Trust(ing) the Process: Check yourself before you wreck yourself
Okay, so, now it's my turn to blog and I'm going to be a bad cop to Phill's good cop.
If you've been into the clinic or met us you'll you know that these are pretty obvious roles for us – his hair is higher, he smiles a lot and he has less of a tendency to go off on elaborate angry rants for unclear reasons.
Trust(ing) the Process
So here it is, my debut blog for the illustrious Evolutio Avengers crew. I may or may not have called us that without their knowledge, but it seems relevant given the new Marvel movie is out. Oh, and I’m definitely the Captain America of the group - I’ll let you figure out why and who the remaining characters are. Now, if I’m being honest writing a blog is way out of my comfort zone, putting words to paper (or laptop) has never been my forte throughout school, and frankly, hasn’t improved much since. I’d much rather use my hands or pictures to express my thoughts. Anyway here goes…
Find Your Pterodactyl
Mindset, again. I’ve become interested recently in the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset. (Ben Bergeron, Pursuit of Excellence podcasts, obsessed) Basically, having a fixed mindset means that you resign yourself to the fact that you / a situation is always going to be a certain way and that you have no power to change it, so why bother. Having a growth mindset means you see things as ever changing and that just because something is this way NOW, does not mean its that way forever, and it is completely within your control to bend what initially may seem like the confines of your situation and potentially change the outcome completely.
Gluteal Amnesia
You know when you're having an argument with someone and you get angry, and you know you can't say “you are such a dickhead” but you can get away with “you're acting like a dickhead”?
Bear with me here, but I reckon this applies to glutes, disc bulges, shin splints, heel spurs and a heap of other painful things. We have so many clients that come in and say “I was told it's shin splints and to stop running” or “I had a scan that showed a slipped disc so I haven't deadlifted since then”, and I'd like to convince them these things don't always mean that particular body part IS a dickhead, maybe it was just acting like one at one point.
Adversity, My New Friend
So recently I’ve been all over mindset, it’s like my latest hobby. If you know me, you’ll know that I don’t just like something, I FUCKING LIKE IT, in bold, caps lock on. Whether it’s an object (must wear my Train Manchester tank from Sam Briggs’s gym every Saturday), a food (I have eaten broccoli every day for the last 12 months) or a person (my bff and I have 3 matching tattoos), I must absolutely immerse myself in whatever that thing is, until it either becomes as much a part of me as my frequent use of the C word, or I basically fuck it to death and move on to the next thing.
The Deadlift, Friend or Foe?
The deadlift is considered the grand-daddy of the gym and strength and conditioning world. If you want a bigger snatch or bench… get deadlifting. If you want to run faster, jump higher.. Get deadlifting. The hype about the deadlift is warranted. It is one of the most bang for your buck exercises and if executed well can give you big rewards in performance. But if this lift is so good why are deadlifts kryptonite for some lifters?
Junkie
"Would you say you are addicted to exercise?"
Asks my training partner / BFF / fitspo as we glue rhinestones to t-shirts in a rare non-exercise related activity.
I think carefully about my answer as I look around my apartment, which is decorated with a whiteboard detailing my next weeks training plan, along with a collage of photos taken of me at various comps over the last 18 months of being single as fuck and CrossFitting my life away. I have a kettlebell as a doorstop, and as we speak I’m entering my macros from the meal we just ate into My Fitness Pal.
Evolutio - Being Human is the New Black
In my view, what do people want more than ever. Honesty, humanisation, and the truth.
For me, it’s obvious. In a world that can be brutal, we’re saturated with an ideology that it’s not, when our surroundings, life events and personal circumstances can be completely the opposite.