Author: Admin12Rounds

‘I used to joke with my mates about paying £10,000 for one of those transformation programmes to lose that extra 10kg I was carrying’  

Eliot joined our boxing fundamentals programme back in November with a goal of picking up his fitness and losing a bit of weight.  After being a keen Rugby and sports enthusiastic he’d got into the London lifestyle of boozing after work and put on a bit of weight.

After completely fundamentals he jumped straight onto our fight skool programme.  He loved getting involved in sparring and seeing the progression in technique week by week.  Plus he’d made some new friends on fundamentals and they all decided to do fight skool together to encourage and motivate each other.  After 10 weeks of intense training it was time for fight night.

Stepping on the scales on the last weigh in Eliot had lost 13kg.  Thats over 2 stone. 

He didn’t need to spend thousands of pounds on personal training, nutrition or any gimmicks or fads.  He just committed to our intense training programme.  

Fight Skool is not centred around weight loss but due to the training regime and the commitment to being in your best physical condition on the night, we’ve found that everyone loses an average of 5-10kg on the programme.   Consistent training is what gets results.  If you are going to get in the ring and have a fight – you make sure you turn up for training.  Plus we have a 3 strikes and you’re out policy, to keep you accountable to getting those sessions in.  Oh and a killer 2 hour sparring session on Sat – that keeps you out the pub on a Friday night.

There’s no magic pill its just plain old hard work and commitment.  The rewards go far beyond a summer body.  The sense of achievement, the team bonding with a new group of friends, the knowing you can see something tough through to the end all have a lasting effect on self esteem.

If you want to get involved in our next fight skool programme and get in the best shape of your life this summer, we have6 spaces left in our summer programme.   The fight takes place on 6th July at Stamford bridge – a bonus for any Chelsea fans

Our final intake session is onThurs 25th April at 7pm.  Just complete the form hereto book a space

This year I had the most amazing break over the festive holidays. After a week of time with family, long countryside walks, and way too much cheese, I came back from Scotland fully rested and recharged.

It didn’t used to be like this for me. In fact this time of year used to cause me a lot of anxiety.

Having a fitness business I’d get completely stressed out with all the New Year, New You fads.  I’d panic about being prepared for the Jan rush, launching new programmes and having everything all ready to go. After all Januarys the time you’ve got to get everything in order right?  I told myself I had to get everything completely organised over the holidays. So much so that I often missed out on quality time with the people I love as I was too busy working

It took me a while to realise that this approach didn’t actually get me anywhere. It turns out that living a more balanced life and taking the time to recharge has actually made me more grounded and productive.  AND it’s a complete myth that you need to have all your shit together by January.  All that does is send you into overwhelm and result in failure.

The moral of the story is that a balanced approach works so much better that jumping into things full throttle like a headless chicken.

You might be feeling the same with all the New Years resolutions stuff that’s out there.  Everywhere you look we’re being told now’s the time to make changes.   We get so fixated about making all these changes that we forget about why we want to change things in the first place. Because we want to feel better. Yet so often we jump into diets and training programmes that we hate and cause us stress and unhappiness.

At 12 Rounds Boxing we like to get our members into consistent training programmes that they love so much they want to keep them up all year round.   We believe that fitness and getting into shape should be fun and not a chore!   We also focus a lot on mindset as well as training.  The reason being, we all know what we need to do, drink less and eat less and move more. But the problem is in getting ourself to do it right?  And especially getting ourself to see it through past January.

if you like the sound or our ethos and approach and want to get involved in a form of fitness that keeps you training past January, join us for our open day on Sat 26th.  Taster classes running all day alongside nutrition and mindset seminar.  Come and meet the team and learn how to stay motivated to go the distance.  We believe fitness is for life not just January!

Stay tuned for details and how to sign up :)

Here’s to feeling your best in 2019 

Nutrition can be such a minefield. There’s so much conflicting info and it changes all the time.  And there can be so many rules! Cut your carbs, don’t eat after a certain time, eat breakfast as soon as you wake……..

How do you know what to follow?  My advice is instead of getting caught up with rules around what you should/shouldn’t eat, get in touch with you and your body and work out what’s right for you.  Trying to follow someone else rules can cause a lot of stress.  Stress is exactly what we want to avoid as it takes us into the wrong part of the nervous system to nourish the body and get it working optimally.

Instead of following a set programme, I encourage my clients to get to know themselves and what works for them.  Start by becoming aware of how certain foods make you feel.

Are you sluggish lacking energy? Do you feel hungry or bloated? how well do you recover after training?

Getting to grips with what your body specifically needs is a bit of a science experiment.  eg. Some of us do better on less carbs, some of us feel awful!

After a lot of trial and error over the years I finally know what works and doesn’t work for me. What works for me doesn’t necessarily fit into the rules of what the experts say you ‘should’ do. Here are some of the ‘rules’ I regularly break:

• I don’t eat my first meal till around 11/12pm. This is usually eggs on gluten free toast with some spinach on side which is a balanced meal of protein, fat and carbs.
• I eat carbs with my evening meal, usually some rice or potato along with veg.
• I eat quite late in the evening.  My last meal is often around 9.30pm – not ideal but I work evenings and that’s what time I get home.
• I have the odd treat when I feel like it, usually some dark choc, a coke or the odd beer or vodka on the weekends.
  This means I don’t binge. When I used to restrict myself and be perfect during the week, it would lead to binges on weekend.

It all goes back to balance – I’ve always stuck by the 80/20 principle. If you eat well 80% of the time, the body can handle a bit of sugar or cake the rest of the time.

Trying to force yourself to follow rules that don’t suit your lifestyle is a much more stressful way to live.

So my advice is let go of the rules and get to know your own body. Work out what’s right for you instead of trying to fit in with someone else’s model.

ps here’s a pic of my puppy Larry and his balanced meal. He just needs to work on actually chewing his food no
😂

Recently I was invited to take part in a 30 days challenge by my mentor Dax Moy.   It was all about getting back to your message and start to put it out there to connect with the right people. This came along at the perfect time to help me regain some direction and focus. I’d kind of got a bit complacent and had been coasting along for a while.

It turned out to be a lot of work on re-setting habits. What I learned from this experience was this is the exact same mental journey that most people go through when they start a fitness regime.

Dax compared this to starting a new relationship and how there are 3 main phases:

Phase 1 – You are raring to go, enthusiastic and motivated. You make extra time for the new thing because it’s new, fun and exciting. You’ve decided you’re going to get fit so you put everything into it.  (Does this sound familiar?)

Phase 2 – Despondency. The novelty has worn off and disappointment sets in. Life starts to get in the way and you stop putting in the same effort. You make excuses to yourself, start to miss sessions (or prioritise dates!) the small habit changes you were making become less frequent.  This is where most people drop off.

Phase 3 – Acceptance. The thing becomes a habit or permanence in your life.

In my recent journey I certainly went through all these stages. I started off so enthusiastic, loving the accountability.  One of the things we had to do was daily check in videos in morning and evening,  This really works for me because I hate letting other people down.

Then I started to get busy. I fell behind in the tasks, I didn’t want to do the check videos anymore. I could hear myself saying why do I have to do this? I don’t have time for this.   Instead of feeling excited about the tasks I was now irritated.

I considered dropping out and spoke to my coach about it. We spoke about how dropping out would bring me no benefit whatsoever so I kept going. I decided I would do as much as I could in the allocated 45 mins per day.

Over the 30 days I learned a lot about this process of starting a ‘new relationship’ and committing to it. Because I didn’t quit and kept going I was able to change my habits.  In that 30 days I achieved more than I have in the last 6 months.  I managed to fit in 45 mins of work in every day, even when I was busy, even when I didn’t feel like it.

Whether it’s establishing a fitness routine, developing a new relationship or creating any new habit, the problem most people have is they quit before they reach that acceptance phase. They quit somewhere in the middle when it becomes difficult, when the motivation is gone.

When you give up at this stage nothing really changes for you. You haven’t done ‘the thing’ long enough to re-set a habit. You go back to your old patterns – the ones you’ve been doing forever that are very hard wired. Like having a glass of wine after work instead of going to the gym…..

And you don’t feel good about yourself as you didn’t keep your promise to yourself :(

Imagine you made yourself the same promise I did?  That every day for the next 30 days you gave yourself 45 mins to focus on you.  To prioritise working on your body and mind.

What do you think would change by the end of the 30 days?

Have you ever missed out on doing something because you didn’t want to go alone?

I have.  When I was younger this fear stopped me doing so many things, even getting into boxing earlier in life – simply because I had no one one to go with

That annoying voice in my head would tell me unhelpful stories like ‘everyone else will prob know each other’ and ‘I’ll be the only one who doesn’t know what I’m doing’.

Doing things on my own has always scared me. Being an introvert, walking into a room where everyone else is chatting to each other fills me with dread. What if no one talks to me and I’m stand in the corner on my own like a lemon?

That’s why I make that extra effort for people to feel safe and comfortable when they come to 12 Rounds. Fun and connection are 2 of our values and helping people feel safe is my speciality.

I love making sure I organise people in pairs when they come to my classes. Not only does it avoid anyone feeling like a spare part, it encourages people to get to know each other and have a bit of a laugh while their working out on the pads.

When I was learning boxing, one of my biggest fears was not having a partner (one gym I went to if you didn’t have a partner everyone would just start working and you would be left standing there and have to approach two friends and ask if you could join them – it was horrible!)

Fears can control you and leave you missing out on all kinds of opportunities.  But only if you let them.  Like in boxing, sometimes you have to to just step forward into the shot with your guard up.  Sounds counter intuitive but it takes the power right out of the shot.

Same with fears. The min you face them they lose their power over you.

If fear of going it alone holds you back, here are 3 tips to help you step out of your comfort zone

1. Take action 
Whatever it is that you want to accomplish. Book yourself in for an initial session. Preferably something that’s paid for. That means you’ve made a commitment and an investment in yourself – AND there’s a cost to not attending so you’re less likely to duck out of it

2. Be organised
Leave in plenty of time to find the venue, get a coffee on the way and arrive in a relaxed state
If I’m unsure of something I know I have tendency to procrastinate and miss trains – then I can lie to myself and say it wasn’t my fault and have an excuse for why I didn’t go. Don’t let yourself off that easily!

3.  Engage                                                                                                                                                                                  Don’t go in half heartedly.  Challenge yourself to engage in the process. Ask questions. Get a seat at the front of the room. Introduce yourself to people. Remember everyone else is in the same boat and likely feeling the same nerves.

Stepping into a boxing ring and competing takes a lot of courage. It also takes courage to overcome that first hurdle and step into the gym in the first place.  Don’t live to regret what you didn’t do, step into the fear and who knows where it could lead?

It’s no secret that one of my pet hates is over training. It’s something that’s close to my heart because it’s something that used to affect me a great deal.

I was that person

I was that person that did high intensity exercise 5-6 days a week. My weekly training routine consisted of 2-3 intense boxing sessions, crossfit, heavy lifting and sprints

I desperately wanted to drop body fat so I thought the only way to do this was to keep pushing my body

I didn’t get results this way

All it led to was frustration and tears. Why was it that I was working so hard but still not losing weight?

What did come out of it was I went on to explore the whole mindset side of things and the understand the nervous system

Now it’s very clear to me why over training doesn’t work and how it’s actually quite dangerous

If you are confused too here’s the science bit:

• Exercise is not what makes you loses weight
• Exercise is a stimulus that the body then adapts and responds to – during the recovery phase
• Meaning recovery is just as important as the exercise it’self

The nervous system: Recovery happens in our parasympathetic nervous system. If we keep training for hours on end we keep our body sympathetic. It then becomes very very difficult to access the parasympathetic system. Without allowing ourselves to become parasympathetic our bodies can’t mobilise fat, build muscle and do all the things we need them to do to keep ourselves strong and healthy

The other thing is when we train for over an hour at a time, partially cardio, we start to break down muscle tissue. WE WANT TO RETAIN AS MUCH MUSCLE TISSUE AS POSSIBLE AS THIS KEEPS OUR METABOLISM HIGH

I get it that training can be addictive. All this stress hormones running through our veins feels good, it gives us energy and a dopamine high

But like any addiction the high are short lived and you have to keep doing more and more to get the same effects

Continuing like this means you literally fry your nervous system and could end up with chronic fatigue at a later date

So less really is more

My advice:  – keep your training sessions to one hour
(unless you are training for a competition or specific goal, and then you should take professional advice about supplements and rest in between sessions)
– Ensure you have a mix between cardio, resistance training and stretching throughout the week
– Make sure you are fuelling your body correctly for the amount of training you do

As Jim Rohn once said ‘Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live’

What kind of person rocks up and signs themselves up to a fight with no prior experience?

Ian Geddes was just walking through Clapham Junction and discovered 12 Rounds.  Before he knew it he’d signed up for Boxing Fundamentals – as a stop gap before completing our fight skool programme

So what was his motivation?

Ian needed a new training goal.  He’d always been into fitness and had been going to the gym 5 x a week but with no real goal or challenge involved.  He wanted to do something different and he’d done a little bit of martial arts so when we came across 12 Rounds he thought yeah ‘why not boxing?’

And what an experience it’s been.  When we talk about the challenges of the training Ian goes straight to self belief. He talks about knowing he could do it from a fitness perspective but he had to over-coming the self doubt and his inner voice that told him ‘you can’t do this’

And he bloody well did do it!  and put on an amazing performance with a tough opponent.   Being fighter is all about being able to take yourself to the trenches and pull find that energy from nowhere.  It’s about pushing through when your body wants to give up.  Ian truly showed his fighters heart in this bought, earning himself the title of ‘most determined fighter’ in our fight skool awards.

Over coming that mental battle is possibly the hardest part of the journey.  That’s why we teach our fighters about mindset and how to prepare mentally for the journey as part of our programme.  We look at developing an awareness of what that inner dialogue is saying to you and how it leads you to take action – or not.  And how to reframe any negatives thoughts and languages and develop the skills of self belief

Something we’ve learned from our previous participants is that this is not just something that will make you physically stronger and fitter and get you that 6 pack.  You will complete this programme as a stronger and more confident person.  You will walk taller, you will handle difficult situations better.  You will go after more of your goals knowing YOU CAN ACHIEVE ANYTHING YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO

That’s exactly how Ian summarised his experience ‘It’s something to overcome and show yourself what you can do when you focus your mind on it

Watch Ian’s full post fight interview here

Ready to go back to skool?

Our next programme is already half full.  Intake days are running for the first 2 weeks of August.  If you’re ready to step up to the challenge complete our application form at the link below

Apply here