Hi and welcome to another week,
It has been a couple of weeks since I last blogged – so a big thankyou to all of our members and everyone who has come into the gym to support us during that period of time. I am (obviously) biased but I think the classes have been just amazing – for me, seeing Round One’ers performing so amazingly well at the Crossfit competition up at the showgrounds this week end has been a great testament to the program that we run. Now I have finished patting myself and the rest of the team on the back, I wanted to offer a super special congratulations to Christine Ross-Davies, Kerri Limmer and Taima Komene. These three amazing ladies made up ¾’s of the Western Australian ladies Masters Crossfit team which last weekend won the national title in the competition held in Melbourne. Of course, the three of them backed it up this weekend by winning the masters division in the Three vs Three contest…pretty darned impressive really (though I hate them really for making me feel I need to be doing ‘more’!).
Last weekend I missed blogging as I spent the weekend in Sydney attending the ‘Crossfit Football’ coaching seminar. Now, I have heard a lot of “I don’t like crossfit and I don’t like football” and “I don’t play football – why is that important” type comments so let me first try and explain what it is about. The word “FOOTBALL” is really a pseudonym for ‘SPORT’ or ‘ATHLETE’ training – it is called ‘FOOTBALL’ because the guy who heads up the program (John Welbourn) played in the NFL for 10 years. So essentially it is a training program for developing speed and power that can be USED rather than just getting bigger, stronger and ‘fitter’. Moving fast and developing ‘real’ strength – from core outwards – was the focus of the training.
Whilst there was a lot of stuff that we went through and a lot that I learned over the two days of the seminar (not least of which is that if you are 44 and trying to keep up with a group of 24 year olds you are going to be sore when you finish!) I wanted to focus on a few of the coaching points that were continually stressed to us throughout the weekend.
1/. Every. Rep. Counts.
I know this sounds super obvious but the way the lecturers insisted on ‘perfect’ reps was pretty impressive. They insisted on it – and the words “fix it, fix it” were heard all weekend long. Sure, showing up is half the battle but you just have to do things properly – and if you KNOW you lean forward on your squat then you need to take some responsibility for monitoring and maintaining your own form…the coaches need to coach you (of course they do) but the results will be yours – good results from doing things well and not so good from just ‘doing’ them. Taking short-cuts just to ‘finish’ your set of ten (10) or however many it is wont get you where you want to go.
2/. Stress to progress.
I must have heard this 10000 times over the weekend – ‘You have to stress to progress’. Now, to be fair, the guys running the course usually used this catch-phrase in terms of ‘weight’…but if you think about it for more than one second you can see it applies in so many areas. It might be in ‘making’ yourself hold that top speed on the assault bike for 20 seconds rather than 15 seconds. It might mean making that top speed 75 rpm instead of 70! It might mean getting up early on Saturday morning to get the 7:15am class done before dashing off to kids sport/Christmas shopping. It might mean spending time cooking a meal on Sunday evening rather than resorting to takeaway food. If you want to move forward, you have to move out of your comfort zone.
3/. Get your chilli HOT!
If you want to train, be READY to go. As Luke (@mcquilkin) said to me on Sunday morning – “get your chilli hot – there is nothing more important than the pre-warmup warmup!’. I can see a few of the 12pm/1pm’ers laughing as I type this – I often roll out of my ‘office’ into the gym just a moment or so before (or after!) the designated session start time, but there is no doubt that if you spend the first 15 minutes of a 45’ish minute session just ‘getting moving’ then you are not maximising your performance. 10 minutes of skipping, rowing, stretching (or whatever) before ‘GO’ is 10-minutes well spent.
4/. Not how you look – but how you FEEL and how you MOVE.
We are all different body types and shapes and aspiring to see a reflection that is 5kg lighter or has more muscular legs or a flat stomach are not really ‘training’ goals. Let go of that stuff. Train to be a bad-ass who can move fast and lift heavy stuff. You can’t train to lose 5kgs (even though losing 5kgs might just happen as a result of your training) but you CAN train to run/ride/row faster or squat/bench-press/press heavier. So focus on what you can control – train and enjoy the outcomes of that effort – enjoy being strong, enjoy moving fast and well, enjoy the things your body is capable of that you just know that not only your friends couldn’t do, but you couldn’t even do 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 (or however) long ago when you were at your ‘peak’.
5/. Train fast, be fast!
Another one I heard ALL weekend – train fast to be fast. You could add another million and one catch-phrases to this one (the word ‘explode’ seemed to feature in a lot of them) but it all boiled down to one simple instruction – get yourself ‘ready to go’ – and if you need to take time in your setup, take time in your setup – but when you go, there should be no second guessing, you need to go like you have been fired out of a gun. A lot of the lifting we did on the weekend was ‘heavy’ but within the range of weights I like to think I can ‘manage’ – the challenge came in forcing myself to ‘shift’ the load as fast as I possibly could. And then do the next rep even faster than that. I just KNOW that this style of training really shocked and challenged my body (I swear I haven’t been so sore since forever) and am looking forward to seeing if I can maintain my focus on ‘speed’ outside of the confines of the course.
That’s about it. All up, I learned a tonne of stuff and will be trying to implement some of it at Round 1 to benefit all of you. Please remember, if exercises that you used to think were ‘easy’ have been slightly ‘changed’ and are now hard again – well, that’s good. You have to stress to progress! Think of it in those terms – the tougher the exercise, the more effort needed, the better the benefit to you in the long term!
See you in the gym,
Michael.
There are a heap of people from the gym who have all signed up for the Movember fundraising – so if you see some particularly ‘dirty’ looking moustaches around the place it is not (well, not NECESSARILLY!) a fashion statement but an effort to raise awareness and funds for Mens Health.
If you are interested in donating we would LOVE to have you – the gym’s fundraising site can be found here:
http://moteam.co/round-1-fitness
We will be finishing off our MOVEMBER efforts with a special “MAN’S WORKOUT” in the usual Body Work timeslot on Saturday, November 28th. I actually have no idea what we will be doing in this workout but I envisage us coming up with as many ‘manly’ activities as we can…perhaps dis-assembling a carburettor followed by using a remote control to change all of the tv channels to different games of football. Or something.
A belated congratulations to everyone out there who had a go at the October challenge – and in particular to everyone who slogged it out and got to the end. I know a few people who still made the 21 classes + stuck to their diet/sleep plans despite interruptions through holidays/work trips etc and just want to let you know I think you are just AMAZING – I really thought just getting through the ‘bare minimum’ to finish the challenge was going to finish me for good…pretty proud to have made it to the end though.
Our next challenge will be the traditional ’12-days of Christmas’ challenge. As usual with challenges in December we will not be including food/alcohol restrictions but will be looking to create a fun challenge that has everyone hitting the beach/pool over the Christmas break in tip-top shape!
There have been a few changes in the gym recently with some new gear going in both upstairs and downstairs.
Upstairs we have replaced all of the cables on the cable based machines AND re-upholstered all of the benches that were showing signs of splitting and cracking (and a couple of them were a bit worse than that). We are also working on getting a new Multi-Press (http://www.lifefitness.com.au/product/multi-press-osmp/) upstairs to try and further facilitate the use of that area for people looking to perform either hypertrophy work or REHAB based training. This will result in the removal of the incline bench press (and potentially the bench press – don’t stress, there are several of these available downstairs!!!) which should really help in terms of the space available there as well.
Downstairs there are some new 15kg ‘ladies’ Olympic bars which have already been getting a good workout as well as some new 10kg bumpers from Technique (http://techniquestrength.com.au/).
We also have installed a new uppercut shield from RingSport (http://www.ringsport.com.au/) which seems great…it has a different filling to the foam used in the Jim Bradley shields and I am hoping to get a little more longevity from this bag – time will tell.
In case you have been hiding under a rock, you would have noticed we are having some ongoing problems with our Assault Air Bikes. We are continuing to work with the suppliers on fixing these issues. The two bikes that have been marked as ‘Out of Order’ for a few weeks now are waiting on the arrival of a specific tool to enable us to replace the ‘bottom bracket bearing’. Please be patient with us as we work to get these back online.
As mentioned a little while back, when the current Beach Bodies cycle finishes we will be doing a ‘1-rep max’ testing day in the gym. This is scheduled for November 29th (a Sunday) and the plan is to test the maxes as follows:
– 12pm Bench Press
– 1pm Squat
– 2pm Overhead Press
– 3pm Deadlift
For everyone who has jumped into a Body Work class, Tanks class or No Rules class and had ‘no idea’ what to set the barbell at for their strength set, well, this might be the day for you. If I am super motivated we might even cook a few burgers throughout the day!
If you are interested in testing, please let me know by return mail to info@round1fitness.com.au. In addition to the testing listed above, we will also be giving people the chance to test their 500m row AND their 30calorie assault bike throughout the day.
Here we go – Beach Training day number ONE will be on Sunday December 7th and will kick off at 09:30am. Our plan is to spend 60-minutes or so doing a beach workout and then follow-up with a bbq and a bit of a get together from 11am. We will be meeting down at C.Y. O’Connor beach (there is a grassed area where the kids can play plus a couple of bbq’s)…save the date, get along and lets have some fun in the workout then spend a bit of time enjoying one another’s company.
Week 11 is up and we are NEARLY at the end. Please grit your teeth HARD and try to get yourself through to the end – there are only 3 weeks to go (including this one). Now is NOT the time to drop the weights back down – just keep pushing, pushing hard to the end – you will be a stronger, faster athlete just by staying the course.
Here is a link to the Crossfit Football site relating to the course I attended last weekend and mentioned in the opening section of the blog. As noted, we have modified our ‘Strength Program of the Week’ to reflect the ‘AMATEUR’ progression followed by the Crossfoot Football site…so if you are keen to get a big stronger – and have 15-20 minutes before/after a boxing class – grab yourself a barbell and a squat rack and get started!
You guys might also like this video by Will Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3CRdPHDCC0
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