easter weekend as my only real weekend off, and even then it wasn't a true weekend off as the business kicks off next week so much was done to move towards the launch.

It really is ok to start over!

That being said, I recognised that I was having a slip up from my usual healthy eating habits and that's fine. It's part and parcel of healthy eating. When you adopt a healthy lifestyle, you will get instances where you stumble off the plan you've set for yourself, and that's fine, it's going to happen.  Life's stresses get in the way and there will be times when you just need to have a blow out in whatever manner it takes.  Just don't let it continue on for too long or you'll slide back into old habits and undo all the good work you've done.  This isn't a diet, this isn't something we pick up and put down then harrang ourselves with because we failed.  There is no failure in healthy living, there are just slips every now and then, and we learn to recognise they are needed.  There is lots of trail and error, and figuring out what works for you and how you can plan your time to make things work.  But that's not failure in the form we usualy recognise, it's the type of failure that preceeds success because some parts of the attempt worked. All we do now is refine the process until it works for us, because everyone is different in their mindset. There can never be one size fits all, we are all so very different.

So yesterday my emotional eating trigger got a bollocking, and today I feel far more positive and back to my usual happy self.  I've had my slip, got a little bruised from the fall, and picked myself up, dusted myself off and looking towards a bright shiny new week....my last one in the full time grind (that might also explain the week starting out in a very positive fashion ;) )

So slip, don't slide, give yourself a break for having the slip, mark it down to one of those days and then get back on then healthy wagon as quickly as you can.   You will soon notice the slips become far less frequent andthe slide non-existant.

Have a great week all and as always, be kind to yourself

Krissie
xx

Following your dream......

So today I resigned from my 9-5 desk job (or, as it has been recently, 7:30 - 6).  This is a huge step, this a definite leap into the unknown. But it's been something that I know I've been heading towards for the best part of two years.

When I started this blog I was already getting questions from people on Facebook, about how I had lost the weight and what I recommended. That gave me the inital idea for No More Mrs Fatty McFat; a hope that by documenting my weightloss and the pitfalls, highs, the education I gained etc that there would be information enough for someone to find and say 'That's what I needed to hear, that's the same as what I tried' etc.  I realised through answering some of the emails and comments that I got through, that there was a plethora of people (not just women) that wanted someone who understood what they were going through to help give them some solid advice. Most had said that when they have joined a gym, some lythe young adult not long from Sports Science degree at Uni was asigned as their inductor at the gym. The person that they were trying to get to understand their issues had never been fat, had never suffered the utter deflation that these people had, and to them it was exceptionally off putting.  Many never went back to the gym after that inital induction and are debating still if they should return.

I realised that I had a vantage point that the Instructors these people had been to didn't have. I have been obese, I have battled with the voices in my head that tell me I'd never be good enough, I have had those 3am binges where you eat until you are sick, I have had the angry screams at myself for allowing myself to become so hideous that I was afraid to leave the house.  I have been there, and I remember all too well what it is like to be that scared, unhappy person. So in August 2011, I decided I wanted to change my career.  I had changed jobs the year previous with a promotion of sorts in work. The job was very well paid but exceptionally stressful, often lonely and at certain points of the year had long hours (the height of festival season no less, so that scuppered the band a little) and I was utterly miserable.  I had spent so long on sorting my health out that now my inner peace and joy was being sucked out of me by the one thing that I felt I had no control over.

Wrong!  And I know fine well that that was wrong. Had I not taken back control of my health? Was I now just putting those fears onto something different? Yes, yes I was. That August, after a rather turse few words with a colleague that left me in a bit of an emotional state, I sat with OH and confessed how unhappy I was with my work life. That I had no joy in the bulk of my day as I sat behind a desk, lifelessly inputting, sorting and arranging data; that ultimately I felt as though I was being suffocated from the inside and needed to refocus my life. We sat and made a pros and cons list about giving up my job and the pros serverely outweighed the cons.  We talked at length about whether we could afford to drop to one income for a while, while I worked on building a client base etc, and I often have wondered if that was a selfish thing to ask of OH and a lot of responsibility to place on his shoulders.  But as he always tells me, we are a team, and when one of us needs to pick up the slack to ensure the other is back to a happy medium, then so be it.  (He's pretty awesome). The decision was made. I was going to re-train and become a Personal Trainer.



It really is, it's how we learn.



After much working out of finances, I realised that although I would have liked to have finished in the job sooner, March 2013 was going to be the goal. So the plan went into action. For the best part of 18 months, I have retrained so that I can offer an all round package for a variety of disciplines. I am a qualified Gym Instructor, I am a qualifed Pole Instructor, I can take small group training and am in the process of completeing the final modules for the Certificate in Personal Training as well as the Exercise to Music qualification so I can teach the myriad of cardio and strength based larger group classes that are out there.  I have done it, I have taken a dream that came from something I had once thought would never be, could never be me.  I want other people to feel what this feels like, that you can take back the control on your health and ultimately your life.  It's a pretty amazing feeling.

I was very touched the other day to get the following message from a friend, someone I met through a hobby:

Today I had a University interview, and they asked me to talk about someone who inspried me, and what I feel I could learn from them.  I told them about you, how you've changed your life in such a great way, and are now living the life you dreamed of.  I told them how inspired I've been by your determination, your kick-ass enthusiasm and how you don't let yourself be the cause of your own failure (by not making excuses to work out etc.)  You really show the rest of us how it's done, that if you want something and are prepared to work hard enough anything is possible. Thanks so much for that.

How awesome is that?  I'm so touched that she thought of me for that answer, and I'm fiercely proud that she's following her dream, and requalifying in what she honestly wishes to do.  Go Girl! It's hard to say, 'right that's it, I'm throwing off the security blanket and giving this a shot'.  But if you have things in place and support from wonderful people, (my friend has her partner's full support also, which is fantastic), and you can cleary make a run for it, then do so. Life is far too short to spend thinking 'what if...'.  Take it by the horns, life is meant to be lived.  And if you read this and think 'there is no way I could do that', then's that's fine, too. Sometimes the timing isn't right, sometimes we have to go a little further along the path to really see the exit.  But never say, never!

I'm not so naive as to think that I will walk out of this job and straight into a 10 clients, 4 bootcamps, 10 pole students a week lifestyle.  Oh no, I'm not that green!  I know it's going to be tough.  I know that I'm going to be working most of the day to drum up business and teaching very little to start, but eventually it will even out.  I know running my own business will be a challenge (I have been self-employed before) but I'm looking forward to it. Most of all, I'm looking forward to not having to think of something to make me smile when I get up in the morning, as there will be plenty to smile about.

So here's to the next chapter, it all starts on April 8th 2013!

Be kind to yourself, as always

Much Love

Krissie

x

A revamp to the website coming soon!

Happy 2nd Birthday blog

Wow hasn't the time flown?  Two whole years. This little corner of the web that I started two years ago has grown fairly consistently, so thank you to everyone who has shared my ramblings, the articles and all the general information that spews forth from this adled brain.  I love reading your comments and hope that some of the information I share is of use.

What started as a project to keep myself accountable to my continuation of a better me (in health and in character) has grown into something much more than that.  It's something I am fiercely proud of and something that continues to bring me great joy on a weekly basis.  I say it everytime and mean it with earnest, that I will maintain this blog with more regularity, but alas time has gotten the better of my yet again.  Hopefully with the launch of the full new venture on April 8th (a date for the diary) I will be posting far more regularly and incorporating a new look to these pages.

I will explain more about the new venture when certain things are in place (I know, I'm such a tease). But for now I want to look back at the last couple of months and share what's been going on.  It's been a tad on the busy side.

Since the launch of the album the band hasn't really stopped.  Even in our down time, we managed to maintain momentum with the album and do as much promotional work as we could.  We had a feature in Metal Hammer, had lots of airplay of the new tracks and announced the 2013 leg of the Rage and Retribution tour, Oh and we also got announced for some festivals and as support to Queensryche (I'm super chuffed with that one as I grew up headbanging to those guys).

Over Christmas, Mr K and I proved you could workout anywhere as we were visiting my parent's (who have retired to Spain), getting some much needed vitamin D courtesy of that giant nuclear explosion called the Sun, and using the local park to do all sorts of crazy workouts. My parents are very lucky, in that that the park right next door to their house has football pitches, tennis courts, bleachers, basketball courts and more, making it a fitness buff's dream come true to get a good workout in on a regular basis.  The Spartan WODs came in handy for me to get to grips with training in different environments (which will come in very useful when I take that module next month to finish off my PT training).  I passed my Level 3 Advanced Training Approches and Anatomy and Physiology modules, and also my Beginner Pole Instructor qualification and I'm coming up to my assessment for my Exercise to Music, and the last two modules for the Level 3. So all is on course to have completed all the main qualifications by the end of March.  I must admit to being utterly in love with training others to find their soul mate workouts, to find somehing that inspires them to be healthy.  It's quite a fulfilling job.

I have purchased a weights bench and some spinlock vinyl, sand-filled weights, for my home gym, which have already proved invaluable.  So when I've been working late and get home I can get a fairly heavy lifting session in without having to go to the gym.  There are absolutely no excuses for me not to workout anymore.  I have so much home equipment now, that to not workout is not an option unless it's a rest day (and everyone MUST take rest days or you are going to injure yourself), or when my parents are visiting as they take over the basement. For those days I can just use my local gym.   I am really looking forward to ramping up my client base and being able to offer so many different training methods to get the best possible results.  It's something that I think every Personal Trainer should be able to do, offer a wide variety of training methods as one size doesn't fit all and if I can make working out as fun as possible then my clients are going to see quicker results.

Figured it out finally!

As for the weight loss, well, I'm not worried about it anymore. I do weight myself periodically but more than anything it's what I'm eating that I've noticed has the biggest effect on how I feel.  If I have chips from the chippy, I generally feel sluggish for the rest of the evening.  If I eat a lot of chocolate (I do have some as I quite enjoy it still but nowhere near the amount I was having and not everyday either), the sugar crash is so horrendous that it's just not worth me having more than a few grams.  My eating is very clean these days.  At the start of January I invested in the KiFit bodybugg to monitor my everyday energy expenditure and sleeping patterns. I have discovered that even though I may be lying down for 7-8 hours a night, I'm actually only getting between 3 -4 hours sleep, and even then it's sporadic and not all in one consistent block.  At most I get a full hour unbroken sleep.  It is little wonder that I wake up feeling dreadful.  And that is also impacting on my physical wellbeing, as I'm not getting sufficient rest.  So to ensure that I am getting more beneficial sleep, I am trying not to use my phone or iPad before bed, and I'm using the time to do my reading and research the old fashioned way, via a good book.  Something else that the bodybugg pointed out was that I wasn't eating enough.  Yes really!  I am far more active than I thought, which is a very good thing of course, but as I'd not being fuelling myself sufficiently then my body had reacted adversely. Now I'm more mindful of how I can pad out my meals and am far more mindful of my snacks and the body fat has decreased, and my energy levels are through the roof.  So it's all going in the right direction.

Something that struck me last night, as I got ready to go to a community gala evening, is how seriously comfortable in my own skin I have become.  Don't misunderstand me, it's been a tough old journey and I still have those days where I think 'urgh', but now it doesn't matter what people think of me or how they view me.  I am happy with me, and sure there are little things I think could be improved but isn't that the measure of success?  I've stopped comparing myself to others, because it doesn't matter, it really doesn't.  I'm me, and no one else is.  The only person I need to compare myself to was the person I was yesterday and even then it's not about how I look, it's about how I act. I've completed what I initially set out to do and that was to get healthy and to lose weight.  My goals are vastly different now.  I still want to be the best me that I can be, of course, and increase my own strength to show to myself what my body can achieve but I'm more concerned with how I am as a person and how I treat those around me.

We make mud look damned good!

So things that are coming up in 2013! Mr K and I have got our Season Passes for the Spartan Race UK this year.  That will be kicking off in August and hopefully we will be completing the Trifecta in November finishing with the Beast (a half marathon with so many obstacles it's not funny, but I love it!).  We hope to do at least 2 of the Zombie Evacuation runs, as they were great fun last year.  There may even be a Tough Mudder in there somewhere if we have the time.  I have some ideas for projects that I will start once the new venture has launched (April 8th remember), and I will be starting to teach one to one pole lessons from home for a while as well to build that up, as well as improve my own training and technique when it comes to pole. It's all go presently, and to top it all off we're back on tour with the band which makes me even happier.  Always the performer ;).  I'm so busy I don't sit still for more than a few seconds, unless I'm writing a blog of course.  And you know I wouldn't have it any other way, I am loving life right now and long may it continue. 

htpp://www.krissiekirby.com

new content coming soon

Be kind to yourself, always

Much Love

Krissie

x

That's one off the Bucket List

Last year when OH's cousin Jim passed away at the very young age of 36, it really brought it home that life is short.  Yes it really is, if you stop and think about it for a few moments.  How quickly has 2012 gone by?  Have you noticed that as you are getting older, the time seems to move much faster?  Have you found yourself remarking that 'crumbs, 2013 came around awful quick'? That's life being short, that's life moving fast and if we're not careful there will be things we wanted to do but 'didn't find the time for'...I really dislike that excuse.  So it frustrates me when people say, oh life isn't short at all.  In the grand scheme of things, yes it is, we are here for a fleeting moment so let's make the most of it!

Live!

Sorry, getting on my soap box again, aren't I?

Where was I? Oh yes, so after Jim passed away, I decided to finally make a list of all the things I wanted to try, and to carry on adding to it.  I have started to put them on a board on my Pinterest account (feel free to have a browse around my mad pinnings if you're a Pinterest pinner).  One of the ones on my written list was rock climbing.

I have a very rational fear of falling and hitting the ground as a sloppy mess, I dislike heights for the most part as well but this is something that I know I can get over with some work, the fear of falling though I'm not so sure.  CJ and I were looking for something different to do as part of my belated birthday treat.  The downside of having a birthday so close to Christmas is that it's usually difficult to get everyone together to do something, as we're gigging or there are office parties, or a myriad of other things... oh and Christmas itself of course.  So I tend to not really bother celebrating my birthday, but this last year I decided it's worth doing something to mark the occasion, even if I have to leave it a month or so.

So we had decide we would try rock climbing, and as luck would have a coupon for a sizeable discount appeared in our inboxes from one of those coupon companies the very next day.  I rang the climbing centre and instead of £12 for a taster, it was £5 each.  Wonderful, it appears the Universe agreed that we should go and give it a try. (I love little signals like that, coincidence or not, it doesn't matter I still take it as a sign it's the right move).

Three of the walls we climbed.

Off we went to Boulders in Cardiff to have an hour and half taster session of indoor climbing.  And you know something it wasn't as bad as we anticipated.  Neither of us froze on the wall. Neither of us screamed to be taken down. And although some of the climbs were more difficult than others, we attempted them all and did the best we could. And that's something to be very proud of, by both of us for both of us. We didn't give up, we didn;t stand hands on hip looking blankly at the wall thinking 'there is no whay we can do this'.  Oh no, we took the walls on and no matter what we were going to keep giving it a go.

It's the first 'done that' on that bucket list. And why not? Life is meant to be lived, enjoyed and filled to the brim with the good stuff.  In my last entry, I talked about celebrating the little things, and this is one of those things that I can now look back on and say 'I did that, I took on a fear of mine and I proved I can do anything'.  We celebrated as only we girls know how, with a coffee anda small slice of cake for me and a panini for CJ, and talked about all the other stuff that we want to do together and with our respective OHs.

Sometimes we have to go out of our comfort zone to truly know what we are capable of, and you may surprise yourself at how strong, determined, and daring you can be. So the bucket list is filling up with the crazy, the cool, the scary and the silly and I'm looking forward to ticking more off.

Until next time, be kind to yourselves
Krissie
Xx

Celebrate the little things...

Happy New Year. I hope you all had a wonderful festive season?

So this entry started as a Facebook update, but I soon realised I had more to say than a status update will allow, as usual, so here is a quick blog.

I had a great session in the gym last night.  After all the trouble with my IT band irritation and all the recovery I've done for that, then hyper extending my hamstring before Christmas, I was very worried that I would have lost a lot more strength than I have.  As a few of you may have read, when I developed IT band irritation and it persisted, I was told to rest by my physio and to cease with heavy lifting in favour of body weight exercises in what is known as active recovery. Knowing very well that all I would be able to do is maintain cardio fitness by swimming and easing back into running, I took his advice and knew that it would be better to return with a lower weight and rebuild my strength back up as I would have lost quite a bit of strength over the 9 weeks of recovery that I eventually took.

The deadlift

So, walking into the gym last night night, I approached the  Smith Machine with the intention of working out my 1 rep max for all my free weight exercises (for those of you who are unsure what that it, it is the maximum amount of weight you can lift in one repetition, with good form, but know that you can't lift that same weight for a second time without sacrificing form).  I would have preferred a free bar that you can add plates too, but my gym doesn't have one, only pre weighted barbells that stop at 40kg which are brilliant for when I do my sets. Working out my 1RM is important.  It helps me gage where I am in my strength but also allows me to set my weight correctly for the style of resistance system that I use on a given day (there are many styles in setting your sets believe it or not). Imagine my delight that, even though I have dropped all my heavy lifting down to almost half of where it was when I took time off to recover, I was still able to dead lift more than my own body weight.  I thought I was dead lifting my actual body weight, when I tweeted my delight last night, but actually looking at my weight chart this morning (I'm doing a body analysis thing which I'll explain in my next blog), I am dead lifting over my body weight and weight less than I though (cue huge grin). I am also back to almost my heaviest in the back squat.  To say I'm thrilled is an understatement.  I admit I high fived the OH and then did a very girly jump and dance about the gym, much to the amusement of everyone else.

A very girly dance

For you numbers people:  I weigh 74.8kg and I lifted 77.5kg in plates on the bar (not including the bar weight as it's not marked so I have no idea how much that weighs, so I'll just go solely on plates until I move to a gym with a 10 or 15kg free bar).  I am beyond delighted.  I honestly thought I would have lost far more strength than I have. It also means that I can now increase my weight correctly for the sets I want to do, and ensure I'm not cheating myself in going too light.  I love lifting heavy, it gives me a real sense of accomplishment and makes me very aware of how my body functions through the movements and how strong the human body is.  Now I am fully armed, once again, with all the details to make my workouts as effective as possible.

Stop being a slave to the scale.
It's a guide, that's all.

It's reminded me that no matter what life throws at us we are always much stronger than we realise, body and mind, and that sometimes we need to just go all out to remind ourselves exactly how strong, focused and determined we can be. Little achievements and successes should always be celebrated, they make everything else shine and put all the nonsense we subject ourselves and are subjected to, each day, into perspective.  In the weight loss world we call a success like that an NSV (non scale victory) and I think these are the more important victories.  The scale is a guide and should only be looked on as a guide, it is a number, it is not lord and master.  Or clothes are also a guide, and give us a better understanding of where we are than a number. And our achievements in any movement should be cause for a celebration of sorts. For Example: can you reach your hands further to your toes? Can you finally touch your toes, where as you couldn't 6 months ago? That's success, and a guide of improvement of some kind.  And they should be celebrated because when you have that day when that voice says something negative, or self defeating, you can say 'maybe but I can touch my toes and I couldn't do that last year.' It's a positive for your attitude arsenal. Use it, own it, celebrate it and throw it back in that voices' mug when it rears it's ugly head.

Look at what you've achieved.
Celebrate it.

These little things change your perspective from one of self defeat to one of self acknowledgement in how far you've come.  There are times we need to look behind to move forward. But don't look at them with negativity, those past things, look at them with a sense of achievement and celebrate that achievement no matter how small.  My celebration last night was to jump around the gym like an idiot with a great big grin on my face.  Yes the boys in the lifting area looked at me daft, so what?

So celebrate all your little achievements, no matter how small. They are the very things that make you remember why you are doing it in the first place.  And  if you're in the gym ask one of the trainers about working out your 1RM, ask them about lifting and techniques and they will be more than happy to chat to you about it, they may even offer you a free taster session if you are lucky.

As always, be kind to yourself

Much love
Krissie
xx