beginners
What Happens When You Can't Finish the Workout
We've all been there, the clock running out with everyone else finished, and you still going.
Latest
Movement
Wall Balls: The Simplest Movement Nobody Paces
A 9kg ball, a target ten feet up the wall, and a movement you can teach in ninety seconds. Squat down, stand up, throw. Catch it and go again. Nothing technical about it.
CrossFit
CrossFit or the Gym: Which One a Busy Amersham Parent Should Choose
There are several gyms within ten minutes of Amersham station and their websites all say roughly the same thing. Equipment, opening hours, a photo of someone on a treadmill. None of that is the decision you're making.
Nutrition
Eating Before a 5:30am Class
The alarm goes at 5am. You're in the car by 5:15 and on the floor by 5:30, and somewhere in those fifteen minutes is the question of whether you should have eaten something.
Lifestyle
Term Time Is the Best Training Structure You'll Get All Year
Term starts this week, and the week gets its fixed points back. Drop-off, pick-up, clubs on the same evenings they were on in June.
Support Systems
September Starts Tomorrow. Here's How to Begin.
It's the last day of the summer holidays. Tomorrow the term starts, the diary resets, and for about a week everyone in Amersham is open to doing things differently. That window is short. If you've read this blog through August — the fear of being the worst
Support Systems
Ignite: What the First Three Months Look Like
Most gyms sell you a membership and a door code. We don't, because it doesn't work for the person we're built for — someone who hasn't trained in years and is nervous about starting. Hand that person a door code and a timetable
Active Ageing
What Meaning to Get Back Into It Actually Costs
There's a cost to meaning to. Nobody puts a number on it, so it feels like nothing — a decision sitting harmlessly on a shelf, available whenever you're ready. So here is the number. From around thirty-five, an adult who does no resistance training loses somewhere
Sleep
The 4:45 Alarm Only Works If the 9pm One Does
Everyone who commits to early training in September commits to the alarm. Almost nobody commits to the other end of it, and that's why most of them have stopped by half term. The 5:30 session is an evening decision, made at about half past eight the night
CrossFit Kids
First Week of Term: The Session That Isn't About Winning
Next week the timetable arrives. Football Monday, swimming Thursday, a match on Saturday that involves being somewhere cold at half past eight. And somewhere in that grid is at least one child who's going to spend the season being told, in a hundred small ways, that they'
Support Systems
Booking the Class is the Hard Part
The hardest thing you'll do all week is the ten seconds on a Sunday evening where you open the app and put your name against a class on Wednesday, knowing Wednesday-you will be annoyed about it. That is the rep that decides everything. The training itself is
Women's Health
Training, Recovery and Food for Women: What We Know and What We Don't
Lisa asked how training, recovery and nutrition differ for women. The answer starts with an admission: we don't know as much as we should. For decades the studies were run on young men, because a menstrual cycle is an inconvenient variable. So a lot of what gets confidently