I sometimes think all the fitness advice ultimately just consists of things that your mother told you. Stand up straight (good posture), get to bed early (importance of sleep), eat your greens (a varied natural diet), don’t snack between meals (some sort of time restricted feeding), stop worrying so much (mental health), wear sensible shoes (posture, foot health), brush your teeth (because mouth biome has all sorts of effects), get some sunshine (Vitamin D and circadian rhythms ) and enjoy fresh air (breath and move).

Always strive to add another rep, or a pound to the bar or another second to the length of the set!!! I wrote this originally in 2013 but it still holds true. You will have heard similar things. The gurus shout at us and encourage us to try harder to…

There is a background to what I am going to be writing. I am planning a series of how my daily runs and walks change me. The focus was going to be on what I get from the run or walk, but as I reflected I understood that this perspective…

Using resistance training to get you “fitter” for hiking and backpacking. That was and remains the focus of my little book Hillfit. I am always trying to simplify though and strip away the unnecessary, of which there is a lot in the world of resistance training where the positions are…

More, Less or Enough? — How about re calibrating our attitude towards diet and exercise to one which is focused on the idea of enough? So often in both diet and exercise we find ourselves at an extreme. More and more of this and less and less of that. What would happen if we shifted…

I want that blogger’s secret knowledge — Increasingly I am finding that so much of the fitness & fitness blogosphere is a strange place which I am seeing more as a form of gnosticism. Let me explain: Gnosticism I suppose is something of a theological term. From Wikipedia Gnosticism comes from the Greek: gnosis which means knowledge…

You never liked my writing The poems just left you cold. The alchemy it failed me I couldn’t give you gold. I offer you this dirt instead I’ve carried it too long It’s deep inside my soul you see And spoiling every song. My heart is soiled and grubby A burden all can view I need a deeper cleansing Fool’s gold can’t pull me through.

In the last two weeks I’ve been on holiday or travelling as I might prefer to call it. We passed through northern Spain — the mountains of Asturias, the hidden canyons of Burgos and the (fiercely independent) beautiful coast of the Basque country. There is much to write of what…

There is a strange macho language that is attached to mountains. They are conquered. We tick off the ascent in our log books, highlight the peak on our maps. …