Unleash the Monkey Army

A couple of conversations I’ve had recently have started me thinking about strength and its importance to me. I list it as one of my core values and my social media feed would suggest obsession at almost dangerous levels. And yet, I don’t really think I look like it. Sure, I’m large but that’s easily dismissed as desk jockey/all-you-can-eat-buffet-fan. I have this bad habit of writing these blog posts without a plan, so I have no idea where this might end up, but I’d like to try to explain. The weights room is my happy place. Not in a nip-slip, Gym Shark vest, mirror-posing, cheat-curling-in-the-squat-rack, Brozilla kind of way. It’s also not about ego. I’m only moderately strong and body composition is not my target. I say moderately strong on an objective basis rather than any self-deprecation. I’m stronger than a lot of people but in a strong gym or even a college weights room there are plenty stronger. I enjoy the lifting. So much that normally occupies my mind falls a...

Ordinary people leading ordinary lives. We look for the extraordinary out there to give us a sense of something more than this. But quite often we end up putting our faith in the witless, the feckless, the pointless, believing them to be something more as a result of how we come to be aware of them. Glossy and distant it seems is better than gritty and close to hand. Familiarity breeds contempt? A prophet in his homeland? Or perhaps that people on our level make us think too much about our own part in all this... Even in the drab ordinariness of it all we plant and nurture the seeds of the very thing that could lead to our own accomplishment of something grand if we would but just point in that direction. Our ability to confront and endure a job; a relationship; a friendship; a life which by all accounts is manifestly unfair and beneath us should give us a sense of pride. OK, so it is not a fate borne with good grace but while not stoic, it is an endurance that most would not ...

It's time for me to both add some value and bring something a little bit old school to this party. Yes, that's right, I'm going to talk to you about the off-season.  Starting from an early age, the off-season was that fallow period when you wandered around like a lost sheep looking for something to fill the void. When I was 16 and just starting rugby, that was easy, rugby finished, cricket started. Then come July I got blend a bit of both before playing some matches of both in August and switching back in September. Then I played a bit of rugby league, then I went on a Summer rugby tour and between the prep and the reality of it, the nails were well and truly hammered into the coffin of my pursuit of gentle days standing in a field in white pyjamas.  Where was I? Oh yes, the off-season. It's May, you're not professional but even so, your almost 8-month long season has not long finished. For some, the time away came at just the right moment. For others, it...