Author Archives: Grandnat

Such a social way to eat out – Salt Yard Tapas Restaurant Review

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There is something wonderfully sociable about eating tapas. Those small plates of Spanish meat, fish and vegetables served with colourful aromatic sauces. I love the flexibility of experience it gives you. You can pop into a tapas restaurant for a quick glass of wine and a charcuterie plate, or you can take a long leisurely few hours working through the menu with friends or business contacts.

Salt Yard Tapas Restaurant Review

Salt Yard (54 Goodge St London W1T 4NA), is one of the best tapas bars in the UK located in the bustling restaurant area near Charlotte Street it easily holds it’s own against competing establishments. And again flexibility is its advantage. People have coffee and cheese mid-morning, beer and a few plates of food for lunch, and wine beer and most of the menu in the evening.

It’s an award winning venue and you will have seen it on Master Chef UK – the contestants had to cook the signature “Courgette Flowers stuffed with Goat’s Cheese and drizzled with Honey”.

I recently spent an evening there with journalists and we started with a beer and a plate of deep fried chillies. Whilst these do not blow your head off with chilli heat they are salty and bitter. They get you in the mood for more drinks.

Salt Yard Tapas Restaurant Review

I selected the wine as my dinner guests checked out the menu. I was attracted to the “Pittacum (Mencia, Bierzo 2007)” described as organic and dark with pepper & blackcurrant fruit, herbal and earthy.

Very soon the chatty waitress brought the bottle and it appeared to be a popular choice. The food began to arrive with conveyer belt frequency.

First up was “Fried Squid with Tomatoes Chillies and Coriander”. I must say this was a little too fishy for me. I like squid precisely because it tastes different and this didn’t.

Salt Yard Tapas Restaurant Review

After a slightly disappointing  start came a tasty return to form. “Confit of ‘Gloucester Old Spot’ Pork Belly with Rosemary Scented Cannellini Beans”  – fantastic crackling crust and melt in the mouth moist meat below.

“Slow Roasted Chicken with Chorizo and Chickpea Stew” – a perfect Spanish dish warm and colourful.

“Grilled Underblade Fillet of Beef, Artichokes, Black Olive and Piquillo Salsa” – tender meat and earthy flavours.

A second bottle of Pittacum arrived as the journalists tucked into more fish and some of those courgette flowers. The restaurant was full now, atmospheric and noisy. A sociable way to eat has to be a accompanied by a backdrop of a hundred conversations, clanking plates, and clinking glasses.

We didn’t have any room left for a dessert even though the “Churros with Chocolate Sauce” caught my eye. We all left sated, having thoroughly enjoyed another evening of Salt Yard tapas – the social way to eat out.

Over to you: Have you ever eaten Salt Yard Tapas? What do you think of this restaurant? I’d love to hear your own Salt Yard Tapas Restaurant Review or about other similar establishments. Please post your recommendations and comments below.

“Is Yoga Safe?” – This dilemma puts off the uncertain and provides an excuse for the procrastinators

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I spend quite a bit time convincing people to try yoga. I want to convince those that think it is some wacky religion that, in fact, it is a great form of exercise. And if they want to take it further, a healthy way of life. For those, especially men, who think it is too easy, I tell them about power yoga. To people who think it might be too hard I talk to them about less arduous forms of hatha yoga.

is yoga safe?

The fact is that there is a form of yoga to suit everyone’s individual needs. But whichever you choose, your strength and flexibility will improve. You’ll find your posture gets better, and you will feel you have higher energy levels. If you explore the meditative aspects of yoga you might feel calmer and more relaxed.

Despite the obvious positive benefits people often ask, “Is yoga safe?”. In fact Google those three words and you will find it is a question asked frequently all over the world. I think this has been prompted by some alarmist articles published in the media over the last year claiming that people have been hurt doing yoga. There was a particularly doom and gloom piece in the New York Times which was quoted all across the globe in many more newspapers.

We really need to read such articles in context. Everything we do in life carries a risk. You don’t stop boiling a kettle because there is a possibility you might get scalded. You just keep your hands clear of the spout when the steam comes out. Crossing the road might not be the safest thing to do, but we look right, look left and look right again before we cross in order to be avoid being hit by a car.

Thousands of people are hurt or killed in car accidents each year but we don’t stop driving, we just buckle up and take care.

is yoga safe?

The newspaper article in question quotes a very small number of yoga injuries. Hundreds of people actually also get hurt running, weight training and cycling but the journalist did not offer this comparison. Yoga is no more or less unsafe than any other form of exercise as long as you take care as you would with anything else you do in your daily life.

Check with your Doctor first if you have any issues or injuries, or you are pregnant (and yes yoga is safe for pregnancies). And then as long as you have a good qualified teacher who can give you options to suit your own range of motion, and you don’t seek to exceed your abilities, or be pressured into exceeding them, then yoga is safe. This simple checklist is the yoga equivalent of buckling up.

Sadly articles like that one in the New York Times just give uncertain people another reason not to give yoga a try. And for those genuinely looking to procrastinate, they can provide the perfect excuse to stay on the sofa.

Over to you: If you are a participant how have you found your yoga classes? Were you put off by worries about safety? If you are a yoga teacher what do you do to over come these fears? Please leave a comment and let’s have a debate about it.

If you liked this blog here are some other yoga topics:

Content marketing for fitness professionals – how to get customers to come to you

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Content marketing is a hot topic at the moment. But if you are looking for a cost effective method of promoting your business then it is worth looking into. It differs from traditional marketing techniques in one important way. The customer in control.

Most of what we marketing people have been doing for years is a form of interruption marketing. We send out stuff that we want people to watch, or to open and read and then follow our call to action. Letters. Emails. TV adverts. Bill board adverts. Magazine adverts. They “interrupt” you from what you are doing and try and make you do something else.

TV is a form interruption marketing. 20 years ago when there were only 4 TV channels you had to sit through the adverts (or at least go away and make a cup of tea). Now many people use Sky+ or TiVo. They record programmes, or pause them live, to watch them later. And the beauty of this is that you can zip through the adverts. And most people do. And let’s be honest. How many of us dive for the mute button when the Go Compare Opera singer comes on? I have to restrain myself from sticking my foot through the TV screen.

For these and other reasons interruption marketing is no longer as successful as it once was.

The modern internet world allowed a whole new approach to develop – inbound marketing – and it is based upon the premise that people search for information and content.

In some markets 90% of all buying decisions start with an on-line search using Google or another search engine. Arguments in pubs and bars and between co-workers are quite often settled with a Google search

content marketing for fitness

This is the key to inbound or content marketing. People want answers to the questions they have. They want answers in the content they can find on the internet. If you provide the answers then your customers will find you.

Imagine someone in Liverpool wants to buy a really good barbeque chicken. They are not going to type the word “chicken” into Google. They would get billions of results. Neither will they type “barbecue chicken” because it would still create too many results. “Best barbecue chicken”  is still no good if the best is in New York. “Best barbecue chicken in Liverpool” – might narrow it down to a few local outlets.

In this new world we need to be there when people come looking. And that means your website or blog becomes your inbound marketing hub.

To get people to find you when they come looking,  you need to provide accessible and useful content that will pop up on Google. The centre piece of your inbound marketing hub is a series of relevant articles (i.e. a blog) about your niche.

Going back to the chicken example. If you had a blog which answered the question, “who provides the best barbecue chicken in Liverpool”,  then this would show up in Google and low and behold you would have a visitor to your website who is now a potential customer.

Obviously you need to make sure that your site is fully optimised for search engines – but again this is not as hard as it seems. Neither is it as expensive as you would think, especially with great software like WordPress.

What are the top 25 questions that your clients ask you, about their fitness regimes and their fitness goals? What do they ask you about different exercises, classes and equipment> What questions do they have about food and nutrition?

You know the answers to those questions. Indeed you could probably recite them in your sleep. There you have, already, 25 topics for articles that could be up on your website and optimised so that when people search for answers to those questions – you are the one providing them.

People aren’t going to type just “Personal Trainers” into a search engine just as they aren’t going to type in just “chicken”. They might type, “Best personal trainers in Liverpool?”

If they did would your website show up on the front page of Google?

Over to you: Would you like to learn more about content marketing for fitness professionals? Have you already had some success setting up your own blog and are using inbound marketing. I’d like to hear your stories. Please leave a comment.

Other marketing blogs:

3 Fitness Marketing Tips inspired by a Dragon from the Den

You don’t need to be flexible to do yoga – but doing yoga will make you more flexible

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One of the popular myths about yoga is that you have to be very flexible to do it. It’s one of the questions I get asked most. And I can see why. In popular media yoga practitioners are often photographed in very advanced poses that make them look like they are bent double with their limbs wrapped around their necks. I’ve seen videos of famous Ashtanga teachers who genuinely look like they can tie their legs in a knot behind their backs. These images scare people.

flexible to do yoga

The truth is that there are many levels for each yoga pose. The aim is not to dangerously contort the body, over stretch it or overload it, but to go as far as feels challenging. For many people, especially beginners, that might not be very far at all.

So no, you do not have to be very flexible to do yoga, but you will become more flexible by doing it.

I remember before I started going to yoga classes, long before I became a teacher, I couldn’t perform a forward fold and touch my toes. Nowhere near touching them actually. Within weeks of practising yoga I could get closer, and now I can get all the way down. As a result I am much more flexible now than I was when I was much younger.

Improved flexibility is just one of the physical benefits of yoga. Others include:

  • Better cardiovascular efficiency
  • Better respiratory efficiency
  • Better musculoskeletal flexibility and joint range of motion
  • Increase in breath-holding time
  • Better dexterity skills
  • Better posture
  • Better strength and resiliency
  • Higher energy levels

Very few of us will ever achieve the rubber elastic bodies of Ashtanga yoga video stars, but neither should that be a necessary goal. All of us can benefit from the physical improvements yoga can bring. And if that means getting just one inch closer to touching your toes then that is an achievement to be proud of.

Over to you: I would love to hear your stories about how yoga has improved you physically. How much difference have you noticed? Please post a comment let me know.

Other yoga blogs: