Hi and welcome to another week,
Great sessions last week. I really enjoyed the debut of 7-minute rounds and look forward to continuing the trial of these over the next 3-4 weeks. I thought it hit a good balance between the somewhat ‘chaotic’ nature of the 9-minute round classes AND the more structured approach of the 5-minute rounds (or shorter) sessions. I was also really (really) happy with everyone’s efforts to do some deadlifts in the gym on Wednesday and Thursday. It is a great exercise (the best exercise??) when done properly and I was thrilled to see so many people having a go, really focussing on their technique and challenging themselves with regards to weights.
I wanted to talk a little bit about training this week – and whilst some of the examples I use below will specifically reference ‘weights’ I don’t want you to think of it in such simple terms. Remember, if you have enough imagination a punching bag can be your ENTIRE gym. If you have a little more imagination than that, well, you might be able to get away without even having the bag (but where would the fun be in that??).
When I am training – when all of us are training – we have a ‘history’ of training sessions past that we carry around with us. And this history is related to our techniques and the ability to activate our muscles to perform exercises ‘RIGHT’. And it is also related to effort and emotion. For a lot of us, our history of effort and emotion has come from being yelled at and told to do sprints or pushups as a young kid playing football/netball/basketball whatever. So applying real ‘force’ in training is a pretty simple idea for us – our ‘coaches’ yelled at us when we were young hence we understand that sometimes you just have to ‘PUSH’ as hard as you can. I understand though that a lot of people have never, ever experienced this. For me I learned this at footy training back in Under 10’s – our coach was ‘OLD SCHOOL’ (and given this was 25 years ago, you can imagine what ‘Old School’ might have meant!) – and thought nothing of making us do sprints/pushups/whatevers in the cold and rain in the middle of winter. We all quickly learned that there was no fooling him when it came to ‘EFFORT’ – you either gave it everything or we all did it again. I can’t remember what I thought of it all at the time but certainly the lessons learned have lasted forever.
What I see in the gym is some really dedicated people – they attend sessions three, four, five times every week. They eat ‘well’ (which might mean they don’t eat enough food but they don’t live on ‘junk’) yet don’t quite progress at the same rate other people do. They are training ‘well’…but they don’t quite understand how to train ‘hard’. The missing element is a little bit of emotion – they are training consistently and training ‘well’ – but they haven’t quite learned how to train with real emotion or how to really ‘embrace’ the feeling of pushing through physical barriers.
I often say to people “You don’t like the bag, the bag doesn’t like you’. This means hit it as hard as you might if you were in a fight. If you haven’t been in a fight – and I am sure there are some people out there who haven’t – you need to use a little bit of imagination/emotion and hit the bag AS HARD AS YOU CAN. Or imagine shoving someone in the chest AS HARD AS YOU CAN. The same thing when you have a barbell in your hand/on your back. When you are lifting it, lift it with some real SPEED and POWER. Don’t squat all the way down and then ‘inch’ your way upwards – DRIVE up with power and speed. I’ll say that again – DRIVE UP WITH POWER and SPEED. You need to get yourself ‘mentally ready’ (emotionally ready??) to lift the bar as ‘HARD’ as you can. If you are lifting it slowly – DON’T! Get your brain in gear – get an emotional response ready and when you are pressing the bar above your head, don’t ‘lift it’ – PUNCH the SKY. Drive the bar upwards with POWER and SPEED. When I say ‘Unleash the Fury’ it means exactly that – find some emotion and push/pull/punch using that emotion.
Now – please don’t think I mean ‘abandon technique and just chuck stuff around fast’…because I don’t. You still need to remain focussed on doing things ‘right’ – hips locked, back straight, shoulders set etc – but you can’t just slowly lift the bar. It has to be a ‘summoning’ of all the effort in your body, count 1-2-3 then GO with FULL power. If you ‘lift’ the bar you might find you make some slow progress and – in time – feel confident enough to increase your weights. If you ‘DRIVE’ the bar with all the power you have, you will quickly find you progress through the weights quickly – you will quickly find that the changes in your body composition you have been ‘waiting for’ are happening ‘all of a sudden’. The same for your boxing – don’t ‘punch’ the bag, drive your fists through it. Don’t ride the bike – set yourself a target (500m this minute is a good one – or even start by aiming for 400m) regardless of what it says on the wall and get after it.
It is a tough line we walk at times as coaches. We want everyone to be doing things ‘right’ and want to try to be encouraging and supportive. But there are times when what people NEED (not what they want) is a little bit of “C’MON” – a little but of “Again, Faster/Harder/Stronger” in order to get it done. Drive your own bus – train with effort and intensity, train with speed and power.
See you in the gym,
Michael.
P.S. If you are looking for the foam roller link for the 28-Days Later challenge, it is down with the ‘Link of the week’!
p.p.s. For those people who asked me for some football skills stuff for their kids, I uploaded the first video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npPcl13UFss . I have a few more of these planned out and ready to go…not sure on whether I will push ahead with them or not but we will see.
Thanks to everyone who dressed up on Friday the 13th. There were some amazing costumes worn in and this week I will be putting up a voting sheet so we can work out who the prize winner is.
To the people out there who went the ‘whole hog’ (and by that, I mean make-up!) – specifically Jess Smith, James O’Neil, Kat Saxon, Celine Hadad, Duane Ahukaha, Jess Hughes, Shelley Nodwell and Selma Hadad (and I think that is everyone who ‘wore the paint’) then a huge congratulations…
Two weeks in and all is well. Congratulations to everyone who has managed to get everything done so far – I think we are still a fair way short in terms of Instagram photos from last week…if you haven’t finished that challenge then be sure to do it TODAY (it literally takes two minutes). Further to that, your words may help someone else – things that you have learned (and there is some great stuff up there – just search instagram for the hashtag ‘#28dayslaterchallenge’ to read it all) might be just the thing to help someone else start on a pathway to healthier eating.
Anyway, enough about last week! The new ‘EXTRAS’ video is up on YouTube – check the link here for what you need to do in week 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWYNaHR46E8
Happy to help with any questions you might have…but ONLY if you have watched the video first. This might be me just being petty but even simple 5 minute videos take a couple of hours to put together and publish – but only 5-minutes to watch.
We have had one treadmill out of action for some-time now…and unfortunately it has a blown IO board which is replaceable but at a cost of more than $2500. As such, a new treadmill will be arriving this Tuesday to replace it…so we will be back at a full complement of 6 (Six) treadies again.
Apologies for the delay in arranging the replacement/repair however when costs hit those levels I do need to be careful to manage our cashflow appropriately.
We have been lucky enough to become stockists of both Rebel Coffee (http://rebelcoffeeco.com.au) and Blue Dinosaur Bars (https://www.bluedinosaur.com.au) in the last couple of weeks. Be sure to give the products a try – they are amazing tasting, high quality and (well, depending on your thoughts on caffeine!) pretty darn good for you. The Blue Dinosaur Bars are $4 each – the Rebel Coffee is $15/250g…
We have some new hand-wraps on the way…and new Quick Wraps. The wraps will be available in a couple of new colours – Lime Green and Orange – so be sure to check them out when they arrive this week.
We have also ordered some “different” backpacks for our 12-month membership packs. These are a little bigger/more expensive than the sling bags and feature the newish ‘boxer’ logo you will have seen on the back of the trainer shirts…just something different really so that people who renew their membership year after year get a little bit of variation in their ‘goodies bag’.
On top of all that, we have some new Round 1 Caps on the way…should be here around the end of the month. These will also feature the new logo!
Every year we run an AFL Dream Team competition and this year is no different. Well – it is no different in that we are running a league…it will be different in that I will WIN! Regardless of that, the League has been created and if you are interested in joining our code is FAN9U7RV. The league (oddly enough) is called Round 1 Fitness. There are 20 spots in the current league – if you miss out, send me a quick email and I will start up a second competition…
DreamTeam crazies might appreciate this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IenTMfgcADM
As mentioned over the last couple of weeks, some new bikes – Assault Air Bikes – will be in the gym soon. These will replace EIGHT (8) of the Keiser M3 Spin Bikes (we will be keeping 4 for people who want to do some spinning). We are hoping to sell off the Keisers – if you are interested in a spin bike for home, please send me an email to info@round1fitness.com.au. So far we have potential homes for all eight bikes but I am sure a couple of people will pull out so if you are keen please let me know. With regards pricing, I saw a spin bike with no screen (no access to rpms, distance etc) advertised through Nordic for $1295 yesterday…admittedly that is brand new but without the monitoring gauges how would you even know how much work you have done??? The keisers will be available for a lot less than that (around $400 should be enough based on current interest) so let me know if you are interested.
OK. I have been banging on about this for AGES and we now have 50 people registered in our team. Which is AWESOME. But I think we can do better than that. Now we have reached the magical number of 50, the Spartan Race Team have given us a 10% off code to help attract MORE registrations…if you are keen to have a go – or have registered but have a friend who is keen to be part of our team – then please send me a note (info@round1fitness.com.au) and I will send you through the discount code.
To register, go to http://spartanrace.com.au/event/perth-sprint-18-april-2015
Our team name is ‘Round 1 Fitness’ – choose the ‘Intermediate’ category. The team password is ‘speedball’.
Email info@round1fitness.com.au if you have registered so I can try and keep track of things!
Anyone who has been to Grill’d would know that each time you order they give you a ‘bottletop’ – you put the bottletop into one of three containers to indicate which community organisation you would like to support. This month one of the options is Cockburn Basketball Association – who provide a great facility for everyone in Cockburn (from the young to the elite to the old!) to get active and have some fun playing basketball. Plus they are great friends of all of us at Round 1.
If you are wondering which of the three ‘tubs’ to drop your bottletop into, please think about supporting Cockburn Basketball.
Perkville is awesome. It is a rewards scheme that gives you ‘credit’ in the gym for every time you pay for your membership/every time you scan your membership card at the front counter. You can then turn that ‘credit’ into TANKS classes, InBody Scans, Personal Training, Protein, new Boxing Gloves etc – whatever you want really!
Signing up really is simple – go to www.perkville.com , enter the same email address that you have registered at the gym and everything else is done for you.
Free stuff at the gym just for turning up? Sounds alright to me!
OK. Link of the week time. First off, here are the foam roller links I promised the people doing the 28-Days Later challenge:
1/. The ‘words’: http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/what-is-a-foam-roller-how-do-i-use-it-and-why-does-it-hurt
2/. The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJLxruO3su0
Next one? Well, you can complain about the hot or complain about the cold or complain that you are too tired or too busy or too ‘whatever’…but if you want great results you need to set aside negative thoughts and just get on with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5StAlj3EAf8 (Mind you, those ‘sled push pushup’ things at the end are crazy!).
Michael.
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