Personal Training in Liverpool Street

Video: How to Train for a Strong Lower Back

Having a strong lower back always ranks somewhere on people’s list of gym goals. It may not be as important as their holiday or marathon goals, but lower back strength always comes up eventually.

Often, a new client mentions that their back occasionally feels weak, sore or tired. While back pain can be nuanced, there are simple steps we can take that can make a difference.

What a Strong Lower Back Could Mean for You

A strong lower back doesn’t just affect your gym workouts. It can affect your work, social life, leisure activities, and so much more. If you’ve ever lacked confidence in your back strength, then you can probably remember a time it held you back.

When I started training in kickboxing and weightlifting I was often disrupted by a sore lower back. I had my share of back injuries, and learned a lot of lessons about how to move and train properly.

This post won’t dive into specific back issues, but it will discuss some of the methods that have helped me and my clients feel better about our lower back strength.

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Quick Post: 4 of the Best Deadlift Accessory Exercises

The deadlift is a fantastic strength exercise in its own right, but after a certain amount of progress, you will need to supplement it with other lifts to keep getting stronger. This is where deadlift accessory exercises become an essential part of your strength training programme.

How to Include Deadlift Accessory Exercises in Your Programme

These accessory exercises will help you rectify the weak links in your deadlifting game and strengthen important muscle groups. The downside to this is that these exercises will be hitting the same positions and muscle groups as deadlifts. This means you won’t be able to train every exercise on this list at the same time and deadlift heavy; you’ll have to choose what you want to focus on.

In the breakdown below, I’ll discuss when to use these accessory exercises to improve your deadlifting ability.

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Everything You Need to Know About Weightlifting Shoes

If you’ve been training in gyms for a while, you might have seen a few people wearing weightlifting shoes. You’ll recognise them by their funky design and the fact they have a solid, wedge-like heel.

These heeled shoes are popular amongst Olympic weightlifters, powerlifters, Crossfitters, and other strength-focussed gym-goers.

With the increased popularity of these training methods in mainstream gyms, these shoes are becoming increasingly common. So much so that you might be tempted to buy your own! In this guide I’ll break down whether you should get your own weightlifting shoes, and when to use them.

Note: I previously recommended these shoes in my list of the best gym kit for strength training. Check out the other items on the list!

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More Speed And Strength With One Gym Hack

I’ve been working with athletes for a long time now, and I’m always amazed how poorly understood cluster training is. I just can’t believe that this super-simple method for training speed and strength isn’t more commonplace amongst sports players.

Regardless of what sport you play, it’s a certainty that you need to produce force to move and perform. In the majority of cases, it will be beneficial for you to produce this force as quickly as possible. There are plenty of exercises you can do to train speed and power, and I’ll write more on them soon. In the meantime, cluster set training will keep you fresher, and improve the force and speed of your resistance training. The best part is you don’t need any special equipment or skills to perform this style of training.

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The Truth About Pullup Training That Will Supercharge Your Progress

I started this blog to cover all things related to strength and gym confidence; well, pullup training certainly delivers both! It doesn’t matter if you can actually do pullups. What matters is that you’re working on lifting your body using your upper body pulling strength.

For these reasons, improving pullup strength is one of the most common goals people enquire about when they start training with me. Pullup training will help you improve your grip strength, pulling strength, core strength and more.

There’s just one problem. As pullup goals became more popular, every trainer (myself included) raced online to demonstrate our favourite pullup accessory exercises. This left the public with a library of exercises, but no guidance for putting them in a training programme.

By Becca Matimba on Unsplash

It’s like having a pile of bricks but no blueprint for the house you want to build. Exercises on their own don’t get you results; a good training programme does! Today’s video covers the programming mistake that so many people make when trying to train for pullup strength.

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4 Tips That Will Transform Your Sports Performance

I’ve always been fascinated by the process of training people to improve their sports performance. My involvement in strength and conditioning began in 2011 and I was reading books on the subject long before that. I’ve identified some universal behaviours that you should follow if you want to improve performance in your sport of choice.

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By Sporlab on Unsplash

While there is an abundance of knowledge in professional sport, the information just doesn’t reach those who participate at amateur or recreational levels. And yet, it isn’t just pro athletes that want to improve their sports performance.

If you want to improve your game in your chosen sport, then this video is for you. In five minutes I’ll go through 4 things you can do to go further in your sport. These tips aren’t overly expensive, complicated, or time-consuming, but they will help. Some of the tips are quite practical, whereas others will encourage you to review certain aspects of your current training regimen.

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Be Your Own Personal Trainer for Better Fitness Results

It’s not always easy to find a personal trainer you match well with, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting fitness results.

Having a personal trainer is proven to improve training consistency and help you reach your fitness goals (for more on that, you should see what my past and current clients had to say about their training experience).

You may not be able to completely replace a professional personal trainer, but there are a number of PT habits you can copy to boost your own gym performance and results.

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5 Best Exercises for TRX Training – Your Questions Answered

When it comes to selecting training equipment, I absolutely love anything that is simple to set up and use. That’s why, when suspension training equipment like the TRX started becoming common in gyms, I set out to learn a variety of effective TRX exercises that could help my clients achieve results.

This list of my top 5 TRX exercises is not exhaustive, but hopefully there will be one or two exercises you haven’t tried before. I’ll also answer some of the common questions about suspension training.

By Lawrence Wilcox on Unsplash

Note: I am not affiliated with TRX or any brand of suspension training equipment, and am not incentivised to promote them.

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The Complete Gym Motivation Round-Up

When I started Ready Steady Strong in 2021, one of my first projects was a 5-part series of blogs on gym motivation. Each part in the series covered aspect of gym motivation and the mistakes I frequently see. I’m proud of the series, but in hindsight, it was a long read!

By Alexander Redl on Unsplash

Fast-forward to 2023, and it’s time to streamline this topic with some simple solutions to your gym motivation problems. We’ve all wrestled with a lack of motivation when it comes to training. However, over 13 years of training people, I’ve see what works and what doesn’t when trying to overcoming a lack of fitness motivation.

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The Best Shape of Your Life: Ways to Define Your Fitness in the New Year

As an experienced personal trainer in London, I meet plenty of new clients this time of year who tell me they want to be fitter than they’ve ever been before. But getting into the best shape of your life isn’t a great goal to set.

Whether it’s a goal for your new years resolution or any other time of year, success requires two things:

  1. A clear understanding of what you want and why;
  2. A structured plan of how to get there.

I’ve written more about point 2 here, so for this article I’d like to focus on getting specific.

gym focus
By Jon Tyson on Unsplash

No one else can tell you what your goal should be. Goals based on external pressure tend not to be very powerful motivators. That being said, you might still be struggling for inspiration. I’ve made this list of potential fitness goals that might help you narrow things down.

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