Expert Articles

So you've fallen off the band wagon and need someone to blame, sure you've been following your program completely by eating the right macro's, doing your weights and sufficient cardio each week right? At the end of the day you need to be true to yourself and ask yourself in front of the mirror, "Am I giving this 100%" time to quit making excuses at the end of the day you've only got yourself to blame. We all have equally the same amount of hours in the day 24 hours, 7 days a week is 189 hours or 11340 minutes. It's what we choose to do with these hours that's really going to make an impact on our health. After all we only have one body, you need to take action and look after yourself otherwise you will turn yourself into a walking time bomb.

My Why Wakes Me Up

Achieving your fitness goals requires commitment and dedication to the Four E's: Emotions, Education, Eating and Exercise. By consistently focusing and improving on the Four E's, no goal, no matter how big you dream, is unattainable.

Limitations. Just the word evokes negative ideas of restriction, control and constraint. In day-to-day life we experience numerous limitations, both internal and external.

Our legend of a trainer Kyle travels around Australia to compete in obstacle races - read on as he shares his insights and reveals his top 5 tips for anyone considering competing in an obstacle race.

Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich  is one of the bestselling inspirational business books ever. A recent USA Today survey of business leaders named it one of the five most influential books in its field, more than 40 years after it was first published. It was a book that resonated with me at a young age and his principles have been a huge contributor to my own personal achievement.

WHAT?! Eating fat burns fat? That sounds contradictory to the fat phobic view that many have adopted. By taking fats out of your diet you're actually taking away a valuable tool for fat burning plus a great tool for vitamin transport and craving fighting. Let's have a look at how..

We talk a lot about goals here at Vision and indeed they are an integral part of helping clients get to where they want to be. The first goal session is often a very powerful experience - full of emotions , sometimes tears - often fears but ending in hope and optimism for the future. At Castle Hill we, as trainers, take our own goals very seriously. I'd like to share with you my experiences of my own personal goal.   We have a board inside the front door "Your trainers' goals." To be honest when it was my turn to write up my goal I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was new at vision and just loving my new job that I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to do in the future. After some debate and a lot of arm twisting by my colleagues it was decided that my goal would be to run the Blackmore's Half Marathon. Before the ink had even dried I was already regretting it - How could I possibly run that far - 21 KM's - that's like running to the city!! My friends and family would have laughed at the prospect of me finishing - as would my soccer team mates - despite having played for 30 odd years I was never very  fit and nearly always the first to take an enforced break (put on the subs bench!!) Anyway I thought I could do one of two things - chicken out and come up with something easier or REALLY see how powerful goal setting can be. I'm so glad I chose the latter.   So armed with a training plan (thanks Amie) the journey had begun. Basically I had to do 2 shorter runs during the week and then a longer run on Saturday morning ( that got longer and longer as the weeks progressed ) Not wanting to suffer alone we persuaded a few brave clients to sign up too and Saturday morning Run Club became our long run. Now this is where the power of a GOAL comes into play. It wasn't a choice of whether or not I was going to go for a run - it had to happen. If I was going to finish the race the training had to be done - it was as simple as that. I had a client who's goal was to lose some weight for her upcoming wedding. A not uncommon goal of course - all eyes would be on her and the photos would last forever. In our goal session she said to me -"When I wake up on my wedding day I want to know that I did everything I could" This is something that I will always remember. I wanted to know that when I stood on the start line on Sunday 20th September that I had done everything that I could to finish the race - in fact as the date got closer and the runs longer I even added a time goal - sub 2 hours.   So if it was cold, if it was raining if I was just feeling tired or unmotivated I said to myself -- if I miss todays run could I look in the mirror and say to myself that I had done everything I could - The answer of course is NO - so I went for a run. Did I enjoy the run? Sometimes after a 100 metres I was wishing I was anywhere else, sometimes it got better and I felt good ... sometimes it got worse and I felt terrible. But every single time when I finished the run I would tick it off on my chart and every single time that felt really really good. Now for full disclosure I did miss a weeks training - I had a slight injury and decided that resting for a week would be the best option - but when I woke up on race day I felt I had done as much as I could.....