GRIP

We should all strive to be and do our best throughout all walks of life, after all you put in what you get out. But doing your best does not mean being perfect, and in fact striving for perfection can sometimes do more harm than good. It's something that we see in the fitness industry a lot, especially with the prevalence of social media (instagram being the biggest culprit!). Every man and his dog seems to be posting pictures & videos of themselves either performing some superhuman workout or in their gym gear showing off bulging biceps, chiselled abs and buns of steel. Couple this with TV, film and magazine ad images shoved down your throat every minute of the day. You can tell yourself stop looking, STOP IT but that thumb just keeps scrolling. Eventually it can start to get to you and you start to think " Why don't I look like that, why can't I do that? Do I not train enough? Is my diet wrong? Am I just not as good as those people?". What people forget ...

This week we're talking about the infamous lower back!! Most of the adult population have suffered some sort of lower back pain at one point...(shock horror it's probably those chairs' fault again!!)People are constantly on the hunt for this magical exercise/stretch that will fix everyone's lower back pain, but it doesn't exist!! Firstly everyone is slightly different, what works for one person won't work for another. You'll most likely have to go through a few different exercises to see which is best for you. Secondly, we're constantly told our lower back is this fragile thing and we shouldn't move it in a way that would seem to aggravate it - your back is a muscle just like your quads, it needs to be worked, it should be strong (not weak like most of ours because we don't use it). We have to learn to move without the fear of doing damage to it. Say you've gone to the gym and tried a new workout which included a few Deadlift variations. Th...

Everyone bangs on about posture, guilty! But thinking about it, the lifestyle we all lead now with comfy sofas, computers & mobile phones means 'good' posture is pretty hard to obtain when we are sedentary. But you know what it's ok - and i'll tell you why... Our tissues adapt in nature to the stresses we place upon them including adapting to postures we assume during our working day/chilling with Netflix at home! Still try and get up/move regularly but we shouldn't be so harsh on the postures we adopt whilst sitting.The loads that we are placing on the tissues whilst sitting at a desk or reading something on your phone really aren't that demanding and load is really important when we are thinking of tissue damage. You don't need to panic that when we slip into 'bad' postures we are doing lasting damage. If you can get up from your desk and move around at intervals then great but if you can't don't stress about it, simple movements can b...

Flexibility: enables you to reach the end ranges of motion of some movements, it doesn't necessarily mean you have core strength, balance or co-ordination at these ranges to control the movement i.e. some external force is required e .g. gravity or leaning against an object. Mobility: the ability to perform and control movement patterns through their full range of motion. While flexibility is important and being 'flexible' is something many people aspire to be, issues can arise from over training. As discussed previously, flexibility differs from mobility in that external assistance can be provided to reach the end position. This in turn means that at the end position the ability for the involved muscles to produce force and safely control movement can be greatly reduced. Training flexibility through prolonged stretching (and ignoring mobility) only provides a temporary increase in muscle length that will quickly revert to its previous state. Forcing a stretch u...

Why do a lot of people go to the gym? To look good, to be slimmer, or get bigger or be ‘toned’ (say it again, I dare you). There’s nothing wrong with taking pride in how we look. But it’s not the be all and end all of working out. Thinking about this reminded me of a tweet I saw when the Olympics were on. It was from a fitness company (naming no names) who are solely concerned with promoting exercise for aesthetics. It was something along the lines of “The shape on the gymnasts is insane”. Nothing wrong with the tweet, those gymnasts work hard and as a result look good. They have to be lean because any fat is just dead weight. However, what did make me chuckle was one of their equally aesthetically motivated followers comment of “What do they do to look like that?”. Ummm…. Are you serious?! They do gymnastics! That’s how they train. Not everyone just goes to the gym to do bicep curls and leg extensions. They go and do something they enjoy or to achieve goals other than losing X amou...

A large proportion of our population suffer with some form of mental illness nowadays. It can be extremely hard to deal with and finding ways of coping is the hardest part. With little help out there and people not asking for the help, puts insane amounts of pressure onto themselves, which just perpetuates things.  Confession time – I have suffered with mental illness & an eating disorder since the age of 17 and still have difficulties in coping now. Honestly I don’t think it will ever disappear, it’s a matter of managing it and embracing it’s a part of me. I was the person who never really sought much help over the years; embarrassment mainly stopped me from doing so. Determined to try solve everything myself but with not much luck, always a step forward and then 10 backwards a few days later. I constantly locked myself away from the world (the worst thing to do), jeopardising friendships and being so alone. I’d run away and think this will work it will be the miracle cure...

So I don’t know if you’ve heard but we’ve opened a new training studio. Take a look: I think you can probably tell from the picture its not your average ‘gym’. No machines, no dumbbells/barbells, no treadmills, cross trainers or bikes…. Alright, I get it, there’s not a lot in there. But then do you really need all that stuff to get into the shape you want to be? The answer is no. I’ll let you in on a little secret… I’ve been a personal trainer for six years and out of those six I’ve had a gym membership for a grand total of one year. That was during my first year at university. Even then I can count the number of times I actually used it on one hand because it became such a pain fighting for the weights with guys from Bath Rugby. They usually won. Well, they always won ‘So what did you do?’ I hear you ask. Surely you can’t be a personal trainer and not train yourself?! Of course I trained, but most of the time just at home, or outside. I started off with a bench and some adj...

Look up a workout now and it's very likely to be focused on a certain area of the body. I mean who hasn't heard of the infamous 'chest day' or (in some cases much rarer) 'leg day'. So what's the idea behind these split routines? They've been designed to completely exhaust single muscle groups through sheer volume of exercises performed in one workout, using primarily only those muscles. This in turn causes muscle damage, which is then repaired during rest as well as promoting extra growth on top to adapt to this training load. So does this mean split training is the only way to build muscle? What are the other options? While there are many different split variations (usually based on how many days a week you can workout) to choose from, the other main contender in workout design is the full body. As the name suggests, this means every muscle group is worked during a single session. Unless you're going to spend 6 hours in the gym. this obviously mean...

T-Nation devised this challenge: 500 total reps of swings per workout;  10 reps 1 rep of strength movement 15 reps 2 reps of strength movement 25 reps  3 reps of strength movement 50 reps Rest 3 minutes Repeat 4 times to get a total of 500 swings Between sets of swings add a low volume strength movement (e.g. barbell overhead press, dip, goblet squat, chin ups, pistol squat, front squat, handstand push up, wide grip pull up, muscle up) For the 1-2-3 rep lift use 5 rep max weight For things like dips do 2-3-5 rep scheme If you do the workout 5 days a week one of those days only do the swings (no strength in-between) If you do the workout 4 days a week use the strength movements every workout  You may use a different strength movement every workout, rotating between them It was all going so well... Firstly I wanted to do this challenge as i'd never embarked on one before and Josh is always having a go at them, so I thought why not give it a try. My goa...

The swing is a fundamental movement in kettlebell training and should be the first thing you learn when picking one up. It provides the foundations to build up to more advanced and challenging exercises. However it is an awesome exercise in its own right. Correct technique is vital to get the most out of the swing. Countless times I've seen people trying to perform a swing using a squatting movement, but as you can see from the video above that's not the way to do it. What makes the swing such a great exercise is that it targets the muscles in your posterior chain, a group of muscles that are often over looked. These include the hamstrings, glutes and back as well as your core. However to make sure these are correctly targeted, the swing needs to be performed as a hinging movement, pivoting about the hips. This means that bending at the knees should be limited as much as possible. By targeting the posterior chain the kettlebell swing is a great exercise for com...

We have developed our poor postures solely from sitting too much. We’re pretty much doomed from the start – 12 years of most of our lives we go to school and sit in poor ergonomic chairs for 5 hours a day. Imbalances occur due to one muscle group being too tight and the opposing one too weak. We therefore develop tight chests, necks, lower back, hip flexors, hamstrings and calves, leaving our glutes, core and mid/upper back WEAK. This leads to a fairly dysfunctional skeleton, hence why a lot of us suffer with aches and pains. Not to mention headaches, shoulder impingement and sciatica. We can start to improve our postures by trying to restore our imbalances - daily stretching of the tight muscles and strengthening of the weak ones start to un-do the damage we have done. As well as changing our lazy habits - we are all guilty! Think of how a baby/toddler who has just started walking moves. This is how we should all be moving and the way they sit. They have yet to learn our la...

Although I train mainly with calisthenics, I do have a few pieces of equipment I turn to regularly, usually to spice up conditioning workouts, for example I'm a big fan of kettlebell training, especially because of its emphasis on working the posterior chain which is often overlooked, but I'll come back to that another time... Because recently a different type of training caught my eye – steel mace training. Just like kettlebells steel maces aren’t a new thing, in fact they are thought to have been used as long ago as during the Persian Empire as a method for training warriors and soldiers. So what’s the idea behind mace training? The mace is effectively a concentrated weight at one end of a bar. It can be used for any number of standard exercises (deadlifts, bent over rows, military presses etc) to give a unilateral emphasis, however this equipment truly shines when used for its more uniquely designed exercises. These are designed to work rotational strength and improv...

The bodyweight row can be performed either on a straight bar or gymnastic rings/TRX. It doesn't get as much attention as the pull-up, but we think it should. Here are a few reasons why it's awesome; *  It's a great exercise for working towards a pull-up because it allows you to build pulling strength using a lower proportion of your bodyweight. *  The row is one of the few exercises that promotes external rotation of the shoulder, which is important in preventing strength imbalances and injury. *  By strengthening your middle back, the row is great for improving posture, reversing the effects of prolonged sitting and hunching over a work desk.  *  Essentially being the opposite of a press up, the row also requires you to keep your body in good alignment through the movement, engaging and working your core muscles. *  Its easy to manipulate the difficulty of the bodyweight row to suit any level of training simply by moving the position of...

Bodyweight exercise always seems to get a bad rep. Last one out on the field at rugby training? 10 burpees! Step out of line in taekwondo class? 20 press ups! If this type of exercise has been ingrained in our minds as punishment, well of course people aren’t going to choose to do it. Then of course there’s the point of view of the fitness industry and their suppliers. If everybody trained using calisthenics who would buy the next piece of miracle equipment guaranteed to help you achieve all your goals without even taking it out of the box? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying by any means that all fitness equipment is useless, that would be absurd. For many sports it’s essential, Olympic and power lifting for instance.  What I am saying is that training with weights and equipment is not the only way to burn fat, develop power or increase strength and muscle mass.  If you want proof, just check out gymnasts.  There is a wealth of benefits to bodyweight trai...