Run Forrest Run

Two running groups tonight…one group doing primarily fitness and the other doing speed work (which was actually fitness…but don’t tell them that). Here are the two sessions.

3 minutes easy run…the 2 minutes of mobililty and flexibility work

40 seconds hard run 20 seconds recovery run

30 seconds hard run 30 seconds recovery run

20 seconds hard run 40 seconds recovery run

They did 3 of these sets back to back for a complete block then they took a 1 minute water break.

They did 3 of these blocks in total….so that’s 35 minutes in the session in total.

Logi's response to his pitch conditioning session

The other session looked like this:

This session took about 30 minutes as well.

This is what I think conditioning work should look like…if I sent these guys out to run for 35minutes they’d be bored to death. The intensity would be rubbish. I’ve also never seen a sport played at a single velocity…these sessions had constant changes in velocity…acceleration, deceleration and changes in direction. I bet if I took a 100 athletes that I’ve coached that have done these conditioning sessions and who’ve just ran laps…I bet every single one of them would actually rather do my sessions any day…I bet if any of you did them as well you’d rather do mine…the other thing I bet is that doing my sessions you’ve no idea how much time has passed and how long you have to go…you are just counting intervals down and doing a 35min run you’d feel every second passing. As I think we’ve established…each to his own. Maybe you’d prefer to just go out and run 35 minutes. I know what I think my lads prefer and what I think provides a better bang for my buck time wise.

The Womens Rugby

500m row/Stretch/500m row/Stretch

1A Chest Supported Scap Rows – 2×8

1B Inverted Shrugs

DB Floor Press – 2 w/u x8, 5×5

Band Assisted Pull Ups – 5×12

Straight Arm DB Sit Ups – 5×8

Elevated Split Squats – 4×8 each side

Leg Curls – 3×8

Rower – 10 sets of 100m effort with 45 second recovery between efforts.

Damian Tested

Weighed in a 110kg and benched the same. The did 10 pull ups, 44 push ups, 31 inverted rows and trap bar deadlifted 170kg.

Putting the dangers of Windscreen Wipers and Sit Ups into perspective…

…this is not to say that proper exercise technique and application should be dismissed but come on seriously…this is training…this isn’t even being done competitively

Some live scrummaging practice…do you think sit ups is the biggest risk to these lads backs?

Logi played most of the games at the end of last season while recovering from a broken back…and no…it wasn’t from doing sit ups or windscreen wipers.

I bet the lads wish that it was Logi who one the Fatathon…thankfully though he’s only 120+kgs.

Logi likes lineout’s only because being lifted is so slimming.

This is why we push press.

The athletes appearing in the following post are actually paid actors

I’m still laughing about the posts I read this morning. I’ve finally been ‘found out’…I should put a disclaimer out the front of the gym and on the blog to protect myself from a lawsuit.

Note: The text, images, videos, athletes, sweat, blood and tears that may appear are works of fiction and may or may not represent reality.

I’d say this actor wished he was working at a children’s party today or maybe doing a commercial for toothpaste.

Logi was calling an ambulance right after his session…he needn’t of worried…the ambulance guy was right outside keeping an eye on him.

Naturally that’s not his own sweat that he’s bathed in.

This actor did well considering he usually earns his dollars as a body double for “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson”.

I put these actors through their paces this morning.

Bike 10 mins – 5mins Level 5..then increasing a level every minute at each minute interval.
1A 3 Pull Ups
1B 10 Push Ups
1C Bridging…it was done by Logi and Tank so while Logi did his Pull Ups and Push Ups the Tank was bridging and then swapped over…they did as many circuits as possible in 15 minutes.
Bike 10 mins – 5mins Level 5..then increasing a level every minute at each minute interval.
2A 10 reps Bench Press
2B 10 Reps Inverted Rows
2C 10 Barbell windscreen wipers…once again done as a 15 minute circuit.
Bike 10 mins – 5mins Level 5..then increasing a level every minute at each minute interval.

So an hour of work and well done.

Would you want to train after these guys?

Patrick did his testing today…we are going to start a body building phase next.
Results as follows:
TrapBar Deadlift – 100kg
Bench Press – 60kg
Pull Ups – 1 rep
Push Ups – 32
Inverted Rows – 15

Oh…I forgot…apparently none of my athletes squat to depth either!

Not sure how much deeper this guy can go?

The Fatathon went as well as I planned….naturally

I brought Steven Carroll in to put the Bodymetrix body composition ultra sound and software to the test…well I wanted to make sure of the lads body fat measurements as well as ensure none of the bellies they were sporting weren’t the result of an unplanned pregnancy.

There is no where to hide your fat from sound waves.

As you can see…some of us had more fat to try and hide than others.

I shouldn’t let some of my female athletes test with the lads…it’s bad for their confidence.

Before

After – I think you’ll agree that there has been a significant decrease in the amount of muffin top overhang?

Chops did well…the secret according to Chops is no carbs after 3pm except for the 2 nights a week at which time he gets completely plastered! Well…who am I to mess with success.

Day 1 – 120.9kg
Day 7 – 119.8kg
Day 14 – 117.6kg

So a loss of 3.3kg. I think that is 1.5kg off each love handle and 0.3kg of his neck.

Before

After – I know what you’re thinking…what has that fat bastard got to smile about…in fairness I think for two weeks work….10 training sessions and anything but strict dieting…he can afford a smile.

He’s got 3 weeks worth of strength work and field conditioning to do and if he isn’t under 115kg’s by then he’ll have another 2 weeks of fat camp…that’ll wipe the smile off his face. I intend to have him playing at a lean and hard 112-115kg come the start of the season.

Before

After – At least Johnny won’t need that girdle any more.

Day 1 – 122.5kg
Day 7 – 119.2kg
Day 14 – 117.9kg

So a loss of 4.6kg

Johnny’s program is going to be similar to Chops only he has a little more gym based conditioning to do as he is still continuing his rehab some recent knee surgery.

Before

After

Day 1 – 122.9kg
Day 7 – 117.8kg
Day 14 – 121.2kg

Did you see what happened there…Logi was the hot favourite to take the title after week 1…he was pretty mad about his 2nd week of dieting…actually….can it be called dieting when you actually put on more weight than the other guys lost? He was so mad at one stage I thought he was going to have a stroke. Then I saw this photo and thought he already had.

Logi was so mad that he gave himself a little bit of brain damage…or so it appears.

Let the games begin

We started a Fatathon this evening…Logi, Chops, Jonny and myself are having a 2 week fat-off. I just want to get this out there…you guys may remember me mentioning going on a diet? Do you remember that? I’ll give you a little recap…I was 108kgs and wanted to get leaner…I dieted hard and stupid and got down to 104kgs…well I weighed in tonight…I was the slimmest of the 4 at 112kgs…now I’m not the greatest mathamatician but I think 112kg is approximately 8kgs heavier than 104kgs…one of you can do the maths for me. Anyway…Logi, Chops and Jonny all did their first session of their new program tonight…I’ll let them fill you in on the details….the fat is going to be flying over the next couple of weeks so stay tuned.

I love getting them fresh off the production line

I had a new project walk in today…James plays a bit of tennis and he is going to be seeing a lot of me over the next couple of months.

Today was our first meeting and we got straight to work. I want to post these up because I know already that he’s one of those athletes who is going to really get stuck into whatever I give him.

We will be testing tomorrow morning…in 5hrs actually and I’ll write his program for the next couple of months after we see where we are at. This morning we basically just had a bit of a look at him so I could see what I had to work with.

I’m not going to say what I think…you have a look at him and let me know what you think he needs?

We did some hurdle steps.

Going left to right.

Going right to left.

So what do you see so far?

We did a lot of ankle mobility work…it wasn’t great either…but we’ll sort that out as well.

Here he is doing some single leg knee drops…I can’t keep my big mouth shut…this was his third set and I’d coached him through the previous two sets but some of his issues are still apparent here?

Single leg knee drops.

Then we did some blast strap push ups and inverted rows. I’m not going to pack the blog with videos but I thought I’d throw this in as James has a pretty common condition in athletes in single side dominant sports like tennis and golf.

Blast strap push ups.

I know this is cruel…but I just can’t help myself.

James doing some plate shifting for the first time.

Some clapped out broken down old man doing some plate shifting.

Do you think this guy was in a hurry to get his last set over and done with?

The beauty is in the detail

Some of the best stuff here goes on in the ‘comments’ section…and rarely has much to do with me…I just thought I’d let the browsers know…I know there is also a lot of mindless drivel in there…but I kind of like that as well.

Not anything specific to update you on so I am going to go through a lot of catching up stuff.

We’ve made some decisions on the testing protocols. I think what we’ll do is to break testing up into a beginning and end of testing session and also do a mid cycle test. I’ve been thinking of pushing my training cycles out to 6 weeks for a while so this will fit is nicely I think.

Basically we’ll bookend the training cycles with the following testing:
1RM Trap Bar Deadlift
1RM Bench
Repetition maximum pull ups
Push Ups in 60 seconds
Inverted Rows in 60 seconds

In the middle of the training cycle we’ll have a ‘testing session’ in which we’ll do the following:
3RM Squat
Repetition maximum body weight bench
3RM Pull Ups

The reason being is that I think these are all good tests but obviously doing them all on a single day would be a real effort…so breaking them up this way makes sense and I think it will give us a good indication of everyone’s gym based athletic balance.

I want to go through Hugh’s stuff…I still haven’t finished his program…like about 15 others that are open on my desk top in a variety of states of completion…but I have a template in my head and he executed tonight’s session really well.

He did some mobility work to start…some simple…or should I say partly simple and partly not so simple ‘overs and unders’ Hugh’s a little tighter in one hip than the other…he has another solid week of gym based mobility work then I am going to strap him down to the table and MAKE him more flexible….whether he or his hips like it or not. I’ll get someone to video this when we do it…it might have to be rated R as a result of all the violence, foul language and screaming that will in all likelihood ensue…but I’m sure a lot of you will find it amusing. Then he did some band work….just looking at getting his hips firing away…I love the look Hugh gets every time he doesn’t do something perfectly…I don’t see that look often…but it always cracks me up.

Hugh pretending he’s dancing stallion.

Then he did his trap bar work…3 warm up sets the built up to a heavy 6RM at 180kgs over 5 more sets…it looked a little too easy so I had him do another set at 190kgs after a good rest….only got 3…I guess that last set wasn’t as easy as it looked. We did some weighted 45 degree hamstring/back extensions…basically we have the padding right down low on the thigh and do full back extensions…2 warm up sets of 8 and the 3 weighted sets of 8 reps…that was the entire session for him today.

Logi doing some RDL’s with Hugh pulling 190kgs for reps in front of him.

Logi and Gus went at it hard tonight and I think they are both going to surprise when they do their testing next as they are really putting in the hard yards.

Logi and Gus…banging out their 8th 250m interval of 10 to finish their session.

They both seem to be getting into the swing of their program. If you have questions about it…ask them…and I’m sure they’ll get back to you.

Plate shifting after pre fatigue work

Johnny did his fitness tonight…he knocked out the long intervals in 32 odd minutes…I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong. Then did his shoulder prehab work which consisted of the scap shrugs you see below…15 reps at 30kg, 45kg and 60kg followed by this Y,T,W,L shoulder complex.

Chest Supported Scap Shrugs

He did some high rep weighted ab pulldowns after this for 3 sets of 25 reps and then his band pullovers shown below…and that was it for him tonight.

Band Pullovers…after watching him do the worst windmills ever last night…I took it easy on him.

I’ll upload the videos and come back and flesh out the details here and answer all the questions and respond to the comments.