, ,

Re-framing: The art of being awesome when the chips are down

Don’t you just hate people who never get ‘down’? Or those people who seem to have all the luck? Because all the luck you personally have is bad, right?

My six year old was recently telling me “You make your own luck” and he’s about 88.2% correct.

stats2

I really buy into the idea that:

Luck = Preparation + Opportunity

Preparation is something that is (almost) completely under your own control. Read more

,

Festive Survival for Gym Rats and Iron Heads

It’s that time of year. That dreadful period where you are forced to sit next to people you don’t like from work and relatives whose name you can’t remember. You are expected to make small talk. You are socially conditioned to eat and drink to excess. If you deviate from this you run the risk of becoming a social pariah. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because your will of steel is making your mother/brother/sister/co-worker feel bad about themselves.

Why are you trying to make me feel bad for things that are wrong in your life?”

Anyway, it is a time for celebration and enjoyment. I really like this idea from Buddhism:

Buddha describes the middle way as a path of moderation, between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification.” Read more

Metabolic Conditioning doesn’t work…

“Have you heard about the new metabolic conditioning classes? They only take 30mins, that’s why I’m doing them.”

… is what I overheard in the gym about two weeks ago. Ever since a lot of people got back from the International Fitness Conference ‘metabolic effect’ is the thing all my clients and gym-rats have been asking me about. It usually starts:

“Hey, have you heard about the new fitness craze? Metabolic conditioning…”

Hold on there, Buttercup. New? The 1990’s just called and they want their science back. Any PT, Coach or other athletic trainer worth their salt has been incorporating metabolic conditioning training in their fat loss/conditioning programmes since at LEAST the early 2000’s (in its currently understood format, I’m not going to pretend for a second that it wasn’t happening before then). It might not have been called met-con (yep, we’ve abbreviated it), but it was there. Read more

I hate functional training

You heard me, I hate the current trend of what is being espoused as ‘functional training’.  The idea that ‘this or that’ is ‘functional’…Functional for what?

squat on a swiss

To understand the idea of what functional training is, we need to answer that question. What are we training for, what is the desired result? What is functional for a marathon runner may not be functional for a strongman competitor. So this becomes goal dependent.

The basis of what is deemed functional training can be broken into a series of simple movement patterns: Read more

,

Misinformation Station #1: Kettlebell Side Bends

[Note: Misinformation Station is a series of articles aimed at providing information to the general gym goer. It’s based on mistakes I see in the gym everyday.]

Every day thousands of people discover through some means or other the ‘new fad’ that is the kettlebell. Using the kettlebell is going to make them stronger, leaner, faster, more powerful and generally look awesome.

You may discover kettlebells through the hundreds of fat camp shows on TV, the pictures of fitness models using them (poorly) in a fitness magazine, or it may be a friend of yours has discovered a hardstyle or GS kettlebell class in their neighbourhood.

 

Please ignore the pink 'bells in the corner...

Please ignore the pink ‘bells in the corner…

You want the benefits of this awesome training and so you sign up for the gym (handing over your hard earned cash). You receive an induction into the safe use of two-dimensional gym machines, and all the time that the gym staff are talking you are nodding but have one eye on the kettlebells in the corner of the ‘functional area’ of the gym. Read more

Questions from the week gone by

I’ve been a bit remiss with my blog writing recently. So, I decided this morning to blast out a short piece detailing some common questions I’ve had in the last week.

So let’s get started…

Why are you doing ‘extra cardio’?

Here’s the long answer: Now, people pay me good money to help them identify their goals, assess their current status and build a road that gets them from A to B. Building a training plan is like cooking a good meal that has a starter/appetiser, a main course, a dessert (because contrary to popular belief we are allowed the occasional dessert!) and perhaps coffee to finish.

gourmet

Each course of a meal has a specific function and can be likened to a workout: Read more