If you are looking to give yoga a try, a hatha yoga class is a good place to start.

Look for the hatha yoga classes on the timetable in fitness clubs like David Lloyd’s and Bannatyne’s. Or you might see adverts for hatha sessions in local community centres and church halls.

In the UK, hatha yoga is seen as a gentle form of practice, compared to the more demanding ashtanga or power yoga. In actual fact hatha yoga is the oldest type of yoga practiced by people all over the world. It is a common framework from which all the more modern interpretations have evolved.

So ashtanga yoga, which is a set series of poses performed in the same order ever time, owes as much of its roots to hatha, as power yoga (a faster series of moves which are more aerobically challenging), bikram yoga (practiced in a very hot room), and freestyle fitness yoga (taught without reference to any traditional pose names). All of them have been developed from the same starting point.

Nevertheless, hatha yoga is now often synonymous with a gentler form of practice suitable for beginners.  If you like it you can progress to a more challenging form later, but wherever you end up you will still see some common features.

Hatha yoga embraces “8 limbs”, or foundations. of which those relating to poses/exercises (asanas), breathing (pranayama), meditation and concentration are most prevalent. Sometimes the more spiritual elements are also represented but many people just seeking the physical side choose not to focus on these.

Well here we are in 2012 and there are two more years of construction pain before the trams start running. The tram units themselves wait sadly unloved and without passengers in their little play pen at the Gogarburn Depot.

This has been a vanity project. Nothing more. The route is well served by buses already.

Here are some of the highlights of the Edinburgh Trams disaster:

• Original plans were for three lines. One serving the airport to the city centre; a second loop down through Leith and back to the city centre through Granton; and a third out to Musselburgh in the east. Only the first line is actually being built.
• The cost estimate was £498m. The final bill will be just short of £1 billion. And that’s for 1 line not three remember.
• The trams were to be running by summer 2011. July 2014 is now what we are promised.
• The tracks on Princes Street have been laid three times necessitating the closure of this famous thoroughfare. The tarmac was already crumbling and dangerous before a single tram had ever run on them.

The green agenda is often used to justify building the trams. I wonder how much extra pollution has been created by the building work, the delays, the re-routing of traffic and the heavy machinery. How long will the trams have to operate in order to pay back this carbon debt?

And when the construction is finally finished and Edinburgh cab drivers will have to find a different topic to talk about, there is one question which I would love to know the answer to.

Given that the tram units themselves will each carry 250 passengers. That’s 78 seated and 172 standing. If you were a passenger arriving at Edinburgh Airport after a long journey, would you choose to stand up for the ride into town, or would you select the guarantee of a seat in one of the superb airport buses, or the privacy of a cab direct to your destination?

Over to you: Are you looking forward to the completion of the Edinburgh Trams? What do you think of the scheme? Would you choose to travel to the airport in a car, a cab, a bus or would you take the tram? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Let me tell you about what happened to me and then I’ll answer that. Before I started going to yoga classes, a long time before I decided I wanted to teach it, I wasn’t flexible. Not at all. I was a typical male into running and weight training combined with little or no stretching. By muscles were short and tight. I couldn’t touch my toes when I bent over. In fact I couldn’t reach any lower than my knees.

The first yoga class I did was a relatively easy hatha class. Basic poses and some deep breathing. I found some of them difficult because of my inflexibility. But the teacher as great. She told me not to over exert and to take it easy. I ached the following day, but stuck at it. After a few weeks I definitely felt more flexible. I still couldn’t touch my toes but I felt I could get lower. Even if it was only an inch.

I’ve now been participating and then teaching for nearly 10 years and do you know what? I can touch my toes now. With my legs dead straight with no bend at the knees. I’m not sure exactly when it happened. But one day in a forward fold I suddenly thought, “Hey. I can touch my toes.” I was so happy. It felt like a great achievement.

What I can’t do however, in downward facing dog, is press my heels flat  into the floor like some even more flexible people can. I probably never will be able to do this. I definitely won’t ever be able to wrap my feet behind my ears. Sometimes individuals are just not built that way.

But It doesn’t matter. You just go as far as is comfortable.

I wasn’t flexible before I started doing yoga but by doing yoga I have become much more flexible. So going back to the question, “How long will it take to get flexible by doing yoga?”

The answer is different times for different people. But that doesn’t matter either.

You will become more flexible than you currently are as soon as you start practising yoga. And you will become even more flexible, in whatever small or large degree, every time you practice again. The complete journey to flexibility might be a long one or a short one. That’s not what is important. The important thing is making the first step on the journey.

Over to you: Were you like me? Short tight muscles and no flexibility? How has yoga improved you? Are you looking to start taking yoga classes? Are there any other questions that you have? Please post a comment, or a question, or anything you like in the box below.

Les Mills the creators of Body Pump brought this revolutionary fitness class to the UK at the start of 2012. I wondered if it would be a little slow to take off. Not because of any flaws in the workout, CXWorx works as I said, but because some clubs appear reluctant to pay for another licence. Maybe they think their PTs can put something similar together.

Whilst take up as been slow down south, CXWorx is starting to gain a strong foothold in Edinburgh. Blazing the trail has been Edinburgh Leisure who have introduced many classes across the city. David Lloyd have followed and I hope others are interested. Les Mills have held 2 instructor training modules already and more are to follow.

One of my fitness instructor friends has already trained in CXWorx and Karl Fitzpatrick on his Group X site comments as follows:

“30 minutes passed. And job done. Ouch. But you love it. Get the lovely feeling of ache. Knowing you’ve earned it.”

And another is about to take the plunge and do the training – in his CXWorx Blog, Simon Philp reminds us about the benefits of the class:

“Formulated with a carefully structured, scientific approach and unforgiving intensity, Les Mills CXWORX tightens and tones, improves functional strength and assists injury prevention like nothing else.”

So should I consider doing the CXWorx training module?

After I qualified as a yoga teacher in 2010, and as I now teach Body Combat, Body Balance, Power Yoga and Hatha Yoga, I said no more. But there is something about CXWorx. It’s chipping away at my resolve. And as the class gains ground in Edinburgh so too does the feeling that my portfolio might not yet be complete.

Over to you: Have you trained on CXWorx? What did you think of the training module course?Are you a participant? What do you think about the CXWorx core fitness class? Have they made any noticeable difference to your core strength? Please post a comment below and let me know.

If you enjoyed this blog you might like to try this one as well:

• 6 Ways to Sculpt your core with CXWorx

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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

• What is power yoga? It’s a good workout and it ain’t easy.

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

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

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:

• Should I try Yoga?
• Yoga is good for you despite what the newspapers say.
• What is power yoga?

The mattress in my home bedroom is not made of stone. I do not buy rough toilet tissue and my towels are not made out of bleached iron wool. So I don’t want these features when I’m travelling.

Unfortunately these days a grubby hotel with spartan furnishings may be all the corporate travel budget can bear. If I do get landed with a grim hotel I usually console myself that it is only for one or two nights. But it’s not a hard bed and lack of fluffy towels that upsets me most though. My three main gripes with hotels throughout the world, but mainly in the UK, are as follows:

• Extra charges for WiFi
• Cold, congealed breakfast buffets
• Outrageous charges for mini-bars

In addition I am also put off by sprawling mega-hotels with endless check-in and check-out queues, which teem with masses of humanity fighting for space in the bar or the restaurant.

So I am delighted to have found a hotel chain, Indigo, which hits the spot in almost every way and succeeds in these 3 ways to improve hotels. Indigo Paddington, for example,  is a flawless diamond hidden down a street about 2 minutes walk from Paddington station. This makes it a perfect base for business and pleasure trips. It only has 60 or so rooms so it feels intimate and cosy.

The rooms are quite small but they are brimming with lovely colourful fabrics, pictures and decorations. The bed is liberally covered in throws and cushions and is delightfully comfortable. In the bathroom is one of those showers with a head the size of a plate so you feel as if you are standing in the rain. If this is too much for you just use the second hand held shower head.

All rooms have free WiFi and soft drinks from the mini-bar are complimentary.

At breakfast you order from a menu and your plate is prepared fresh and brought to your table by the waiter. This alone would set Indigo above the majority of hotels in London. And they are appearing in other UK cities.

Over to you: What are your hotel grumbles? Have you found a hotel or chain that provides a great service at a good price. Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Look at the boys. They tend to shun fitness classes anyway because they are seen as something the girls go to. But tell them a class is easy and you’ll definitely never get them to give up the treadmill or weights room to give it a try.

And the girls? Labeling it as the more “sedate” class puts off the ladies who are looking for a calorie busting more intense cardio work out.

I wrote recently that there is a type of yoga for everyone. From those styles that include more of the spiritual elements, to those that offer a more physically challenging, strengthening and high heart rate experience. If the latter is what you are looking for the give power yoga a try.

What is power yoga? Well for one thing it isn’t easy. Let me repeat that slowly so the clubs can hear me. It isn’t easy!

I guess it developed as an Americanised version of traditional Ashtanga. Ashtanga can be tough and is always a set series of poses progressing through the so called standing, primary and intermediate series and beyond. Power yoga takes the physical intensity of Ashtanga but introduces variety. No two classes will be the same. You will do different sequences of poses in a different order in each session all linked together by a flow of movement.

There are variations of power yoga across the world. In the US there is Baptiste Power Yoga (named after a famous yoga teacher called Baron Baptiste – it is certainly worth googling his videos and books). In the UK it might appear on timetables as fitness yoga or dynamic yoga.

What is it like? Well you are going to get hot and sweaty and you will be almost constantly on the move. You’ll start with some deep breathing to calm you down and to get some oxygen into the muscles before they begin to work. Then on to some warm up stretches before the hard work begins.

You’ll do anything up to 12 rounds of sun salutations – which is a linked sequence of between 10 and 20 poses each one held for as long as it takes to inhale or exhale. This raises the heart rate, warms up the muscles and prepares you for the main series of exercises.

There will be flowing sequences of standing strength exercises, some balances and moves on the floor to strengthen the tummy, the side abs and the back. Each group of exercises will be linked together by a vinyasa which again is a series of poses similar to part of the sun salutation.

The class will last for between an hour and an hour and a half. At the end you’ll relax for the last few minutes and allow the heart rate to return to it’s normal resting beat. And you’ll need it because your body will have been challenged, the muscles strengthened and stretched.

People who have tried my classes have been surprised how tough it has been. There are times when I will look up to find a few participants taking a break in child’s pose as they get their breath back under control. I often wear a bandana when teaching. Not because I think it is cool, but because I sweat like a tap. And I’ve even seen those doubting weight lifters admitting that it’s tough. Everyone seems to like the results. More strength, flexibility and range of movement in the body.

So clubs. Can we drop the “E” word?

Over to you: Have you tried power yoga? Do you agree that it is quite a good workout. Have you seen results? Please leave a comments and let me know.

Other Yoga Blogs:

• Yoga is good for you despite what the newspapers seem to think
• Is there a Modern vs Traditional Yoga argument?