Hi and welcome to another week,
Firstly – if you wanted to register for our City to Surf team, the wrong link went out in my email. Here is the correct one:
That link will enable you to enter directly into the Round 1 Fitness team. We had our first training session last Saturday morning at 8am – the plan is (numbers permitting) to run together every week at that time in the lead-up to the event on August 30th. We had a great – if very quiet – first session and I can promise you that if you come along to the running club each Saturday AND complete 2x Boxing classes every week, you will happily get to the end of the 12km event in a couple of months time. The sense of achievement you get from completing the running program and finishing the Fun Run this will be unbelievable so jump in with both feet and get involved.
Our classes have undergone their first ‘major’ change in a couple of years in the past week with the introduction of the ‘Advanced’ and ‘Beginners’ option at each station. Now the idea here is to give everyone a pathway to ‘success’ as they go through the session – for example pushups on the rings might be beyond you at the moment, but ‘normal’ pushups on your knees might be fine…in that case, you take the ‘B’ (or Beginners) option for that station/movement. Now – you should WANT to do the ‘A’ (advanced) option if you can. You should want to really give the ‘A’ option a go if you can – particularly if you have been at the gym for a while – and taking option ‘B’ because it is ‘easier’ is not really the idea…taking the ‘B’ option should be because you are still ‘getting started’ or are genuinely still developing the strength to complete the ‘Advanced’ options.
So far it seems to be working really well with everyone taking a realistic approach to the sessions – taking the ‘tougher’ options wherever possible and ‘backing off’ to the ‘B’ option only when there is no other option. The only exception to this behaviour seems to have been on the cardio stations (particularly the bikes) when a lot of people have been taking the ‘Beginners’ path. Remember, you should WANT to do the harder option (I think I already said this! J ) so only back off to the Beginners option on the cardio if you are new/coming up to speed or perhaps recovering from injury. The scaling options are not designed to give everyone an easy way out of their bike sprints/conditioning efforts…that isn’t the idea at all.
I guess the question that can be asked is ‘WHY’ – why have we done this? The first answer is that it is something that has been in the ‘plans’ for almost 6-months now – but we have held off because of a concern that not ‘everything’ can be scaled – or, rather that if we try and scale ‘everything’ the classes will end up consisting only of pushups, situps and (air) squats. Which sounds a bit boring to me. But then in the recent member feedback survey, we received comments from more than a dozen people that the sessions are ‘so much harder’ now than they used to be – which is probably true…after all, we have a lot more gear now and we have a lot more fit and experienced members now…and to keep pushing them we have had to keep ‘pushing’ the programming. But when we have regulars saying that they just ‘dread’ coming back after a month long holiday because of how ‘HARD’ the classes will be, it makes you wonder exactly how daunting the ‘normal’ classes are for new people who have just walked through the door, or people trying to transition from Beginners sessions to ‘normal’ classes.
I want everyone – all of us at the gym want everyone – to leave feeling good about themselves, to leave with a sense of achievement about the work they have completed. If the session consists of a series of activities that – despite your best efforts – just proved too difficult to complete, then where is the achievement? Where is the sense of satisfaction if all you can think about is they times you tried and failed? THIS – this is why the option ‘A’ / ‘B’ structure has been implemented. The changes aren’t to make things ‘easier’ or give everyone a ‘way out’ – it is enable everyone to really work at their own level, to ‘UP’ their level in stages if necessary (go to option ‘A’ for cardio but stay at option ‘B’ for ABS for example) and to be able to leave the gym feeling like they have done EVERYTHING they can to the best of their ability right throughout the session.
Good luck!
See you in the gym,
Michael.
We have just made a pretty big investment in a new rehab/pre-hab solution from BlackRoll (http://blackroll.com.au). Whilst there is nothing ‘wrong’ with the ‘standard’ foam rollers we have always offered in the gym, they do become ‘squishy’ quite quickly and this really stops them from doing the job they are supposed to do as well as they should do it. The BlackRoll equipment is German-manufactured from re-cycled materials and is a real ‘step-up’ from the current equipment.
In addition to offering a wider variety of rollers for everyone to use, there will also be massage balls and massage duo-balls available for everyone.
The City to Surf is coming up soon – 30th August is GO TIME. For anyone interested in running the 12km event, we will be starting up a running club on SATURDAY mornings at 8am (immediately after TANKS). The program will go for 30-minutes for the first 4-5 weeks and will then extend to 45 minutes.
In the past with running club, we have gone to some ‘different’ venues to mix things up – this time we will be primarily based at Round 1 but will add in two extended runs throughout the program.
No need to book – all you need to do is ‘show up’ at Round 1 at 8am this Saturday and we will be hitting the road (and park!).
Please note that the Running Club program is for Round 1 members only.
Seems like most people are doing pretty well on their zone diet so far. Pretty much everyone I have spoken too has made an adjustment of some kind – one block more or less, moving a block from dinner to lunch or from a snack to breakfast – in order to optimise the way that they are feeling and their body composition. This is PERFECT – it is exactly what should be happening. You start off with a consistent ‘base level’ – and then make changes to support the individual aspects of your life.
See it through to the end – two weeks to go – and the results will be there for you.
Week 4 sees a continuation of our linear progressions. We are getting to the half-way point of these progressions so this week I am happy for you to ‘push’ the envelope a little if you have been finding ANY of the exercises a little easy. For example, if you are ‘easily’ completing your bench press reps, don’t go up by 2.5kg – go up by 10kg and really ‘reset’ your starting point. As noted on Facebook last week, if you have any exercise questions, please ASK them rather than making ‘guesses’ when you get to the gym. And if you can’t find the Round 1 YouTube demos, well – the link to our YouTube page can be found at the bottom of our internet homepage (www.round1fitness.com.au) together with our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Remember to keep your training log UP-TO-DATE. This means, update it EVERY SESSION. We are in a linear phase at the moment and in order to progress you actually need to know EXACTLY (EXACTLY) what you did in the sessions previous…store the info IN GOOGLE DOCS and ON YOUR PHONE and reference/update it when you are training…don’t wait until two days later and try to remember. Further, as of now I want you to SHARE that training log back with me so I can look at it whenever I like. Right click on your log, select the ‘SHARE’ option and enter my email address – mpratt@round1fitness.com.au – and in that way I can check your progress.
A couple of big upsets this week caused havoc in the tipping. Carlton beat Port and Melbourne beat Geelong – and not a single person in the comp managed to get either one right.
There is a slight change on the leader board – we now have a boy in the top 4…the girls (Dani, Shelby and Michelle) remain 1-2-3 but Paul O’Connor has pushed up into 4th place just one off the lead.
A Dream Team disaster for me this week – and really, who cares about anyone else. Apart from having half my side not play due to the bye, I ended up with both a 15 (Gunston) and a 20 (McIntosh) amongst the 13 players I actually had…and then my captain got concussed and wore the vest for the second half…
Anyway – I am out of love with Dream Team. For anyone who had a good week, good for you. I am not even going to CHECK the scores, let alone write about them. And yes – I am a sore loser.
Full E:60 segment (13 minutes so apologies for the length) on recently crowned NBA champ Steph Curry. Great story – too small in high school, not recruited to a major college…now MVP of the league and part of this years championship team.
Well worth the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaV5082XQ7Q
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