Author: Dave

North Wales explorer

15 minute workouts for knackered dads

On By DaveIn FitnessLeave a comment

Equipment:
Chin up bar
Strength bands
Caffeine tablets

Tabata intervals, done once every other day, are a great time-efficient way of gaining many of the benefits of cardiovascular exercise, in a much shorter space of time – 4 minutes.

Choose any exercise, for example squats with bodyweight.
Find a Tabata Timer on Youtube or download an app.
Do 20 seconds of squats, rest 10 seconds, then repeat 8 times.
This gives 4 minutes of high intensity exercise.
I like to do these with MMA specific exercises like sit-throughs.

If you can spare another 10-15 minutes, here are a couple of workouts you can do at home for muscle-mass or just muscle-maintainence.

Remember that ‘return on investment’ in terms of exercise and ‘gains’ in strength and muscle mass is not proportional.  In fact, there are a lot of fitness professionals who argue that 1 set of exercise to failure, is all that is required per body part.  See Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates’ training philosophies (not 1-set training, but certainly an in-and-out of the gym mentality)

 

 

 

Most importantly, do something, and form the habit of exercising whenever possible. Even if it’s just doing squats whilst the kettle is boiling!

Home Birth ‘Review’

On By DaveIn Home, ParentingLeave a comment

For your first child, I seriously would not bother.

We hired our birthing pool for 5 weeks for £90 which isn’t bad to be fair. Although it is basically a paddling pool (in fact my mate’s wife gave birth in a paddling pool rather than a ‘birthing’ one)

 

Everything was going great, until it came to the final stages – the bit where you have to do all that pushing…

Nothing was happening, so the midwives phoned an ambulance, which took well over an hour to arrive.

All the neighbours came out (even though most of them have never spoken to us) to see what was going on, and my wife was taken out on a chair in the middle of the road, which couldn’t have been the best experience ever.

She was exhausted, and in lots of pain by the time we got to hospital. What the home-birth groups and Daisy Foundation didn’t, apparently mention was the fact that once you are at a certain stage in labour, you can’t have any extra pain relief. Considering that 45% of home-births, for the first child, end up in hospital, it’s an important thing to consider.

So without any pain-relief (wasn’t allowed gas and air even, perhaps because of her shallow breathing) my wife was ‘cut’, and the baby was taken out with forceps.  She was in so much pain, it’s borderline traumatised me, so I’ve no idea how bad she must feel.

Anyway, all is well, that ends well. We did have to go back into hospital because baby lost a bit too much weight, and Jo had to feed her every 3 hours, but all okay now.  Thank God.

How To Meditate

On By DaveIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The quality of this video is terrible but the content is there:

 

Meditation is great for enhancing focus, reducing stress and controlling negative thoughts.

You can learn to meditate, by being guided through 10 minute sessions, for 10 days with the free app from HeadSpace, which you can find here.

Breathing meditation can be done without the app.  Just sit up straight, and set a timer for 10-30 minutes.

Breathe in for 10 breaths, focusing on the feeling of the breath coming into and out of the nose, lungs and mouth.
Then breathe in for 10 breaths focusing on the sound of the breath. Then for 10 breaths visualise the air coming into and out of the body.

Repeat this until your time is up on your timer.
If your mind drifts (which it will!) just bring the focus back to the breath.

You can also try using a mantra, a short phrase you can repeat over and over with each breath.

‘Mindfulness’ can be applied to everyday tasks such as washing the dishes.  Focus on the dishes, not what you want to do in 5 minutes time.  Focus on the feelings of touch, the noises etc as you do the dishes, it should make it more enjoyable!  Should!

Don’t Get Stuck on the Negatives

On By DaveIn Random, UncategorizedLeave a comment

 

Why do we spend so much time thinking about the negatives?
Dwelling on the tiny injustices and trivial occurrences which damage our egos…

Here is a great video about the importance to think about the positives, and how to do it –

 

One of the best tips, that we can probably all relate to us when you’ve come home from work. Tell your loved one(s) specifically about what was good about your day.  Don’t go into the negative things.
This will prove very difficult at first!

This is one way that you can train yourself to focus on the upside of your day. Other techniques include writing down what you’re grateful for each day.

Positive affirmations are also simple, yet effective.  For example, next time you go into the gym, think or state out loud – “this is going to be an amazing workout”

I think being positive is a very important aspect of parenting.  Children copy their parents, so try remember this next time you start moaning about things that don’t really matter.

 

I’m 34 – Should I write a Will?

On By DaveIn Parenting, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Will_myths

 

It’s not something that I’ve considered before, but no that I have offspring (well one on the way in 1.5 months) it’s something I should put in place.

This webpage does a convincing job of persuading me to get the proverbial ball rolling, and contact a solicitor to get this sorted.  Especially as I have a mortgage, and well, 2 dogs as well!

You can use the webpage by clicking on the 3 bits of pink text, and separately, choosing a reason that you haven’t bothered writing a well from the pink drop down menu that appears.

I chose “it’s too expensive”, “I’m too young” (haha) and “it’s too time consuming”.  Apparently, it’s not too expensive (normally costs about £150 from my research), I could die anytime and it only takes 1 or 2 appointments to get the will sorted out.

So get going, and contact a solicitor or will writer. After all, you don’t want your kids worrying about finances, when they’ve just lost a love one. Poor Ted wouldn’t know where to start…

TedSnow

Puppy Update – Mr Chow has gone mental

On By DaveIn HomeLeave a comment

So last week we picked up “Mr Chow” from a house/farm-house in Welshpool.
Mr Chow was initially, as quiet as a proverbial mouse, even resorting to hiding from us all behind the shoe rack.

Well a week later, the little bugger is hyper, and keeps, literally jumping on Ted – our 5-year-old springer spaniel.

I’m not sure if Mr Chow is playing, or if he’s already started trying to place himself in the Alpha Male position, but either way, Ted isn’t happy.

Obviously he can’t be jumping on and nipping at Ted all the time. He also insists on lying in Ted’s basket whenever possible, instead of his own.

Ted just growls at him, and every so often we have to give Mr Chow a time out for 5 minutes in his cage until he’s calmed down a bit.

Any ideas of how to chill Mr Chow are more than welcome.

Here’s a video of him being as tame as possible:

 

I think next time we think about getting another dog, we will consider the option of adopting one instead!

Although, I was interested to read recently, that dog ownership has a number of reported benefits including:
– Increased levels of happiness! Thanks to the interaction and love received from a dog

– A more active social life. People are much more likely to interact with dog owners for some reasons. If you have a dog and a baby in a sling, people don’t leave you alone!

– Increased immunity – because they’re always covered in stinky dirt and fleas and stuff

– More exercise – people with dogs tend to get out and exercise more

 

If you still don’t fancy getting up at 5.30am to walk the dog before work every day, the Aspinall Foundation for example, offer a range of beautiful animals to adopt. Every adoption package includes a personalised e-certificate, a species factsheet, a regular newsletter and animal updates.

Ambam the Gorilla
Ambam the Gorilla

I’ve always wanted my own gorilla!

Although Mr Chow is arguably a more practical pet.

National No Moaning Day

On By DaveIn RandomLeave a comment

I think this would be an amazing way to get sponsorship and make money for charity.

There are similar things about on the internet, like the 21 day no moaning challange –

http://www.laurellerond.com/2014/05/willing-take-21-day-moaning-challenge/

You should be able to nominate a spouse, a colleague, a gym partner or yourself and get sponsorship for charity.

This should definitely be a thing. Either that, or a 30 days of gratitude challenge. Gratitude is a life changer, try it for a week and see the difference that it makes.  I think it would be a cool idea to take pictures of everything that you are grateful for, and make a collage out of it; that is then placed in a prominent place at home or in work.

8 Tremendously Important Ways That Gratitude Can Change Your Life

Also, listening to this lego song helps too!

Meditation for Children?

On By DaveIn ParentingLeave a comment

Listening to Deepak Chopra, and other successful and apparently well-balanced people like Noah Elkrief, it would appear that they all meditated, as kids.

It makes sense, especially when these days, kids seldom have to sit and be silent and endure boredom (or just silence) for hours like we used to. Now they have tablets, iPads they can play on instead of having to watch Antiques Roadshow at Nan’s house, and even drop down TV’s in the people-carriers so that long journey are no longer tedious.

How are they expected to sit and watch a teacher chalk stuff up on the blackboard for 6 hours a day, when they’re normally used to high-level stimulation that comes from all the colours and flashing lights and intensity of computer games?

Maybe meditation is a good remedy, I’m not sure, but certainly worth looking into…

Yoga for kids
http://ayogastoryforkids.com/