Hi and welcome to another week,

Last week of the challenge last week – and for me at least that made getting my training done just a ‘little bit’ easier than it usually is.  There is just something about pushing to achieve something that really helps drive you along and gets you in the gym and training hard.  Congratulations to everyone who managed to complete the challenge – and whilst we’re at it, congrats to anyone who slogged it out in the City to Surf earlier today.  I haven’t entered the event since 2014 but was thinking this afternoon that next year might be a good year to have another go!

Funny weekend for me.  Was my team’s last game of footy yesterday which was one thing – but both of my boys finished their own footy seasons a couple of weeks back and it has been interesting to watch what is happening with them/how they are filling their time without any ‘formal’ sporting commitments to keep them on track.  What it has made me aware of more than anything is exactly how much the world has changed and how dependent we are as parents of ‘organised’ activities to keep the kids moving and how this simply wasn’t an issue confronting my parents when I was growing up.

I am pretty old and when I started school it was in the 1970’s (yep, I told you I was old) and the world was way, way different.  I could write down what feels like 10000000 differences but when I started sketching out this story the main difference was pretty simple – we didn’t have mobile phones, iPads or (in my case) computer games of any sort.  In fact in my house for a couple of years when I was in primary school (or it felt like a couple of years) we didn’t have a tv set and whilst that was a ‘little bit’ strange it really didn’t raise much of an eyebrow when my friends at school were told about it.

My kids these days have all of that stuff – and they are always on the lookout for ‘more’.  (One more thing – when I was a kid, we got presents for our birthday and for Christmas…full stop.  That seems somehow different now as well).  When the kids get up in the morning on the weekends, they USUALLY have a sportining commitment to start getting ready for.  But with all of that ‘done’ for now (at least), the pattern of behaviour seems to be turn on the tv, grab their iPAD or a game console and seemingly ‘settle in’ for the day.  I would like to say that as kids my friends and I were ‘different’ but that isn’t it – given the opportunity we probably would have done the same thing.  But we grew up in a time when Sunday morning television (remember, there was only channel 2, 7 and 9 not the 2000 channels that seem to get piped into my house today) pretty much consisted of religious programming and lawn bowls – neither of which were particularly inspiring to the 10-year old version of me (or my friends).  So we simply HAD to find something to do with ourselves.  So we became pretty good at figuring out stuff to do with ourselves.  And our parents?  Well, they were pretty happy to let us get on our bikes and go wherever we pleased, doing whatever we pleased, safe in the knowledge that eventually we would become hungry and return home.  We didn’t get into ‘too much’ trouble most of the time…and those times we did, well, trouble with a capital ‘T’ was waiting for us when we did finally get home!

I grew up in Kardinya and I honestly think I could still draw a map of all the streets (with street names) around the house where I grew up – including footpaths if needed – so often did I walk/ride/skateboard around them as a kid.  And that was 30-something years ago.  I am equally certain I couldn’t create a similar map around the house where I live today – and we have been living in the same house since 1999!  Further, I would be very surprised if my kids could draw such a map.  This isn’t to be critical of them – it is just making the point that things have changed a lot in the past three (3) decades or so and we need to make sure we are aware of what is going on and making sure that our kids are getting all of the exercising – and particularly ‘free play’ that they need.

Now I do hear quite a bit that it is not that the world has changed – it isn’t that the world has changed – it is that somehow ‘kids’ are just ‘different’ these days.  And to this I would offer you the following quote:  “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents….They ignore the law.  Their morals are decaying.  What is to become of them?”  Now whilst this quote is reflective of some of the things I hear people telling me it is not a ‘modern day’ quote.  In fact, it is a quote from ancient history – from Plato (who lived from 437 BC – 347 BC).  I have amended it somewhat to take out the part about rioting in the streets (in case anyone looks it up!) but the point remains valid – our kids are not the problem – they are just creations of the environment that they are growing up in and every generation will seem ‘disrespectful’ and ‘lazy’ to those that come before them.

All I can say to everyone is that the best way to get your kids up off the couch and moving is to get off the couch and get moving yourself.  You are already setting a great example to them by getting to the gym and exercising – set another great example by encouraging them to explore and ‘free play’ by doing those things with them.  Take a basketball or football (or Frisbee or Boomerang or whatever) down to the park and ‘invent’ a game.  Get them involved, get them active – teach them by doing that you don’t need a games console to have fun.  Your kids will learn through the examples you are setting for them – make sure your behaviours are ones that you want them to model – hard work, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle…

What has any of this got to do with the gym?  Goodness only knows!  Crazed Sunday rant over.

See you all in the gym,

Michael.

Gym Update #1 – The 1608 Challenge – Challenge is OVER!

‘Summer Bodies are made in Winter’ and the August Challenge is now D-O-N-E.

I hope you managed to get it all ‘DONE’ and have given yourself a nice big pat on the back…I know that the extras in this challenge weren’t ‘too bad’ but – as I keep saying to people – trying to find the time (and the motivation!) to spend an extra 10 (or 15, or 20, or more) minutes in the gym after you have finished a class is not easy.  I know for me I found the challenges ‘FUN’ once I started doing them…it was getting motivated to START them that was the problem  Regardless, very proud of myself for finishing all of the challenge elements last Tuesday!

If you love the challenges, stay tuned for our next challenge scheduled for OCTOBER.  This next challenge will be the penultimate one for 2016 and will feature a combination of food challenges, classes and extras…it will be just the thing to be truly ‘ready for summer’.

Gym Update #2 – New Gear

In case you haven’t noticed, we have some new Barbell racks in the gym – these racks (made and installed by the simply amazing Boris Pacey!) open up a fair bit of space AND mean that we no longer have to worry about the whole ‘stagger the barbells’ system that has plagued us for about 5 years…

Can anyone apart from me remember when there were only 8x circuit bars in the whole gym – 4x 10kg bars and 4x 15kg bars?  And there was no rack for the bars…they ‘lived’ on the floor!  The fixed bars in the upstairs gym were around of course, but for the boxing circuits we only had the 10kg bars for the girls and 15kg ones for the boys.  Somehow it seemed to get the job done then but I couldn’t imagine it now!

Gym Update #3 – AFL Grand Final Day @ Round 1

This week, our product of the week is Boxing Gloves.  I am super proud of our product range – bag mitts, mma-gloves, leather gloves and sparring gloves – and the great price points we are able to offer them at.  I know that I have been using Round 1 sparring gloves in the gym for more than 4-years now (I had some of the Supa-Tuff brand we used to sell before that!) and when you consider that I box (pretty much) every day AND am only on my 2^nd pair…well, the $65 purchase price seems ridiculously cheap.

A few people might have also noticed that our redesigned MMA gloves are now on the shelves…these are just $40 (try pricing them elsewhere to get a real appreciation of the value) and the improvements to the wrist strap in terms of both support and making them easy to put on/take off are amazing.  Check the latest video here for details.

Footy Tips and DreamTeam

Well, in a pretty remarkable final week of tipping Kristy Morris has selected 7/9 winners to comfortably win the competition on a score of 151 points.  Kristy won the competition by 4-points – Luke Morabito, Justin V, Michelle Donald and Jake Donald all finished in equal 2^nd place on 147 points.

Over in the Dream Team the Grand Final has been played and won – and once again a team has come from 8^th spot to take home the prize.  Congratulations to Rocco who – on the back of a pretty amazing 200 point game from Nick Riewoldt – defeated Lloyd by about 50-points (recording a mammoth 2500+ point score).

Congratulations to both Kristy and Rocco who have both had $50 worth of Perkville points added to their rewards scheme accounts.

Link of the week

A bit of workout ‘motivation’ from Hannibal this week…I always marvel at how strong these guys are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ4M67zpO6g