18 years ago, when I gave birth to my beautiful daughter Lois, we thought we had chosen a unique name. Fast forward a year it seemed like everyone was calling their daughters Lois!

I would like to think it was down to my good taste in names plus the fact she was such a gorgeous baby (and she is now a stunning young woman) that it inspired so many parents to choose the name.

I have now learnt that this was not the case. It was a part of my brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It’s like a filter, letting important information in and keeping the not so important out. The RAS also links your conscious brain to your subconscious brain.

Lois was now my focus so my brain put her, and anything associated with her at the top of my conscious thoughts. It makes sense that I would now notice her name a lot more.

What’s this got to do with your quest to improve your health?

Actually, quite a bit.

It is thought that we can actually train our RAS to help us achieve our goals. By bringing what we want to achieve more into our conscious thoughts rather than our subconscious our brain will seek out things to make it happen.

We already do this to some extent, if I were to tell you not to think about chocolate, I bet you thought about chocolate? Think about it long enough your brain will start telling you where the nearest chocolate bar is.

You can actually use this superpower for positive change. Here is how.

Step 1

Write down what you want your goal is and how you want to achieve it.

Use language that reflects how important it is to you, then write it down with intent.

Instead of “I would like to exercise more” say “I am someone who lifts weights 3 times a week.” You are already telling your brain you are that person.

The RAS then seeks out way to make it happen. If exercising more is your goal, you become more aware of sporting activities around you or ways to add more movement into your day.

Step 2

Keep your focus. You have written your goal down and you have stuck it on your fridge, after a couple of weeks you may overlook it. That bit of paper has blended into the background. To keep you focus fresh move your paper to a new venue that makes your brain hit the refresh button and give the task another hit of importance.

Having a strong intent is a huge push to your goals. To complete them you have to adapt your behaviour and make things physically happen. The good news is your RAS will shine a spotlight on opportunities to do this.

Working on how you think and talk about your training is just as important as physically doing it. Prioritize what is important to you, maintain focus and seize the opportunities that are put in your path.

As you can see, I now have 4 precious beings for my RAS to think about.

If you liked my article, please share. For online coaching go to www.laurawoodley.com and fill in the application form and hit “submit”

Improving your health and fitness is a journey.

When you go on a car journey the satnav plots your route from your start point to your destination, hopefully avoiding any major hold ups along the way.  Planning your route to improved health is the same. You need to know your current level of fitness and your starting point so you can select the best form of training to reach your destination healthier.

Knowing where your fitness is at makes planning your training more effective. To find that out start by performing an assessment on the area of fitness that is going to have most impact on achieving your goal.

If that goal is to be able to improve your energy to keep up with your kids on the family cycle, then an assessment on your aerobic fitness would be a good choice. This will tell you how well your body uses oxygen when exercising. The more efficient you are at doing this the more energy you can produce. This makes performing exercises that require a lot of oxygen like cycling easier. A good V02 max score is also linked to improved cardiovascular health and longevity.

The good news is you don’t need a lab and fancy equipment to get the information you need.

You can perform a 2k row test on a concept2 rowing machine.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1.  Warm up on the rower until you feel that you are ready to go all out.

Step 2. Set the distance for 2000m on the console

Step 3. Row as hard as you can until you have completed the 2000m

Step 4. Make a note of your time

Step 5. Go to the online concept2 calculator input your time and age, height and your training category (unless you are a competitive rower go with Untrained)and it will give you your score.

If you would rather run you could do a Cooper run test, where you run as far as you can in 12mins and record your distance.

Here’s How.

Step1. Have a watch and a way to record distance. If you are on a track you can use laps and distance markers. You can also use fitness trackers with GPS

Step 2. Warm up until you feel ready to be able to start the test.

Step 3. Start your watch and tracking method and run for 12 mins as fast as you can.

Step 4. At the end of 12mins record your total distance.

Step 5. Enter your distance into the online cooper run test calculator.

*You can then see where you sit within your age group using the chart below.

If you have never done any structured training before or had a long break your score may be in the lower range for your age. Including more lower intensity cardio work will help improve your level. When your retest and your score improves, you can add more higher intensity work to increase it further.

Depending on the time frame of your goal and how consistent your training has been, will decide when you retest. Test too quickly and you will not have had enough time for training adaptions. 3-6 months is a good time frame.

Retest under the same test conditions to get comparable results. For example, if you did the test in the morning after breakfast make sure you do the same next time.

There are margins of error and no assessment is perfect, but it will give you a base to work from.

Assessments are not about finding faults, they are about helping you to figure out what your boundaries are so you can use smart training to push them further.

Give one of the assessments a try, the information will make your training more specific to you and help you crush your goals.

If you are unsure of your next steps with training and would like more structure to it, I have a couple of coaching slots available go to www.laurawoodley.com  fill in the application form and hit the “Submit” button.