Published at 15:47, Wednesday, 03 November 2010

SOMETHING slightly different this week, not my usual question and answer session as I feel I want to go a bit deeper this week.

A reflection some people might say, however I believe it’s a matter of evolution. At some stage in your life you always need to look backwards in order to move forward and this is an aspect of what I encourage about the training cycle you undertake.

I look back to my very first vision of weight training when I was 10, watching my brother lifting weights in the garage. It never really hit me with any kind of passion, I didn’t feel the need to pick up the nearest dumbbell and prove something at that point I was interested in another kind of sport which gave me greater satisfaction and that was sprinting.

I loved the sense of competing against people of my same age and older and although I always reached a final I never quite crossed the line as a winner. It didn’t matter in most cases because I knew I had a hunger for a sport I enjoyed to do.

It didn’t last long however and after a year or so of competing I went from exercising a lot to doing nothing. Everything fitness seemed to stop dead in its tracks, I never enjoyed that feeling I had of finishing school and sitting on my backside for the rest of the night, it didn’t feel like me. It was another few years before I started getting the bug back and this is where weight training took over my life a little.

The buzz of looking bigger gives you a confidence that very few understand. Throughout my twenties I trained an average of five times a week, I wanted to get bigger and better and at times it was unhealthy to the point you over train and go backwards. There is a downside to it all, most people will try everything and anything to gain size and with that comes steroids. I can thankfully say I never took a steroid in my life – yeah I got the odd person questioning my size but you always get that no matter how hard you’ve worked.

I never had an injury or a lack of motivation in my twenties but as soon as I hit my thirties everything seemed to go downhill. I developed shoulder injuries, really bad shin splints, hip injuries and groin strain after groin strain. Along with weeks of lay off came a desire to eat everything that was full of sugar or full of fat. An increase in weight and a change in body shape increasingly came to the fore. Only this year have I decided to make a change.

Now the change is happening, a change in direction that I can honestly say is the start of a something new and fresh. I have always wanted to create a crossfit style gym and even though I had a ton of equipment in my garage last year, I have decided to get back to basics a little bit and start using the crossfit beliefs.

In come the JCB tyres for flipping and using a sledgehammer on, the use of my airdyne bike to improve cardio whilst adding some good resistance for my upper body. Kettlebell and powerbags for overall conditioning. A barbell for compound movements and dumbbells for the isolation movements. Mix in a pull up bar and some gymnastic rings and hopefully a few other purchases then you have the complete outfit. Along with all this the great outdoors for running.

There is a point to everything I have told you here and it’s a very important point: Forget about all you know about the training you have performed. If you noticed you could split my training into three sections, my early days and my passion for running, my twenties when my passion for weight training was at it highest then to present day when my passion is to change everything I have known and attempt something completely different.

The word ‘passion’ rings vibrantly throughout that paragraph. So many people still perform the same workout they did twenty years ago and for what reason? Have they improved? no without doubt they haven’t. They are performing the same training because they know nothing else. They haven’t got a passion, it’s because they don’t want to challenge themselves.

Whether you have spent the past ten years pumping iron or you are used to running up a fell, it shouldn’t matter. If you haven’t got the passion anymore then a change is needed. I couldn’t go back to performing the same weight routine I used to do because I find it massively boring. I know that the training I perform this time will give me spark and an excitement that I had back in my twenties.

Passion breathes new life into any training regime, motivation increases and it makes you want to train longer and harder.

Without doubt you will not be disappointed.

Crossfit hit America with a bang many years ago and only over the past few years has it hit here. Crossfit was so good because it was different to anything else out there. They could have been called ‘Passion’, because they all create an enthusiasm amongst there community.

This is where you must go, I want everyone reading this to review there current training plan and ask themselves are you passionate about it, if the answer is ‘No’ then it’s time to change.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk