5 Simple Tricks To Instantly & Dramatically Increase Your Deadlift

I don't hold with a lot of  Gym-lore thinking.  By that I mean you will not find me spewing out the usual nonsense that you find in fitness magazines.

I fervently believe that strength, fitness and fat-loss come from adding muscle to your body and that you do this by lifting weights via compound movements and by gradually increasing the weight you lift.

"Okay, okay" you say..."so what has this got to do with increasing my Dead-lift?"

Well, it goes like this.  I offer a solution to getting fit and strong in the shortest amount of time and get a hoard of excuses as to why these exercises can't be performed.

For exercises like Dead-lift and Bent-over row...the limiting factor or objection is grip.  Picking up heavy bars puts a huge strain on your grip and your grip will probably give out before everything else.

So here is what to do to instantly improve your grip.

• Do NOT use lifting hooks or straps...they will only make your grip weaker over time.

• Do use a technique called "White Knuckling".  When you grab hold of the bar, squeeze the bar as hard as you can as you lift.  This activates and recruits a whole host of muscles, sinews, ligaments and fibres within your body.  Allowing you to pick up much heavier weights, or making heavy weights seem a lot easier to lift.

• On the last repetition of each set, hold the bar for a count of 10 before lowering it.  So if you are doing 5 reps per set, hold the bar for a count of 10 on the 5th repetition of each set.  This will help build your grip strength.

• Use chalk to improve your grip.  We didn't realise how effective chalk is to lifting until we tried it.  Absolutely amazing how much it improves grip.  It is also very cheap, peanuts cheap.  There is a down-side to using chalk...the dust cloud and mess.  But you can get around that with Troll chalk balls or Eco Balls or even liquid grip.  All are highly recommended and won't get you thrown out of the Gym for making a mess and they are all still very cheap.

• When the weight gets very heavy, switch to using a split grip...commonly known as an over-hand and under-hand grip - one hand over the bar (palm of hand facing towards your body) and one hand under the bar (palm of hand facing out away from your body).  The same sort of grip you would use to hold a Baseball Bat.

There you have it...5 simple tricks to instantly and dramatically increase your dead lift.  Incidentally, with the exception of the split-grip, these techniques can be used to increase/improve your bent over row, dip, pull-up/chin-up and bench press.

So quit your stalling, quit your mewling and give it a go.  I guarantee you'll be stunned at the results.

Delicious BanBerry Fat Free Dairy Free Ice Cream

One thing I do adore, especially in the hot weather is a delicious ice cream.  Since I stopped consuming dairy this became some what of a thing I quietly, now and again, yearned for.  How brilliant that completely by accident I made some!  So without further ado, here is what you do do

Serves 4 - 6 (or just 1 very hungry teenager as happened in my house!)

 Ingredient

• 10 Ripe (spotty skinned) banana's
• 200 g Dates (if dried soak overnight in 300 ml of water) (Optional, they add sweetness but can be left out)
• 2 cups frozen Mixed Berries 
• 200 ml spring water 

Method

Chop each banana into 4- 5 chunks, place in a freezer box/bag and leave over night to freeze.

If you are using dried dates pop them into a tub with 300 ml of water to soak overnight as well . . KEEP WATER DO NOT DISCARD THE NEXT DAY!!

After all the freezing and soaking has gone on get your blender and pop in the dates and top up water they were soaked in to 200 ml whizz it up.

If you are not using dates then just pour in 200 ml of spring water.  Next throw in the bananas and blend together.  If you are using a high speed blender such as a vitamix you will only need to blend for seconds otherwise you will overheat the mix.  On the other end of the scale if you are using a less powerful blender you may need to keep stopping and stirring to ensure all the fruit is processed.

Tah Dah ready.  That is it done, yes it really is as easy as that!

Serve with sliced strawberry or sprinkle with chopped nuts, or just leave it the way it is!  

How To Survive Divorce

How to survive divorce with your sanity intact and your happiness beast mode on, is the subject de jour (ooh hark at me and my french ways).

Well I have been there and done that so thought it only polite to share the "how to" bit.

THE BLAME GAME

The issue that first hits the stumps is the

"Who's fault is it"

No matter what you would love to say on this one, whether it be a cheating husband/wife, one half saying the other "just doesn't understand" the answer is very, very simple and the sooner you get this the quicker your happiness and life status quo will return.

THERE IS NO BLAME, PEOPLE JUST CHANGE!

Now, to the spurned lover this will sound incredibly harsh and even somewhat unfair, but it is, and always will be, the truth.

We as humans are ever evolving creatures, I shall put myself in the petri dish here for analysis.   I am a lover of this thing we call life, I enjoy it and think it there to be enjoyed, however my idea of enjoyment and my ex-husbands were quite different.  He loved playing on gaming devices, going to the pub and basically not being very near me.  I on the other hand am a tactile person and had a rosy picture in my head of family days out at the weekend, walking together, cycling together, getting fit together . . . . it took me 18 years to realise my dream would never come true.

The main turning point was realizing the vast chunk of my life had been spent in a pretty much exercise free zone.  Yes, I walked the dog and went pootling with my daughter's on the bike but never even realised our local swimming pool had a gym, and, even if I did would have considered it a Men Only zone.  Skip on a few years to 38 and suddenly I realise I am so unfit it is ridiculous and have spent way too much of my life wishing to be a different shape.  I start looking into fitness . . very cautiously you understand, this was an alien planet as far as I was concerned.  Skip to 39 I made a promise to myself to be fit for 40, this is when my whole world suddenly got turned on its head.  I trained hard, very hard, in retrospect TOO hard I lost ALL of my excess body weight, but in doing so a new passion had arisen, another crack in the ice of an already globally warmed iceberg in the marriage, I adored training, I was hooked.  I wanted more knowledge about it and here lay another issue for this was yet another passion that was NOT shared with my husband.  He was a construction worker and considered lugging plaster boards up and down the place good enough exercise for him.  So, the petri dish develops more globs in it as my changes kick in.  I am no more the happy little round house wife that cooks meals and hopes her hubby will be back before 8pm, I am now a very happy woman realising a passion and realising that her husband is not and never has been the man she actually wanted.  I realise I just don't love him.

Who is to blame here?  Me for wanting more out of life or him for not providing it?  Answer neither of us, we were just different beings with different needs and passions.  No one was to blame, life just happens and we have to deal with that.

 The man I married was not my soul mate, no matter how hard I tried to bully him into it.  As you can see we are both at fault as we were a) not living the life we truly wanted and even worse b) trying just to "tick along" as society says married people with children should stay together for the children's sake.  I say STUFF THAT!!

WE HAVE TO STAY TOGETHER FOR THE CHILDREN 

NO YOU DON'T!!

Ahh the ego such a pampered lover.  It tells both you and your partner the best thing you can do, even though your marriage/relationship is in tatters, is to stay together for children as this is what society dictates.  Yes, of course it is the best thing.  Just like if a child is growing up on the Gaza Strip it may as well stay there in times of non bombing and violence as that is what it is used to!  Sod moving the child to Barbados where there is a chance of peace, tranquility and somewhere to relax, readjust and focus on THEIR little lives.  Let's keep them in the purgatory of being pulled from one parent to the other, constantly seeing or hearing the two people they love rip each other to pieces and having to deal with all the whispered slurs from one, or boths parent about the other.  Let them have their whole childhood focussed, not on their study, their passions or their future but on your messed up relationship with each other . . . anybody seeing a problem yet?

The best thing for you is just the same as the best thing for your child.   MOVE ON.  Yes a divorce is hard on all parties involved there is just no getting around that, it hurts, but here is the readjustment point . . EVERYONE HEALS!  Your children will get through the mess quicker if they are not being used as weapons ie "I'll take the children away from you if you [insert random demand]".  Why not put on your big grown up pants and sit with your child and find out how they feel.  It is worth noting your ego may take the biggest kicking of its life at this point.  Let them tell you who they want to live with for now.

 . . . back to me, my children wanted to stay with their father because he had the big house and a better job.  Fair enough!  I got to see my youngest daughter a few times a week.  Don't get me wrong it hurt like a red hot knife through my soul, but, after precisely 3 months my eldest daughter had moved out to live on her own and my youngest daughter was pleading to live with me, which I grabbed with both hands it has to be said.  It turns out a big house and wallet don't provide the things they truly wanted.  I now live very happily in the smallest house you can imagine with my new partner (who really IS my soul mate) and my youngest daughter.  I never asked for a penny in child maintenance, told my solicitor I did not want any of my husbands earning, I even gave my husband the house we had built, (later found out he had not been paying the mortgage so had to sell it).  The point here is, your marriage is defunct, you have to move on for the sake of your sanity and, if you have children, for the sake of their future.  If you are using your partner's income as your own then it is time for you to stand on your own two feet or at least come to a FAIR decision, but, I guess that bit should be left to the solicitor. Remember the more money you get through the divorce the chances are the richer your solicitor will be!  If you are in the UK and using Legal Aid and get some settlement in the end from a sale of house or whatever, between the solicitor and Legal Aid they will rip as much of their losses back from you as they can in my case £7,000+!  

The moral of today's little literary outpouring is;

We have to learn to move on with our lives.  Stagnating in any situation that makes you unhappy will turn to depression, which in turn will end in illness, it is how our bodies and minds symphonically work.  Surely it is better to take responsibility for your own life, to live by design not by default, to stop waiting for others to pick up your slack and to realise the best money to have in your pocket is not that gleaned from someone else by a solicitor, but that you have made by yourself.  Divorce is as hard or as easy as you want it to be, the trick is not to push so hard at each other but learn to bend without breaking.  Life is full of lessons and we just have to be aware enough to realise they are being taught.

Right, I am off now to hug my soul mate and make my daughter (who has just passed her triple science exam with 100% allowing her to take it as her GCSE triple option, which in turn allows her to further her life into becoming a vet) her dinner before I cycle into town to teach a fitness class.

Be happy, lose the ego, love life.

When Did We Start Blaming Everyone For Our Own Fuck Ups?

When did we start blaming everyone for our own fuck ups?  From education right through to what we eat, we have turned into a world that just does not take responsibility for its own actions.  We also have turned into a world that has to sue everyone, for everything.

"It's the fast food companies fault we are fat"

"It's the education system that is failing us all"

"Society has made my child an ignorant prat"

"My marriage fell to pieces because it was his/her fault"

"I tripped over a pavement, I'm going to sue the council"

"He said I was an ignorant pig, I'm going to sue him for deformation character"

"They get paid more than me, I'm going to sue"

Someone actually sued (and won!!) McDonalds as she had scalded her lap with coffee whilst driving!!!

. . . . the list goes on, and on . . and on

The point that has to be made here is, at 43 I have realised one HUGE thing.  I am responsible for everything that happens to me in my life.  When I put on weight, it is not due to the pressure placed on my by advertising, I have never been quietly sitting at my computer when a Ronald McDonald employer of the week has stormed my house, grabbed me by the hair, stuffed me in the back of a van and force fed me a Deli Special of the Week, neither has any supermarket employee forced me into the dreaded "middle" of the shop, where apparently all the bad shit happens and you get sucker punched into buying all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

Now I do understand there are some quite legitimate reasons for taking someone to court/suing them such as gross malpractice, health and safety neglect etc but it is the daft stuff that is mentioned above, people just seem to want to find things to sue people for and, you get what you wish for I am afraid folks.

A story to learn by here is, friends of my partner played the suing game, suing for accidents they had at work to the point where he would DELIBERATELY hurt himself, they actually bought and paid for their house through all the claims they made.  Now I am a firm believer in you get what you bring to you, so if you are constantly telling people how poor you are, you will remain poor, if you are constantly telling people about your fear of being attacked, you will get attacked and so on.   Then what they had been focusing on came to pass, the man who had even gone to the lengths of severing a finger to sue, ended up having a serious motorbike accident and becoming paralyzed at which point, his wife left him.  So be careful what you wish for people!

So, to sum up.  When you realise you are responsible for everything that happens in your life, you will then be able to start making a more positive step to creating your dream life.  If you want to be slender, take a look at what YOU are shoving in YOUR face.  If you are in an unhappy relationship LEAVE IT and please don't do the "but how will I survive without the house, the money, the car (insert appropriate high end item)", the truth for you people is, easily.  I left my husband with £70 to my name and I survived very happily, yes you have to go through some pretty gritty times, but as long as you keep your ego in check, let the past stay in the past and look to making you a brand new happy future, you will, without doubt succeed.

Becoming responsible for yourself is the most empowering thing you can possibly do.

Now, off and empower yourself 

Life Is Too Short For Khaki

One day you are 18 full of life, know everything you need to know about the world, how people work and what you want to do with it all . . then 22 years later you wake up confused, not knowing what the hell is going on or how any of it works, and that is where the fun starts.

I have had a colourful life so far involving living abroad, living in London, travelling the world on my own, then back to the UK to have babies, get married, build my own home, get divorced, get fat, get fit, get fat again and am still in the process of getting fit but this time doing it rather better than before (even have a teeny bootcamp I teach) then on to find out all about life and how I really tick.  

So why this literary vomit? You may be asking.  Well, for one thing I have learned a couple of things, tricks et al that should be shared as there may be one person, probably living alone, with a dog called Herbert that needs to read this shit.  That person needs to know that brown is a crap colour to have on your walls, matching khaki trousers and top are not sexy and look so dated whether you are male or female and should only be employed as a garment of choice if you are in the military and need to hide behind other faded green things.  Life is just too short to be spent wandering around blending into ponds and privet hedges. Oh and a note to goths (yup been there done that), black doesn't stand out either and for your information you are not alternative, it has been going on now for WAYYY too long for that.  If you want to be alternative do IT  but is "alternative clothing" really to be found in a catalogue?  NO you should be brandishing your own uniqueness on the world!  Go forth and get brandishing.

So as this is my opening gambit to this my latest attack on the internet I shall off and leave you with this thought.

No one sees a grey cloud and thinks "that is amazing, that is gorgeous, look at that"  however everyone who sees a rainbow does!