New Year - New You!

That time of the year is coming where you start to re-evaluate your goals from this time last year and you can honestly say whether or not you've achieved them.

I think that January is a good time to set new resolutions as the new year provides the feel of a fresh start. You can effectively wipe the slate clear of all that's happened in the last year and start afresh, motivation high ready to achieve bigger and better things.

When it comes to your health, this could be exactly what you need to help change your body and your improve your life dramatically. This could be the year where you finally see that 6 pack or finally feel confident in a bikini. Nutrition, training and supplementation can start again and provide a new encouragement as you have a positive mindset.

                                                                                               

It is important to not only set long term goals but short and medium as well. This is more likely to keep you on track and to ensure constant progression because it gives you checkpoints for which you must aim. Saying you want to lose 10% bodyfat by December 2011 is a good long term goal but is too far away to keep motivated. Saying you want to have lost 2% bodyfat by 15th February is a good short term goal as it is achievable and gives you a target in the near future.

It is easy to make resolutions and give them up if it's too much too soon, if you have a problem with carbs then going straight to <50g a day may prove too difficult, choosing 150g might be more suitable. If your current activity level is low and you want to start going to the gym 5 times a week this may make it stressful if you cannot fit this around your current schedule and you may give up. Saying you want to start with 2-3 times and build up is far more achievable.

Make this year the best ever! Let's make 2011 the year that we make things happen!

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

Abolish stretching routines with M.A.T

I am looking forward to having an MAT assessment done some time in the next couple of weeks with a local trainer, Gavin Frecklington.

MAT stands for Muscle Activation Technique and is a revolutionary way to treat muscular pain and dysfunction. Usually if you saw a strength coach they would look at what muscles were weak and try and strengthen them. If you saw a physio or chiropracter then they would look for muscular tightness and use stretching or trigger point relief to remedy this.

The best analogy to use to describe MAT is to imagine if you went on to ice, immediately your body tenses and tightens up as it recognises an unstable surface. If your brain recognises an unstable joint then as a protective mechanism it will look to tighten that joint up.

Chronic pain and injury can be a thing of the past if the reason for the pain is looked at from the opposite position, as an instability problem instead of a tightness or muscular weakness.

This sort of treatment would benefit anyone from high performance athletes to pensioners. Anyone who has pain in any area of the body would reap the rewards.



I've heard good things about the reults that can be obtained from this type of therapy and myself have experienced A.R.T (Active Release Technique) which is a similar concept of looking for the original source of pain, not just the problem area.

If your someone who has tried every flexibility routine under the sun, have seen all sorts of different specialists all who whom haven't been able to effectively diagnose and fix your  pain then I suggest you look into this type of treatment. More information can be found at http://www.muscleactivation.com/.