GRIP

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...