Hi and welcome to another week,
Thanks (and congratulations I hope) to everyone who managed to grab one of the 10-sessions for $79 passes. Hopefully the sessions will help you get right into the swing of your training and by the time the weather starts warming up you are ‘ready’ for a really good run at getting in shape for summer! What’s next? Well, the ‘Crazy 88 Challenge’ is next and that starts tomorrow (August 3rd). For anyone/everyone who has already signed up, I have your sheets in the gym ready and waiting for you…for those of you who haven’t, well – Get on it! The challenges are a great way to remain focussed and motivated right throughout the month!
Just wanted to really (really) quickly talk about a couple of habits today that – whilst they wont get you through the challenge, they will help you get the absolute most ‘bang for your buck’ in terms of outcomes from your training. The first ‘habit’ is both the simplest and the hardest thing you can do – take every exercise through a full range of motion.
We have been Nazis with regards to pushups and squats for a long time now – get your chest to the ground for your push-ups means ‘the ground’. And it doesn’t mean ‘flop’ your whole body to the ground – it means touch your chest to the ground – the only think touching the floor in fact should be your toes (or knees! ☺ ), your hands and your chest. Squat down below parallel (and stand ALL the way back up). When you press, get the bar right up overhead with elbows past your ears. Touch your chest to the rings doing fence pulls (body rows) or get your chest to the bar when doing pull-ups. Fully extend when you hit the bags and make sure that you are balanced with your feet ‘set’. The list of exercises goes on and on and I am sure you can all think of an exercise where you aren’t fully extending and just by doing ‘full’ reps you could really transform your results – you will find that all of a sudden ‘5’ reps go from being a breeze to a real ‘push’ and you will benefit because of this.
Now that you are going through the full range of motion, it is time to focus on that second habit – speed. When you hit the bags, hit them HARD. You don’t like the bag, it doesn’t like you – hit it as HARD AS YOU CAN. ‘Drive-up’ when you squat and do a push-up – get from the bottom to the top as fast as possible. Move with speed and focussed EFFORT for each exercise. It is great to have fun when you are training but do it BETWEEN exercises – have a laugh and a joke by all means but when it is time to ‘GO’, GO! Focus on completing the movements with as much speed and effort as possible…have a laugh with the person next to you when you are done and then go all over again. Sprint with the sled. Drive your legs HARD on the rowers. Move with speed and intensity throughout.
Don’t be scared of doing just a little bit extra – this is habit number three (3). When the session is over – or before it begins, don’t be afraid to do just a little bit more. We make this easy for you with our one-percenter program but – let’s be honest – nothing is ever ‘easy’ after a session and NONE of us (and I mean, NO-ONE!) wants to do an extra set of lunges/squats/pull-ups or whatever at the end of a class. Do them ANYWAY…all of those little efforts – just 2-3 minutes each day – add up to a LOT OF WORK by the time a month is done. If you do three sessions per week and do the one-percenter at the end of each day, by the end of the month you would have done the equivalent of an extra 45 minutes of training. That’s an entire extra session. By the end of the year, you would have done the equivalent of TWELVE (12) extra sessions just by doing your 1%’ers.
That is amazing. 2-3 minutes per session (assuming 3 per week!) is equal to an extra session every month which is equal to an extra TWELVE (12) sessions every year. And this is just from finding an extra couple of minutes each time you are in. If you need to race off after the session (and we all have those days), ask the trainer before the class what the 1%’er of the day is and do it before hand instead…you do have time. One other thing – when it comes to a ‘little bit extra’, one ‘extra’ that can be a lot of value is to spend a couple of extra minutes stretching down or rolling out…after all, if you arrive at your next session ‘ready to go’ because you have done the prep, then you will get all the more out of it!
Let’s face it. We all have good stuff and not so good stuff that we do every day – and that is just in relation to our health, fitness and body composition goals let alone all of the work, family, social, personal dev, financial and every other thing we all have going on. And no-one is ever going to be perfect. Ever. These three little habits – go through a full-range of motion, move with ‘speed’ and do a little bit ‘extra’ – are just three simple and easy things that we can all do within the confines of our current training schedules. You don’t need more time, you don’t need any new equipment, you don’t need anything except a little bit of focus and concentration during each session and some real ‘determination’ to do the extras when the end of the session comes and you are ‘done’.
Good luck,
See you in the gym,
Michael.
As mentioned at the top, our next challenge is scheduled for the month of August – the ‘Crazy 88’ challenge. The challenge is a classes based challenge and involves the following:
There are no real ‘tricks’ here – there are 20 classes to complete (in 28 days) and a few extras to get done. The only rule with the extras is that once you start work on the ‘88’ you must FINISH them. You don’t (for example) need to do 88 pushups in a row – but once you start your 88 you need to finish ALL of them before you can move on. You might do sets of 10, sets of 5 or sets of 2 – it doesn’t matter, as long as they are DONE. The eight exercises involved will be announced on the morning of August 3rd via FACEBOOK (and of course they are on the sign-off sheets).
Finishing the challenge will get you a Round 1 ‘Get it Done’ t-shirt…when you sign up you will also receive access to a Body Scan which you can use either as a ‘Get started’ motivator or as a post-challenge reference point.
The cost of the ‘Crazy 88’ Challenge is $25 and you can sign up either at Reception or via the following web-link:
Crazy 88 Challenge Registration
For anyone who has already signed up – your sheets (and scan vouchers) are available from reception!
We will be receiving our next order of Bag Mitts and MMA gloves sometime in the next couple of weeks. The new MMA glove design (no thumb) really is amazing so if you are a fan of that style of glove, given them a go – we only have red in stock right now (black ones on the way) and at $30 they are available at a really good price. Just on the pricing thing, I would encourage you to have a bit of a look around at pricing for these gloves elsewhere – the prices we offer these leather mma gloves for really is pretty amazing.
Our ever popular bag mitts will be back in stock as well – including some limited edition purple/white and blue/canary yellow colours for all of you Freo and West Coast fans. I have seen the colour mock-ups and they look amazing…excited about them being on the shelves. I tried to get some red-white-blue ones as well for all of us Bulldog supporters however the manufacturer said to me that due to the high demand for those colours they are unavailable.
Week 10 of the program has been circulated and we have entered a ‘non-linear’ training phase. Don’t worry – you will still be throwing some heavy bars around but now you will be adding a bit more assistance work to assist in pushing through some of the training plateaus I am sure everyone is experiencing. Whilst it would be nice to think we could just keep adding 2.5kgs to our barbell every week forever, life isn’t quite that simple!
I have been working on a Beach Bodies phase 2 program for anyone who might be interested – please let me know via email if you are keen as the programming effort is significant and I don’t want to spend a heap of time working on things that people don’t want to do! I am trying to set this second phase up as a ‘scaled’ approach which would enable people to maintain a linear progression OR move towards more supportive movements depending on where they are at with their training.
Wow. This week we had a TWENTY-TWO way tie for first. Twenty-two. 22. That is amazing. I am guessing that everyone picked the Hawks game wrong (Tigers won) and the Pies game wrong (Dees won) and went ‘chalk’ the rest of the way. This all meant (of course) that the ladder remained pretty much unchanged with Paul O’Connor holding on to his 2-point lead.
Some BIG Dream Team scores this week with Ash (NeverNeverLand) and Dale (Magpieman) both cracking the 2300 point mark. This has only happened twice this year – to have two people crack the milestone in one week is pretty amazing.
Next week is the last round before finals and the last chance for a couple of coaches to try and extend their season. Lloyd’s team (Gym Gods) is the only team outside the top-8 that can still push its way in – and next week he is head-to-head with Cameron who is one of the teams he could knock out. Other coaches in the firing line are Travis (Yangebup Pigs) and Rocco (Rocco’s Ropes)…though it has to be said that Rocco has a very (VERY) easy draw!
Creed – Get excited. I am trying to organise a movie night so we can all go and see this together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv554B7YHk4
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