Unleash the Monkey Army

It starts with recognising that it is sometimes a good thing to not get everything that you want. Periodically it is a good thing to go without, to work your willpower like any other muscle. I am not talking about consigning yourself to a hermitage or about donning the sackcloth and taking a scourge to yourself. Rather, have a look, what security blanket do you give yourself? What do you give in to without a murmur? Skipping a training session, the bag of crisps, the toast and butter to tide you over when you get in from work? Or go the whole hog with a paleo challenge. Now set yourself a time. Four weeks, 30 days, 40 days...your call. Now go to it. The ascetics might call it normal, the catholics will be reminded of Lent, the muslims of Ramadan, the military fetishists of Andy McNab's description of hard routine, others just describe it as character building. Whatever helps you get through it, don't label it if you don't need to. It's just something you do. Why? Well,...

It seems that in the last few years the idea of periodization has fallen into the nerdier shadows of the training world. It's not so much that there are people criticising it per se but there are so many people entering fitness or returning to fitness training who either had no exposure to the concept previously or who are turned on to the idea of beating the piss out of themselves with every workout. Cards on the table, the classic mode of teaching periodization is a turn-off for me. It's pretty turgid and a lot of it seemed to revolve around bodybuilding type models. And that's fine, if you're a bodybuilder but in my world mates do not let mates wear budgie-smugglers, so the idea of getting towards the point where you stand on stage looking like a condom packed to the gunwales with walnuts and pose in your briefs does not do much for me! That and the idea of completely random training meant that I've had some fun along the way. But for sports performance we simp...