Personal Training Blog
5 Fitness Apps to Keep You Motivated
YUMMLY 30% exercise and 70% diet, a statistic we often hear. The app yummly makes a nutritious and holistic diet easy to adhere to. The app includes loads of recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts, whilst taking into account recipes for individuals who are lactose intolerant, vegetarian or follow a paleo diet. It even gives option for the cuisine you are craving, Yum, Italian! MY FITNESS PAL To go hand in hand with your new Yummly app, track that you are consuming the correct amount of nutrients including your carbohydrate, fat and sugar intake, based on your height, weight and weight loss goals. MAP MY RUN As the name suggests, a running app!! Track your run via a GPS tracker, which records your daily activity, distance ran, time taken, and calories burned! A great app to see your progression through your fitness journey and set personal goals with yourself. Bring a pal on this journey, interact and engage with their progress! A great way to help each other stay motivated. LIFT Set goals you want to achieve. This app keeps you motivated by sending daily reminders and goal tracking. Almost like one of the Difference Personal Trainers inside your phone all week!! A fun way to keep you accountable and be the best version of you. What is your goal this week? Make sure you come to the gym 3-4 times? Drink 2L of water every day? Let us know what you goal is. HIIT & TABATA HIIT has been scientifically proven to be awesome for your health! It improves aerobic capacity, cardiorespiratory fitness, glucose tolerance, exercise endurance and burns more calories than steady state cardio! Set fast paces routines by adjusting working intervals, rest periods and amount of sets completed to suit your person fitness levels. Let us know what your favourite app was! |
The Quick Fix to Weight Loss
 The ‘Quick Fix’ that you see advertised on many different platforms such as television and mainly social media, gives individuals a false sense of security. No matter the goal, training can be broken up into many different parts, such as the actual training program or whether it be nutritional coaching, can be more specific such as sleep patterns, it has to take into account your life as a whole and every individual is different. For all of us, even the practising personal trainers etc, it is imperative we have a plan on how we train and how we train our clients. If there is no plan, we are just setting up ourselves for failure and we are hoping for that quick fix that is shoved in our faces. A plan on how to keep a client motivated for the long haul, for the bad weeks, how to keep a client on track in regards to macros and counting calories, otherwise we are just guessing right? So in short, the quick fix that is advertised so readily for all individuals, is not quite what we expect it to be, yet we need to be ready for the long haul and put in the hard work month on month, once you commit to this, you will feel accomplished once the results start to show. Hayden Difference Personal Trainer Narellan |
What makes a Successful Training Program
 GOALS A tip i will always give my new clients is to set a measurable goal, whether it is training one day a week or losing 1 kg per week, whatever the goal, this needs to be measurable, something that can be achievable and be repeated week on week. By setting a measurable goal it helps keep motivation levels at a high level and will assist in the long term success of your training journey. In adding to that, everyone loves when a goal has been reached and it helps with self-confidence and that feel good feeling will help keep the client on track. SAFETY Another major tip when training is in regards to exercise choices you make and how you progress them and also how long a program can last for, for your body to still achieve results. When starting in the gym it is obviously not the best idea to jump straight in the deep end and start lifting heavy weights without correct technique and programming. When starting a new program it is important to have a fitness professional be present to watch and help coach you through the prescribed exercise. By having this professional with you it will help iron out any creases in regards to technique, what is achievable and also, any questions that may arise. EXERCISE PRINCIPLES In regards to an actual program and the exercises it is important to understand fundamental basics such as progressive overload and getting deeper into programming, such as undulating periodisation. With progressive overload it is important not to chop and change between exercises because there will be no benefit from changing between exercises from one training day to the next. I recommend staying on a program for around 4-6 weeks as this allows for true results to be seen, throughout this time period you can change variables such as rest breaks, amount of receptions, amount of sets and of course, the weight. By manipulating these variables it allows for adaptation to occur, rather then just a standard 4 sets of 10 repetitions per exercises for all the exercises, by changing the stimulus the body and muscle endure, it will allow for change to occur, for instance weight loss, hypertrophy or strength depending on the client and their goal. CONSISTENCY This ties in well with setting a measurable goal, this means being consistent in the training and the amount of days training, hours spent training, the nutrition aspect also. Consistency is important, everyone has good intentions of attending the gym and exercising, until the time where your body is too sore or you’re too tired because you’ve overtrained those 5/6 times in the gym that week. By setting a realistic goal by saying you’ll attend the gym 2/3 times per week for 6 months is better then attending the gym 5.6 times for one month, you need to realise this is a lifestyle change and by changing everything at once can be problematic, you need to ease yourself in and it may take months until you’re ready for that extra day of training. NUTRITION The nutrition you undertake while starting an exercise program can be the difference between being successful and failing, nutrients are the driving force behind all bodily functions which means we need to meet those requirements in order to be active and achieve results. The tricky thing in regards to nutrition is that you need to be able to sustain this long term, while restricting some foods will work for you, there is no guarantee it will work for another person, a high protein and low carbohydrate diet may work for you it may not. I could go on all day about different types of ‘diets’ out there, but the basic building blocks when talking about nutrition is calories. In order to lose body fat, you must eat in a calorie deficit, basically, consume less calories then you will burn throughout the 24 hour period. HAVE FUN Lastly, if you’re having fun, you are more likely to keep coming back and stick to the above principles which will in the long term provide you with good results whether it be lose of body fat, decreased % of fat etc. While you’re exercising and you’re having fun, you are likely to form a social bond with fellow clients and also trainers, these friendships that you form can also keep you on track and feel a sense of togetherness in the chase of that your ultimate goal and help motivate each other going forward in their lifestyle journey. |
Consistency and results - it's all about mindset!
Throughout any training program everyone will come across a plateau period, a time when they think, is it worth it, why am I doing it, this is getting hard, maybe I wont go into today, I’m too busy with the kids to train today, the list could go on forever. For some people this may be a daily for others it might come once in a while, either way these, it is important to remember that being consistent is the base for results. Weather your goal is weight loss, body building or just for general fitness and well-being being consistent day in day out, week in week out, is what will ensure you get your goals. It is actually these times, when you push through the days you “don’t” want to do it, that you will see your best results. So what strategies can you use to help with consistency 1. Awareness! Be aware that in reality getting to your goals is not always going to something you “feel” motivated for. Accept that you are going to have days when it gets hard, when you don’t feel motivated, when you could think of a million other things to do. Knowing that this exists, helps you to catch it when it arrives Focus on the Positive On those days you have these negative thoughts it is easy to buy in to the “bull” that you are spinning yourself. The “reasons” why you shouldn’t have to train today, so you need to focus on the positive. Remember all the hard work you have put in already, be proud of the results you have already achieved, remember why you got started on this journey, think of how good you will feel when you finish that workout, when you pushed through a challenging day! You will feel amazing! 3. Tap into the fear of not succeeding Sometimes the positive is not enough to motivate us, so we need to think about what it would feel like to fail at this goal, not to hit our desired weight, to continue putting on weight or being unfit and unhealthy. The thought of not being able to run around with out kids, or being in hospital with illness. Sometimes the best strategy for motivating yourself through the hard times is to tap into your fear of failure. Fear can be a stronger motivator than pleasure! Remember turning up of these days and putting in the hard work in the gym you will feel a lot better physically and mentally moving forward, by just turning up to the gym is a win in itself! By being consistent with your training and your diet and keeping this discipline will help you to see results and will keep you strong in both body and mind. There are many different tools that can be used to keep yourself accountable and on track, some include;
By following these steps it keeps the individual accountable regarding their fitness journey it will help keep them on track when they have the negative thoughts and the bad days, reminding them not to give up and to stick at their task and long term goal of health and fitness. |
How do I stay motivated when it's 100 degrees outside?
Staying Motivated to Exercise When it’s 100 Degrees Outside!
With the Aussie summer heat on its way, it’s easy to decide to stay in the cool air-conditioning instead of working out. We have all had the thought pass our minds ‘oh, I’ll just wait till it’s a little cooler’. Not this year! Here are some of my favourite tips to beat the heat, stay cool and smash your workout:
1. Exercise early
Take advantage of the cooler mornings! Get up early, do a workout and feel great for the rest of the day.
2. Time to lose the hoodies
Avoid wearing dark colours which attract the sun making you hotter. Light, loose fitting gym gear will be a lot more comfortable during the summer heat. If you are outside, don’t forget a hat and sunscreen.
3. Stay Hydrated
Water, water, water!! An essential part of any workout, water helps regulates your body temperature. If you're not hydrated, you will not be able to complete your workout with your best performance and might start to experience muscle cramps and dizziness.
4. Listen to your body
Don’t push yourself if you’re going to end up hating your workout. Reduce the intensity if your body is telling you to. Maybe complete your 60min run along the beach where you can cool down, or just go swimming! Swimming laps is a great workout, your body will love you for it.
5. Stay Indoors
If it’s just too hot outside, not a problem at all! We will see you at your personal training session at Difference Personal Training. We’ve got the indoor coolness all sorted and ready for you to go.
Summer is the best time for you to be the best version of yourself! So keep exercising, dress appropriately, stay hydrated, and kick your goals with no excuses. |
What are the benefits of doing High Intensity Interval Training (HITT)?
People often ask us what is the best exercise to do when at the gym. There are several different responses and it depends 
1. Burn more calories, burn more fat. HIIT increases the amount of calories you burn during your exercise session and afterward because it increases the length of time it takes your body to recover from each exercise session.
HIIT causes metabolic adaptations that enable you to use more fat as fuel under a variety of conditions. This will improve your athletic endurance as well as your fat-burning potential.
2. Keep the muscle. Anyone who has been on a diet knows that it’s hard to not lose muscle mass along with fat. And even worse, steady state cardio seems to encourage muscle loss through the production of cortisol. A study published in the Journal of Obesity showed that both weight training and HIIT workouts allow dieters to preserve their hard-earned muscles, while ensuring most of the weight loss comes from fat stores. Keep the muscle, burn the fat. Perfect!
3. Get lean, stay youthful. Not only does HIIT beat conventional cardio as the most effective and efficient form of exercise, it also provides health benefits you simply cannot get from regular aerobics, such as a tremendous boost in human growth hormone (HGH). This is great news since HGH is not only responsible for increased caloric burn, but also slows down the aging process, making you younger both inside and out. It’s almost like a metabolic fountain of youth. Forget the Botox, it’s time for your HIIT workout.
4. Metabolism booster. Several of the genes affected by an acute bout of exercise happen to be the very same genes involved in fat metabolism. Another study in the Journal of Cell Metabolism showed that when you exercise, your body almost immediately experiences genetic activation that increases the production of fat-busting (lipolytic) enzymes. Everyone wants to be a more efficient calorie burner, even at rest, so after you’ve completed a HIIT workout, you’ve not only burned a ton of calories, but also sped up your metabolism! Win-win!
5. No time, no problem. Your life is really packed. It is always a challenge to find time to squeeze in a workout. Well,”no time to exercise” is no longer an excuse, now that HIIT can be tailored for the average adult. These quick, efficient sessions leave you with more time to enjoy life while feeling more fit! You can use FitStar anywhere, just download the app, and boom, you can try some amazing HIIT moves. It’s right there in your pocket!
The HIIT approach to cardio exercise is definitely physically demanding, but it can be modified to different levels of fitness. That said, if you have any cardiovascular problems or other health concerns that limit your ability to exercise at very intense levels, or if you are relatively new to aerobic exercise or not already in good shape, HIIT may not be for you—at least for now. If you have any doubts or concerns about whether it might be safe for you, check in with your medical professional before trying HIIT.
HIIT’s just one of many ways you can get fit and healthy. If you are unsure of what training to do, contact us and we can get a personal trainer to write you a customised program.
Difference Personal Trainer Narellan
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Exercise in a Moon Boot, what can I do?
Although being in a moon boot or having a lower limb injury can affect what you are able to do, it also opens many different doors as to what you can do. There should be no weight bearing exercise for the lower limbs (i.e. squats, lunges, deadlifts) nor should there be any walking or running on a treadmill, cross trainer or bike, as this may exacerbate the pain in the lower limbs while they are trying to recover from the injury. What I like to focus on if a client of mine has a lower limb injury, is their core and upper body, this can be done using free weights or machine weights depending on the clients confidence in the gym, it is safer to stick with machine weights during this time of recovery. Machine weights such as chest press, shoulder press, lat pull down, seated row are all very good machines that are non-weight bearing for the lower limbs, but still give the client a workout where they have to exert energy. You can superset this with core work as to give the upper body a rest in between sets. Core work can include Russian twists, ankle touches, leg raises, crunches, bicycles… the options are endless when it comes to core work. By staying active and in the gym, when the lower limb injury does recover, the transition that would usually occur where the motivation and routine has been thrown out the window and it will be hard to rediscover this, but by staying active and keeping in routine, you can start to incorporate lower limb exercises into your exercise program and build your strength and confidence to where it began before the injury. You will need to start light when you do start weight bearing exercise as to not reinjure the limb, and to build strength into the left or right (or both) lower limb before you can start lifting heavy again. So being in a moon boot will not restrict you fully in the gym, you still will be able to keep up physical activity and keep the routine for when your limb does recover. By focusing on the upper body and core aspect of training it will help with the mental side of things during the injury, where mentally clients may struggle during an injury, keeping active and healthy will definitely help with self confidence. Hayden PT Narellan Difference Personal Training Narellan |
Injuring the
lower limbs such as an the ankle or the foot can have a negative impact on self-confidence
and an easy excuse to stop attending the gym, by saying you’re in a moon boot
and that you cannot exercise until it is fully healed. This is not the case,
there are many possibilities of training while in a moon boot and it should not
hinder you in your journey in the gym.Should I avoid fruits as they contain too much sugar (too much carbs)
Often I hear individuals say they try to avoid fruits (such as bananas) because they contain too much sugar (or too many carbs), but should the sugar in fruit really be the blame for our obesity epidemic?  Yes fruits contain sugar. The main sugar found in fruit (which you have probably heard of) is fructose. However, fruit is not made up entirely of fructose – it contains water, fibre and other beneficial vitamins and minerals that make it an optimal choice to include in a balanced and healthy eating regime. Additionally, due to the presence of dietary fibre, fructose derived naturally from whole fruit has a different metabolic effect on the body when compared with fructose that is “added“ to foods. In fact, most fructose consumed in the diet is not from fruit, it is actually derived from sucrose, commonly known as ‘sugar’. Sucrose is a double sugar comprising one glucose and one fructose molecule. Discretionary foods such as sweet biscuits, cakes, chocolate, lollies, fruit drinks, sport drinks and soft drinks contain large amounts of fructose, commonly referred to as “added sugar”. These are the foods that we need to monitor and there is a general agreement among health professionals that we should be consuming less of these discretionary foods as they are easy to overindulge in, generally provide no nutritional value, or essential nutrients. Furthermore, weight loss is typically achieved by strategies that consistently result in a lower energy intake relative to the energy used so reducing energy-dense, processed and high sugar foods (such as those mentioned above) may assist with decreasing the high rates of obesity and other metabolic disorders affecting our nation. The World Health Organization has recently dropped its sugar intake recommendations from 10 percent of your  Please note these sugars are different from intrinsic sugars found in whole fresh fruits and vegetables. Many of us don’t realise much of the sugar we actually consume or how much sugar there is “hidden” in processed foods. To put this into perspective, we compared the total CHO and sugar content of 3 items (see below) 1 can of coca cola (375mL): • Total carbohydrates: 39.8 g • Sugar: 39.8g • Equivalent to 10 teaspoons of added sugar/fructose • Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Sugar, Colour (150d), Food Acid (338), Flavour, Caffeine. 50g chocolate bar: • Total carbohydrates: 29.6g • Sugar: 28.7 g • Equivalent to 7 teaspoons of added sugar/fructose • Ingredients: Full Cream Milk, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Milk Solids, Emulsifiers (Soy Lecithin, 476), Flavours. Milk Chocolate Contains Cocoa Solids 24%, Milk Solids Minimum 24%. 1 small banana: • Total carbohydrates: 16.8 g • Sugar 14.4.g (with 2.3g of that being dietary fibre) • Equivalent to 3 teaspoons of natural fructose So what does this mean? When looking at the can of coca cola and the 50g chocolate bar you can see that total sugar is much higher than that of the banana. Additionally, in both of these products, sugar is listed second highest on the ingredient list (ingredients are listed in descending order by weight) and as a rule of thumb, if the product has sugar in the top 3 ingredients it is too high. This is also an indication that the almost all of the total carbohydrates is derived from sugar that has been added to the product. So in summary, what nutritional benefits would you get from this? Not many. The banana has 12.1g of sugar when deducting the fibre content. However, the bananas’ sugar comes with a quality nutrition package containing important nutrients such as vitamin C, B-6, potassium. In conclusion, the Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend that we eat a wide variety of nutritious foods from the five food groups. There is no discussion on avoiding sugar altogether, so cutting out foods such as fruit, dairy products and many wholegrain that do contain some sugar, along with other major nutrients, is unnecessary and unhealthy. If you avoid bananas because of their sugar content, think again. You don’t need me to tell you that a banana is a healthier alternative to a can of coke or a bar of chocolate. Dietitian, Kimberly |
How to stay motivated during the colder months
 During the warmer weather, it is easy to get physical activity. We work in the garden, go for walks in the evening, bike ride with the family, and spend lots of time outdoors. When someone wants to go, we jump up and go. There seems to be more energy in our steps. The main motivation is looking good in great clothes. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all want to look our best for as long as we can. The by-product of looking good is that we can achieve great health benefits. Unfortunately, when winter rolls around, all we desire is to curl up on the couch in big sweaters and slippers. It’s not cute but it’s comfortable. But, that big sweater gives us a false sense of security. We can’t see how much damage we could potentially be doing by eating and maintaining a sedentary lifestyle. It is okay to want to slack off a bit on the exercise but totally dropping things is a no-no. Here are a few tips to help you stay motivated during the winter months. To start, set a regular time to work out and stick to it. You may not feel like meeting a friend at the gym for a class but you can pop in a DVD or VHS tape and sweat at home. Instead of cranking up the car and braving the cold, you stayed comfortable and worked out anyway. Maybe the busyness of the holidays has you skipping workout sessions. Exercise is cumulative. Every little bit adds up. Fifteen minutes in the morning plus another fifteen minutes in the afternoon equals thirty minutes of physical activity that day. Physical activity doesn’t have to be an hour of jumping up and down to a routine. It could be reading a magazine while walking on the treadmill. Dancing around the room, as you vacuum and clean, counts as exercise, also. Talk to a friend or workout buddy even if you can’t get to the gym with them each day. Use the telephone to keep each other motivated. When the weather leads you to slouch on the couch, phone a friend and get a pep talk until you jump up on your feet and get going. Listen—you’ve worked mighty hard all year. Why throw it all away during the season of frivolity and food? It won’t be easy to stay motivated, but friends can help. Stick to the routine as much as possible and you won’t feel the after effects of a long indulgent holiday season – you’ll be one step ahead when January rolls round too. Difference Personal Training Narellan |
Why the “pause-button mentality” is ruining your health and fitness.
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