Unleash the Monkey Army

The first flush of the new year is out of the way and many resolutions have already been cast aside, dismissed like a credit card bill pending a better set of circumstances in which to respond to the call. Now is probably a good time to visit the perennial January question - goals. Picture from Reuters.com Now, we "know" that the setting of goals is a good thing. I mean, those of us who have the double-edged blessing of working for pretty-much any sized organisation will have had it drummed into us that that it is vitally important. It also stands to reason that achievement is more likely when the objective is set. But what doesn't often get mentioned is that this is not merely a matter of temporal inevitability like night follows day; rather, it is a likely but no guaranteed sequence like Summer following Spring in the UK (you know it should happen but quite often it seems to go from Spring to Autumn/Winter with barely a pause for breath in between). Go...

The story so far: Our intrepid couch coach has set out, with turgid prose and malice of forethought to burpee on each day for 100 days. The rules are simple: 1 rep on day one; 2 reps on day two, and so on, climbing to day 100 when we climax with 100 reps. Allowing for a little, ahem, life interfering with the art, if one day is missed, it is acceptable to catch up on the following day by completing all of the reps owed. Miss two days and the exercise is ended - rest up for a few days, consider your failings and start again. Our story so far has paused at the end of day 50, half the total number of days notched up. Soberingly though, we've only chalked up 1,225 of the full scope of 5,050 burpees. The next week and a half passed without incident. Occasionally needing to nudge myself out of my torpor to just start. Because once started, even as the air starts to thin with elevation on the ladder, inside of 10 minutes we are finished. Then the entry for Friday 30th November reads...

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...

As we roll into Christmas it's about half-time in the season and that lends itself to a mid-term review- a view from Fester's dungeon. I've been known to get too serious about stuff and one of the myriad things I did wrong as skipper was to take it all too seriously and to try to get everybody to feel the same way, to the same degree. I still take things seriously but I try to remember to keep some humour in it and confine myself to my sphere. I no longer struggle to teach the pig to sing. I can't speak for my porcine friends but it was irritating the heck out of me! As a firmly amateur club, it has been interesting to see an emphasis on fitness coaching. I would say "strength and conditioning" as that's my background, but frankly we're a long way from that. Even so, for some time now the club has had a dedicated provision of fitness coaching in its corner (yes I know necessity is the mother of invention but why fight it!) . I'm told it ...

1. Know what you want 2. Understand the consequences of not getting what you want 3. More importantly, understand what getting it will mean 4. Figure out the steps to get there 5. Keep 1 in mind while working through 4. Just take the first step, there's beauty in action. If you're doing something right now, figure out why it is important to you (if you're taking the time to do it, it must be significant on some level. If it really isn't, if it isn't more important than your next step, or if it isn't setting you up to make that next move, why are you doing it?) "But it's easier said than done". Really? I suppose it can be, if only because we've got into the habit of being as glib with ourselves as readily as with the outside world - ah well, at least there's an ounce of integrity in that! The five points above not only point you in the right direction (ultimately you need to provide the drive) but will give you a number of chances ...