Unleash the Monkey Army

I'm about a week out from competition and that means that my mind is starting to dwell a little. This gives me chances to rationalize and start to shape and control those mental processes.  2017 has been an interesting experience for me so far but we'll keep to my age and the training perspective for now. 2016 closed off with a focus on burpees (the annual 100 day ladder carrying through from September to December) and the indoor rowing Crazy Bear Challenge (30 Half-marathons in 44 days). I came through both ok, setting a personal best with my final 21km. But it meant that I hadn't done any kind of strength work since October. That's ok. Activities have a "season" as you shift focus.  So in January I joined the resolutioners crowd in the gym and started back at it. It was not long before my bicep tendon and brachioradialis were giving me grief and only a month of self-treatment/avoiding certain aspects of training before I sought treatment. Through thi...

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...

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...

Having had to break my run of trips to Westbury for Ironworx Strongman, I had Nailsworth Strength and Fitness' Autumn Strongest in sight. The problems were multiple but the two most prominent were that it was going to involve multiples of bodyweight for many of the rounds and it also involved a bench press. If you watched the Olympics you may have noticed the trend across the weight categories in weighlifting. As the bodyweight increases, generally you see an upward shift in absolute strength, that is to say the weight on the bar. But there comes a point after which that weight represents smaller multiples of bodyweight. And there's the rub with this format. It is demanding but it is accessible to a broader spectrum of lifters than a comp with just an absolute weight in it. But it it means the big boys are going to have to shift some big weights for reps which start to feel like a cardio workout. But what's my beef with the bench? For your average gym monkey a bench press...

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...