While these concepts are more or less well positioned for improving our health and fitness - upon reflection, I feel these concepts could be communicated a whole lot better to the general population where health and fitness is the goal! 1OK Steps is not the target - increasing your physical activity is! Targets are helpful, but they aren’t the pinnacle when it comes to health. The goal behind a step count is simply to help encourage more physical activity on a daily basis. T

As I have learned and progressed along my fitness journey, my experiences have helped to better shape my perspective on what truly matters when it comes to working on your health and fitness. In many cases this is more straightforward than you would think, I hope to share this in 3 simple principles which I wish I had better understood earlier in my career! Consistency beats perfection! Perfection can seem great, it can even appear to be the bare minimum in terms of expectati

As many reading this are probably aware by now - there is a surplus of information going around the health and fitness space when it comes to what works best and what everybody should be aiming for if their goal is health and fitness. Unfortunately this space has become saturated with a surplus of misinformation and it is getting harder and harder to decipher which advice is helpful or hindering when you aren’t well versed on said topics! In this article I will focus on some

One of the more annoying pains out there is knee pain. While this can be common in active people and athletes - it is often equally as prominent in more sedentary populations. While there are a multitude of reasons why someone might experience knee pain at some point in their life. The principles for best management will often be the same! In this article I hope to offer my thoughts on how to most proactively approach that pain in your knee! Load it. I’ve said it before and I

It’s easy to become overwhelmed when it comes to improving your nutrition whether that be for health, performance or both! I see this commonly with clients trying to turn their normal diets upside down in order to put together what they believe to be the perfect diet for their goals! If this sounds like you and you feel you just can’t find something that works - then this article is for you! Starting off - I like to encourage clients to develop a baseline. What foods do they

Back pain is multifactorial, meaning it’s influenced by more than just physical structures. This is why both its causes - and its management can be often misunderstood in light of current evidence. To better understand your “back pain” - it can sometimes be helpful to first understand “pain”first and foremost. A lot of the time, people associate pain with structural changes, tissue damage, or pathology — and in some cases, this can be relevant. However, a growing body of evid

You’ll have to pardon the pun but this is a topic that I see being frequently misunderstood on a weekly basis. Sometimes a misunderstanding of this diagnosis can be more damaging than the condition itself in my opinion! In this article I hope to shed some light on the topic and offer some reassurance to those who may not know what to make of the diagnosis or maybe know someone else who may find this helpful! The reality is that Osteoarthritis as a condition is way more common

Something I see a lot in clinic and with my online clients. A common misunderstanding when it comes to pain and injury. Once this misconception is clearly understood - I find things start to drastically improve when it comes to variables like strength, function and of course..pain! I firmly believe if more and more people were educated on these mechanisms we would have a lot less people struggling to the same extent with pain and injury. As a physiotherapist, education plays

Often we find ourselves in awe of friends, colleagues and such who manage to stay in shape year round. We might put it down to luck, genetics, circumstances, discipline or a myriad of other reasons that for one reason or another - we feel are out of our control. We might see these goals as unrealistic and feel we are a million miles away from the life we want and need if we really want to start prioritising our health and fitness. The reality - there will always be someone b

As health professionals we are privileged to work with a wide variety of individuals. As a result you come to learn that people often have busy lives where they might initially struggle to fit their health and exercise behaviours in as a result. In many cases this can be time sensitive- there are times during our life where our priorities may shift with other priorities taking centre stage i.e. having children, maybe an ill family member or an exceptionally busy period in wor

In this week's article I hope to provide some basic principles we can follow if we want to prioritise our performance in the gym and try to maximise our return on investment when it comes to the hours spent training! To many, these may seem basic - but ask yourself. Are you truly maximising your efforts in each area? In my experience there is often always something we can improve upon in each of these areas if performance and true potential is your goal! Have a plan. While ge

As a physiotherapist and online coach - I am reminded on a daily basis thatArthritis is something that the majority of people are going to experience at some stage of their life - some people confirming the diagnosis through an x-ray because of ongoing pain - the other individual finding out as a result of imaging for a separate investigation with little to no symptoms of arthritis. As physiotherapists - this is one of the more common things we see people worrying about - in

Sometimes we tell ourselves that health and fitness is out of reach. We look at the top 5% of fitness influencers who are what we define as the pinnacle of health and fitness and we immediately have an overwhelming task looming up in front of us. The good news as this is not how we need to look at things. Improving your health and fitness is a lot closer than you think - and every effort no matter how small is going to help! In this article I will highlight 3 tasks we can do

This week I was kindly asked to come on air to discuss gym etiquette on my local radio station WLR. The topic was centred around issues that are becoming more prominent in gyms as more and more people get into the gym and start to work on their health and fitness. I started working in gyms almost 5 years ago and have been training for over 10 years so I felt qualified to speak on such issues that appear to be more and more common in gyms over the last few years. These issues

As we age, it is quite normal to experience some age related changes happening at our muscles and joints. These changes can often occur at different timescales for different people with some experiencing them earlier and later than others. In my experience as a physiotherapist - there are many things people overlook when it comes to slowing down and in many cases reversing the negative side effects of the conditions I hope to elaborate on next! Over time, our body can be pron

As we age, it is quite normal to experience some age related changes happening at our knee joint. These changes can often occur at different timescales for different people with some experiencing them earlier and later than others. In my experience as a physiotherapist - the conditions that are most commonly associated with age include osteoarthritis and in some cases tendinopathies. While many can experience these age related changes within their knee joints - these changes

Oftentimes the advice alongside pain and injury is rest. While in many cases this can be a safe and appropriate first response - it should not be misinterpreted as the treatment or management strategy. In the majority of cases there will be a more proactive approach to managing an injury or flare up of chronic conditions. So what can be considered a safe and effective management strategy when it comes to managing pain and injury? While the answer will often depend on the comp

This is something people often spend a little too long thinking about in my opinion. In a world where we strive for optimism and close the gap between perfection and reality. The secret formula to the perfect workout is something many individuals will waste their whole life chasing. The perfect program can mean lots of different things to different people! It will naturally be defined around your goals and core values. Understanding your overall objective here should be most

Something I often observe with clients, and in many instances - my own predicaments from time to time! Something we tend to do when we feel things aren’t going to plan early on in the week. We find ourselves moving down a more self destructive path for the rest of the week. Feeling that all is somehow lost - we abandon our plan and just tell ourselves we will start fresh next week, or worse again next month! This can happen so easily and can be hard to manage when you fail to

Health and fitness can seem like a far off destination for a lot of people. It can seem like a far off desire that you simply don’t have the resources to reach. This might seem like an odd take to many reading this - but I get it. In our lives today health and fitness is evolving and becoming a bigger and more dominant part of people’s lives. Marathons seem to be on every month and there seems to be a hyrox event taking place every other second day! Meanwhile our social media