Tag: Energy

  • Guest – Lisa Brown on our Choices: “One Choice that we do have is how we respond to the situation we find ourselves in…”

    Guest – Lisa Brown on our Choices: “One Choice that we do have is how we respond to the situation we find ourselves in…”

    Introducing Guest Blogger, Lisa Brown – Health & Fitness Guru

    Exercising Regularly supports your immune system and releases those feel-good endorphins promoting your mental and emotional wellbeing.  Having admired Lisa and her work for years we are so pleased we are able to share her wisdom with you here.

    Lisa Brown – Director of Innervate Health & Fitness, Owner of Coogee Gym, elite personal trainer. English by birth, Lisa studied Physical Education at the prestigious Exeter University. An innate wanderlust and teaching degree led her to Hong Kong, a seven year stint in an International School in the Middle East and eventually to her beloved Sydney, Australia. Here after a couple of years as Head of Primary PE and Sports at MLC School she followed her lifelong passion for exercise and jumped headfirst into the business of fitness. The first year she travelled around the parks and beaches of Sydney as a mobile outdoor PT. But soon she formed her company Innervate. At it’s peak the business employed 20 personal trainers servicing on average 200 sessions per week. Lisa is an educator, mentor and coach but her real jam is face-to-face PT. Her work is varied and ranges from turning a 75-year-old woman onto the physical and mental advantages of strength training to literally helping a client walk and thrive again after a horrific motorbike accident. The joy of helping people move without pain in strong and healthy bodies is the stuff that gets Lisa up at 4.55am every morning, that and a double shot cappuccino and Leroy Brown her black Labrador.

     

    Layla one of my online personal training clients shared the following last week in our WhatsApp community group chat:

    “I read today ‘it is inevitable that isolation will change your body …it is your choice whether that is for the better or the worse’ – we are choosing option A” Layla Lockie 

    It struck me how powerful this was.  It can feel like many of our choices have been taken away.  Our governments are dictating what we are allowed to do, who we are allowed to see, where we go or not go.  We know this is essential for our health and the health of our World but the daily choices we are allowed to make have taken a massive nosedive.  One choice that we do have is how we respond to the situation we find ourselves in.  My gym is situated in a place called Coogee Beach in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, Australia.  It is a small community space where everyone regardless of age, gender, experience, injury, level of fitness or background can get their groove on and achieve things that they never thought possible.  My jam is strength and like my bio says: I love to empower people to move better without pain in strong, kick-ass, healthy bodies.  I was observing what was happening around the World regarding COVID-19 and chatting to friends in the UK.  I knew that soon things would start to change here in Australia too and that my gym would be forced to close.  So I made a choice.  I chose to move my whole business online.  I thought I would have more time for this transition but things esculated pretty quickly and as the government made the call to close all gyms on the Sunday, I am proud to say that by the evening we were ready to rock and look after our community online the very next day.  A new way of working, communication and spreading my message of health, strength and fitness was born, overnight, just like that.  I am grateful that I had the opportunity to make this choice.  For me exercise, healthy nutrition, quality sleep, controlling my stress is now a conditioned and habitual way of living but for many in my community it is not, throw a Worldwide Pandemic in the mix and you have a perfect excuse to disregard all of the above.  Here is where you have the opportunity to choose.  My client Layla made that choice.  She refers only to the physical aspect in her WhatsApp post but her choice to invest in her health and fitness has positive effects that reach way further than her body.  She has empowered herself to take control of the situation that she finds herself in.  She has chosen to look after herself by moving her body in a nourishing way thus boosting her immune system, improving her bone and muscle health, increasing her energy levels, promoting feel-good chemicals in her brain that can help improve her mood and enhance her self esteem.  She made the choice.  I take my role as a health practitioner and the leader of my community extremely seriously and I feel that now, more than ever people like me need to step up and be beacons of light and motivate and inspire others that struggle to make choices that will help them to thrive not just survive through these challenging times.  None of us are perfect; we don’t always make the right choices at the right time.  We are living through days that our generation has never experienced or could ever have imagined experiencing.  But here we are.  The many choices that we took for granted are not at our disposal at this time but we always have choices that we are in control of.

    …’it is inevitable that isolation will change your body …it is your choice whether that is for the better or the worse’ – we are choosing option A”  Layla Lockie 

    It is your choice. What do you choose?

    Want to join our tribe? I am doing everything I can to look after as many people as possible regarding their health and fitness amongst the situation we are in.  I am so pumped to now be working with people from many different countries.  Would you like to jump in on our online workouts?

    I will provide you with five workouts a week delivered to your inbox, all with simple video explanations and descriptions.  All fitness levels are catered for.  Cost is per household and so the whole family can jump in.  WhatsApp group to keep community and each other accountable.  No equipment needed apart from an easily available thin resistance band.  I’m using tempo and paused methods for intensity instead of load.  It’s intelligent progressive overload programming.  There will be two strength and conditioning sessions (Monday and Wednesday’s sessions), Tuesday is a short interval session with core and glutes, Thursday is a recovery, yin, flow session and Friday is a ‘Big Bang’ circuit style workout.  This does not mean that you have to do these workouts on these specific days or that you have to perform all of them.  These sessions are all about you and your lifestyle and your schedule.  So make them work for you.  If you would like to know more flick me an email at lisa.brown@innervate.net.au

    If you would like to follow me on my socials please check me out on insta:
    https://www.instagram.com/lisaatinnervate/
    https://www.instagram.com/coogeegym/  

  • Inside Out

    …the big declutter!

    Are your cupboards and wardrobes reflecting how you feel inside?

    Do you feel like you have lost a little bit of direction, that things are piling up on top of you? Or do you feel that spring has already kick started your process of decluttering?

    That great feeling most of us experience when the days start getting lighter is actually a biological response. In the darker days of winter our pineal gland produces higher levels of melatonin, the hormone responsible for inducing sleepiness. As we begin to experience more daylight the production of melatonin is reduced and we literally begin to wake up! Energy levels naturally increase, our drive to exercise and make healthier choices reignite and we have a desire to shed the old and make room for the new…yes, it’s time to do the big declutter!

    Taking charge of those areas you hide from others, the ones which haven’t seen daylight for a while, the piles of paperwork, those things that might be useful “one day”, the unworn clothes, the tasks hidden at the bottom of your in tray or even your digital clutter has been proven to have a positive effect on your focus, mood, performance and well-being.

    We recognise it can sometimes be difficult to find the motivation and time to take charge of the clutter that is not only on the outside of us but also on the inside.

     

    The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.
    ― Joshua Becker

     

    Yes believe it or not this includes laziness, stubborness, excuses and the big sticks you’ve been using to hit you!

    Baby steps…

    Action will help you to make the changes needed.  Clearing your physical space gives you the sense of clarity and well-being from which you can tackle the larger obstacles in your life. You can make a change.   One of the crazy ideas and thoughts our head gives us when we see this picture of all our mess is that you cannot move it.  Well of course you can’t… not in one go! BUT guess what you can in small bites, small chunks and small steps.  If you struggle enlist a few trusted people to help you, you will be amazed the difference it can make in your life.

    Here’s a starting point:

    Make a list of everything that needs to be done

    Now divide the list into three sections – the sections are ‘Now’, ‘Soon’ and ‘Later’

    Place only five things to be done now in the ‘Now’ List, then divide the rest by importance into the ‘Soon’ and ‘Later’

    Make it a priority to complete the five tasks in the ‘Now’ List

    When you have completed ALL the five in the ‘Now’ List ONLY then can you move another five in from the ‘Soon’ List

    It’s really important to give yourself an understanding and consideration for where you are or for the things that have happened.  When you understand something it can change your life. Clutter come from trauma and negative experiences in our life, be kind to you.

    Marie Kondo in a growing favourite book of ours “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising”, highlights the importance of decluttering holding a focus on what you would like to keep rather than on what you can get rid of (this mindset has been proven scientifically to induce unhappiness). With this in mind, another good tip when deciding what to keep is to ask yourself two key questions:
    1. Does it spark joy?
    2. Does it provide a service?

    If the answer is no then donate or discard of the items in the most suitable way.