Nutrition
In a week the diary empties out, the routine resets, and people who've been meaning to sort their food out since January finally get a week shaped like a normal week. September, not January, is when the year restarts. So — what the Nutrition and Lifestyle Programme is. It&
Active Ageing
I get asked this in the car park about once a week, usually by someone in their fifties, usually with an apology attached to the question. Yes. And I'll answer it from the register rather than from theory. We've been coaching people over fifty in this
Recovery
Recovery has become an industry. Ice baths in the garden, massage guns in the kit bag, compression boots, saunas, patches, powders. Almost all of it is sold on the promise that you can buy your way out of being tired. The reality: Sleep. Seven to nine hours. Nothing else is
Lifestyle
A member asked me last week why her Saturday sessions have been so flat all summer. We went through sleep, food, the heat, her programme. Then she mentioned the two or three glasses of wine most evenings since the holidays started. The biggest effect is on sleep, and it'
CrossFit Kids
Term starts in a fortnight, and with it the annual scramble: which clubs, which nights, which one they'll actually stick with. Team sport is excellent and I'd never argue against it. But in a team sport, a child gets a place in a group, a set
Support Systems
The sentence I hear more than any other isn't on the gym floor. It's on the phone, on a first call, about four minutes in, usually with a slight laugh to take the edge off. "I just don't want to be the worst
Training
Stand with your back against a wall — heels, backside, upper back and head all touching it. Now put your arms straight overhead and try to touch the wall with your hands shoulder width apart and without your ribs flaring off it. Most adults can't. If you can'
Nutrition
The shop is sorted. Now the harder part: cooking, on a Tuesday, for people who all want different things, in the forty minutes between the end of work and the start of swimming. Most family nutrition advice is written by someone who's never had to do this. So,
Lifestyle
You've planned this autumn before. Not this one specifically, but you've had the exact thought — in September last year, and the year before, and probably in January. Once things settle down, I'm going to get back into it properly. Then term started, and things
Sleep
In about two and a half weeks, an alarm goes off at 6:30am in a house that's forgotten what 6:30am is, and the first fortnight of term is brutal for everyone in it. It doesn't have to be. But the fix starts now, because
Training
The kettlebell swing is the most misunderstood movement in the building, and the way most people do it is a squat with a bell in their hands. Watch a class and you'll see it. The knees travel forward, the chest drops, the hips go down, and the bell
Nutrition
Three weeks until term. Which means three weeks until the 7:15am kitchen, the packed lunches, and the question that ruins more nutrition plans than any takeaway: what are we eating tonight. Your food decisions on a Tuesday evening are made by a version of you who's tired,