So far this month we have talked about how pride can benefit us in many ways. Today we want to touch on how some versions of pride can have a negative impact in our life...

Following from Ash's email on Saturday, how many of you made your 5-point list? Thanks to those of you who shared with us. We are so proud of you!

I  managed to jot mine down during some quiet reflection time in Scotland. One of the points on my list was that I am proud of myself for saying "yes" more... opening myself up to new experiences and broadening my comfort zone.

In Wednesday's email we asked you to tell someone close to you how proud of them you are. Did you manage to do it? If so, how did it make you feel? Hopefully you were filled with positivity from the response you got, praise can help evoke feelings of happiness, content and gratitude  With that in mind, when was the last time you were proud of yourself?

We know that coming to the gym can feel a bit of a chore sometimes and can be a challenge both physically and mentally, but week in and week out we see familiar faces, as well as new faces in our classes. You guys are coming and giving your energy, commitment and attention to our SMASH classes and we are proud to see how well you are doing! The improvements are visible to us and we hope you are seeing/feeling them too

Throughout the month we will be exploring what Pride means to us, yourself and others and the positive impact living with pride can bring to your life. We will also look at how some aspects of pride can actually prevent us from achieving certain goals and explore how our egos can affect daily life in good and negative ways. Until the next email on Wednesday, have a think about what Pride means to you...

For many of you bank holiday weekends mean an extra day off work, for us in the fitness industry it usually means a quieter few days which gives us an opportunity to re-set and re-focus. If you find yourself in a position of having a little more time on your hands this weekend, what will you do with it

Getting a little bit of Vitamin D every day is so beneficial to our health in many ways so why not combine a burst of sun with a leisurely run? Or even a not-so-leisurely run?!!

As most of you may know by now the SMASH team are running the Vitality 10k this bank holiday Monday and we are taking a few of the SMASH crew with us. 

This week is mental health awareness week and, as you know, mental health and wellbeing is something Sam and I are both very passionate about - it's why we created SMASH! Hopefully you have seen some interesting, helpful and informative posts on social media, interviews in magazines/newspapers or articles on the radio and TV?

Hen parties are not something I would usually look forward to – all the alcohol and drunkenness that seems to be associated with it. However after giving up alcohol 9 years ago (as I’ve mentioned many times) – I’ve learned to embrace parties and nights out

How many times have you said "I'm going to start that on Monday" or "That can wait until the weekend" or even "Next year I'll do it..."? Most of us can probably raise our hands and say we have done this more than once!

As you probably have gathered over previous emails, I’ve gone through a few things and have had to make a number of life changing decisions over the years (as many of us do) – today I wanted to share with you the (shortened version) story of how I became a personal trainer.

Most of you attend our SMASH classes and we are very proud to see how much stronger you are all becoming as the weeks go by, especially with some of those exercises you had never done before! Speed, flexibility, mental strength, agility, endurance - all of you are smashing the classes in your own way and we hope that you feel the benefits elsewhere in your lives - work, home and play. 

April is almost over so here is a summary of everything we have spoken about this month in regards to our focus of Nutrition...

The month is coming to an end so we both felt we should share a little about the nutrition plans and guidelines that each of us follow before we conclude the focus of Nutrition on Saturday

With this sudden heatwave we realised that we haven't written about the most important part of nutrition.... HYDRATION!!

We are continuing our focus of nutrition and today we are talking about mindful eating. This is something we have touched on before, as one of the biggest things we do mindlessly is eat.

Our focus for the month is nutrition and in Wednesday's email we talked about how the media can influence us. A continuance from that comes from the effect supermarkets and advertising can have and how their very successful strategies can cause us to make poor choices when it comes to food!

In today’s email I wanted to touch a little on some of the research I have done as part of my Open University Degree (still ongoing!) – in particular about how much the media can affect many of our decisions, including our food choices.