Active Ageing
Managing Training Volume at Forty, Fifty and Sixty
What falls with age is your rate of recovery, not your capacity to work hard.
Training
Movement
The Front Rack: Why Your Elbows Drop
Front squat, halfway through the set. The elbows come down, the bar rolls forward onto your fingers, and the next thing you know you're squatting like a pooping dog. Everybody has had this. It's usually blamed on wrist mobility, and that's often not the full picture.
Movement
Toes-to-Bar and the Missing Midline Training
You hang off the bar, the legs come up to about hip height, and stop. It feels like your abs have run out. So you go home and do sit-ups, and next week the same thing happens.
Training
Why We Retest
Ask someone whether they're fitter than they were in March and watch what happens. They think about how they feel. And how they feel is mostly a function of how they slept, what's happening at work, and whether last night's session went well. Or often they'll look at the number o
Movement
Why Lunges Leave You Sore for Three Days
Wednesday's session had sixty walking lunges in it. Thursday you feel fine. Friday you're going down the stairs at Amersham station sideways, hanging on to the handrail.
Support Systems
Why a Coach Beats an App
An app costs about a tenth of what coaching costs and it will give you a programme that's better written than most of what people do on their own. I'd rather someone trained off an app than wandered around a gym for a year. But be clear about what it can and can't do.
Movement
Balance in Your Forties, Not Your Seventies
Watch someone put a sock on. Some stand there and do it. Others sit down on the bed or reach for the wall, and have stopped noticing that they do.
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.
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.
Recovery
Ice Baths, Saunas and Massage Guns: What Actually Helps You Recover
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
Training
Overhead: Why Most Adults Can't, and How We Get You There
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'