I was away on holiday for the last fortnight. I was sunning myself in toasty warm Thailand, but having missed a week and a half of real training just before I left because I was ill I couldn’t go for the whole two weeks without training. I was also getting itchy feet to do something [...]
Tags:Powerlifting·Rest·Training
One of the biggest reasons I gave up my desk job was to reduce the stress in my life. I would like to live as healthy a lifestyle as I can manage and decided that I could arrange my life so that I didn’t need the level of income that came from a five-day-per-week high-hours [...]
Tags:cortisol·Diet·Figure·Psychology·Rest·Stress·weight loss
No weights this week because I was away walking so the plan for the next week remains the same (here’s hoping I’ve not lost too much strength – I certainly ate lots working on the basis of preferring to gain fat than lose muscle and I gained a bit of weight while I was away, [...]
I’ve had quite a few questions from people since my post about the lifestyle changes that I’m making asking how I fit it all in. Honestly I didn’t know and, out of interest, I kept a very detailed timetable of my life for 5 weeks a couple of months ago to find out. How to [...]
A while ago I used to joke that I did too many blog-watches about Vitamin D. Well, since then the topic of “sleep” has taken over from that. There’ve been some more excellent posts about sleep and, crucial as sleep is to good athletic performance and health, I’ve set them out below as a glossary [...]
Tags:Recovery·Rest·Sleep·weight loss
I get stressed far too easily and I’ve found that my stress levels correlate with poor performance in the gym as well as mental fog and all the usual things that I expect from high stress days. It’s worth noting though that I don’t often suffer from poor sleep when stressed, I just wake up [...]
Tags:Diet·Insomnia·Motivation·Muscle gain·Recovery·Rest·Stress·Training·weight loss·Women
My sleep has been a bit up and down recently. When things are less busy at work and I’m chilled I can climb into bed, read for a bit and then happily be asleep within minutes of putting out the light. Unfortunately, when I’m stressed and busy I find that my ability to go to [...]
Tags:Posture·relaxation·Rest·Sleep
I am serious about wanting to qualify and compete at powerlifting but that didn’t stop me from having a holiday last week. What were we doing? We were cycle touring round the far North East of Scotland. When I say far North East I really do mean far North East. We drove for nine hours [...]
It’s not often I get to write a blog post like this, but this will be a short celebration of the fact that I had learned my lesson last time I tried to increase my work capacity and workout density. I applied those lessons and as a result I managed to smoothly move into my [...]
Tags:contraceptive·menstrual cycle·Recovery·Rest·Training·Work capacity
I had a tiring reminder this weekend of the impact that my menstrual cycle can have on my physical activity levels. The usual activity levels In a standard week I usually do a bike ride on Saturday and Sunday mornings and a weights session that lasts about an hour and a half on Tuesday, Thursday, [...]
Tags:menstrual cycle·Rest·Sleep·Training
