Hi and welcome to another week,
First up – apologies for missing the blog last week. Between a Sunday spent Body Scanning and a Monday running classes followed by building Assault Bikes, I simply ran out of weekend! I am sitting here typing this on Saturday night (I have a busy Sunday with Little Athletics, Round 1 and Marshall’s 13th birthday) which I hope shows that I have learnt my lesson – get more organised!
It is hard to write this week without writing about the amazing achievements recorded by so many people who completed the 28-Days Later Challenge. With a few weigh-ins still pending we are pushing 300kgs of weight loss averaging out at nearly 4kgs per person. Outstanding. And all through following a simple regime of three (3) gym sessions per week, no bread, no alcohol and no added sweeteners in their food. Personally I was very happy with my own results – my weight only went down by 400g – but I did drop nearly a kilo of fat and added as much in muscle. Not only that, I just feel ‘BETTER’. Sugar and sweeteners really should be ‘sometimes’ foods!
Reading back through the last paragraph, I referred to the 28-Days later regime as ‘Simple’. I guess it is true – the rules were simple – but please don’t confuse ‘Simple’ with ‘EASY’. Anytime you commit to doing something and give it all you have got, it is not easy. For me going without alcohol for 28 days was definitely a hard challenge – I don’t really drink a lot but a couple of drinks a couple of times each week is a pretty ingrained habit and going without was tough. I know a lot of other people have told their stories about missing things as diverse as yoghurt (contains sweeteners), diet coke (sweeteners) and tomato sauce (yep – sweeteners) but also how the results of their ‘sacrifice’ have shown both on the scales and in their day to day positive outlook.
Simple is not ‘Easy’. When it comes to managing your life, sometimes the ‘simple’ answers are the hardest ones to honour. For example, you realise that you have been inconsistent in getting to the gym is a challenge due to a busy life – and when you look at the timetable you just stare at that 5am time-slot and KNOW it is the answer to your problem. “I know – I will train at 5am”. Simple right? Until the alarm goes off at 4:15am and all of a sudden that simple answer isn’t quite as ‘EASY’ as it seemed. It is HARD to follow through – but if you really want the results you say you do, you CAN do it.
Want another example? You are trying to lose that ‘last 5 kilos’ (you know, the hard 5 that all of us are battling with) and decide to have a real go at a genuine ‘TABATA’ lifting program. 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off doing front squats (or barbell thrusters if you are a real ‘ideas man’) for FOUR (4) minutes. Eight efforts, Four Minutes. That is pretty simple. And apparently it is one of the great ‘fat stripping routines’ ever – so let’s give that a go. So you set up the rack, get under the bar and press ‘GO’. And with two minutes gone and 50 something reps in the rear-view mirror, all of the reasons why the routine isn’t being done by ‘everyone’ become really clear in your mind. And you resolve not to finish. And you resolve NOT to quit. And you resolve NEVER to do it again. And then your 10-seconds rest is over and you have a decision to make – you know the answer to your goal is to pick up the bar and get moving again…but it is just so HARD. Just like the 5am classes, how much do you really (really!) want it? Because if you want it, you can do it!
The rules of the challenge were simple – and some people posted amazing results. But this scenario is true so many times in life – how many times have you listened to sports commentators on television talk about sport ‘x’ being a ‘simple game’? – but doing the basics, the simple, fundamental basics, consistently and well is really hard. People always talk in the same way about managing your diet, your training, your life – about how ‘SIMPLE’ it should be. How SIMPLE it is to get your food prepped, your training done, get to work on time. But again, simple isn’t EASY. If it was EASY to drop weight, everyone would be walking down the beach with six-pack abs. If it was EASY to gain muscle, everyone would have shoulders like Arnold. But it isn’t easy. The answers to the questions are SIMPLE – but following through on the work is HARD.
Challenge or no challenge, if you want results in the gym they are honestly yours to take – and you probably already know what you need to do to achieve them. The answers are SIMPLE – you know what they are. But simple doesn’t mean easy – hard work and commitment is where results come from.
See you in the gym,
Michael.
p.s. The details of the Tabata lifting program can be found in Dan John’s awesome book ‘Never Let Go’. If you want to read it – and I would recommend it to everyone – you can get a copy here: http://www.amazon.com.au/Never-Let-Go-Philosophy-Learning-ebook/dp/B0051GOM66 We have been using a lot of Dan’s ‘stuff’ at Round 1 since opening the gym back in 2010.
Whilst I mentioned the 28-Days Later challenge, I just wanted to add a special congratulations to everyone who participated. Whether you managed to get to the end or not, good on you for having a go – contemplating a month without alcohol/bread/sweeteners is not easy and just giving it a crack is a great effort.
Our next scheduled challenge will be a ‘Get it Done’ t-shirt challenge and is planned for APRIL – I am still working through the plan but in principle it will be a 30/50 challenge. The idea will be that you will have 30 days to complete 20 classes + 50 reps of a series of exercises. The plan will be set up so that you can complete all of the extras with an extra 30 minutes per week on top of your classes. Anyway, let’s how how it all looks when it is finished.
For everyone who is registered for the SPARTAN Race on April 18th (and don’t forget to order your shirts from TeeSpring HERE: http://teespring.com/round1fitness-spartan2015 – they look amazing and there is only 9 days left to order) we will be conducting training session number 1 at Anning Park next SUNDAY morning at 8am. The session will be finished by 9am so anyone who wanted to get their SPARTA on then head down to the gym to do the 9:15am session can do so.
The plan at this stage is to run a session next week, another on Sunday 29th before trying to get some time at the Rhino Obstacle Park on the weekend of April 11th/12th…
We will do some running, some monkey bars, some rope climbs…just a few things that will help you get through when raceday rolls around.
If you haven’t registered for our Spartan Race team, there is STILL TIME. It is going to be awesome. We will ALL be doing it together as a team and helping one another through it…and we might even maybe head out for a sneaky beer afterwards!
Just a reminder that for the duration of the 2015 Crossfit Open we will be doing each of the WOD’s as they are announced each Friday night at 7pm. The workouts have been both a great challenge AND a lot of fun so far…our plans are to head out to dinner together after the workout this coming Friday night. If you are interested, just get to the gym in time for a 7pm start on Friday night.
The new Backpacks are in, the new Backpacks are in. For anyone who has been waiting patiently for the bag that goes with their 12-month pack, please let me know.
Remember, you can now take your membership pack as ‘Perkville’ points rather than ‘just the pack’ if you like. You will receive 1100 points at sign-up which you can then use on PT, Body Scans, Gloves, Wraps, whatever you want. So for people who ‘don’t want the bag’ or whatever, don’t feel you have to miss out. Just swap over your ‘pack’ for ‘points’ so you can take full advantage. If you still haven’t joined Perkville, I just don’t understand why! It is free. You get points for every dollar you spend on your membership. You get points every time you come to the gym. The points can be converted to vouchers that you can spend at Round 1…go to www.perkville.com and get on it!
What else? As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we now have both ORANGE and Lime-Green wraps available for sale in the gym (as well as all of our other colours!). The next arrival will be some new snap-back style caps that should be here within the next week or so.
I have started up a NEW Footy Tipping league for 2015. So whilst in past years your membership to the Round 1 competition has just ‘Rolled Over’, this year if you want to be in you will have to rejoin. The league name is Round 1 Fitness 2015 and the link to join is HERE: http://www.footytips.com.au/comps/Round_1_Fitness_2015
The password for the league is ‘speedball’.
Good luck everyone!
A bit self-indulgent but if you haven’t seen our latest members profiles, you really should have a quick read. Pretty inspiring stories from Paul (this week) and Flick (last week):
https://round1fitness.com.au/rn_profile/paul-artis
https://round1fitness.com.au/rn_profile/felicity-thompson-flick
Once you have checked out the profiles, have a look at this amazing article from Juggernaut related to knee pain:
http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2015/02/24/patellofemoral-pain-part-1-putting-research-rehab/
Michael.
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