So why just settle for something practical when you can have more? Why not get make those kettle bells a really visual object that displays like a work of art when not in use. Enter the Demon Bell – a kettle bell design with a gruesome looking demon face carved into the front of the main body of the kettle bell. These Demon bells truly are a sight, and I’ve gotta say, I want one! OK, more than one!

So they look good, but on top of that the design of these kettle bells is excellent in terms of practicality. They feature anatomically designed handle grips,weight distribution that’s been specially designed for balance and specially angled backs designed to match forearm angles for kettle bell specific exercises. The face, designed to reflect a training mentality, represents a savage training ethic.

I simply can’t say enough about these things, they’re just plain cool. Check them out for yourself: www.demonbells.com.

Sabotage 1: The people around you

A possible scenario:
You sit down to have lunch with a group of people, with a healthy meal consisting of lean meats and vegetables.  As you look around everyone else is eating McDonald’s, pies or pizza.  Someone offers you some of their unhealthy food.  You reply after a pause saying “No thanks, I’d like to but I’m trying to be healthy”.  You made the difficult decision to stick, as tempted as you were you’ve battled the urge successfully, then it happens:  “It’s alright mate! Once won’t hurt! You can eat whatever you want…”

This is an extremely frustrating situation, while the person offering the food thinks he/she is being polite and trying to help you relax and enjoy yourself, they have no idea just how rude and unsupportive they’re being.  Sure, you’re trying to better yourself, achieve your goals, and here they are telling you “don’t have to” and to relax just once.  While once seems like only once to them, you realise the ‘just once’ happens many times a day, and once turns into twice, three times and so on.  As I said earlier, these people don’t realise what they’re doing, so you’ve got 2 options.  Just ignore the comment, and say no.  The problem is this can get frustrating time after time, so you may need to explain to the person, politely, what they’re doing.  If they know how serious you are about your goals and that they’re making it hard for you, chances are they’ll try to stop convincing you.  After all, these people aren’t really out to harm you, they just don’t understand.  Helping them to understand will make things a lot easier.

Sabotage 2: Your Lifestyle

A possible scenario:
You’ve got a busy day, you have to drop the kids off at school, then rush off to work.  You forget your lunch, you’ve got 20 minutes to head out and buy something, but the only food available is at the bakery or a fish and chips store.  While you’re contemplating how you plan on eating healthy, your boss tells you they need you to stay back for a few hours because of an important job.  There goes your workout.

There’s no easy way to tackle these little curve balls life throws at us, but now is the time to be strong and really stick to your guns.  If you’re forced to eat unhealthy, make it a small portion, don’t just give up and pig out.  As for the workout, you may need to attempt to either squeeze one in later or skip it all together.  For cases like this it’s good to have an easy to execute back up plan.  Keep a basic home workout routine written down so you can perform it at anytime should you miss the gym, and the same goes for your diet.  Keeping a healthy snack at work as a backup can be an alternative, or understanding the closest place to your work with healthy food options.  While these aren’t exactly bulletproof, it demonstrates a way of thinking that can save you from these scenarios. If staying healthy is nearly impossible with your current lifestyle or job, maybe you need to weigh things up and make some lifestyle changes.  What’s more important – your daily routine, or your health?

Sabotage 3: Yourself

There’s no scenario here, just a constant mindset. Motivation can make things easy in the beginning.  The novelty of eating healthy and exercising can wear off very quickly, so you must develop your mental approach. Craving unhealthy food, or simply not bothering to put the time in to exercise is what will inevitably prevent you from living a healthy and active lifestyle. Learning to toughen up and stick to your guns, being confident that this is what you want, is the way ensure success.  While the above 2 types of sabotage focus on external environmental factors, it is ultimately yourself who will be responsible for the outcome.  Learn how to work within that environment.  So if you take one thing away from this entire article it’s this: you are responsible, dedicate yourself, don’t allow others to sway you and be stronger than the temptation. At the end of the day the only factor in life you have remotely any control over is yourself, so exercise your self control and aim high, because no one else will accomplish your goals for you.

Understanding your environment is the key, points 1 and 2 are what you must learn to understand and work within, and working on yourself is the way to do it.  While the above methods may not be exactly right for you, think about these factors and workout the best way for yourself to overcome these obstacles.  If you can do this successfully, you will be healthy, active and fit.  It’s only a matter of time!

This is why we must try to mix things up. Keeping things fresh will prevent your body from adapting to any particular routine and have it constantly being shocked from different angles and keeping that progress constant. The thought of constantly thinking of new routines and workouts however can be a bit daunting as a lot of us really like certain exercises. Exercises like Bench Press, Squats and Deadlifts (The Big Three – compound movements) should always be regularly integrated into your routines.  So how can you constantly keep things mixed up and fresh?  With a few simple concepts:

Change the order of your workout

This is a simple but highly effective way to keep things fresh.  For example, say you perform a workout including Bench Press, Dumbbell Flyes and Incline Dumbbell Press. Most of the time you’d just do a few sets of Bench Press, then a few of Flyes and so on. Why not do one set of each?  Perform 1 set of Bench, 1 Set of Flyes and a final set of Dumbbell incline then repeat for how many sets you wish to perform.  These can be done with rest between each set or you can treat it like a superset (without rest).  Another good way of further mixing things up is to reverse the order of your exercises.  Perform a few sets of each consecutively in reverse, or even follow the 1 set  method in reverse.  By mixing and changing these things around you’ve got a few different possibilities for one area of work, and you haven’t even altered which exercises you’re doing!  Another great way to mix things up is change the weekly order of your workout, once again you can reverse the order of your workout, eg start with chest on Monday and legs on Friday instead of legs on Monday and Chest on Friday.  Or even group some muscle groups to together or have a week of full body workouts.  These simple methods can create many different ways to structure your training.

Change the exercises you’re performing

Alternate exercises are a good way to work a muscle in a way it’s not used to being worked.  Simple things like switching from a barbell to dumbbells can have a drastic effect on your workout.  Switching from barbell curls to dumbbell curls or bench press to dumbbell press are good examples.  All it takes is a little thought.  Another approach is to try leaving the machines and cables behind and using free weights or vice versa.  Even just changing the nature of each exercise can make a huge difference.  Try slowing the speed of each rep, drop the weight & up the reps, or even increase the weight and lower the reps.  These methods of changing an exercise or even just the nature of the movement is a surefire way to keep things fresh.

Add an extra element of intensity

Try utilising supersets for a week, then switch from that into starting each workout with a burnout set.  You can alter from week to week or workout to workout.  It’s all about removing the monotonous routine and trying something you’re not so familiar with.  There are many ways to add to the intensity of the workout (see our post on adding intensity to your workouts here for some more ideas). It can be just a minor change that will have your heart pumping that bit harder , and in turn keep you away from that plateau.

Here’s something I’d like you to try, if you think you’ve been caught in a rut: apply the above principles to your routine and count how many different workouts you can come up with.  The final number may surprise you!  Let me know how you go!

Episode 13 features UFC Fighter Jon Jones and UFC Fighter BJ Penn, with Shannon Lee.

Episode 14 features Shannon Lee and Round 5 President, Damon Lau. Watch and Enjoy!