Unleash the Monkey Army

It's the day after Trojan's Strongest Man 2017 and I've had a night's sleep and a chance to regain my customary composure. So, having picked up my dummy and put my toys back in my cot, here's my traditional reflection on my antics. It's the 6th year that the event had been run. Matty and the Trojan family put together a good occasion. It's easy to forget or overlook how much work goes into getting something started; keeping it ticking over and  clearing up after. Thank to everybody involved for giving us the opportunity to show off the product of our work. But it wasn't all about showing off. The proceeds from the day went to CLASP (Counselling Life Advice Suicide Prevention www.claspcharity.com), a charity close to the hearts of the Trojan family. An immaculately observed minute's silence before the young son of a fallen friend released two balloons in memoriam was a touching moment. Not at all unusually for a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK...

Previously in the blog... ( Part 1 )  In our last episode, our intrepid hero had gone off to find some tucker having survived the static (ish) events of the day. And while I was having a munch on my lunch, I found myself thinking about the events so far at Nailsworth Strength and Fitness and was wondering if I could have done more. I won't lie, that's a crappy place to be. Of all the things you could be thinking about after a competition, the one that shouldn't come up is "could I have done more?". You might think "could I have done better?" or "Could I have done that differently?". But the question of whether you could have done more, that should be beyond doubt, an emphatic, resounding no.  But unusually, I wasn't unhappy. Curious about how it might have gone, and a slight thought about perhaps I might have been able to get more but ultimately relatively happy as I'd hit target (and therein lies one of my issues with goals...but t...

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 ...

One of the roads to clarity on Monday's mental meander is to think before posting! But possibly more helpful is, in amongst some of the other ideas, is to think about "Dodgeball" (yes, the 2004 movie) for a second. "I found that if you have a goal, that you might not reach it. But if you don't have one, then you are never disappointed. And I got to tell ya...it feels phenomenal" Self-sabotage. In Peter Law Fleur's case it is appears as more explicit in the not setting goals and then not working towards anything. For many more it is a far more insidious authoring of our own demise. Hold on, before you get too upset, let me clarify - few people actively set out to lose (and those who tend to get accused, prosecuted and fined for match-fixing) but nonetheless, we're setting ourselves up for a fall. In terms of missing training defeat is not the objective but by taking the field under-cooked or as a group of individuals you are stacking the deck agai...

I can't hear what you're saying because your actions are deafening. As a player, captain and coach I've always struggled to get my head around players telling me that they wanted to progress and then not turning up to training. Or turning up but going walkabout, if you follow me. Struggled because, well, frankly, I did not really care whether they wanted it or not. If told that they did not then I could either manage my expectations or selection accordingly. The ambivalent, who blow hot and cold can be managed. Those who blow one temperature for the most part can also be handled. But those who sell the desire dummy are a pain in the brown eye. The concern for their progress, potential and the team is the slippery slope. It's easy to not train because it's cold, or because it's raining, or because it's your dog's birthday or because it will be bloody hard work or it might expose a weakness. Most of us have been there at some point. And if not in the...

There's something about high intensity repetitions of an exercise (hill sprints is what brought this to mind) which is like life. Just to be clear, when I say high intensity I mean - as much as you have to give at that time. Balls out, fast as you can, hard as you can. Clearly then, if you do a number of reps in that session your results will decline as your "best" is a little less each time as your tanks drain. How quickly it declines will depend on a number of factors e.g. time available for recovery; prior training inter alia. WARNING: DIGRESSION..... We talk about our best effort but we should be clear, best effort is only a maximum of what is available at that given moment. Your "best" will depend on many things - fatigue; time of day; motivation etc And at the same time, it doesn't. What? The measured output of the results of our best effort will vary dramatically. As will the ease with which we hit the stride of our best effort. But best effort is al...