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
Management consultants: not all bad Thanks to my job, the language of management consultants has become second nature to me. Some phrases, like ‘straw man’ and ‘thought shower’ leave me cold and I avoid them whenever possible. However, I like the concept of ‘thinking outside the box’ and I think that it’s something that applies [...]
Tags:Goals·Injury·Powerlifting·Psychology·Recovery·Rest·Training
It’s been a week off for the powerlifting. I may be serious about qualifying for powerlifting, but everyone needs a week off and this was a week of active recovery. I won’t fill a post with ramblings about the six days we spent walking out on the hills of the Lake District, the surprisingly good [...]
I was staying away from home the other week because of work. For the second week I had a dreadful mattressso my sleep quality was poor and by the end of four days I was stressed and physically tired. Sleep is a hugely underestimated element of athletic performance. Dan John swears by it for performance [...]
Tags:Insomnia·Recovery·Rest·Sleep·weight loss
