Six-packs are sexy, right? I mean, everyone wants to look good naked, to be proud of their body, to be confident enough to take their shirt off in the summer like the diet coke guy, right? Of-course we do! I don’t usually concentrate too much on the aesthetic side of fitness, there’s enough gym mirror bum selfies on Instagram to keep this solar system in self-image reinforcement for a millennia. But, the fact that I am a fitness and nutrition coach seems to provoke people to ask questions along the lines of “if I eat more salads will I get a six-pack?” Or “if I avoid potatoes will I get a...

  Did you know that in addition to fitness and nutrition I also offer professional bike fits? Well I do. Full disclosure, I’m a part-time recreational cyclist at best and my personal preference is for off-road. I ride an entry level 26er hardtail… Yep a 26er, remember those? Anyway, the fact that you are likely to be a more serious cyclist than me ought not to put you off because I have a very particular set of skills, skills that I have acquired over a long career… Don’t worry I’m not going to hunt you down and kill you like Liam Neeson. My background is in fitness, I am a pe...

If you have read my other blogs on exercises for lower back-pain you will have already seen the importance of core stabilisation, or at-least the need to understand dynamic stability and correct alignment through movement. But what about spine mobility? Does that play a role too? You bet your aching arse it does! Here are the other blogs in that series: Part 1: The Core Part 2: Strength Part 3: The Hips The mid-spine is called the Thoracic, the bit that your rib cage is attached to and where many of your vital organs are kept. The range of motion available here is quite vast...

      **This is a guest blog by Tommy Cole, author of The Smart Shred Diet**   I sat there as a young, impressionable, budding nutritionist, absorbing all the information I was being told by a nutrition guru I looked up to at the time. Information that I now know to be complete BS. He was telling me how sugar is the devil of nutrition, high GI carbs don’t have their place in the healthy diet, and that fruit–yes, fruit(!)–is fattening, simply because it contains sugar. This led me down a fruit-fearing, carb cutting, year-long phase of my life I like to refer to as m...

The kettlebell swing is an excellent exercise. It incorporates one of the fundamental movement patterns – the hip hinge – it helps develop explosive strength, core and spine stability and cardiovascular fitness. Because I love me some kettlebell action I thought I would break down the swing and some of its common variations. Technique and form are super important when exercising, especially when you add load to that exercises and even more if there is a dynamic explosive element to that loaded movement. Many people do the swing wrong and put themselves at risk of injury. Let’s lis...