Bastards

I get bored easily.  I have noticed that unless I have some kind of goal to aim for, or unless I have someone keeping me accountable, I can easily put things off until another time (why do something today if you can put it off until tomorrow?).

And once I have put something off once, it is easy to put it off again (if it was all that important, I would have done it by now!).  And then my consistency goes all to pot.

So one trick I use to con myself into keeping on going is to set myself little challenges/games.  This is my latest…

My girlfriend is REALLY looking forward to opening her advent calendar.  But I banged my head recently and have decided to set myself an Advent Challenge.

In the run up to Christmas, I am going to do 2,500 Bastards.

Starting on December the first and ending on Christmas day itself, I am going to do 100 bastards each and every day.  And here are the rules I have set myself so far (I have a bad habit of bending rules unless they are cast in stone by the Gods themselves):

• 100 full, quality Bastards each and every day (no rubbishy half-harted ones with a rubbish jump/pressup).  After all, a challenge isn’t a challenge if it is easy.
• A day lasts from midnight to midnight.  I am not likely to wake up at 1am in order to do  them, but at least the option is there if I am feeling a bit odd/drunk.
• They can be spread out or grouped together in any way (eg I can do all 100 in one go, or do 10 sets of 10 over 10 hours etc).
• I can not do any less than 100 a day, and any over 100 do NOT count to the total (so I can’t do 200 in one day, then take the next day off).  This means I have to be consistent.

I am hoping this advent challenge will tick all my character flaw boxes:

• I can honestly say that I wont be lazy if I am doing shed loads of bastards every day…they are not easy or nice and everyone sane avoids them like the plague.
• It won’t take that long to do 100 of them, so I will have little chance to get bored.
• I don’t need any equipment or gym memberships or have to spend any money at all to do this.
• Announcing this here will mean I can’t give up half way through, because my ego won’t let me face that shame and my sister will never let me live it down (and feel free to slap me hard if I make any lame, whining excuses as to why I havent done them).

So there we go.  This is one of the random tricks I play on myself to stop me getting fat and lazy.  Do you have any tricks that work for you?

As always, feel free to share this with anyone you think may be interested using the buttons below.

Thanks!

Bastards

Name:  Bastards

Also known as:  (If you know these by any other name, please leave a comment below).

Main muscles used:  Legs, chest, shoulders, arms, heart.

Other muscles used:  Everything else.

Top tips:

• Start by standing tall.
• Squat down and put your hands on the floor, a bit more than shoulder width apart.
• Jump your feet back into the pressup position in one smooth movement, just like the first half of a squat thrust.
• Keep your belly tight all the time, don’t let it sag towards the floor.
• Do a full, quality pressup, with chest touching the floor.
• Jump your feet back to where they were, just like the second half of a squat thrust.
• Jump high up in the air and tuck your knees tight to your chest, just like a tuck jump.
• Land softly on the balls of your feet, then repeat.

Common mistakes:

• All the same mistakes as the constituent parts (squat thrust, pressup and tuck jump).
• Cutting each part down into smaller and smaller moves as you get more and more tired.

Comments:

The Bastard is a progression on the already difficult burpee.  It is essentially the same move, but with a pressup and tuck jump added.  Because the whole body is being used, it works your heart and lungs a great deal.  The pressup makes it a very good upper body strength exercise.  The explosive tuck jump makes it a very good lower body strength exercise.  The combination of everything makes this a very, very hard, full body exercise.

And it is horrible…hence its name.

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Marine Commando Challenge

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m doing the 10 km Marine Commando Challenge on October 9th, raising money for the Devon Air Ambulance.

I have a “Just Giving” donation page where anyone can donate money for the charity, and I need your help to get as much donations as possible.

Please click here to go to my page and donate something, and tell all your friends to help me too!

Thank you!

“I think I’m reasonably fit.  I do a lot of walking (dozens of miles a every week), but I get so out of breath when I climb the stairs/run for a bus/play with the kids.  What is wrong with me?”

The Intensity/Duration Curve

I recognise it.  Every single week someone comes up to me and asks me some version of this question, so here is the answer.

It is all to do with the Intensity/Duration Curve.  First of all, here are a couple of definitions:

• Intensity:  The amount of work (exercise) done in a given unit of time. 
• Duration:  How long it takes to do the work (exercise).

The graph shows how as the intensity of the work decreases, the duration of it can increase (point B or “Low Intensity” on the graph).  Or put another way, as the duration decreases, the intensity can increase (point A or “High Intensity” on the graph).

You can see this easily in the real world.  How long you can walk/jog is measured in hours, how long anyone can sprint flat-out is measured in only seconds.  Of course, the world is not simply black and white.  We are not restricted to either A or B, but we can do anything and everything in between and different things in life/training will fall at different points on the curve.

Examples of A include:  100m sprint, high jump, long jump, throwing the javelin, running up a flight of stairs, running up a hill, punching a bag fast and hard, jumping.  These are all things that are explosive, fast or need a blast of full effort all at once.

Examples of B include:  marathon, walking, easy swimming, easy bike riding, basic gardening.  These are all things that are “slow burning”, still need effort, but you need to “pace” yourself.

Most of us spend our lives at the “B” end of the curve.  We try to make things as easy as possible in our lives (quite understandable).  But following the very basic principle of

“We get better at what we do”

we get relatively good at doing “easy” things for a “long time”, but get relatively bad at doing “hard” things “quickly”.  In other words, we get better at “B” and worse at “A”.  And when life forces us to do something intense (eg running for the bus/ambulance/bar etc), we are totally unprepared and find it a real struggle.

Now I am certainly not saying that high/low intensity training is better/worse than the other.  But they are different and if you are interested in good, solid all round general health and fitness (as hopefully you all are), you should be able to manage both.  And restricting yourself to just one end of the curve (usually the “B” end) will leave your shortcomings very exposed at the worst time.

So if you want to be able to handle “climbing the stairs” or any such higher intensity things like that, you need to make sure you are doing some higher intensity training.  The simple way of doing this is when you review your training, don’t progress by increasing the time/repetitions etc.  Progress by increasing the speed/weight etc.

As always, if you are interested in improving your health, fitness or training, or finding out where you are and where you should be training on the curve, contact me by clicking here.

I hope I have explained this curve well enough, because I will refer back to it in the future.  If you are scratching your head, puzzled at what I have written, please leave a question in the comments below.  And if you know anyone who could benefit from this, please “share” it using the buttons below.  I need all the help I can get spreading the word!

http://sheffieldmanofsteel.co.uk/

Only a couple of weeks until I have a go at the Nettle Warrior challenge!  So as a practice run I’m having a go at the Sheffield Man Of Steel tomorrow!

Wish me luck!

Strength Training with Pressups

“New and important guidelines” have been released today about recommended physical activity levels for people in the UK.  Click here to read them and see how you compare.

Here are just a couple of my thoughts…

• It recommends aerobic activity (remember the golden rules of aerobic activity:  Get out of breath, Stay out of breath, Do it often) AND ALSO muscle strengthening activity.  And I know I sound like a sexist bastard when I say this (but I was brought up surrounded by women, my closest friends are women and i train a hell of a lot of women), but ladies!  Pick up some heavy-arsed weights!  Please!  In 50 years time, I do not want to be pushing you round in your bathchairs because your bones have crumbled away through osteoporosis, because you wrongly thought you would get “bulky” if you picked up anything heavier than you bloody handbag!  Click here to read everything I have written about getting stronger.

• It recommends “vigorous intensity” activity each week.  This is more than just a gentle stroll…it means something that really works you hard and pushes you out of your comfort zone.  Remember, “hard work” are not swear words.

These new  guidelines also include the following points:

• “The intensity at which we exercise is key, and light activity such as strolling and housework is unlikely to have much positive impact on the health of most people. For aerobic exercise to be beneficial it must raise your heartbeat and make you sweat.
• The more exercise you do, the better. Everyone should do a minimum of 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise but that really is the minimum for health benefits. If you can go beyond 150 minutes, you’ll gain even more health benefits.
• Sedentary time (time spent sitting down to watch TV, use a computer, read or listen to music) is bad for your health, even for those who are achieving 150 minutes of exercise a week.”

In other words, it is saying that we should improve both our Background Activity and Peak Activity levels (click here for more information).

And finally, how many of us do you think are meeting the old recommendations of 30 minutes of activity at least 5 times a week?

• England: 40% of men and 28% of women
• Northern Ireland: 33% of men and 28% of women
• Wales: 36% of men and 23% of women
• Scotland: 43% of men and 32% of women

If you are interested in getting some real health and fitness benefits from your training, contact me for some coaching!

Strength Training with Pressups

“New and important guidelines” have been released today about recommended physical activity levels for people in the UK.  Click here to read them and see how you compare.

Here are just a couple of my thoughts…

• It recommends aerobic activity (remember the golden rules of aerobic activity:  Get out of breath, Stay out of breath, Do it often) AND ALSO muscle strengthening activity.  And I know I sound like a sexist bastard when I say this (but I was brought up surrounded by women, my closest friends are women and i train a hell of a lot of women), but ladies!  Pick up some heavy-arsed weights!  Please!  In 50 years time, I do not want to be pushing you round in your bathchairs because your bones have crumbled away through osteoporosis, because you wrongly thought you would get “bulky” if you picked up anything heavier than you bloody handbag!  Click here to read everything I have written about getting stronger.

• It recommends “vigorous intensity” activity each week.  This is more than just a gentle stroll…it means something that really works you hard and pushes you out of your comfort zone.  Remember, “hard work” are not swear words.

These new  guidelines also include the following points:

• “The intensity at which we exercise is key, and light activity such as strolling and housework is unlikely to have much positive impact on the health of most people. For aerobic exercise to be beneficial it must raise your heartbeat and make you sweat.
• The more exercise you do, the better. Everyone should do a minimum of 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise but that really is the minimum for health benefits. If you can go beyond 150 minutes, you’ll gain even more health benefits.
• Sedentary time (time spent sitting down to watch TV, use a computer, read or listen to music) is bad for your health, even for those who are achieving 150 minutes of exercise a week.”

In other words, it is saying that we should improve both our Background Activity and Peak Activity levels (click here for more information).

And finally, how many of us do you think are meeting the old recommendations of 30 minutes of activity at least 5 times a week?

• England: 40% of men and 28% of women
• Northern Ireland: 33% of men and 28% of women
• Wales: 36% of men and 23% of women
• Scotland: 43% of men and 32% of women

If you are interested in getting some real health and fitness benefits from your training, contact me for some coaching!

Flat-out Sprinting

I read this story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8429518/Sprints-better-than-marathon-for-heart-health.html) when it came out last month.  It shows how multiple, maximal effort sprints had similar effects on health compared to long duration exercise.  But after chatting with some people in the gym, I have a couple of problems with the practical implications of it…

• Maximal effort sprints are not simply shorter duration exercise, but they are much more intense.
• Maximal effort sprints are bloody hard work and they make you feel horrible (vomiting is a common thing afterwards!)
• The vast majority of people don’t know what maximum effort is and they never go anywhere near it.
• If I got the everyday people in the gym to do maximal effort sprints 3 times a week, 99% of them would not come back after the first time.

Fantastic exercise, but not maximum effort sprints.

So while brief, intense bursts of exercise is beneficial (and personally, I much prefer them to long duration, steady exercise), there is a time and place for them.  And that time and place is in people who are physically and mentally capable of doing it.

Unfortunately, these days there are fewer and fewer people who are actually capable of safely putting in maximal effort sprints.  Either their weight or lack of body awareness/coordination makes tripping a real danger, or they are so heavy they can put joints at risk.

And then there are very few people who actually know what maximum effort is, and how to do it!

As a real life example, I have trained with a guy who is much fitter than I am.  He just simply does-not-stop.  He can just carry on going for hours and hours.  But when we did 10 second sprints, he could not go any faster than his normal pace!  He just could not switch his brain out of “steady pace” and into “flat-out pace”.

He knew how to push himself longer, but not harder.

Now personally I think that everyone should learn how to push themselves harder (it makes you a fitter, stronger, better person).  But that was not what people were taking away from this news story. 

They were not walking away telling themselves

“I need to push myself as hard as I possibly can”.

Instead, they were walking away thinking

“I only need to do about 5-10 minutes, then I can go and put my feet up.”

They were taking away the message that they could be even lazier and do even less work than they already were.  Taking away the wrong message is always a problem when it comes to only reading the headlines, but never the deeper story.

If you liked this article, or know someone who might like it, please feel free to “share” it using the buttons below.

Pregnant Weight Training

A while ago I wrote some posts about exercise during pregnancy (click here, here, here and here).  So here is a little bit extra on the subject.

I want to direct you to a new bit of research done to test the safety of resistance training for pregnant women (click here for the abstract).

In short, 32 pregnant women did 12 weeks of supervised low to moderate intensity strength training and it was shown to be safe.  So getting pregnant is not an excuse to give up all activity, do nothing and eat loads!

And if you are pregnant while reading this, congratulations!

As always, if you know anyone who might benefit from reading this, please use the “share” buttons below.

Do less, score more.

This is a line I heard a top level coach telling one of his fighters.  The fighter was moving around, ducking, weaving, attacking, blocking…generally doing plenty of work and making his presence felt…but he was not actually scoring any points, or getting the job done!

Pointless "stuff"

And that is a major problem for many of the people I see training/exercising.  They spend hour after hour doing “stuff”…but somehow fail to improve.

I was like that when I used to work in a warehouse…I could walk around the place with my clipboard for ages…but somehow managed to never get any actual work done!

When people hire me to help them achieve a result, I remember this quote and one of the first things I try to do is to cut out all the pointless “stuff” that people do.  Getting fitter/stronger takes hard work.  And when you have hard work to do, the last thing you want is tons of pointless crap slowing you down, wearing you out or getting in the way of the rest of your life.

So if you want help with your training, or if you want to improve the efficiency of your training, contact me today.