2024 Training Log Part 35

Today on the stereo- Owen Pallet. To say I’m in a chilled winter mood is understating it.

Yesterday I ran my last event of the year. It was an easy one, the easiest of the year in fact, with about 300 competitors, versus into the thousands for some events during the year. It’s not hard work, you could be digging ditches or putting up scaffold, but it does take it out of you because it’s go go go. To be honest, I hate it about 70% of the time. But the 30% that I love keeps me going back to it.

A large part of that is the satisfaction of seeing it progress, and seeing the competitors who use it go on to compete in majors and do so well.

Let me tell you something really quick before getting on with the blog. Academically I’m not very bright. I had this thing when I was a kid where people (usually my family) would tell me how intelligent I was, but then the results would come in and they would be underwhelming. In fact, they wouldn’t even whelm. I could sit and talk about fairly complex subjects, and had understanding, but I couldn’t write the stuff down. The net result was I left school feeling stupid, and I had a piece of paper to prove it.

But that’s not the story I want to tell you. Because that one is miserable and it has a few more twists to it. The thing I want to tell you is that when I was 12 I made a Christmas log for my ma. My Papa (that’s what we called my grandad in case you’re wondering) had showed me how. I sawed a fire log down the middle, drilled a hole for a candle using a hand drill (I wasn’t allowed to use the power tools yet), got a little plastic robin from a shop that I attached with a little U-nail, and sprayed it with fake snow.

It went down a treat, so someone, I forget who, said I should make some more. So I took my pocket money and bought some logs and some candles and some little robins (I seem to remember some supply chain issues with those) and a can of fake snow. And along with my mate Mark from next door, we produced 20 Christmas logs in my garage. We then, eh, borrowed a shopping trolley from around the corner and went door to door selling them for £5. An astronomical price you might think, but c’mon! Hand made, artisan pieces these were.

We sold out, so we made more. And we sold them out. The only thing stopping us was geographical constraints. Neither of our parents were fond of us wandering around the streets beyond the with a shopping trolley full of logs and pockets full of cash at 12. We couldn’t scale up, you might say. I can honestly admit now, at this remove, that perhaps quality declined in subsequent batches. Perhaps due to tired 12 year old limbs operating a hand saw. Some of those final pieces may have been a little rocky on your mantel.

By the way we tried it again the next year, but we discovered what every teenage boy discovers. A little lad with a hairless top lip and a squeaky voice is charming, and you’ll give him a fiver, but a pubescent kid with the beginnings of a Ronnie on his top lip and a cracking teenage drone is viewed with suspicion. Why are you knocking on my door? What’s this piece of shit log? Can’t you do better? Are you distracting me while your mates break in the back of the house? Piss off!

Despite taking a bath the next year, the experience stuck with me. You don’t need to pass higher maths to be useful. You don’t have to sit in an office for 8 hours doing the same thing over and over. You can make something happen for yourself. What do people want? Can you do it for them? Can you talk to people? Can you convince someone that what you have is worth something? Can you do it better than the others? And luckier still, I got to combine that with what I love. Up to now at least.

I can’t claim to be doing well, and I can’t say that it’s easy, but I can claim that to do what you love, working for no one but yourself, is just fucking great.

Anyway, training.

Monday

This week I freed myself from the BFR straps for a break.

1. Single arm bench 5×5
2. Dumbbell floor press 3×15
3. Single arm cable row 4×8
4. Face pull 3×15
5. Wobble board plank 2x60s
6. Weighted crunch 2×15
7. Cable kickbacks 2×20
8. Hammer curls 3×10

Evening Jiu Jitsu

Ah great rolls. 8 rounds. Just my type of training.

Tuesday

Lower Body

1. Lateral Lunge 5×8
2. Nordic Curls 5×6
3. High step ups 5×10
4. 45 back raise holds 3x45s
5. Glute raise 3×20

Wednesday

Evening Jiu Jitsu.

8 rounds.

Friday

Super Pump useless session.

1. Dumbbell Bench 3×20
2. EZ Curls 3×15
3. Dumbbell Row 3×20
4. Skullcrusher 3×20
5. Arnold press 3×20
6. Bent over raise 3×20
7. Cable Pulldown 3×20
8. Lat pulldown 3×15
9. Incline hammer curls 3×20

What was I doing here? No idea. Screwing around. I felt a little fatigued before and wanted to do a recovery session so put some muscular endurance work in there but ended up feeling more like I was in 1994 copying the back page of Muscle and Strength mag.

That was it for the week. Pretty happy to squeeze in 5 given the week that was in it.

See you on the mat!

Barry