Boxing Blog

    The End is Always Near – Becoming Resilient and Resistant to Illness

    Hey Everyone,

    Welcome to another week – and my first blog in a couple of weeks.  I will talk more about what has happened in the blog below, but just a quick reminder of some cool stuff that is “imminent”:
    1/.  THIS Saturday (June 4th) is…LUMBER JACK Day – wear your flannel shirt and bring a gold coin donation as we raise some money for SECOND HARVEST!

    2/.  This WEDNESDAY at 7pm our new program – “DAD BOD BLASTER” will be kicking off.  There are limited spots for this program and you can register HERE.

    3/.  Saturday June 11th we will be running the “Murph” workout in the Funky gym.  “1-mile run, 300 squats,200 pushups and 100 pull-ups…finishing with another 1-mile run”.  We will be doing some prep for it over the next two weeks in our Funky Classes.

    4/. Monday July 4th – Kick off the “28-Days-Later” revisited challenge.  Due to the SNAFU with the booklets, we had to do the Feb version via ‘Softcopy’…this time, the books are here, the challenge is ON!  And, I mean, who doesn’t want to lose a couple of kegs in July with spring around the corner??

    Right!

    With all the quick updates out of the way, I have a statement to make.  How VULNERABLE are we?  I mean, as ‘people’,  I mean, yeah, COVID is of course part of this statement, but I didn’t even have COVID – I just had ‘a virus’ which essentially confined me to bed for two weeks.  I mean, sure – I’m in a difficult work situation and there were a few days when I had to attend simply to ensure the doors stayed open, but…how vulnerable are we?

    I like to think I am a pretty fit and healthy person who looks after themselves pretty well – sure, I’m getting old but I follow a structured exercise regime and train 6x days per week (well, I did until a couple of weeks back anyway!!), I eat a healthy diet, I drink a lot of water (and black coffee) but not much else…for sure I could sleep a bit more (usually about 5 hours/night) BUT my sleep is CONSISTENT…I pretty much go to bed at 10pm and get up at 4am 6x days each week (I sleep to 6am or so on a Sunday).  But I got absolutely whacked by ‘just a virus’ and I can only imagine how someone who wasn’t looking after themselves would have fared.  I have to admit to running into old friends on occasion and just wishing they would take better care of themselves – but having no real tangible ‘reason why’ for those thoughts…I mean, I’ve been lucky in life and really haven’t experienced too much illness personally or with my immediate family.  But getting sick over the past couple of weeks – I really, really, REALLY want them to start looking after themselves.

    I read a book (yep, here I go again) recently called “The End is Always Near”.  It was written by one of my favorite PodCast hosts – Dan Carlin – who publishes the “Hardcore History” podcast (my favorite ever episode is called “Apache Tears” for anyone interested).  Anyway, in his book Carlin talks about how throughout human history we have been on the ‘brink’ of destruction.  He uses a myriad of examples to explain his hypothesis (he is a great storyteller and it is a very easy read) but the chapter that really captured my attention covered the end of the Bronze-Age.  Somehow – between 1250-1100 BCE, every city in the Ancient World with a connection to the Mediterranean Sea all the way east to where modern day Iraq is located was essentially ‘destroyed’.  Some civilisations were permanently erased (Mycenaean Greece) whereas others (eg. Egypt) were quite literally ‘sent back’ to the iron age.  Writing was effectively ‘wiped out’ in Greece and the Hittite Empire went from a huge, centralised state that provided regional stability to essentially nothing – its cities vanishing and only smaller, disconnected villages remaining.

    Worse of all – no-one actually knows what happened – but of course, amongst the theories that are out there disease/plague is very popular.  And as we have seen over the last few years, the impact of highly contagious diseases on even our society with modern medicines and mechanisms in place to distribute food/water has been massive…yes, we have come through it relatively unscathed in many ways however I think all of us should be in a better position to appreciate the importance of being fit, strong and healthy (though to be fair, I didn’t really get this point through my own thick head until a couple of weeks ago when even getting off the couch became something that I needed to ‘pysch myself up for!’).

    Being sick has certainly taught me something – that being ‘sick’ is 100% terrible and I need to do a little bit better to ensure I am just a bit more resilient ‘next time’. 

    I have written up a little program that will see me doing a little bit of walking outside – I just have that feeling that my time in the ‘fresh air’ is not what it should be, and whilst I ‘probably’ get enough exercise I’m really not quite as ‘STRONG’ as I would like to be at the moment so I need to reset some of my strength plans alongside my boxing classes.

    Since getting sick I  have really been focussing in on replacing some (not all!) of my coffee with water and I am working in the background to try and get at least one full day out of the gym each week (I’m not sure I’ve had that since 2010) as well as finding a way to get a couple of extra hours sleep on at least one more night of the week…let’s face it, it’s hard to get 8-hours sleep when you are at work around 4:30am, so maybe I need to find an extra day each week when I’m not required at work at that time?  Who knows…stranger things have happened (though not to me).

    What can I say, having not needed to have really ‘any’ time off work in the past decade or so (I mea, half-a-day here or there really) but being whacked by ‘just a virus’ has really got me thinking.  We can all do just a little bit more to look after ourselves, make ourselves just a little bit stronger, fitter and more resilient.  And making sure that we are as resistant as possible to all of the ‘stuff’ floating around!

    See you in the gym,

    Michael.

     

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