The Sunday Routine

My kitchen tends to freak people out. On the front of the fridge is a laminated printed sheet with a four week menu. It tells me what meal I’m eating every night. On the front of my freezer is another laminated card. This one has written on it in non-permanent marker how many tubs of each, slow cooker prepared, frozen meals I have in it. I have a whiteboard on the wall, divided into two columns. One side is a ‘to do list’ and the other is a ‘to buy’ list. Whenever I get down to the last one or two apples, put away an almost empty packet of quinoa or even put the second last loo roll on the holder, I write on the board that I need to buy it at my next ‘big shop’. Read more

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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

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The Noble Push Up

The push up. Quite possibly the first ‘proper exercise’ many of us experienced at primary school, after school sports, or if we thought it was the way we could transform ourselves into Batman. The push up (or ‘press up’ for our US friends) is so ingrained in our cultural psyche as a part of ‘physical preparation’ that it appears in training montages from Rocky, to Tim Burton’s Batman, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, through Rocky again, Christopher Nolan’s Batman and most TV shows where the protagonist has to be shown to ‘get serious’ to face the coming challenge.

Rocky OAPU

The original training montage!

Here are a few simple points on training the push up.

  1. No push ups on knees!

Read more

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Changing routines and why you are still fat…

Warning: Rant Alert!

Let me tell you a story…

aerobics

Teaching quite a lot of kettlebell classes for a fair number of gyms, my classes have to be accessable to anyone who decides to ‘just drop in and try it’. The kettlebell swing (a hip hinge) is at the same time a very simple and natural movement AND a hideously complex and alien one for people who’ve forgotten how to move. So I need to be able to provide a session similtaneously for amatuer athletes and complete beginners, which CAN be slightly problematic. Let me share a tale… Read more

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If you could only do three exercises…

An off the cuff, quickie, unedited (and unapologetic) piece I just wrote. My answer may change slightly in the morning…

My good friend and Brazilian Jui Jitsu/Kali/Gladiator extraordinaire Christian ‘c-Lefty Dog’ Ekerct asked a question on Facebook recently.

“To all Yoga-, Strength-, Fitness- and/or Martial Arts Trainers/Coaches:

If you could choose only three exercises/drills/postures of your art, what would it be?

(If the name is not to common, please explain it a bit)”

Three exercises/drill/postures, with no other knowledge of what the goal is, or the physical history of the individual/group! Christian has a tendency to not ask easy questions! Read more

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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

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