The late afternoon sun hugs the field. The two tired brothers have worked since the early hours of the morning. Now they’re getting the last of the day’s harvest done. Bob, the younger of the brothers, is inherently lazy. Trying to get the harvest done with him is like dealing with a toddler insisting on using a hammer to eat a kiwifruit. A patience testing endeavour. Ron, the older of the two, with his sleeves rolled up, is throwing bales…
Yes, warming up can seem like an annoyance at times. Especially when you’re in a hurry and just want to get into it. But skipping the warm up, or worse, doing it like a sloth means leaving some of the potential results hanging uncollected on the hooks of missed opportunities. The purpose of a warm up Get more out of the workout Cold muscles don’t contract as well as warm ones do. By warming up you increase the blood flow…
Strength, power and cardiovascular fitness forms the foundation for longevity. And these qualities have to be constantly nurtured to stop them from crumbling. They need the integrity that comes from frequent practice. Yet there is a point of diminishing returns. A point of too much. Be it chasing some random ego-driven numbers with weights, running ourselves to the ground on the trails, or pushing that one extra set or rep when it clearly doesn’t matter. Strength, power and cardiovascular fitness…
The gym-less self-isolation training hasn’t been a challenge for most of my clients. Not because any of them have proper gym set ups at home. But because when we train at the gym it’s mostly with kettlebells, dumbbells, resistance bands and bodyweight. Stuff that’s easy enough to set up at home. Sure, there are some aspects we are now missing. Cable pulley system-machine-whatever-you-want-to-call-it, the power work with medicine balls, trapbar deadlifts and the access to landmine exercises. The last being…
I like to think of myself as a minimalist. Not a hardcore minimalist who takes only chewing gum and a stapler to go on a zombie hunt. But a minimalist nevertheless. I have a somewhat nihilistic view towards most of the gym equipment. Although I work at a gym (Except now. Cheers, COVID-19. You dick.) with options galore of training equipment, I often set imaginary restrictions on the equipment I can and can’t use. Working with these invisible rules is…
A fact: speeding through a red light will get you in trouble with the law. And if there’s no real-life-police or a tech-abled-camera-police to see it, you’ll at least get condemned, huffed and labelled as an irresponsible driver by your fellow motor vehicle operators. And as a bare minimum, you’ll see rude visual gestures from the people eager to cross the road. The cultural norms around driving are strong and based on the heavy sense of “people like us drive…
Call them rules or principles, either way it’s reasonable to expect that you have a set of them guiding how you live your life. Even if you don’t have them written down, there’s that inner compass of values that you reflect on as you navigate life. You know, don’t lie, treat others with respect, don’t be a dick… As with life, principles in training matter because they keep you close to the track of what’s important for you. Here are…
On every brilliant record there’s usually that one “meh” song that you’re willing to skip to get to the next. On Appetite for Destruction it’s “Think About You”. Although a good song, it sounds painfully 80s today. They should’ve put “Perfect Crime” or “Shadow of Your Love” there instead. I assume the Geffen suits had their say to make the album appeal for a wider audience. Sigh. Then, on one of my all time favorite albums, Exile on Main St,…
This is the third and final part of the series. If you haven’t read Parts I and II yet, I recommend you give them a geez before diving into this one. It makes this Part III far easier to get into. You wouldn’t watch The Godfather Part III before watching the first two, right? Not that I am comparing this to The Godfather. It’s just the first that comes to mind when thinking of a trilogy of any sort. Part I:…
This is Part II of a series of three. Not unlike The Godfather. I mean, The Godfather Part II is where it’s at. If you haven’t read Part I yet, I recommend you do so before diving into this. It’ll make Part II make more sense. If that makes sense.Part I: Overall health markers, movement, body compositionPart II: Are Your Strength and Conditioning Up To Standard?Part III: Measuring Fitness and Filling The Gaps Let’s continue the adventures into the standards….