Chopping Onions & Hugging Trees? Are you really in your zone?

I have a confession to make. I am a bit of a control freak. I don't mean to be, sometimes I try not to be but fact is my little freak usually wins the inner and outer dialogue. Even in simple things like cooking it will manifest it's military commander head. Poor Mr. G will ask if there is anything he can do to help, I will allocate a task and he will be more than capable of chopping a fucking onion BUT no....no not how I want it to be chopped. I will sidle up and double check that chopping is to standard with a 'let me just.....' and taking the knife and VOILA control has been regained. I feel a perverse sense of satisfaction. What a fucking weirdo. Let the man chop. I know he can chop. Why can't I just let him chop? Now that said this only applies to things I consider to me my jobs. Mr G chops the wood for the log burner and not once have I sidled up to take control, actually if I did I would probably get my fingers chopped off lol. So does this make me a selective control freak? I don't know. I am sure someone somewhere will be able to take me back to childhood and put it down to losing a banana mojo in the sandpit or some such bollocks. Anyway I digress as usual.

Back to the point. I consider my training and the programming of my training to me MY domain. For those of you who have been along for all of my ramblings you will know I have handed over my training to a new coach, Nicola Vaughan-Ellis (who is fucking awesome btw...that is not up for debate.), at the time of handing this over I knew I would have 'issues' with it but I never thought it would be quite so difficult. Up until now I have always kind of 'winged' my training. I have never really followed a set program. I have simply trained hard, appropriately and consistently. I have always decided, with the input of my training buddies, what I will be doing on any given day but sometimes that would be decided on the day and sometimes before and often change part way through the session. So now to have 3 weeks training in advance, written down, planned with precision....by someone else has taken me outside of my personal training comfort zone.

The training we are doing is SO different from what I have been used to. Different moves have been introduced with a different empahisis, a different split, different...different.....just soooo fucking different!!! Now any of you who are the opposite, who can't function without a plan set in stone this will seem rather weird. And one would think that as a trainer/coach (whatever the label is today), I would list every rep, set, rest from every session in order to assess my SMART goals (YAAAWWWWWNNNN). Well I don't and I am a fully fledged kinaestheste when it comes to training.

Kineasthesia -
The sensation by which the bodily position, weight, muscle tension and movement are perceived. Also called muscle sense 

I suppose it's kind of like hippy dippy training. Let's hug a tree, see how we feel then rip a big ass weight up :0)

Alas this is no longer. My tree no longer needs hugging, in place I have a training diary. Yes an actual paper one (made from the aforementioned hugged tree perhaps?). I have a pencil, I have a rubber and I have a big fat plan that has been written by someone else. This has sent me, over the past 4-5 weeks, into a mental turmoil. I was in my groove, knowing what I did felt right. And it worked right? I mean I have won shit? I have records? I have bloody worlds records? I am awesome right??? Or am I? Have I been in my groove or stuck in a rut? OK I have had some pretty reasonable results but can they be better? Should they be better? Do I want them to be better? Now for some the level I have achieved would be more than personally adequate and that is perfectly fine as we all have different paths and expectations, but I know I want to be better. I don't want to be good, I want to be GREAT. Yes this is personal ego and I am OK with that, me and my ego get on just fine. I also know that I do not have all the tools be be this great lifter I aspire to be and in order to get out of that rut, my tree hugging comfort zone I need to trust other people. People who have forgotten more than I will ever know. People who see the greatness. People who know what true greatness is and will encourage yet not blow smoke up my arse. 

I am competing in 4 weeks and I am still have mental dilemmas and physical ones to be fair. My body is aching in places that is hasn't ached and in a different way. Some elements of the program I can make an instant connection with and other elements I am like 'what the fuck????'. And yet I have to trust what I don't know and that is hard. Now what if it all doesn't work? Well so what. There is no way that I will walk away at the end of this year that we have committed to working together that it is possible that I leave with having learned nothing. And that is the point. We only know what we know. Sounds obvious huh? And it is but that also mean there is a whole lot of stuff out there that we don't know so if you want to improve in anything go and find people who have what you want and ask them, pay them if you have to and if it is worth it for you. Be the best you can be but I guarantee you can NEVER be that on your own.

While on the subject of comfort zone anything 'technical' is definitely out of it but as just discussed in order to move forward we must....well move forward so my new website is being developed and it will be fucking awesome. :0)

And if any of you fancy having your own comfort zones made a little edgey why not come and join us on this? Play the video peeps....play the video :0)

I even set up the Eventbrite page ALL on my own....yes it took me days but I did it :0)

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nodumbelles-powerlifting-weekend-workshop-tickets-10358098351

PEACE OUT

http://www.extremenutrition.co.uk/

Handing Over The Reins

I have been very remiss with updates here. After the Worlds I felt I needed to just take a step back. It had been a long hard year not only for us training and competing but also with running the gym and working with our clients, especially the competitive ones. We kind of take a bit of down time in December otherwise we would just burn out and this included going on a cruise with a load of coffin dodgers, doing fuck all and it was ace!

In the run up the Worlds we started working with a new coach, Nicola Vaughan-Ellis, and even though she didn't devise our program she did coach us in very specifics aspects of technique which we could then take to Prague and I believe resulted in the clean board of white lights. Our plan was to be 'technically fucking awesome'. This was all done with the view to her taking over all aspects of our training & programming for 2014. This is the first time anyone has ever been responsible for my training....ever. In the interim period we have been working on aspects that NVE would be incorporating into our training.

I will update as often as I can but the detail will vary depending on how arsed I can be but I am sure it will be interesting enough....or not in which case feel free to fuck off and watch Celebrity Bake Off :0)

So without further ado here was todays session.

W/U - Dislocates & OH Squats

Formal Bench - Para Bench
40kg x 6
50kg x 6
60kg x 6/6/6//6/6/6

DB Floor Press
35lb x 8
45lb x 8
50lb x 8/8/6

Rack Press + 1 red band - top 1/4
40kg x 6
60kg x 6/5/4/4/3 - good working weight for these - aim 6x6

Hanging Band Pull Downs - 2 red/2blue
4 x 8

T- Bar Prone Row
35kg x 6
45kg x 6/6/6/6

Panda
2 x Drop through blue/red/white

It was an interesting session and I was pretty fucked by the end of it mainly because it took quite a while as it was the first one so we faffed getting stuff ready and working our how to do some things and then finding working weights so this will improve. I also hadn't eaten enough and was hank marvin by the end of it....all hail the saviour Jaffa Cakes!!!!

So nothing radical but then there never is. The secret is train hard, train consistent and fuck your ego off! Too many people loud mouth about what they are 'going' to do instead of just getting the fuck on with it.

Peace Out!

Interview Part 1

I thought I would give your reading glasses a little rest by sharing and interview I did with Big Tom and Bigger Al from T & A Muscle. Feel free to be offended at any time :0)

Part 2 to follow.....

Did I Miss A Meeting?

A few years ago in the days when the heaviest thing I lifted was a pint of Guinness and ‘sport’ of choice was pool I decided that I would enter Race For Life. I did a pitiful amount of preparation for it. I probably started doing a bit of running 4 weeks before the race and when I say run it would have been more a walk-jog-blow out of my arse kind of interval cycle. Still I had sent in my entry, collected money at the pub I was lodging in. The hairy Glass Barrel rocking patrons believed saving tits was a good cause and so generous donations were chucked in a pint pot that was passed around whilst the bands took a piss break on Friday & Saturday nights. The day came and off I toddled with Mr G and two friends who waited for me at the end with an ice cold can of the black stuff as a reward. The sun was shining as I ran a bit, and walked most of the 5km, with an additional flurry of speed up to and across the finish line. I, along with hundreds of other women, that day took on a challenge as had thousands before us and have thousands after.

 I am sure many reading this have done the exact same or similar race. I will also presume that, for some, the preparation was a shit as mine. I can’t even remember how exactly how long it took me but I do know I wasn’t in the front serious runner  group.  Nope, I was like most, in the serious plodder group and gave no thought at all to who would be the fastest.  I hadn’t researched what an average time was for 5km and certainly not what the British, World, European records were over that distance…or how fast I would have to be to get on the next British Athletic team for the next Olympics. I just turned up. I plodded round. I finished. Just like everyone else. I enjoyed the atmosphere which was a nice collective of personal achievement, individual survival, elation and sadness.

Me after my 5km 'run'...my love of running never improved and I know those that know me well will find the thought of me running funny as fuck.

At no point did I know that Paula Radcliffe could run this distance in 14:29:11. I didn’t know that Tirunesh Dibaba holds the World Record of 14:11:15. Why would I? That would be silly right? Me, a complete novice compare myself to some world class athlete or even the ones in the ‘serious’ runner front group. That would be like telling five year old primary school child to compare their reading abilities to a university graduate.  Stupid right? So why then do ‘primary school’ lifters compare their abilities to lifting graduates?  It’s just nuts.

Some awesome women learning to lift and having fun!

 There is an amazing buzz at the moment in strength training with ever increasing numbers of women getting bitten by the lifting bug. Not for aesthetics but because they like feeling fucking strong. They enjoy the focus of the training, the grunt & grit that comes with lifting heavy shit. They go to the gym, do all the training, watch all the videos on You Tube, follow and interact with other female lifters on social media. They do searches for other lifters who they perceive to be at their own level.  Searches for women at the same weight, same age and then watch video after video and they will often leave jaws dropping with the weights that some incredible female lifters are doing and then the niggling thought ‘I can never do that!’ rears its’ ugly head. And here in lies the problem. 

Why the fuck are you comparing what you are doing in the gym with no or little competition time to lifters who have more experience, training, coaching,  and who have put in thousands of hours of training, athletes who have tried and tested training methods, some with success and some not so successful,  to get to the point in a competition that  you are now seeing in a 2 minute clip? By all means use these great strong women as inspiration, use them to kick the glass ceiling royally in the bollocks so that you can really see what is within the realms of possibilities when it comes to strength but DO NOT compare yourself, do not clip your lifting wings before you have even hatched out of the egg with these unfair comparisons.  We all have a starting point so ask these lifters what theirs was, I can guarantee it won’t be anywhere near the numbers they are lifting now. 

The amount of times I hear that someone would love to compete but then say they aren’t lifting enough or they will look for a competition when they are strong enough. Compared to whom? Where is this lifting measuring stick? I must have missed that meeting. I can honestly say I had no idea what anyone was lifting when I turned up to my first comp. What I do know is as a new lifter everyone took care of me, encouraged me, advised , people shouted my name and cheered when I lifted well. I saw some awesome strong women like Hanne Bingle, Angie McNamara, Monique Newton & Emma James who really opened my eyes to what strong can be. I made some great friends of these women and their support is invaluable as is their brilliant competitive spirit. Best of all I have no idea who won on that day!

So I guess the whole point of this ramble is if you want to compete the just bloody do it. Don’t wait for the day you are breaking World Records. Just do it. Get a total on platform with as many white lights as you can. That will be YOUR starting point and from there you can only improve. With your own personal results you will have your own lifting measuring stick and not someone else’s.