Friday with Heidi: Decisions, decisions

When I was a newly qualified fitness instructor I realised at some point I’d better get a job that used these new skills so I could start to get a return on my investment of training.

I took an interview for a Health and Wellness company that put fitness programmes and gyms into corporates for their well-being programmes.

I knew I wasn’t really cutting this interview as there was some awkwardness and I was trying too hard and towards the end of the interview, one of them asked me what I thought my biggest strength was.

I remember so clearly sitting there and thinking about it. I remember really thinking about the answer so as to give them the best side of me. I looked inward, I looked back through my other jobs and that as a mother and wife and, after some time of deep, internal reflection, said, “I’m decisive”.

Nothing could have appeared to have been further from the truth! I must have spent a good minute or so in silence reflecting on this before coming up with the most inappropriate answer given the build up!

I still shudder at the thought of that cringe-worthy moment!

This week my quick decisive skills have been bought to play again.

The weather warnings, bitterly low temperatures and snowy conditions has made me reevaluate my normal mantra of ‘we’re open all year around’.

I’ve had to cancel sessions due to astro-turf surfaces being frozen. Cancel sessions due to the surface we work out on being too dangerous for a workout to be effective and also, cancel all of our sessions for today last night, because the prospect of today’s weather necessitated a quick decision.

I really don’t like to cancel sessions. It’s not part of my plan. However safety of my instructors, clients and vehicles is way more important than whether you can meet your step goal on FitBit for the day.

To help those who are keen to keep moving I’ve been recording audio camps and written workouts for those who want to stay active so they can do them at home.

I think many others will just enjoy their adult version of a ‘snow day’.

So this week I thought I’d give you 5 ways to stay active when it’s snowing.

Advert intervals. If you’re watching a television programme or film with adverts. Each time there’s a break use the length of the adverts to do some exercise.

Try running on the spot, squats, jump jacks, press ups and planks. With 4-5 adverts per break you’ll get about 4-5 rounds of exercise every half hour.

Stair Running. Running up and down stairs for 10, 20, 30 minutes is a quick and easy way to get the temperature and heart rate up.

Tabata Intervals. Choose an exercise, just one. Say it’s press ups. Do 20 seconds of press ups and then take 10 seconds rest, repeat that for 8 rounds in total. It’s a 4 minute workout, but certainly better than nothing at all.

Toothbrush Squats. When you clean your teeth, practice squats. If you have an electric toothbrush it’s normally a 2 minute cycle. You can get between 40-50 squats done in that time. If you have a manual brush, clean your teeth for about 40 squats.

Get outside. Walking in the snow (with good soled boots) is quite tough on the legs. Wrap up warm, walk rather than drive and enjoy the snowy-scape view of your neighbourhood as you rarely see it, whilst getting some air in your lungs.

Just don’t take too long deciding! We may not have it for much longer.

Have a great week.

Kind regards

P.S. Incidentally, I got that job! But it was an awful fit for me and I hated it, so for the only time ever in my career I left with nothing else to go to. I made that decision fairly quickly!