Margarita Grigoriadi - Personal Trainer

Hey everyone, its been a long time, Iknow. Busy with work and life. But i am here again, writing about the things that happened.

It was the 21st of September that the big day arrived. It was a dreadful rainy day, or as I like to say: It was pissing it down. But, I was back in business. It's been a long year trying to get my hamstring back in order after having forced it in my last triathlon race. This time, however, I was doing a trail run.

As a coach and an athlete myself, I am constantly searching for training and exercises on the Internet in books and journals. Obviously, there is a lot out there to be found and it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information. The trick is, however, to distinguish the good from the bad. One tip I will give you straight away: forget about the hard ones. If you don't do any strength training on a regular basis and you are fairly new to it, chances are, you are doing the exercise wrongly and this can lead to injuries.

It's been a long time since I posted anything about spinning so here we go, my favorite session I recently taught to my classes. It's a class working between a scale of a7 and an 8. What do I mean by scale? I use the rpe scale from 1 to 10 (http://spincycles.wordpress.com/rpe-rate-of-perceived-exertion/), so 7 to 8 when it comes to hills means that it's a small to medium hill. Very important is that the people in the class follow the beat of the song, so if they are not so strong, in some songs they can keep it to a 7 and for the ones who want to feel the burn the take it to an 8.

Hello everyone. Here is a topic I often get asked about by vegans and non-vegans alike. As a personal trainer and athlete I get a lot of questions about nutrition and I am happy to share my knowledge. Today I will be talking about iron specifically. There is a lot of information about iron and iron consumption out there and I have to say, I find a lot of it is very confusing. So, I will make it simple and easy to understand for all of you. I will work the information out around a couple of main questions and I will add some articles and research I found online.

As a triathlete and a coach with a long experience in swimming (I started swimming training at the age of 9), I found there are some rules that you should keep in mind during swimming training. I have realized, though, that allot of people don't know about them, or -worse- simply don't care. This article is about pinpointing the most important unwritten rules you need to know when going to a swimming pool and considering swimming in a faster lane. In the UK allot of pools have these unwritten rules actually written down and published next to the swimming lanes. Unfortunately, here in Belgium you can't find anything like this. Here you will find written some of the unwritten rules of the FAST lane.

Yoga is back in my life. Once a week I join an iyengar yoga class at "Yoga on call" in Ghent. I wish I could go more often, but lack of time doesn't allow me. It's a beautiful space: it's calm and relaxing. I just love Yoga. Why, you ask? It combines strength, flexibility, balance and relaxation. I would recommend it to any athlete or sports person, who wants to achieve the most out of their training. It's an essential part of my training now.

From the start the race seemed to be doomed. I had been suffering from food poisening the week before the race and it really kept my training back. The only upside to it, was that I was able to rest a lot. I took a lot of fluids and kept a diet of non-heavy nutritients. The morning of the race I was still not feeling well, but as the hours went by, I started feeling better. I was still doubting if I would still go at all. Luckily Jeroen was there to motivate and in the end convince me to go on with it. In the past I have competed whilst having fever, which was a big mistake in my opinion. I managed to finish then, but was kindly rewarded with a sun stroke and heavy fever of over 40° Celsius, which kept me stuck to my bed for 2 weeks. Still a little uncertain about how the race would go for me, I started. Luckily, the weather wasn't too bad and it was rather a small race compared to the other competitions I did in the summer, but nevertheless an olympic distance one.

A couple of days ago, the story about my challenge was published in Flair magazine. A friend of mine send me a message that she saw me on the magazine she bought.
About a month ago, I had an interview with Flair magazine about the challenge I am hoping to do in 2014. I had a good time, although I have to admit I was a bit uncomfortable when standing in front of the camera.

It is that time of the year again when outdoor training is getting a bit harder. The weather is getting colder, there is more wind and rain, lots of rain. This is not very beneficial especially for me since I have Raynaud's, which essentially means that my extremities are very sensitive to cold. For a more detailed explanation about this affliction, go to this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynaud's_phenomenon.

Saturday, the 30th of November I organised my first event for my charity organisation, 'To Walk Again'. It was a spinning marathon with the goal of raising money and awareness for this organisation.

Vegan Sugar free protein pancakes
Okay everyone, these pancakes are lovely, brilliant for breakfast or any time you want a fast healthy dessert

Hello everyone,
I teach around 5 spinning classes a week, so I decided to add some examples of the playlists of my classes and what routine I like to put into my classes. So here we have an example of a hill interval. The class lasts around 60 min, soon i will be adding more classes with other routines, time schedule and music.
I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions dont hesitate to contact me

Hello everyone been busy lately organizing my first ever charity event for To Walk Again. It's going to be 8 hours of continuous spinning lessons, with me teaching and special guest. I am really excited not only for organizing something new but also bringing awareness and raising money for a brilliant foundation. The work hasn't finished yet, still searching for more teachers and maybe a few famous people that might be interested in joining. Everyone is welcome to join but I recommend you to book ahead. Wish me luck Margarita

It's been a hectic and crazy 2 months. October is nearly done and training has started again for next year's challenge. September started with a brilliant end of the triathlon season I came second in an Olympic distance in Balen. My time around 2 hours 17 mins, I was chuffed.