Coaching with Fusion

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Coaching with Fusion

Online personal training and coaching, nutritional guidance, accountability, simplifying the journey. I will get you stronger. What does that mean for you?

Getting stronger will improve every single part of your life. Strength of body and strength of mind relates directly to how you approach your goals, both in the gym and out of it, how you go about planning to achieve your goals, and the tenacity with which you pursue your goals. Being stronger means you can move more, safely, and with better quality. Being stronger means more confidence, more self belief, more success.

01/01/2024

Happy New Year 🎉🎉🎉
Let’s set ourselves up for a great one ☺️
As each year passes I keep learning just how precious time is.
Our tomorrows are not guaranteed.
The clock ticks.
The sand falls through the hour glass.
And when it’s gone we can’t have it back.
What comes from that time gone by is memories, experiences, lessons learnt, and a sense of wanting things to be better.
I think that’s why a new year resonates with so many people.
The word ‘new’ sounds like a fresh start.
And there’s hope that this year can be magical.
It can.
It really can, and here’s how.

🔥 Live in each day.
🔥 Live with fire.
Once it’s gone you can’t have it back, so live in it.

Actively look for things to be grateful for every single day.
It’s a terrible (and easy) habit to fall into of only seeing and feeling the negatives.
I’m certainly not one of those irritating ‘turn that frown upside down’ people, but I will say this. No matter how s**t your day is, there is always something in it to be grateful for if you look for it.

Look.
Practice looking until it becomes a habit.
The increase in happiness and reduction of stress you will have from this one thing alone is priceless.

Breathe.
Every day set some time (may only be a minute) to do nothing but breathe.
If this is new for you start with 10 slow breaths, 4 seconds to breathe in, while you imagine your lungs filling with air, and 6 seconds to breathe out, while you imagine your lungs slowly empty.
Oxygen is your friend.
We spend most of our lives stressed and shallow breathing, and not getting in nearly enough oxygen.
Breathe.
The reduction in stress - that you may not even be aware you’re carrying - you will get from this is priceless.

Be.
Be you.
Be unapologetically and wholeheartedly you.
Set goals that excite you and make plans to make them happen.
Let go of guilt around failure - put that s**t into perspective and move on.
Practice the art of only speaking positively about yourself - the carry over to positive actions from this is massive.
Build a team of people around you that lift you - and in turn that you lift.
Be.

These three things are all aimed at increasing happiness and reducing stress.
Life is too short to spend it unhappy or stressed and spinning your wheels trying to get s**t done but getting nowhere.
More happiness and less stress changes the way you approach every task you set your mind to.
The year is new, it is fresh, there is hope that this year will be magical.
Allow it to be.
It will.

25/12/2023

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, and a happy and safe festive season.
Wherever you are and whoever you’re with and whatever you’re doing, I hope you’re doing it with a smile on your face ❤️

20/02/2023

Hi! It’s Margs here! It’s been a bumpy start to this year for me - and I know a lot of you can relate!
Sometimes life throws a hard hit and when it lands it knocks you!
I’ll be the first person to say to anyone that it’s ok not to be ok - you don’t need to waste precious energy putting on a ‘face’ for the rest of the world when you’re really needing to use that energy to look after yourself.
Something that helps me through hard knocks is setting some firm boundaries that let me take the time I need to breathe and be - cutting back on work and social obligations where I can is such a valuable way to create much-needed space.
The other thing that helps me so much is the practice of gratitude.
No matter how hard a day has been, when I look I can always find something - some reason - to say thank you - no matter how small the thing or the reason is, it’s always there when I look.
At some point, if you’ve pressed ‘pause’ to take care of yourself you will need to take yourself off ‘pause’ and start to get things moving again.
Focus on the things you can do to start with and do them well.
There will be things you can’t do straight away, and that’s ok - we have a saying in the strength and rehab world, “first move, then move better”. The same analogy applies to your emotional well-being.

https://instagram.com/coaching_with_fusion?igshid=NzAzN2Q1NTE=

07/01/2023

Happy New Year everyone!!

Here’s something a little deep to think about for the first week of January…
If you bind your self worth to what you weigh or how lean you are or how much you can lift, you are binding your happiness to a moving target.

Those things will change through out your life.
Weight goes up and down.
And up.
And down.
Sometimes you’re leaner, sometimes you’re a little more fluffy.
Sometimes you’re stronger. Sometimes you’re not.

Unless your career depends on you maintaining specific numbers, this is normal.

Health and happiness are goals in themselves.
Super important ones.

A healthy body sheds excess weight, excess fat.
A healthy body is able to be safely strengthened.
And happiness - actively seeking the positive rather than the negative - is part of health.

Don’t wait.
Don’t say you’ll be happy when you achieve *inserts arbitrary number that may or may not still be there in 2, 3, 5 year’s time*.

Happiness now.
It drives everything.

❤️☺️

P.S. While it’s super trendy right now to be giving out ‘diet rules’ and ‘newyearnewme buymydiet’, we’ve never been the types to be super trendy 😂
Lou and I are putting together a little online presentation that we don’t have a proper name for yet…
‘Busting Diet Myths and Eating for Health and Being Happy and Feeling Good Because You’re Eating Good’ is a bit wordy, but that’s the gist of it.

If you’re interested in being put on the ‘I’m interested in this’ list for the presentation, just slide into our DMs 😉

P.P.S check out our website. It’s constantly growing and changing right now as we add bits and pieces to it - next on the addition list is a ‘Video Chats’ page! We’ll let you know when that one launches 🙌☺️

www.coachingwithfusion.com

24/12/2022

Where ever you are, and what ever you’re doing, and who ever you’re doing it with, I hope you’re doing it with a smile on your face ☺️
Happy Christmas ❤️

03/11/2022

The group fitness room has always been a positive place for me.
I have never been particularly gifted physically - I was the awkward, heavy kid that couldn’t jump, couldn’t catch a ball let alone throw one, came last in every running event, and sank instead of figuring out how to swim.
I’ve always loved music and moving with rhythms, though I can’t dance to save myself and my singing is accurately described as ‘not my best talent’.
I joined a gym for the first time because I saw an advertisement for a group fitness class in a mall, and I so desperately wanted to feel the qualities that I saw represented in the image - strong, physically capable, independent, potential unleashed, empowered...
The gym was Les Mills Dunedin, and the class was BodyCombat.
When I went to my first class, I remember track 2 starting. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I knew I’d found what I was looking for.
I was uncoordinated and clumsy, but so so ready to put the work and the time in and become better.
I wish I could remember the instructor’s name.
I never met him, never spoke to him, did what I could to avoid making eye contact with him as I hid in the back row and struggled to get my body to replicate the moves he seemed to do so effortlessly.
I’d love him to know that he put an urgency in me to share the incredible feeling I got from the class with as many people as I could.
Group fitness is not for everyone - but then again, neither is running, or swimming, or team sports, or yoga, or rock climbing.
But there is something for everyone.
You know your thing when you find it.
It excites you.
You make it a priority and find time for it.
You look for ways to become better at it.
And even when the work is hard, and the sweat stings your eyes, and your legs shake, and your muscles burn, your inner child claps it’s hands with joy, exclaiming, “...that was fun! Again, again!”...and every now and then you dress up in *not traditional for fitness activities* clothes and you take yourself a little less seriously and you do that thing you love with other people who love that thing like you do and it’s all a bit of a magical… well… thing! 🥷😂
Because when you find your thing, it becomes about so much more than just the exercise.
It becomes about the experience.
It can be physically demanding.
It can be mentally challenging.
Underneath all of that is feeling.
And when that feeling is allowed to bubble up to the surface and be free, the experience becomes unmissable.

02/11/2022

Did you ever have a 'light bulb moment' when you realised not everything was all that it was cracked up to be?

I had a big one a few years ago with the health and fitness industry.

Grab a coffee and pull up a chair - this is going to be one of *those* posts....

I get migraines. Nasty little things. I get them often and they last for days. My head hurts, I can't stomach food or fluid, my tolerance levels drop, and I generally feel sh*t.
For days.

A few years ago when I was working at Myaree, I got a particularly bad one.
My meds didn't touch it.
The nausea and vomiting continued into the third day.
The pain permitted no sleep.
A trip to a Dr for an anti-emetic and some additional pain relief brought no relief.
By the 6th day I was wrecked.
Exhausted.
Dehydrated.
Weak.

And I had to drag my sorry self to work.

Just having a shower was a mission.

As I stepped out of the shower I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and I was shocked.

So dehydrated that my skin was lying right on top of my abs, almost stuck to them.
Muscles looked shrunken.
Face looked like bone with skin over it.
Grey.
Dark circles for eyes.
I looked dreadful.
I looked exactly how I felt.
I got dressed.
Clothes that had fitted properly the week before were hanging off me, completing the 'walking dead' look.

I got my sh*t together and drove up to the gym, taking little sips of water as I drove and keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn't have to pull over anywhere to throw up.

My legs shook climbing the stairs into the gym. I had to stop halfway up to rest.

I got to reception and the receptionist said to me, "you look amazing Margs, have you lost some weight?"

I was so shocked I was speechless.

On the gym floor another trainer came up to me and told me I was looking fantastic.

A gym member made a point of coming over and asking me 'what I was doing' because it was clearly working and that I looked great...

Somewhere during the course of the morning my own trainer at the time - Dave - caught sight of me and came over.
"What's up mate, you look like s**t."

That statement was the sound of the lightbulb flicking on.

Honesty is rare in this industry.

Money is made by promising fast results and by pushing the notion that weight loss by any means possible is ok.

Even if it means sacrificing your health.

Season after season I watch the damage done by this industry manipulating people's insecurities just to make a quick buck.

The cleanses.
The shakes.
The starvation diets.
The message that you are not good enough the way you are. That you need to be fixed or changed.
That you could be good enough if only you were somehow different.

At the time this incident happened I was surrounded by people - trainers and gym members - who were obsessed with leanness.
It was all about the bodyfat percentage, the number on the callipers.
The message being pushed was that you could always be leaner.... and you should be....
And handily enough there was always a box full of expensive supplements that could help with that.

Isn't it funny that the focus on the whole health side of things - you know the bit that dictates your quality of life - just got lost along the way.
And isn't it also *funny* how when health issues - both physical and mental - manifest as a direct result of these manipulated obsessions over numbers, the blame is assigned to the person who has been sucked in to the vortex and not to the industry that has made a business out of convincing people that they are not ok.

It was around this time that I heard a trainer yelling at his client on the gym floor.
In front of a gym full of trainers and members.
Because that week she hadn't dropped her BF%.
Because she was making him look bad.
Because it was her fault.
Because she was eating too many carbs.
Because she had eaten peas for dinner.
Peas.

My lightbulb moment was really more of an abrupt reinforcement of a core belief.

Yeah sure - have some things about yourself that you want to work on.
You want to lose some weight? Cool.
You want to drop some fat? Great.
You want to build muscle? Nice.
You want to get stronger? Awesome.
You want to develop an aspect of your fitness? Fantastic.

You do not have to hate anything about yourself in order to do any of those things.

And if you support your health first and foremost, a healthy and maintainable body composition will happen as a side effect.

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again - you are your own best creation, a work of art. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to chisel away at what you want, you've got your whole life to get it.

Honestly - if you want something it is worth both the effort and the time it takes to get there.
This is not glamorous.
Or exciting.
Honesty rarely is.

But I made a commitment that day to be boringly, uncompromisingly honest with people when it came to the how's and whys of progress.

Dig in.
Do the work.
Be consistent.

And if you happen to see me on the gym floor one day looking like a sad, malnourished extra from an apocalyptic zombie movie, please, for the love of all that is right in this world, do not tell me I look 'good'.

31/10/2022

“Five years to achieve a meaningful goal should not be demoralizing. It only is because many people fall for 30-day transformation nonsense. Goals generally take longer than you think they will, so focus on excellence during the process.”

If it takes one year or five years or ten years - the time will pass anyway.
How long it might take should not be the consideration that stops positive actions when you have a dream.
How you might feel when you get there - that’s something worth thinking about.

- Margs 👊

26/10/2022

Sometimes sessions just get a little non-traditional… and that’s ok… 😉
Maybe we should ‘caption this…’

Thanks for always being up for my typically *amazing* ideas Ash 👊

- Margs

05/10/2022

Just because you have grumpy shoulders doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good old fashioned chest day just as much as the next person.

It might mean that you have to be a little more particular with exercise selection, and in choosing specific variations of favourite exercises, but honestly, show me the person who DOESN'T want massive slabs of deeply striated pecs rippling across the front of their rib cage and I'll show you the person who has never watched Terry Crews alternately squeezing his pecs to make them bounce and had a try to see if they could do it too.....

Now. Where were we...

Ah ys, chest day.

Grumpy shoulders tend to not like repetitive pushing exercises done a certain way.

The shoulder is fairly complex, lots of tissue crossing a joint that is designed to be mobile in every direction, and it doesn't take a lot of inflammation for that tissue to run out of room.
The resulting pinching and squashing of already angry tissue is most unpleasant.

I can't speak for everyone's grumpy shoulders, as different exercise volume and variation will apply depending on the reason for the grumpy shoulder, but I can share what I find works best for mine.

Firstly, if they need the day off, they get it.
Trying to force angry and inflammed joints to bend to my will results in joints that are even more angry and inflamed.

Pro-tip - listen to your body like someone who gives a sh*t about it.

Secondly, warm up is key.
I used to be a massive fan of using my bench as a warm up for my bench until I'd spent a little time a few years ago following some programming inspired by John Meadows. The selection of an isolation exercise to take a muscle through its full AROM prior to warming up the main exercise of the day changed everything for me.

Thirdly, selecting variations of the exercises that I love that are kind to my shoulders, rather than doing stock standard, means I can keep doing the exercises I love.
I do love a good bench press.
I favour a 45 degree abduction rather than 90 for pressing for both dumbbells and bar, so I love to use a Swiss Bar for bench), this angle gives my shoulders the right amount of ‘open’ - nothing getting jammed up and nothing getting over-tightened.

Fourthly - always putting in a 'rehabby' exercise every time I train upper body means I'm continually making positive progress with pain-free mobility.
The exercise I often select for a chest workout is a Y Flye - fantastic for helping a grumpy subscapularis remember that it's ok to chill out...

Finally - a 'finisher' doesn't have to be a balls-to-the-wall, dry-heaving sweat-fest...
How about treating your grumpy joints to something slow, controlled, and focused…
I like to use an eccentric-focused push up that both allows me to focus on correct core tensioning and squeeze every last drop out of my chest and triceps.

Here’s a sample of a shoulder-friendly workout that my shoulders will happily accept:

Warm-up - Cable Flye - 3 sets, 20 reps, rpe 6-7

A - Swiss Bar Bench Press - 5 sets, 8 reps, rpe 8-9

B1 - Incline Dumbbell Chest Press, 8 reps, rpe 8-9
B2 - Machine Chest Press, 8 reps, rpe 8-9
B3 - Incline Dumbbell Y Flye, 16 reps, rpe 6-7
(4 sets of this triset)

C - Eccentric-Only Push Up, 3 sets, 4 sec eccentric, max reps

Address

Baldivis, WA

Telephone

0431511865

Website

https://www.coachingwithfusion.com/

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