Hi and welcome to another week,

I am not sure there can be any rain left in the sky!  It really does feel like it has been raining non-stop for two weeks straight and I have nothing but good things to say about everyone who has made it into the gym during this time.  I know, I know – it isn’t raining INSIDE the gym – but it is SO much harder to get out of bed/off the couch or stop in on the way home from work when it is cold and wet than when it is sunny!  So well done to all of you and whilst the immediate forecast doesn’t look all that great, let’s all remember that WE have been the good ones still getting it done when ‘everyone else’ has been finding an excuse or two!

I am sitting here thinking that today’s blog is going to be pretty short – that probably (but hopefully not) means you are going to be wondering what I am on about 5-pages from now given my usual style but what I want to say shouldn’t take too long.  Here goes:  ‘We are told from the time we are kids that “Practice Makes Perfect” (or by nit-picker’s that “Perfect Practice makes Perfect”  – whatever!) so why don’t we all take the chance to PRACTICE???

I am talking about this because in some programming for a TANKS a couple of weeks ago, I included the following words:  ‘Make it a FASHION SHOW’.  Or, in other words, do these exercises as beautifully as you can – get the form 100% correct, really concentrate on it and do it right.  Why?  Because that part of the program wasn’t designed to be a race or an attempt to do the ‘heaviest’ lift ever done or whatever…it was designed to be ‘PRACTICE’ and for it to be a benefit it had to be right.

If I draw a sporting parallel one of the most technical events in world sport – the 100m hurdles – was run at the world championship’s earlier today and Sally Pearson – a quite remarkable athlete – stamped her return from injury ‘COMPLETE’ by winning the gold medal – she last won the world title back in 2011.  Checkout the event for yourself HERE if you are keen!

Once upon a time I was a little athletics kid and as I graduated through the ranks generally did pretty well in the running events (not so well in the throws!).  The middle distance stuff was my go and I was pretty competitive at state level to the point where heading off to compete nationally was on the agenda…but the way the team was constructed back then, everyone had to compete in multiple events – there wasn’t funding or whatever for specialists in every event to attend so if you were exceptional at shot-put they figured you might just be passable at discus so would participate in both events…somehow, I found myself getting some specialist coaching in the hurdles with the coaches hopeful (they were W-R-O-N-G ‘cos I was hopeless!) they could get me to do a hurdles event.

To that point, my hurdling had been done as follows:

Run as fast as I could.  If I happened to come across a hurdle in my lane, first, act like I was surprised to see it then jump high and (hopefully) over it.  Land.  Repeat.  Repeat again till crossing the finish line.  Wait for the judges (no electronic timing back then) to give me the (no doubt) bad news!

I have to admit when the coaches were asking me questions like what was my lead leg and how many steps I took between each hurdle and any other number of things that are no doubt important to being a good hurdler (all I learned is that hurdling is way too complicated an event for the likes of me) I started to wonder if maybe the other events I was doing had skills and technicalities of there own.  I mean, my idea of ‘strategy’ at that age was to run every 800m race I was in from the front, run as fast as I could and try not to collapse on the home straight…a tactic it must be said that led to an equal number of thrilling victories and heart breaking defeats!  Not only that, my idea of technique was to just throw everything I had at it and hope for the best.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about.  Practice is important.  If you want to hurdle like Sally, well, there is more too it than acting like the 11yo version of me and running as fast as you can down the track hoping to avoid the obstacles.  You no doubt need to do some drills like THIS and probably find a coach somewhere who can put them together for you in some kind of progression.  Then, come race day, you CAN go hell for leather and – if you have practised to the point that you can do everything under the pressure of competition, well, you might get an amazing result.  Now – not everyone’s event is the 100m hurdles and not everyone is going to win a world title, but I am going to try and come back to my point now.

There are times for competition – when you go all out and hope all of your training and practice to that point hold up and give you a great result – and there are times for PRACTICE.  For us, most of the time we are in the gym (some would say ALL of the time but I get that sometimes you just want to beat the person next to you on the bike!) is PRACTICE time.

So – when you are doing things, your focus should be to do all of your reps RIGHT – that is going to give you the best result.  I regularly have people ask me should I do more reps or should I do the reps using a heavier weight…well, the answer is that you need to do them RIGHT.  I know that sounds like avoiding the question and it kind of is, but that is the answer.  If you can do them right faster, then great, go for it.  If you can do them right heavier, then great, go for it.  If you can do them right heavier AND faster, then great, go for it.  But if going faster or heavier means doing it ‘WRONG’, then in most cases you need to back it off and do it RIGHT.

The reason athletes like Sally Pearson have such a hard road is because being the ‘BEST’ in an event that is decided by hundredths of seconds means being perfect throughout – and for that to happen, you need to get it right every single day whilst training.  Keep that mentality in mind when you get to the gym tomorrow and get started on the first exercise on the warmup board – it is the right way to start getting better.

See you in the gym,

Michael.

Gym Update #1 – August Challenge…All GO!

It really is awesome to see so many people pushing hard to get through all of their extras in the gym.  I know I am feeling the pain after 100x tea-pots each side last week (I have no idea who programs this stuff) but I have to say I am finding my ability to complete each of the core exercises on the plan is already improving…that can only be a good thing.

If you have missed a workout or two (or a class or two) please just stay positive and stick with it.  Just casting it aside this early in the game because you ‘wont finish it now’ is crazy…I mean, even if you don’t finish every workout to finish the challenge (whatever that even means), every one of the sessions you do is getting you closer to the goal you chose – better at cardio or getting stronger!

Just remember, if you are stuck trying to figure out an exercise, don’t forget to check our YouTube channel (HERE:  Round 1 Videos on YouTube) and/or ask one of the trainers in the gym for some help.

Gym Update #2 – October Challenge (is coming).

Every year, our biggest challenge – both in terms of participation and outcomes (meaning specifically weight-loss) is the 28-days Later challenge that runs in February.  This challenge is awesome for a few reasons, but I guess the main one is it enables everyone to get the new year ‘off and running’ after a period of holidays and misbehaviour over the Christmas holidays.

This year we want to try and duplicate that challenge – but BEFORE Christmas.  Rather than everyone be looking their leanest and best in March, we want to make sure everyone is ready for the beach when summer rolls around…not only that, the idea is that come February Challenge time, we are all ‘making progress’ rather than just ‘getting back to normal’ after a few too many beers and bbq’s through December/Jan.

So – we are busily working on the structure of the challenge and a book of new recipes and all those sort of things…and wondered if there might be some people who would like to tie in the END of this new challenge with a dinner-dance style event early in November.  I envision tickets to such an event would cost around-abouts $120 or so…if this is something you might be interested in, please let us know via email (info@round1fitness.com.au) so we can work out if it is worth organising or not!

Gym Update #3 – Running Club Off and Running

So – well done again to the running club crew who walked into a pretty challenging session this morning.  There was a 2km warm-up followed by 20-minutes of 50m sprint intervals – the guys got through 46 of them.  We then ran another 1km before hitting the 50m intervals once again – this time with the recovery being a ‘walk’ rather than a run.

We will be doing it all again next weekend.

Gym Update #4 – Office Changes

Hopefully by now everyone has seen the latest set of changes to the office/retail store area.  All of our gloves – bag mitts, sparring gloves and mma-gloves – are now sold complete with glove bags AND you will find them hanging from hooks rather than sitting on shelves…I really think it has improved the appearance of the office and I hope you all agree.

Gym Update – Footy Tipping and Fantasy

Fantasy first this week given the finals are in full swing.  Two more teams have bitten the dust with Ash (Never Never Land) going down to Craig and Brett squeaking one out over Liam.  Liam was particularly unlucky as he probably had the stronger overall team – but chose his captain poorly (at least in the context of this game) and has lost by just 16 points.

Next week will see the final 4 teams – Craig, Brett, Brian and myself – battle it out for a spot in the Grand Final.

In the tipping competition, Xavier and Leigh top the table for round 21 with both selecting all NINE (9) winners – well done to both of them.  The contest is now down to just five (5) tipsters with Michael Campbell and Ryan Westerside being tied on top, just one point clear of Xavier, Kentucky and Craig B.  Just two weeks to go!

Link of the Week

I really hope everyone has 5-minutes available to read this!

https://qz.com/1046312/scientists-made-people-turned-off-their-notifications-for-a-day-and-saw-an-effect-years-later/