Month in my life

This month’s article is a little different, I’m not going to start talking about the difference between running on the road versus treadmills or how doing leg workout will help you develop a better body. No! There are no tips or training programme this month. This article is about my life as a personal trainer or should I say what I had been doing over the last month.

Last month I was in Sweden, one for my favourite places in the world! I had to travel over for two reasons; one was for a special anniversary, the second to work on a blog with a friend Daniel, a Personal Trainer who lives in Sweden. We started the blog around 2 months ago with Daniel translating everything into Swedish but we wanted to add videos about training, how to exercise and training programs. This was in response to a few requests received the previous month and we felt it was time to honour them. We started the blog to help people reach their fitness and health goals. It’s hard to know what to do sometimes when you read fitness magazine, watch TV and also when you talk and ask people for advice. Not everything is black and white; there are lots of grey areas when it comes to fitness. It’s even hard for personal trainers to know what’s the right thing to follow or do! So that is why we started the blog to help people and guide them through to what ever goals they have. http://2train4fitness.blogspot.com/

Before we started filming we made a choice, to move the site to a different blogging address and change it from Swedish to English as we both wanted to appeal to a wider audience. So I had to do all the talking on the videos which was not as easy as I thought it would be! http://www.youtube.com/user/train4fitnessblog

We spent about four to five hours every day filming and talking for four hours was really drying out my throat! Although I guess I had it easy, as Daniel was doing all the exercise and by the end of day four his body was in bits! LOL. After my 5 days in Sweden filming for the blog, my voice and body was tired plus yes I partied a little too!

On my return from Sweden, I visited London, where I got to see friends from my old job at LA Fitness. I love going to my old gym because it make me understand why I fell in love with Personal training and working out! Before I joined this gym I used to workout all the time but after training with PT (friends), I saw the light and how hard I have to push to reach my goal in my training programs. One of the biggest influences is a personal trainer called Peter Banister. He showed me everything to do with fitness, well the good stuff that you do get on training course or read about in book! It’s the little things that make a big difference in your training programme. (He has some great articles on skiing which you should check out). Plus it’s great just to pick their brains about different ideas to do with training.

The main reason for going to London was to meet my flight to Hong Kong, I went for two weeks. I was contracted to do some work for HSBC. Hong Kong is a great place, if you have never been I would defiantly recommend you go. I travel a lot with work and Hong Kong is one of the best places I have ever been to. Anyway the best part about Hong Kong was the weekend we had free, to go rock climbing. Now I do a lot of bouldering but seeing that we could not take a boulder mat with us on the plane we had to use ropes. A boulder mat for anyone who does not know, is the thin crash mat that you place on the ground to help break your fall if you come off the rock! One of my friends knew some places to climb in Hong Kong. Man we had some hiking to do and I was like a little girl screaming every five minutes! We saw some huge insects and spiders, one the size of my hand and also scarier than the spider, was a thing call a spider wasp, which I saw kill a spider and drag it off into a hole in the cliff face! The hiking was hard; we had to walk along this little thin wall, then up what you may call a very muddy path and over some very wet boulders. I think it took us around 30-45 minute to get to the cliff face we needed, the "central crags of the Peak in HK" we set up to start climbing! The two friends I was with are great climbers so they both went first, they started to sport climb, the first problem climb was called ‘Mini Me’. Sport climbing is when you clip into an anchor point as you climb up the rock face. It was set as an easy climb, but my friends had a little trouble climbing it, so I was not looking forward to this climb. I have done a little sport climbing before but just at the indoor climbing centre’s, and I was not looking forward to trying it here. So we set up a top rope, which is when the rope is anchored in at the top point of the climb making the climb easier and safer too! I still got to the hard section of the climb and could not do it, fell off, slipped up side down and nearly slammed into a tree next to the rock! We laughed so hard I couldn’t grab hold of the rock to spin myself around! I tried again but could not get over the sticking point so I climbed down. We climbed some more problems ‘Yea baby’ and ‘Fat Bastard’. ‘Fat bastard’ was the first sport climb that I completed outside! It’s a great feeling to climb 24-26 meters up knowing you could fall a good 4 meters down before an anchor point takes your weight. If you go to Hong Kong and you climb, you have to climb ‘Fat bastard’, my god!!! I remember as I was climbing having to chalk up because my hands were wet from sweating. One because my heart was pounding and two the heat! You could get sun burned just by doing a climb it was that hot! I remember as I chalked up looking backwards and seeing Hong Kong city behind me. I was as high as some of the skyscrapers and had a great view of the city. I remember swearing and my two friends shouted up to me thinking I was in trouble. The climb I was doing, you disappeared from view half way up, so the person belaying can’t see the person they are controlling. A belayer is the person who is on the ground with the rope spotting you and is your anchor point! He/she is the person who controls your ascent and descent, preventing you falling and hitting the floor! Anyway I had to shout down I was ok, but I seen the view and what a view it was! I remember getting to the top anchoring in and just sat enjoying the view. Think it is a memory that will stay with me for life! After that we hiked a little more and Jimmy and Tommy climbed ‘The Riddler’ and ‘Batman and Robin’. I tried the ‘Riddler’ but I couldn’t get more then 2 meters off the floor so I gave up and I shot photos of them climbing!

It was a great trip and the weekend of climbing just topped it off! If you are in Hong Kong and climb you have to go to central crags. There are not many places in this world where you can climb a cliff and see a view like that. For you guys who have not climbed before I hope this has made you think about maybe trying rock climbing! It’s a great thing to do and keeps you so fit!



More article check http://2train4fitness.blogspot.com/