How to get in great shape when you’re a parent

How to get in great shape when you’re a parent

This post is inspired by my new son Arthur Rhys Griffiths,👶🏻 he is 3 months old and my second child (first is my beautiful daughter Ruby you can see hanging off my arm). If you’re a parent you’ll know the challenges that come from trying to get in or stay in great shape when YOU are not the priority, you can even feel guilty when you do something for yourself. This is a big problem long term, what kind of role model are we to our children when we can’t look after ourselves.

I use the oxygen mask analogy with this scenario, if you’re on a plane and it starts having some major problems (touch wood this never happens to you), the oxygen masks will deploy. When this happens you’re advised to sort out your own oxygen mask before your children’s, this is because you can’t help others unless you help yourself!

Personally, I’ve been struggling with this the last 3 months, the reason I struggle is that the majority of my time is spent working from home as the majority of my business is online. I regularly get tagged in to look after Arthur which prevents me from working, I’m cool with this, of course, however, when you’re self-employed you’re always working and can feel guilty when you’re not. This result is my own time being sacrificed (gym time), I’ve been making it work to an extent, but sometimes only hitting the gym twice a week, this for me has just not been enough. Then when I have squeezed in the time I’ve not eaten correctly (or enough), due to time. I’m sure a lot of you can relate to this.

So what can we do? Do we sacrifice our time with the children? Do we train less?

My best piece of advice is putting a plan together, a simple plan that you stick with. 📝

Here are the problems I have and the new solutions.

Problem one - Taking time away from family to train.
The solution, to train when they are sleeping, that’s right! Starting tomorrow I’m going to get up at 5 am to go to the gym, everyone is likely still sleeping, my family and my clients. This prevents me from being stuck working or being busy with family.

Problem two - Having time to eat clean.
The solution, prepping food! I’m now going to get back on the prep wagon, I’ve stopped prepping food as I had time in the day to cook etc, this is no longer the case with my business growing fast and my family commitments.

Problem three - Missing out on family time due to work and gym commitments, I’ve structured and planned out my days and done this with my other half (better half), we have put a plan in place so that we both have regular gym time, eating clean time and taking care of the newborn time. Today, for example, I’m taking both children out and my other half is going to have some time to chill out, breath and hit the gym.

Inevitably this comes down to having help, support and a structured plan in place!

Now it’s your turn, have a think about the problems you have and possible solutions you might have to these problems.

Think who can help you (look after children for an hour).

Then put a realistic plan together and that you can stick with, the times can change, but the core of the plan wants to stay consistent.💥

My number one best piece of advice

My number one best piece of advice

A guy in the gym asked me a really good question today“Andy if you could give once piece of training advice, what would it be?”

Now, tons of things came to my head, train hard, stay consistent, eat plenty of protein, don’t use Herbalife, lift heavy things, train your legs, don’t buy stupid fitness products like those weird abs stimulator things just because someone like Cristiano Ronaldo says he uses it……….All of these would have been good bits of advice……… but I didn’t say any of those, after about 3-5 seconds of thinking I said: “Track your training and nutrition”.

After I said it I was wondering if it was actually the best answer……. what is the best answer???

The more I think about it the more I think it was a good answer….. great answer in fact.

When you track you can see progress, before you see progress...let me explain. A lot of people get disheartened when they don’t look a certain way after a couple of months of training. This is because they are measuring their progress/success by body composition alone, they forget how much stronger, faster and how much their diet has improved. This is because they haven’t tracked their nutrition or their training, they don’t know how much fitter they are.

You see, training is a lot more enjoyable when you’re can see progress, if you focus a lot on getting stronger and getting faster, trust we when I say you’ll have a decent change in body composition. 

Do athletes train to look like athletes? No, they train to be athletes and their inspirational body composition is just a by-product of their hard work and consistency.

Most of us are naturally quite competitive, and although it might not be a good idea to try and compete or compare ourselves with other people, I truly believe we should always be competing with ourselves and constantly trying to better ourselves both psychologically and physiologically.

Momentum

Momentum

Newton's first law of motion - sometimes referred to as the law of inertia.

Newton's first law of motion is often stated as:

An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Why are we talking about physics?...... Momentum!

Must watch!......

Christmas is coming!

Christmas is coming! 🎅

Yes, I’ll be the first to say it!

This is the best time to get super shredded!

Wait! What? Summer is the time to get shredded….. Isn’t it?

Okay, yes, maybe, personally I love being in great shape and feeling awesome during the festive season as it when friends and family come to visit and I know that I’m going to relax a bit in December. That means we now have two months (until the start of December) to get in that great of a shape that we can afford to gain a couple of pounds over Christmas and new year.

Here is a very effective plan you can follow to get Shredded for Christmas:

Step 1️⃣- Set yourself a goal! It can be a goal weight, dress size, body fat %, total cm’s, whatever it is, just make sure you can track it.

Step 2️⃣ - Break that goal down into weeks or months and make sure you’re on track each month/week.

Step 3️⃣ - Book the gym time and food prep into your calendar (with reminders), these times can change, but never cancelled.

Step 4️⃣ - Buy yourself a nice dress/suit and shirt that you wish to wear and fit in for Christmas and new year, and make sure you fit into it on Chrismas day (no gift recite as you will hit that goal!).

Step 5️⃣- Tell your friends and family about your new goals, tell the postman, your butcher, the receptionist at the gym, the guy in costa who always puts a cool leaf in your coffee, even post it on Facebook, this will get it out in the open and it will allow more people to help and support you towards this goals.

“I wish I was naturally fit!”

“I wish I was naturally fit!”

“I wish I had good genetics!”

Now, as much as people can have very gifted genetics, if they are in great shape they have obviously had to work for it too!

Many people will look at someone who is in great shape and undermine all the hard work they had to put into their physique, by saying it’s all due to their genetics.

Trust me they had to work for what they have, and work hard!

If you want to achieve great results then you need to put in the work!

If you find it hard to gain muscle and you say it’s your genetics, maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re not working hard enough. Can you tell me if you have lifted more this week than last week, have you even tracked this? I’m sure you’re in a calorie surplus in order to build sufficient muscle tissue, yes? Are you even tracking this? 

Alternately, you might want to focus on reducing body fat and toning up, I’m sure you know how many calories you’re consuming each day? Ohh you don’t know? Maybe you’re eating too much, or just eating too much on the weekends.

These might sound very patronising, it’s because they are, now I wouldn’t say this directly to someone, because it is patronising and I’m not a d#*k. However, let me say it indirectly to everyone as it does give people something to think about and if you’re currently struggling that much that you have convinced yourself that it’s due to your genetics then maybe you need to have a realisation, the realisation that if you put in a little bit more work or train a bit smarter then this could be enough to stimulate amazing changes.

#TRAINSMART

Muscle building and fat loss goals?.....Here is the truth!

Muscle building and fat loss goals?.....Here is the truth!

Muscle building and fat loss goals?

Sick of the conflicting information on social media?

You need to watch this video!