Tag Archives: fitness magazine

8 reasons why yoga should be your New Year’s Resolution

Fitness and Yoga, , , , , , , , ,

Happy New Year to everyone. Have you made a resolution? Will you stick to it?

People are talking about giving up alcohol, chocolate, sweets, canned drinks, coffee, red meat, biscuits and cream cakes. They are going to join a gym, take up running, enter a marathon, go to boot camp, hire a personal trainer and start using stairs instead of the lift.

The problem is that this takes will-power and committment. A high percentage of new gym members stop going regularly after just six weeks. But they keep paying their fees much to the delight of the gym’s accountants. And many will be back on the alcohol, chocolate, sweets, canned drinks, coffee, red meat, biscuits, cream cakes or whatever takes their fancy by the beginning of February.

8 reasons why yoga
photo credit: lululemon athletica via photopin cc

Why not just take up yoga instead? It might sound like it’s just as tall an order as giving up pizza, but you don’t even need to join a gym to do it. You could go to a drop in studio or even get hold of a decent DVD and practice in your living room.

Do yoga once or twice a week and you will see benefits almost immediately. Here are 8 reasons why yoga should be your New Year’s resolution.

Better flexibility: You don’t have to be flexible to start doing yoga, but every class you attend will make you more flexible. Yoga moves gently stretch your body and over time will increase your range of motion.

Better muscle tone: Yoga tones muscles because most of the poses involve either strengthening or stretching particular muscles groups. You can develop long lean muscles by doing yoga. In fact you could work pretty much every muscle in the body. And the flow of exercises mean that you will also get a cardiovascular work out as well.

Increased strength: Each yoga pose either strengthens or stretches a group of muscles. By holding poses you will gain muscle strength.

Better posture: Improved flexibility and increased strength means that your posture will also improve. You will also find that your balance will get better.

Re-energised: Apart from the more cardio-based forms of yoga, such as power yoga, you won’t find that your energy fade during a yoga class. Indeed you will find yourself re-energised and feeling quite vigorous after class.

8 reasons yoga
photo credit: lululemon athletica via photopin cc

Less stressed: The physical exercises you do in yoga can also be combined with relaxation and breathing techniques which induce calmness and lower your heart rate. Enhanced mindfulness and mental calm can leave you feeling less stressed.

Less pain: By increasing your range of motion and strengthening your muscles you can prevent pain because you will become less susceptible to injury.

Everyone benefits: Don’t listen to the clichés. You don’t have to be a bendy girl to do yoga. No matter what your age, size, shape or level of fitness you can benefit.

And what’s more it compliments other forms of sport and might even make you more successful at them.

Your turn: Has yoga made a difference to your life? Have you noticed all these changes. I’m on a mission to get more people doing yoga in 2013. Please share your stories. Click below where it says “Leave a reply”.

 

Blade’s back – Review of Body Combat Release 53

Fitness and Yoga, , , , , , , , , ,

I am writing this post with aching legs and burning shoulders. And it is all Body Combat Release 53’s fault. This is a relentless work out. It hardly lets up for a moment. Several times when first teaching this, I forgot to breathe. So the next time I warned the class to take care. Afterwards someone tweeted me to say that they too had failed to follow my breathing advice.

So let’s talk about the tracks.

Review of Body Combat Release 53
Poster for BC53

 

Upper Body Warm Up (Written in the Stars): As usual an uplifting opener with a strong beat and catchy tune. As well as the usual jabs, upper cuts and hooks we also get to preview descending and ascending elbows from later in the class.

Lower Body Warm Up (Are You Ready For This?): Spot the instructors and participants who have done Body Combat for years. This song first appeared in release 10 way back in 2001. I find this a very busy lower body warm up with very quick transitions and a lot going on. The timing in the capoeira ginga shuffle is hard to nail. Overall though very effective as we get warm very quickly.

Combat 1 (Rock N Roll All Night): This is a disappointing track. It’s very short and is a rather insipid live version of the song. However we see the jump front kick in Combat 1 for the first time (it’s usually in track 4) and that raises the heart rate slightly before you blink and find that the track is over.

Power 1 (Shine On): Now the work out cranks up to lethal levels and pretty much stays there from now on. I found my shoulders were particularly sore after release 53 and it’s because all the three power tracks have a hook in the combinations thus working the same muscle groups over and over. The moves in Shine On are simple and the high amount of reps lead to fatigue and a fast heart rate. Use the short skipping break in the middle to get back control of your breathing.

Review of Body Combat Release 53
Dan and Rach doing side kicks in Track 4

Combat 2 (Sweet Dreams): When I first heard this music I thought it was very dark and gothic. I’ve since found out that it is a cover of the Marilyn Manson and not the Eurythmics version so that explains it. Karate takes centre stage here with very powerful blocks and palm strikes. We build up the side kick sequence slowly and then ramp up the power. And I love the Kata which reminds me of the one from my all time favourite combat track, Scooter’s Jigga Jigga way back in release 25.

Power 2 (True Believer): Wow. Another relentless power track with a catchy sing along tune, pounding beat and great words let me create motivating cues. “You’re my inspiration” indeed. Another combo with a hook continues to burn the shoulders. I love the 7 upper cut combo with the huge seventh punch. And finishing with thirty odd upper cuts off the same arm elevates the heart rate to the top of the scale. We learn how endless punches like this can actually work the core as well as the arms. They are like sit ups stood up.

Combat 3 (Swagger Jagger): Cher Lloyd in Body Combat? You’re kidding right? I’ve seen much written on this song on Facebook and on discussion boards. It is an abomination. But the capoeira moves, very low lunges, esquivas, and the knee strikes and kicks torture your legs to the point where the music is irrelevant. If the pain doesn’t take your mind off the music just sing along to the melody in the chorus but substitute the words from the song it has ripped off, “Oh my darlin’. Oh my darlin’. Oh my darlin’ Clementine”.

Muay Thai (Blade): For a few releases now the Muay Thai tracks have featured rock songs. Personal I prefer my MTs to be thumping dance, techno trance tracks and this one is as thumpy dancey techno and trancey as it can get. Blade’s been in Combat several times over the years and it fits the programme so well. This is one of the moments I forgot to breathe. It’s a cardio blaster which will take you to the limit. On reflection the moves are very simple but the sheer intensity will leave you breathless. When I saw that the running order for this release was only 53 minutes I wondered why they didn’t double up this short MT track. I now know why. There is no way we could do it twice.

Power 3 (Summer Rain): Dan Cohen says that if you look up the word “epic” in a dictionary you will find the definition is “Body Combat 53 track 8”. At almost 8 minutes of flat-out punching it certainly feels epic. One of my issues with track 8s recently is that most of them finish with a long section of endless jabs. Finally we have variety mixing jabs and upper cuts into a frenzied melee. Even with my bandana on I found sweat pouring down into my eyes. It finished a little blurry.

Review of Body Combat Release 53

Conditioning (Bangarang): Another dubstep song by Skrillex. More exercises based on hovers to blitz the core. In the notes booklet they describe the moves as “oblique shredders”. Start in plank (on knees or toes) and draw a knee to the side and in then kick out on an angle. Repeat for an eternity. This track worx!

Cool down (Is there anybody out there?): A pleasant cool down song. It is always good to see swan poses and down facing dogs in the last section – great leg and hip stretches. And a lovely finish with a return to the Kata from track 4.

Body Combat Release 53 is the best all round release for a while. It is such a good work out that I can forgive Swagger Jagger’s intrusion. If it wasn’t for the under-whelming track 2 this would have scored a well deserved 10 out of  10.

Over to you: I hope you enjoyed this review of Body Combat release 53. Are you a Body Combat instructor? Please let me know what you think of this class. Participants what do you think? Share your thoughts. Go on! Leave a comment.

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

Marketing, , , , , , ,

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 is 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 professionals

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

Yoga is good for you despite what the newspapers seem to think.

Fitness and Yoga, , , , , , ,

The New York Times published an article with the sensational headline, “How Yoga Can Wreck your Body” at the beginning of January. Great timing when many people are looking to start a New Year with a determination to get fit. What a great way to put off anyone considering Yoga as their resolution. The article naturally caused outrage amongst Yoga teachers and many rebuttals have appeared since.

Yoga is good for you

On 29 Jan The Sunday Times published their own version. Since then I have seen Internet forums flooded with questions like, “Is yoga really safe?” or,  “Is Yoga dangerous?” People have even stayed behind after class to voice their concerns and seek advice.

Should they be worried? No – yoga is good for you but let’s be clear. Newspapers love sensational headlines. They also love to scare us. The Daily Mail is always running stories that one day claim something causes cancer and then next day that the same thing prevents cancer.

When you see a headline claiming that eating a certain type of food increases the chance of cancer by, say, 78% naturally you think that is a worrying figure. But they never publish the base statistic. If the incidence of that form of cancer is one in a million. Then a 78% increase means the incidence is still pretty close to one in a million. But it scares you none the less.

The Yoga article quotes 46 people who have suffered back problems, spinal issues and joint pain. Oh my God so every one should stop practicing Yoga immediately then, just in case. At the same time we should stop eating, drinking, going to the cinema, riding bikes, flying kites, taking dogs for walks, stroking cats, playing football and having sex. In fact curl up in a dark room and shut out the world.

There is risk associated with everything we do in life. And I mean everything. You may sprain your ankle running for the bus. You may trip and fall down the stairs and break your arm. It’s possible you might burn your hand severely whilst cooking your dinner.

Now consider what that 46 injuries really means in context. In the UK in 2010 nearly 2000 people died in car accidents. 22,600 were seriously injured. 184,000 were slightly injured. But newspapers don’t recommend you stop driving even though the fact remains that you are many more times more likely to be hurt driving to a Yoga class than you are to be hurt in one.

“Yoga is good for you.”

As long as you have a qualified teacher who gives you clear instructions, doesn’t over exert, extend or stretch you, then yoga will be of amazing benefit to your body’s strength and flexibility. Like any form of exercise take it at your own pace, grow in confidence, and enjoy it.

Don’t worry about what you read in the papers. Yoga is definitely, really good for you. Come along to a class and feel the benefits.

Over to you: If you are a yoga teacher what do you do to make your clients feel good, safe and confident? Are you a participant? Do you ever feel that yoga is not doing you some good?