Unleash the Monkey Army

I'm about a week out from competition and that means that my mind is starting to dwell a little. This gives me chances to rationalize and start to shape and control those mental processes.  2017 has been an interesting experience for me so far but we'll keep to my age and the training perspective for now. 2016 closed off with a focus on burpees (the annual 100 day ladder carrying through from September to December) and the indoor rowing Crazy Bear Challenge (30 Half-marathons in 44 days). I came through both ok, setting a personal best with my final 21km. But it meant that I hadn't done any kind of strength work since October. That's ok. Activities have a "season" as you shift focus.  So in January I joined the resolutioners crowd in the gym and started back at it. It was not long before my bicep tendon and brachioradialis were giving me grief and only a month of self-treatment/avoiding certain aspects of training before I sought treatment. Through thi...

It's fast approaching that time of year again. Teachers and educators are joined in their wailing and gnashing of teeth by students of all ages. But much more importantly than that, September sees the return of the annual 100 day burpee ladder. This year will be 1st September to 9th December inclusive. Fancy joining in? Just an interested observer? Here's what you need to know: We'll be doing burpees every day for 100 days. It's ok, we'll start with 1 on 1st September. We will do 100 on the final day but we'll have built to it. They don't have to be done in one set. They don't have to be done in one session. There are lots of modifications to the humble burpee to make it easier or harder. Before we start, pick your minimum standard for the ladder. You can spice it up on days when you feel lively but you'll not go below this marker. Be realistic. The point of the exercise is consistency, not showing off. Just because you can do 50 or 100 on...

Over the last several years I have spent much more time than I'd like working with people who have a hankering for the past. Like a drowning man clinging desperately to a piece of flotsam, they cling to the idea that the past was better. You know what, it might have been. But it's gone. Clinging on to it like an article of faith very rapidly changes it from a spur to restore greatness, to an albatross hanging around our necks. You can't have it back. Every actor in that screenshot has changed. In fact the stage it was played out on has changed too. If not because the stagehands have moved the scenery, then because you will now view it through today's lens made up of knowledge and insight garnered in between times. The trouble is, people tend to spend time dwelling on what they did or didn't do or else view the past through rose-tinted spectacles.And if you're in doubt as to humanity's ability to overlook the bad stuff in our past, look no further th...

I was lucky enough to get some coverage in the Bristol Post at the end of this latest burpee journey. The headline, and most of the comments I have had from people have focused on the 71,500 total burpees. The attention has been nice although a little odd since it simply doesn't feel like that big a deal. Let me clarify that. It isn't some sort of false modesty or humble brag. Truly. Firstly, the fact that I can do it, and have done it, strips the mystery away. It means that it is doable. And it is doable by the average, I would say normal but I think most people would miss the statistical nuance and focus on the fact that a predilection for burpees is anything but normal! Where was I? Oh yes, if it is doable then its achievement does not merit much more than a tick in the box and confirmatory nod. Second, I'm embarrassed by some of the suggestions of my fitness. Certainly that has inevitably improved in the last 12 months but other than that, I feel a bit of a fraud....

I've noticed something int he lads I train over the years. Well, I've noticed many things but for their peace of mind I'm going to keep this piece about the burpees! It is the same thing that I have seen in a lot of photos on the internet of people doing burpees. Instructional pictures are quite clear, the finishing position is upright. Sounds straightforward enough (or straightuppish enough) but as with many thing in life, it is not always as straightforward as the textbooks would have you believe. I've said before, I'm not actually that bothered about whether you finish your burpee with a jump or with your hands overhead or at your sides. As long as you finish upright, I'm a happy bunny (everything is relative). What I see a lot of though, is the tendency to fail to open the hips at the top of the movement, and that is what I am talking about. I think it comes about because the head does not lead (and I mean that in both senses). And, the individua...

Somebody close to me suggested to me that my last blog post was a little sad. Sorry about that! That was not the intention but it probably fell victim to two different quirks of being one of my piece's of work: While I do tend to overthink stuff, as a proportion of the time spent thinking, the thinking prior to doing anything or writing anything is miniscule! On the bright side, this means I can crack on with things pretty quickly and without too much baggage to weigh me down (at least, at the beginning, like a tourist, my bags fill up along the way as I collect duty free and tacky souvenirs!).The downside is that I only ever have the loosest sense of what the end point will look like. Which might be why I can attend to triumph and disaster with about the same level of attachment. I don't re-read this stuff before I post it. That's the joy of the internet! Aside from porn and religion, the internet gives us a facility to belch out our every cognitive air biscuit with o...

End of November. Eight months done. It's quite satisfying to write that. I know I have been going for a while, certainly it feels like ages. Counting down the days as I have been keeps the journey ticking along but they are just numbers and, if I'm honest, it feels like measuring a long road-trip by the lamp-posts you drive past. But to write 8 months is like being given a gift that you weren't expecting! It is only two-thirds done but four months to go seems within arm's reach. OK, maybe for a gibbon rather than a T-Rex but nonetheless it is within sight. One of the things that I had not expected on this voyage was the down-times. Given my constant fight to keep the darkness pushed to the back corners of my mind, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did. There are many things that contribute to its exacerbation - sleep and nutrition are two crucial components in keeping the hormones in check. Recovery, mobility and tissue work would not hurt ei...

"And worse I may be yet: the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst'" William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4 scene i We're in to week 26 now, and have racked up over 16,500 burpees in the year to date (since 1st April). When I say it out loud it seems, by equal turn, a trifle and a ludicrous thing. I tend to do my burpees in one session and, depending on what the day throws at me, there are days when I feel pretty flat before I start. Calvin and Hobbes by the outstanding Bill Watterson It is close to unbelievable to think that I have come this far. It is not that I ever thought that I wouldn't, but that is down to a lack of imagination rather than a devastating self-confidence. I'm still firmly of the belief that the single biggest danger to this endeavour is my almost limitless capacity to be distracted by something shiny and have a pop at another challenge along the way.  A case in point. No need, just no need! ...

The numbers are nudging up. My predilection for rounding up has seen me rattle along the tracks, past 11,000 for the year to date. That's more than 900 more than double regulation in the 100-day challenge which I completed in January.  There are days when I am stiffer and achier than others. On those days the burpees start wooden and clunky, you know, like watching Kristen Stewart "act". However, so far at least, even at its worst the first 50 seem to knock the rust off. My in-laws stayed with us for a week during the period since the last blog post and I can't decide whether it is a sign of everything else they have going on at the moment, or more that over the last 17 years of knowing me they have developed a high threshold for concern. Even after wandering into the utility room midway through my double-bill day (280, thanks to an accidental night off the day before), or even enduring the edifying sight of watching me sit still for 30 minutes afterwards with the...

We're getting a little more interest in the burpee year, quite unbelievably! I say "we" with no sense of dissembling at all. The interest has little to do with me and more to do with all you closet nutters out there spreading the word to your friends. Which is brilliant! I'm not sure whether it should be worrying or reassuring that this appeals to you lot, but I am looking forward to your company over the coming months. Some people are new to the idea of burpees, some not so new but trying to get their head around the ladder. Some just like their life made easier (true, they're assuming more of a voyeuristic role in this exercise, but it is all good). So, while it is all on these pages so far, to help all of y'all, I have added an extra page as a primer . I have put links to relevant previous posts on there and will add links to more on there as I find/write more content. Burpee Primer Hope it is of use. But, since this is becoming decreasingly about me,...

A strange story came to mind today for some reason. When I was seventeen, the coach of an American Football team tried to recruit me after seeing me play rugby. He told me that I'd get to hurt people. But he missed the mark then and that hasn't changed over the years. Yes, I've hurt people and been hurt by people but that's a by-product of what I have done, not been the objective in its own right. Then I played rugby for the simple of joy of it, for the immersion and freedom from my own head space. There was a challenge element to it, to see if I could, not about beating others but not being defeated myself. You win, you lose, but those are just marks on a tally board. You're never beaten until you quit. Other people can take everything from you but your spirit. That you give away of your own accord. Other people live that thought more than I have; have expressed it far more eloquently than I ever will, and have tested it in far harsher conditions than hopefully I...

I had started to write an open letter to my rugby lads, urging them on over the final furlong of the season. I had thought that it would included the line about their season titrating down to a series of moments like these, junctions along your timeline where you chose your heading. And then it occurred that it might seem a bit over the top. Particularly when you consider that actually life is a succession of choices. Some are monumental, towering over your life like a skyscraper in a campsite. Others are colossal but take a little digging to find, most of their bulk lurks under the surface. Then there are the small, everyday, apparently run-of-the-mill choices which we make all of the time. Many of these barely cause a flicker of concern, so habitual are the decisions. Yet the sum total of all of these leads us to where we stand today. Granted, at some points the options may seem so heavily weighted to one side or the other as to give the appearance of no choice but, just because...

For the first time in I don't know how long, I turned off the shuffle on my ipod this morning and enjoyed the simple pleasures of listening to a whole album. It's not all that noteworthy in so much as I will put an album on at home in the background when I'm creating some paleo monstrosity in the kitchen but it did spark a thought. There are some parallels with life and training. We have more means of accessing variety than ever before. So much of our experience is like a butterfly. It probably does lead to a tornado in Azerbaijan but I was thinking more of the constant flitting. The briefest of touch-downs on and then off to something else. As a species I think we like choice and variety and there's plenty of it out there. But, like many other things, toxicity is dose specific. We start a task and then something shiny "demands" our attention and we're off. In training we are appealed to by the latest gimmick or the new packaging on an old idea and we a...

This is an odd one for a blog post but I think that we've lost the ability to be comfortable with our thoughts. I'm not sure that we need companionship or a sense of belonging any more than previous generations but I do think we seek these things out with a completely different outlook to our forebears. there is a constant, never-ending supply of, and demand for, information and entertainment - Television; radio; magazines; newspapers; computers; mobile devices; gaming platforms; the blogosphere. They all enter our lives, shoehorn themselves into our existence and lure us in with promises of engagement. And we enter willingly, we get hooked and we demand more. In exchange for the tacit surrender of our ability to critique, to analyse, to determine logical value we receive a succession, a torrent, a flood of padding to swell our time. Suppliers quest for more to sustain it lest we begin to recover, to think about what we're seeing and hearing. So we're brought in furthe...

For a while now I've been struck by how people will judge others by standards much higher than those they demand of themselves. It has risen its head recently. There are few occasions in life that you will get something for nothing. even a string-free, no-obligation gift will cost you in opportunity. So why then do some people insist on demanding that people change to suit them with a steadfast, dogmatic refusal to make the slightest accommodation? I should probably qualify this. Just turning up is not enough, there is still action that needs taking. You will get nothing for just being there. And as you're there you may as well take some action to preserve or progress your position. not prepared to do anything? Don't want to change? Fine. That's your prerogative. And I mean that with no value statement at all. It is absolutely your prerogative not to change but please do not whinge when the world does not oblige. Think about it - what do you want, what are you getting, ...

"No mystic and no student of Zen is at first step the man he can become through self-perfection. How much has still to be conquered and left behind before he finally lights upon the truth! How often is he tormented on the way by the desolate feeling that he is attempting the impossible!" Suzuki, Zen and the art of archery I've been having conversations with people lately about following a path. One of the things that is apparent is that in this world there are not many people who are fully prepared to do the hard yards to get where they say where they want to be (I do sometimes wonder if I'm one of those). Too many of us have a sense of entitlement, a feeling that somehow the universe owes them something. Even those that set out on the path find themselves surrounded by people that tell them it's not fair because it doesn't land in our laps. Don't try to drag yourself up, berate the universe with us. Or we are surrounded by "friends" who tell us ...