Personal Trainer Durham| Glenn Hill | talking about stress | 07983570574

Coach Glenn talking about how to deal with stress, life is full of stress and we need as much help as we can. right?

PT Durham | Glenn Hill | Plantar fasciitis
Hey guys a big  congrats to all of you who ran, jogged or walked earlier this month, in the worlds largest Half Marathon – The Great North Run (Million edition) many clients and friends took part this year.  Myself and my partner where both supposed to but injuries stopped us both from attending.

This blog is all about one of the most common issues that faces runners and athletes.

Your training is going great and then you notice a pain developing in the sole of the foot (typically the front part of the heel, aka the calcaneus). It mostly hurts in the morning when you first get out of bed, and then may ease up after a while, but then you feel like you can’t walk for too long without feeling a lot of pain.  This kind of pain should'nt be ignored. There are structures in your feet that play a huge role in getting you from point A to point B, so you must look after your precious feet if you don’t want to further agravate the injury.

What is Plantar Fascia?Plantar fascia is the thick band of tissue that covers the bones on the bottom of the foot. It connects the heel bone to the toes, and creates the arch of your foot. When the plantar fascia is overstretched or overused, it becomes inflamed and causes heel and foot pain – at this point, it is known as Plantar Fasciitis (anytime you see the suffix -itis, it means “inflammation”).  

Signs & Symptoms of Plantar Fasciitis 

• Pain near the heel
• Pain with walking, or intense activity
• Pain that is relieved with rest
• Mild foot swelling or redness
• Tenderness, stiffness, and/or tightness in the arch of your foot

What Can Cause it

• Flat feet
• High arches
• Excessive pronation (feet roll inward too much)
• Shoes that don’t properly support your foot (old worn trainers)
• Improper running technique
• Walk, stand, or run for long periods of time – especially on hard surfaces
• Overweight/obesity
• Tight Achilles tendons or calf muscles
• Overuse, especially in athletes

Re-hab with Foot RollingUse your body weight and step on a tennis ball or golf ball /similar under your foot and roll it slowly and with moderate pressure, forward and back from the ball of your foot, to the arch, down to the heel of your foot.

The footwear you choose plays a huge role in how your feet will respond to your activities of daily life. Men’s business dress shoes are typically rigid and flat with little to no arch support. Women’s high heels shove the toes in such a small narrow space and keep the ankle in constant plantar flexion, putting strain on the fascia. Flip flops or sandals force the toes to repetitively curl and also cause muscle strain to the many intricate muscles in the bottom of the foot.

Plantar Fasciitis TreatmentThe #1 recommended treatment is rest. Plantar fasciitis can take 6 to 18 months to heal completely, and the more you push it, the longer it will take to heal.  Additional treatment includes:

• Ice
• Anti-inflammatory pain reliever
• Stretching – especially for the hip, calf, and toes. Best done when you first get up in the morning, and 2-3 times throughout the day.
• Proper fitting shoes for your foot-type. Many good running stores have equipment to fully analyze your foot and help determine what will provide you with the best support. I highly recommend my friends at   Additionally, there are specialty “foot” stores and podiatrists who can assist you.  Issues with your legs always get new trainers if yours are old, top tip.
• Night splints that allow a passive dorsiflexion stretching of the calf and plantar fascia during sleep.
• Acupuncture helps relieve the pain, decrease inflammation, and increase blood circulation to the feet.
• Corticosteroid injections help some people, but there is a potential risk of rupture of the plantar fascia, and fat pad atrophy (so, I do not advise using this option).

Avoidance of Plantar Fasciitis

• Stretch,  Every morning, and before and after you workout, stretch your calves with a wall or slant board stretch. Also, you can do a towel stretch pulling your toes toward you.
• Use a foot roller. Again – Roll a ball or can under your foot for some dynamic stretching (Hint, if you get a ball with some nodules on it you can get a nice foot massage while you’re stretching your foot!)
• Wear properly fitting shoes. I can’t stress this enough. Cheap shoes, and those that don’t provide proper support can do a LOT of damage.  Runners should buy running shoes from a running shop.
• Massage the fascia attachment site near the heel. A cross-friction massage will help reduce soft tissue restrictions.
• Pace yourself properly with training progression . Make sure you don’t do too much too soon – especially as it relates to weight-bearing activities such as running. Increase your distance, time, and speed slowly to give your foot time to strengthen and adapt.
• Mix up your training – can be great training too-try cross fit or similar, but it puts pressure on different areas of the foot so no one area is overworked.
• Maintain/develop a healthy weight. Excess weight puts a lot of additional stress on your feet, and so many injuries, pain and problems stem from our feet.

If you run a lot or are planning to this is a biggie, look after yourself.  Prep properly and have the correct footwear and equipment to limit lower limb issues.  9 out of 10 times with novices it's the WRONG footwear.

Glenn (15 years competative running) Hill

Personal Trainer Durham | Glenn Hill | 07983570574

182 front street Chester Le Street

Durham Personal Trainer | Glenn Hill | 07983570574

I have discussions about this very subject on a daily basis, one of my gym members (no names) recently was telling me i was wrong and that we need an Abs class because these classes and sit ups give you a flat tummy or six pack.  If i had a pound for each time i have heard this i would'nt be living in Chester le Street in a 3 bedroom rented house.

Nearly everyone  wants to get rid of the fat in a specific area of his or her
body. When clients tell me they want weight loss, in their minds they are really referring to that specific layer on the hips, thighs, belly or arms. This common feeling shared by people of all shapes and sizes has birthed an almost universal belief that fat can be removed from a problem area by exercising that specific area, for example abdominal work for a six pack....Nooo.  Celebs still claim their flat stomachs come from hundreds of crunches, then they bring out an exercise video - the truth in that scenario is more often than not is they have paid for a Personal Trainer and have been getting beasted and nutritionally guided for months.

Unfortunately, the promise that you can lose fat on a specific “problem area”
by exercising that area is a myth. Also known as “spot training” or “spot reducing”, this myth continues to thrive despite the massive research, which disproves its claim. When we exercise certain areas of our body, such as doing crunches, we will strengthen our abs, but it will not remove fat from our belly. 
Muscle and fat are made from different material and thus one cannot be turned into the other. Fat is stored on our bodies in a certain order that is determined by gender, genetics and blood flow. When you gain weight, it usually goes to your “problem area”, and when you lose weight, your “problem area” is usually the last area to lose the fat. Consequently, “spot reducing” just leads to newly developed muscles hidden under a layer of fat that just
won’t go away.  However more muscles are always good as more muscle means more calories used at rest (metabolism).

The truth of the matter is the  only way to lose fat in a specific area is to lose weight in general. In order to lose weight in general we must increase our exercise and in particular our lean muscle percentage which in return will reduce our fat percentage (start seeing our abdominlas).  Exercise routines should incorporate the movement of large muscle groups for efficient calorie burning. As you develop and strengthen muscles, you also become leaner and increase your metabolism.  Thankfully, as the weight slowly comes off, you’ll notice the fat on your “problem areas” start to disappear as well.

So sit ups and abdominals for a flat tummy? absolutely not, you would be better off doing weighted squats for a flat tummy.( when done properly all of your leg muscles, abdominals and lower back are working together)

Set up a free consultation to learn more how to physically and mentally develop yourself.


Glenn ( bored of talking about sit ups ) Hill

Personal Trainer | Durham | Glenn Hill

A little bit about this blog, i am discussing the fact that some modern magic works better for stretching tight muscles than traditional stretching, Massage stretching or PNF.

My credentials to talk about this subject are:

18 years Army Fitness and being a physical training instructor
Sports Massage Therapist level 3
Master Personal Trainer
BodyMap Practitioner
(BodyMap is all about looking at functions like breathing, eyes, balance, spatial awareness and proprioception in order to take our brain out of threat/fear which improves all of our functions including flexibility and power -it's upstream thinking (in your brain) it works)

Let me tell you the story that suprised me too:

I have been training one of my PT clients who has tennis elbow and tendonitis of the shoulder, we have been doing a bit of running and lots of functional leg and core work.  Our recent sessions have been very hard so i decided to take her through a BodyMap assessment and maybe some massage etc as a form of a full Body/Brain MOT.

I tested her spinal, hip and shoulder  flexibilty and pain levels before going through the body map protocols.  Within ten minutes she was 6 inches closer to touching her toes, spinal and shoulder mobility had improved hugely especially on 1 side.  Pretty amazing really as we are not actually stretching anything just moving eyes, breathing and some other magic (it's a secret-ask Dax) .

The interesting thing here is i wanted her to get the extra inch to touch her toes so i reverted back to downstream thinking of pulling, bending, stretching etc.  Lower limb/posterior chain massage,  massage stretching )pin and stretch, PNF stretching of hamstring and fascia release techniques.

You would think that this has got the extra inch wouldn't you?  WRONG

The process of painful sports massage and PNF looks to have put the client back into a state of threat/fear and limited her toe touch - posterior chain flexibilty hugely.  She is now 5 inches from touching her toes?

So traditional methods of improving flexibility have actually reduced it after the initial BodyMap (your brain just giving you flexibility because it feels safe)

I have learnt a lot today about how your primary giver of mobilty and function (brain) hugley supersedes our attempts of stretching for flexibility and function.

Cool i would like to here your thoughts, questions on a Postcard...

Glenn ( Durham PT geek) Hill

Shortlisted on the National Fitness Awards 2014

5 tips on stress reduction

Heya my awesome tribe

Personal Trainer Durham

I am going to talk about stress and give you 5 top tips to reduce stress, before we do that i will explain why stress is so bad for our health and weight.

Not sure you know this but stress is one of the biggest killers and even CHDs and strokes can be caused by stress.  We are starting to believe that stress is the foundation of most fatalities, think about it.

Obesity which can cause diabetes, heart disease and strokes can be caused directly and in directly by stress.  How can stress keep us fat or make us obese? 

Directly - hormones

Release of the stress hormone cortisol which can stop the fat burning process and hold onto the fat, great for survival of a caveman over the winter months but life threatening for stressed out modern people.  Also when you are stressed you will be most likely be in the sympathetic nervous system which is the flight or fight nervous system when blood is shunted to the limbs ready to run away or fight to survive.  This blood should be in your gut to aid with digestion and fat burning.
Indirectly - eating

So indirectly is more common and more noticeable than the hormonal effects of stress on us, so you are stressed and you go for junk food to make yourself feel better or even worse you starve yourself as you are not hungry.  Both have a very negative effect on your metabolism and keeping fat off in the future.

The medical definition of stress is, “the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body or your ego.” It could be a tiger chasing you or your belief that your spouse is mad at you (even if he or she is not). Whether it is real or imagined, when you perceive something as stressful, it creates the same response in the body.

Years ago stress would be a productive thing for the caveman because it would shunt blood to help a caveman catch his food or escape from a threat or during the winter months it would retain fat to help him survive the winter.  Unfortunately 100,000 generations as a hunter gatherer and 10 generations of modern agriculture our brains haven't developed enough to distinguish actual and perceived threat.

You feel stressed or threatened and a sudden influx of adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress hormones floods your system, raising your heart rate, increasing your blood pressure, making your blood more likely to clot, damaging your brain’s memory centre, increasing fat storage, and generally wreaking havoc on your body.

My tips are as follows and work for myself and my clients: 

1. Move. A great way to reduce stress is enjoyable exercise, a bike ride, horse ride, yoga or a nice run in the woods.  Remember though your brain still sees exercise as stress, it is a stress on your body and mind so if the exercise is too tough or competitive it could have the opposite effect.  For myself a nice mountain bike ride through the woods on a hot day de-stresses excellently.
2. Breathe. Most of us hold our breath often or breathe high in the chest, anxious breaths. Deep, slow, full breaths have a profound affect on resetting the stress response.  Your brain can feel in threat or stress and often some big slow breaths breathing through the diaphragm is the first and quickest way of bringing you back into the correct relaxed nervous system and de stressing and helping you relax or sleep.
3. Sunshine. This is the life giving rays of the sun, the vitamin D from the sun has been proven to make you feel happy and has been know to treat depression.  I have been using the sun actively for improving my clients self esteem and morale for a long time now, normally a bit of exercise or cycling in the sun.  15 minutes of sun a day is recommended for good health, get some real sun on your skin each time.
4. Sleep. Lack of sleep increases stress hormones. Get your eight hours no matter what.  Take a nap if you missed your sleep. Prioritise sleep.
5. Think Differently. Practice the art of noticing stress, noticing how your thinking makes you stressed. Practice taking deep breaths and letting go of worry. Don't let bad people let you get down, ignore what other people think.  Always think positively i actually try and take a positive with everything i do, every time i mess up i think of the benefits.

So to summarise stress is a real big deal and could mean the difference between fat or fit or dead or alive.  I believe that i am the only Personal Trainer in County Durham who thinks of stress as the number one component when working with my clients.  If you would like some more info on what i do please check out the rest of my blogs on here or on my website www.itrainhard.co.uk.

I am running a get fit and lose fat quick for your holidays program with almost unlimited personal training and nutrition support for one month for just £500.  I only have 5 places and one has just gone so if you like how i operate please get in touch ASAP to get my help and support.

Glenn(the stress go to guy North East) Hill

07983570574    01913874222

teaching the NHS about health in South Tyneside Hospital

Personal trainer chester le street

So not sent a blog in a while, this one is about me and my grumpy assistant teaching the health professionals about health.

I have been giving out some freebies again, this time trying to help a great bunch who are a brilliant resource, the NHS.

Nursing staff and other hospital staff are renownded for being over worked and under paid, so i thought it was my duty to help them out.  I thought a free plan with some clever knowledge, some short exercise blasts and a great weight loss nutrition plan all of which can be done at home or in the work place.

My aim was to help people change a unhealthy habit for healthy ones and if they lose some weight in the process then that is great.

So the staff of South Tyneside Hospital have received my chose to lose campaign, done over three different times to ensure i can help as much staff as possible. 

• Talk about metabolism, after burn and golden hour
• Indroducing the plan and ourselves
• Demo fitness session
• Free nutrition plan
• Free home exercise plan
• Free weight loss recipe book
• Free motivation for weight loss ebook
• Free metabolism ebook
• Free alcohol ebook

They weigh and measure themselves at the start of the challenge and at the end.  Ta Da they lose weight, feel great and learn some stuff in the package.

Habits hopefully changed for good.


Glenn (helping the north east get fit)Hill














Check out my page or phone 01913874222

This is about the rotten apple at the bottom of the barrel

Personal trainer chester le street

So i am a firm believer of being genuine, honest, helpful and caring to my members and PT clients and they would all vouch for me on this statement.  I also dont like to hate as it has a negative effect on me and not them and therefore they have achieved their aim.

Recently some one used a social media review site to spout a load of malicious, hateful lies about me as a person and my gym.

Ofcourse no names here as it wouldn't be fair as she couldn't defend herself.  The hurtful thing here is that personally i have helped her in the past with financial asistance and other business related things again i cant say too much as you would know who i am talking about.
I explained my case on FB again not mentioning names etc for the best word to describe someone who would do this and the answers that came back were interesting... lots i couldn't put on here but here is some:

• Bitter
• Pathetic
• Bumder
• Jealous
• Small minded
• Ignorant
• Sad lives
• Hateful

Must mention here that the people who left comments are my friends and clients etc who know me and have my interests at heart, however i agree one hundred percent.

You work VERY hard to be the best you can be for your family, colleagues,clients and members and then some insert your word___________ tries to ruin your reputation by slandering you on social media.

The beauty of this is though i have seen the response from the people that noticed it and it has made the person responsible look very sad and un-professional and done the opposite for me. 

Glenn (the go to guy) Hill

Please come to our open day to see all of our new services and stuff and win some goodies on the 23rd July 2014.

Dont be so rude..

Does your other half have a big nose? the reason i ask is..  you see having high standards is like having a big nose and i should know i have both.

1. Every one can see that you have a big nose or standards.
2. Some people don't like the look of a big nose or high standards   generally because they have nil standards and are probably scrounging layabouts that always chose the easy path.
3. A big hooter gets in the way some times, kissing etc. However high standards can be a pain too because doin things properly and to the best of your ability takes much longer than doing it half hearted.

The point i am making here is that high standards are something some people just have and i/we are making Ladies at Leisure / Personal Training /Beauty Spa and New Salon all about high standards.  This doesnt mean expensive it just means professionalism, diligence, customer care and a strong work ethic.

If you see it not happening in any of the facilities or staff just let the management team know and we will endeavour to improve things. 

Our new Hair salon is opening on the 5th of July and is called "Hair Kandi", we have a brilliant head stylist and are proud to offer a discount of 50% off the full works for our members for first cut etc and for everyone for the entire first week.   
BOOK UP NOW FOR 5th,7th,8th,9th,10th,11th July.


"Hair Kandi"
Ladies & Gents hairdressers
182 Front Street
(within ladies at leisure gym)
Chester le Street
0
I know we generally stick to what we know, however you should try our stylist she is great and has lots of experience and a great style. 

Open day 5th July we are offering great extra offers and styles including nibbles.

BOOK UP NOW FOR THE FIRST WEEK BEFORE ALL OUR PLACES GO....01913874222

www.itrainhard.co.uk

The problem as i see it is that lots of the Weightwatchers members are just like my Personal Training Clients.  They are a little low in self esteem and confidence and would find joining a normal class a bit daunting and that's the idea behind WWW.

Come along and do an exercise class that is solely designed for Weightwatchers members and only frequented by these members too.  Not only can you train with your friends, you can get fit together and build a greater rapor and  team.

Th class would comprise of big compound exercises that burn a lot of fat, however all of the exercises would have an easy and hard variation to ensure maximum benefit to members.

If you would like to see WWW in your area please email:  i.trainhard@yahoo.co.uk or telephone/text :   07983570574

Personal Trainer Glenn Hill (the go to guy)