Hi and welcome to another week,
I loved my training last week. I am struggling a little bit with a couple of injuries at the moment (right shoulder, left elbow) which has made it a bit tough at times, but by modifying my weights and making sure I am not ‘rushing’ through the sessions (punching properly, lifting with good technique) I have been getting through OK. It can be a bit frustrating not being able to do ‘everything’ to the level that I would like but when the alternative is just to give up, I think managing my way through the sessions is a much (much) better alternative!
Last Thursday night, Vanessa and I headed along to ‘The Paleo Way’ event with Pete Evans up at HBF Stadium. I had hoped to be able to share a heap of great information from the event in the blog this week – but to be honest the event was pretty disappointing…heavy on power-point slides but light with regards to practical information. There were a couple of stories that were shared on the night that I did want to relate through this week’s blog though.
The first one of these was a quote they put up that read as follows:
“Everything has the power to strengthen you or make you weaker. Do you know what your own food choices are doing to you?’
Now this is a pretty simple comment and one that is obvious to all of you – but I have to admit that I had never really thought of it that way. I do think about choices – but to be truthful, a lot of my thoughts have always been about ‘balance’. I guess what I mean by this is that I always think (have always thought) that – within reason – a little but of everything (as long as it is just a little bit) wont do you any harm. The more time I have spent on this ‘no grains’ diet though, the more I find even a ‘little bit’ of the wrong thing can really slow me down. The more I eat the ‘right way’, the more I realise that eating the ‘wrong way’ can leave me feeling lethargic and ‘flat’.
Now, I am probably a bad example because I have been on a bit of an eating ‘journey’ for a couple of years now, but I just couldn’t imagine eating from a fast food restaurant these days – no matter what the circumstances. I train too hard to allow my eating choices to drag me backwards from a health or body composition perspective. It just isn’t worth it. If that means I need to ‘wait’ for a little while before being able to eat properly, then I just have to wait. In fact I deserve to wait because I should have been more organised and sorted out my food the night before. Do you know what your own food choices are doing to you?
The second thing I wanted to relate to you was a story told by Pete Evans as part of his opening to the night. The story was about his two daughters (he told us they were aged 7 and 9 at the time of the story) and the girls had been asking him for a pet rabbit. Given my experience with 7 year olds and 9 year olds, I suspect that if they had asked for a rabbit once they had probably asked for a rabbit 1000 times – and getting a rabbit would have been their entire focus (right up until the time they actually GOT the rabbit of course!). Anyway, he picked the girls up from a party and they both had the traditional post-party lolly bags – of course, they wanted the lollies and asked their Dad if they could eat them.
As he told the story, he related that he didn’t want to say “no” – he wanted the girls to reach their own decisions about what the right and wrong thing to do might be. So he asked them – if grass, lettuce and an occasional carrot – was the best food for a rabbit, what might the girls feed a pet rabbit if they were to get one. The girls are smart – they want the rabbit – so of course they replied that they would feed the rabbit grass, lettuce and an occasional carrot. The story went on with Pete asking his daughters what they might do if the kids down the road also had a rabbit – but those kids let their rabbit eat whatever it wanted – and they gave the rabbit lollies and it really (really) liked them. Even though they know that rabbits need grass, lettuce and an occasional carrot, would they feed their rabbit lollies because they knew the rabbit down the road ate them and really liked them?
The girls are smart of course, and said that if the best food for a rabbit is grass, lettuce and an occasional carrot, then that is what they would feed it – no lollies, even if rabbits like them. “That’s great news”, replied Pete. “And what you two need to understand is that you are MY rabbits and I only want you to eat the food that is best for you.”
A simple story about food choices. “Everything has the power to strengthen you or make you weaker. Do you know what your own food choices are doing to you? Do you know what your own food choices are doing to your kids?”
See you in the gym.
Michael.
It has been great seeing so many people redeeming vouchers for Round 1 through our rewards program at Perkville –
http://www.perkville.com. A few people seem to have been a bit ‘nervous’ about using the vouchers…you shouldn’t be. It took a couple of weeks work to get it all up and running, validate the links between the membership system and Perkville to provide the system…of COURSE I want you to use it.
Remember, for every single membership dollar you spend – either an ‘up-front payment’ or via the direct debit system – you get one point. Every time you come to the gym and SCAN YOUR MEMBERSHIP CARD (which is what I call checking in – please don’t think this is a ‘facebook check-in’ – you get TWO points. Those points then turn into Round One dollars – for every 200 points you earn you will get $10, or, if you wait until you have 400 points that is worth $25.
What can you spend the ‘money’ on? Well, anything you like. An ‘InBody’ Body analysis. Personal Training. New gloves. Protein. Whatever you like!
Sign up at www.perkville.com – all you have to do is register at PERKVILLE with the same email address you have registered at Round One Fitness.
We have a few things coming up for August and September. So for those who are interested, it is going to look a little bit like this.
We will kick things off in August with our next ‘mini-challenge’. This challenge will be based around the 300-workout and there will be a set number of reps of each of the ‘300’ elements that you need to complete each calendar week.
In September we will be kicking off a new Life-Plan – and a brand new ‘Muscle Gain’ challenge.
The new Life Plan will be similar to the last one in that it will go for multiple months – but, hopefully learning from the first Life Plan we ran earlier this year, this one will run for 3-months (from the start of September to the end of November) rather than six (6). Like the 6-month plan, the new one will feature diet restrictions AND an exercise/recovery program (classes plus extras) to complete each month. In advance of the new Life Plan starting, I am planning to run a nutrition ‘how to’ session at the gym on Sunday August 31st (just in time for the first week of the life plan). This isn’t going to be a ‘why’ session – it is going to be focussed on HOW to structure your eating when you are on a ‘life plan’ type diet (primarily, no grains or added sugars).
The ‘Muscle Gain’ challenge will run for 3-months in parallel with the Life Plan. It will consist of 12-weeks worth of pre-set weights programs (+ weekly conditioning) that need to be completed – the aim of this challenge will be maximum muscle gain within a 3-month timeframe. Recovery and diet will also be included in this challenge.
We will be using the InBody scanner to support both the new Life Plan AND the Muscle Gain challenge.
The Perth Fitness Show (http://www.fitness-show.com.au) will be held up at the Convention centre on the weekend of 16th and 17th of August. We will be up there with the InBody Scanner trying to spread the word whilst also taking in what the rest of the show has to offer. The program looks awesome and hopefully a few people from R1 will have time to come up for a look. We are supposed to be receiving 50-discounted tickets to attend the show (I am not sure what ‘discounted’ means at this stage – I haven’t received the tickets) but will make these available to R1 members when I get them.
As everyone who looks at the Facebook site will know, we have a really exciting new skipping solution from ‘RX Smart Gear’ (http://www.rxsmartgear.com/) in the next week or so. I guess I am just a bit tired of the continually breaking skipping ropes so I have decided just to throw money at the problem in one hit rather than the constant Chinese water torture of spending $400 on ropes every couple of months. What the new solution means is that we will have a set of ‘speed ropes’ for use during classes with a purpose built rack.
On the subject of speed ropes, a new delivery of Magnum Speed ropes will be available from reception within the next few days. These are a great product and will be available for $25 – each rope is easily customised and a great addition to your training bag. It might sound silly but a skipping rope is a very individual thing and having one you can ‘trust’ makes doing doubles, knees-up skipping etc so much easier – which in turn really helps improve your training. For me, I occasionally will use a ‘normal’ rope in a class if it is 2-minute rounds, but for anything longer than that I grab my speed rope out of my training bag just because I KNOW it is the right size and it makes skipping so much less of a frustration when you have a rope that is perfect for you. Remember as well, if you have 5-minutes spare before a class it is better spent with a rope in your hands than just standing around and ‘waiting’ – and as a dynamic warm-up, skipping is a much better option than sitting on a spinning bike.
Great news last week in that our delivery of bag mitts, mma gloves and long sleeve hoodies arrived. As part of the delivery of bag mitts we also refreshed our hire gloves with 30 new pairs – hopefully this makes things just a ‘little bit’ nicer for beginners and anyone who has ‘forgotten’ their gloves.
Our bag mitts are available in all sizes at the moment – at just $25 they are a great training option for our gym and the best value boxing gloves you will find anywhere. The MMA gloves are also a great product and (I think) much improved from the original design we had a couple of years back – like the bag mitts, $30 is a great price for such a quality item.
Half way through the split round, it seems two games have tripped up everyone in the competition – Carlton beating North Melbourne and the Saints beating the Do(r)kers. Somehow, devout Kangaroos man – Leigh Rodgers – tipped the Blues to beat his team and this places him a point clear of the field at the half-way mark. Personally, I think he should have to hand that point back for deserting his heavily favoured team, but I guess his conscience will be his guide.
Over in DreamTeam it is difficult to assess things as some teams have had more players play than others – it isn’t exactly a level playing field right now. But…Dale’s “Magpieman” and Kim’s “Half Time Heroes” are fighting out a high scoring game, whilst Dale Klompmaker’s “Dales Dreamers” is the highest scoring team at half way.
Good luck next week everyone.
A couple of links this week. First off, a fun one about the National Grid League in the US – some great (if very long!) videos of the competitions are up on YouTube and this little overview one will give you an insight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMd76Vr5sIs
Next, a link to a pretty cool site where you can get organic meat online – pretty good prices and looks like a great product from local suppliers.
See you in the gym!
Michael.
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