Unleash the Monkey Army

Charlie Higson as Swiss Toni PT is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman - at first you throw yourself in with everything you've got (and if you've been out of the game for a while, this won't be for long). But, before long, if you're just thrashing around and not working with your head as well as heart and soul, it will either chew you up and spit you out or you'll get bored and be looking for the door. [Before I continue, an explanatory note for my younger or non-UK based readers - Swiss Toni was a used car dealer in the sketch show "The Fast Show" who compared everything to making love to a beautiful woman.  Feel free to swap the word "woman" for man/goat/whatever to suit your tastes, the effect would be the same.] Interlude reducing my political incorrectness a notch out of the way, we can return to our tale.  It's the end of the first week of January and a significant percentage of new gym members will alread...

The internet is a wonderful thing and it turns out that it is not just for porn! Every one of us can access research papers in medical sciences or strength and conditioning at the click of the mouse. We open our eyes and minds to more information than at any other time in histroy, Alexander's library contained less than a day's search history of the average primary school child. And yet, the cornucopia does not come with a user manual. We do not necessarily immediately have the requisite skill and training to separate the elixir from the snake oil. every trip to the ether puts us at risk from the next most vociferous programme. It could just be a feature of our societal ADHD. Whether time management or prioritisation in the office; or the student who spends all of her time researching and none actually writing; or the person in training who flits from one programme to the next at two-weekly intervals, we see the hallmarks everywhere. I think it may be a combination of lost pr...

I'm not sure if it's an unreasonable man or an enduring optimist who maintains his original heading in the teeth of a gale. Actually, while I'm on the topic of admitting to ignorance, I'm not entirely sure that there is any difference between the two. We need to be responsive to feedback, we need to be open to it, to adjust it or disregard it as appropriate . It's the "as appropriate" qualifier which should be making you think. Please think! Rugby players, fighters, police and military, in response to performance or potential situations think (rightly IMO) "I need to be stronger". Thanks to the work of the Gubernator, Joe Weider and the nutroceutical industry, big muscles are perceived as being the hallmark of strength. Bodybuilders have big muscles, therefore I need to train like them... Cut to game time and some hulk running out of gas early doors. What does this tell us? "As private parts to the gods are we! They play with us for their...

I used to know a doctor, a GP to be exact, who when presented with a patient saying "doctor, it hurts when I do x" would respond "well, don't do x then". Now, this was not the sum total of clinical practice but it it seemed to be a frustratingly large piece of her soft tissue/joint injury management. Now, for years, whenever this bubbled to the surface of my mind I would dismiss it with still fresh frustration. As is my wont, I have re-evaluated in recent times, especially during and after the recent POSE running clinic with @PoseRunning (have a look at Naeem's Twitter feed or website at www.runningengineer.com ). My motivation for attending was down to the lack of enjoyment I derive from running, knowing that it can be a bit of a blindspot for me and a thought that there must be a better way of doing it. Couple that with a curiosity and a knowledge that seeing other coaches in action is never a waste of a coach's time and your have the p...

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...

A slight time delay in typing this one... 26/07/10 - UK There are some things which crop up in both of the major areas of my life - work training. Just as well really, it helps to confirm my belief that hobbies promote and develop behaviours and attitudes which can prove invaluable in the work environment. The one that baffles me in both is nested in people's approach. "I want something different to the outcome that I'm getting now. But I'm going to resist at every turn the suggestion that I should do anything different from that which I've done to this point." Maybe it's just me but I don't understand! A different output requires a difference in its creation. However, while we are busy not changing, the world around us, or at the very least, our competition, is shifting. In these circumstances we find that although we've not done anything differently the result is not the same. So, what to do? Well, for many, frequently even the very bright, the s...