Stryka’s BodyBlog

I have recently joined a second gym that is near my work and is open 24hrs so that when I work that I can still get in to train. It is a very commercial gym full of mainly machines and cardio and only one barbell (what’s up with that???) but it does have a good set of dumbells every 2kg all the way up to 50kg and I have found that once you load up with more than a couple of plates on the barbell for squats or deads surprisely no one lurks about trying to steal the bar to bench with.

Twice now though I have seen this fellow who thinks it is cool to wear compression tights in the gym. Now I have a set of the pants and a couple of compression tops. I have found they are great out on the bike to keep warm. They also do help with recovery during sets etc and I believe some of my pr’s have come from wearing them.

I would like to know however what on earth they do to help you with bicep curls??? This fellow that I saw with the pants did absolutely nothing but preacher curls the entire time I was there. WTF!!!!!! It is bad enough that he spent an entire session on preacher curls (I am assuming it is a coincidence that both times was bicep night and that he did do something else in between, but you never know!), It is bad enough that he wants to object his fellow gym goers to the sight of him in Lycra (at least throw some shorts over and leave a little of dignity out there) but seriously compression pants do not help your biceps.

Of course if it was a chick I wouldn’t be complaining but hey that’s life isn’t it

We all know in life that sometimes things get in our way, so I thought I would introduce to those who follow this blog who are not familiar with Aussie rules football to what is affectionately known as "the hip and shoulder".

I wanted to give you all some motivation for the next time you are in the gym that you could hit it at 100 miles an hour and leave the gym having destroyed all in your path.

Or maybe it is the crap pusher who doesn’t except that you don’t want any of their lard inducing cake, tell them in no uncertain terms why you don’t want it, flatten them.

Or maybe it is the person who puts down your achievements, flatten them by taking those achievements up to the next level.

In fact no matter what or who is in your path, flatten em, leave em lying motionless on the ground, make em cry, you are harder than they are.

Please don’t literally flatten any one… unless they are doing bicep curls in your squat rack or sitting on your bench talking, in that case be my guest.

This morning was the running of the Kingston Fun Run. Preparation for the race was hardly ideal as I have been fighting off a cold for the past week. I also pull up very sore from last weeks race but this morning I felt pretty good.

Conditions were ideal with very little breeze and about 15 degrees celsius.

The start was chaotic. I tripped on someone but managed to regain my feet. The start was very tight out of my gym carpark and there was no separation of walkers and runners. Honestly you would think the walkers would at least show some common sense and move towards the back but no just off to my right was a lady carrying a large handbag.

We get away and after the first 500metres the road turns very much downhill, I knew that I would need to make the most of this first third of the run and push hard down the hill.

I hit the flat and by the half way point I had clocked just over 11 minutes. The next section is where I need to work on, I seem to have difficulty picking up a good quick consistant pace. We turn off the main road and with about a km and a half to go I know that I don’t have much to run but the next km seems to take forever eventually I turn onto the beach and as soon as I hit the harder sand I push into a sprint for the line.

My finishing time was 23:50 about 3 and a half minutes faster than last year and right into my target time.

The City to Casino fun run is as flat as runs get in Hobart, which I discovered today was not necessarily that flat. I haven’t run since my last triathlon back in march so as far as my preparation goes at least I know I tapered off well and didn’t over exert myself in the lead up

Having said that as uncomfortable as some of the uphill climbs were there were actually more downhills than uphill so I felt that my target time of 50 minutes should be achievable for the 11kms. The weather was ideal, sunny about 10-12 degrees celsius and with a small tail wind, you really couldn’t have asked for much more.

I somehow found myself right at the front at the start which took off a lot faster than my preffered pace and whilst I adjusted pretty quickly I couldn’t get myself into a comfortable rhythym.

Halfway through I realised that whilst I wasn’t comfortable my pace was ok and with what I estimated was plenty of time to finish around 50mins.

I persisted at the same pace and before I knew it there was only 2.7kms to go and I had been running for about 36 minutes. Here is where I feel I let myself down a little. I had wanted to push as hard as I could through the last couple of kms but I just couldn’t get enough oxygen until with about 400metres I realise how close I was and all of a sudden I found a sprint with ease. I flew through to the end with a finish time of 50:06 for the eleven kilometres.

If I had pushed harder from the 9km mark I think I could have easily found another 2 minutes, but having said that, I didn’t train for the race and really was having an off day. I have a massive blister in the arch of my foot so to pretty much achieve the goal time I can’t complain too much.

Next weekend the is a short 6km race which involves a lot of downhill. I did next weeks race last year as my first fun run since I was in the army. At the time I was pretty stoked with my 27 odd minute time but now I feel that on this course a blisteringly fast (for me anyway) 23-24 minutes is achievable considering the first three kms is downhill then flat to the finish.

This week I have taken a week of work for absolutely no reason at all except to take a week where I don’t have to worry about much else except eating, sleeping and training

As the title of this blog suggests this week it is all about me.

You see I firmly believe that to have longterm success at your fitness goals, they need to be selfish goals. You need to do this for yourself.

It’s great to have support, in fact we couldn’t get by all by ourselves but we all know that even the most supportive well intentioned friend or family member will become a crap pusher right when you need them to not bring any cheat foods anywhere near you. "just have one, it won’t hurt you"!

Your willpower needs to come from your own motivation because you want it, not because someone else wants you to. Because when it gets hard, a champions mind is focussed on victory not on what someone else thinks.

If you don’t wan’t it for yourself then you can’t take ownership of it.

If you don’t take ownership of it who will drive you to your goals? If you aren’t driving towards clear goals then you float around aimlessly. In 10 years time you will still be where you are today (if not worse).

Like I said over the weekend, take some personal responsibility, take control and own your world.

Be selfish, your life is all about you

Yesterday I witnessed a display of courage, of fight, of never giving up against the odds. Yesterday was Anzac day here in Australia, a day in which we remember the courage and sacrifice first displayed by Australian soldiers in the landing at Gallipoli on the 25th April back in 1915.

It has become a tradition that the Australian Football League honours Anzac day with a match between the two clubs that lost the most players to the world wars. One of these happens to be my team

Yesterday barely two minutes into the game our only ruckman (think basketball centre for you non Australians) landed awkrawdly on his knee and is likely to miss the rest of the season. This meant that the ruck duties fell squarely on a young man by the name of paddy ryder who whilst has a phenomal vertical leap is about 30-40pds lighter to the strength required for the job.

Not only this but because their was no one else out of 44 players for the two teams Paddy was one of two that spent the entire 122 minutes of game time on the field.

Apparently the television commentators wrote him off straight away. Apparently he wouldn’t be strong enough, apparently the task would be too big, too long , too hard.

But on a day where the sacrifices made by our soldiers are honoured Paddy decided that the least that he could do to honour them would be to display a little bit of intestinal fortitude and stand and fight. And fight he did, all day long.

Paddy decided that he couldn’t bulk up 40pds instantly, he couldn’t control anything how big the other guy was or that the other guy had a backup and was getting more rest than he was.

But what he could control was how long he was prepared to work and how hard he was going to fight, through sheer guts and determination he was going to impose his will on the game, he decided he was going take personal responsibility for the job because their simply was no one else, he was going to own his world…. So he did, and his team won because in the dying minutes of the game they were still fighting when others had given up.

We cant control so many things in our lifes. We can either take ownership of the situation and deal with it and come out the other side as a champion or give up and live in mediocrity.

here is the last 10 minutes of the game. Right when the commentors have written off the Bombers. Ryder is number 30 (in the red and black)

Following on from my last blog about excuses I wanted to write about something else that really gets to me.

And that is cutting down someone who has worked their ass off to get where they are.

My last posting when I was in the army was working with civilians, and one of them in particular would whinge about everything we did - "nice for some, us workers don’t get to go to the gym in work hours" (as if he would set foot in a gym ever!) or "knocking off already" after starting 2 hours earlier than they did. We use to say to him that if it was so good to be a soldier why didn’t he ever join?

The reality is of course that life as a soldier is hard work but all he could see where the benefits.

Same goes for the gym "you have it easy with your metabolism, you don’t how hard it is for me, it is easy for you, your fit"

WRONG! you obviously don’t see me in the gym most days of the week. You don’t see me out on the road either running or on my bike, you don’t see what I eat, you don’t see that I very rarely go out on the weekends and have a drink let alone drink myself into a stupor.

If you were prepared to pull your finger out of your ass and work instead of always looking for a quick fix then maybe you could understand why we do what we do.

What we do isn’t easy. There is no magic pill, there is no big secret. I don’t know how often I say it but consistantly brings inevitability. Nobody’s perfect. I certainly am not. I cheat, more than I would like. But most nights I get home from work, eat my chicken breast and sweet potato and about an hour later I go to the gym and lift as heavy as I can.

This is my routine. This is what I consistantly do, and this is why I look the way I do. I could do better of course. But the results of my consistancy are why I am where I am.

If your routine is to get home from work and order takeout then sit on the couch don’t be surprised that you are overweight.

If on the other hand you are prepared to push yourself, you are welcome to join me, anytime you like, just be prepared to work :)

I apoligise for the lack of motivational blogs of late. I have simply been finding between work and gym and triathlons that I haven’t had the time or energy to type. But I have been thinking about this post all week and reading one of Veronique’s blogs gave me the enthusiasm to type it out.

You see earlier this week I was sent to Melbourne for a couple of days to do a short course on giving presentions, something that I have to do from time to time in my work. This course involved having to give a short talk on anything you like so I decided that the best thing I could crap on for 10 minutes about would be an unqualified talk on burning fat and building muscle. 

Rest assured for any Nutritionist/Personal Trainer Nazi’s out there I did qualify my talk that I wasn’t qualified but that I simply wanted to point them in the right direction.

I thought I would probably bore them to death when I started talking about Squating and Deadlifting, Eating 6 times a day etc but instead they got excited, they wanted to know more, my alloted 10mins quickly disappeared but I couldn’t stop them asking questions. They were genuinely excited.

But then the excuses came: "I can be really good at going to the gym every day for a couple of weeks but then I just stop if I haven’t seen results" said one overweight girl.

"I am really good at eating during the day but when I get home I just open the fridge and eat eat eat" said another.

One by one the excuses came out, the self defeating excuses for why something cant be done or why they aren’t in shape. The sad thing was that they genuinely did want to get fit, they did want to lose fat they just couldn’t defeat the mindset that put them where they are.

I just smile and nod when people start talking like that because I realise that until they find that motivation within themselves to change then nothing I can do or say will enable them to see past the excuses.

So I decided to use this forum instead and hopefully here I can offend some people to start thinking about beating the excuses for themselves. Chances are that if you are on this site then you are already one step ahead of the people I spoke to and maybe this will be the blunt object that might get you over the line???

I don’t care if you tell me that you don’t have time to get to the gym! If you wanted this bad enough you would either make time or you would go and get some weights to use at home. I have no more time than you do. Just because Australia is in a different timezone to most of you doesn’t mean we have more hours in a day. I just make the sacrifice!

So you have a bad back/knees/shoulders whatever. I would probably say that the problem is in your heart more than anything else. Do you think that any soldier comes out of the military without something wrong with them. My problem is my knees. I can squat 190kgs and leg press over 800 pounds. If you have a weakness don’t you think you should do all you can to strengthen the muscles around the area??? Sure take it easy and build up slowly just don’t expect me to care when you whinge about not being able to do something.

So money is the issue? I am pretty sure Sweet Potato and Brown Rice cost less than french fries from fat Mac’s. Smarten up a little bit champ. If you wanted this you would find a way.

So for all of you that stopped reading because you got offended good riddance. For any of you left go and check out someone like VT dad that runs in sub zero temperatures. Or maybe someone like ShanBl who works hard and gets it done (her latest progress pics are proof!!!) In fact just go and randomly look at peoples profiles - you are guaranteed to find people who have exactly your excuse….

Only they just see it as a challenge that can be overcome.

Official Race Times: Swim 11:06 (2nd Last)

Ride: 24:36 - Ranked 7th out of 28 (and within 20seconds of 4th)

Run: 12:24 - Ranked 9th out of 28 (again within 20 seconds of 5th)

Total: 48:06 - 16th overall

Bring on next season!  But for now bring on the weights

I have been so excited about riding a fast bike in todays tri that when I woke up this morning to bucketing rain I was almost ready to go back to bed instead of racing. But I didn’t, I got ready and by the time I got to the beach the rain had eased to a light drizzle. The race was still on, I had already paid my entry fee, so I stayed and got ready.

By the time the race started the rain had pretty much stopped. The temperature was about 17 degrees C which is about perfect for the race, there was no wind to speak of but there was a fairly decent swell.

We started off and I eased my way into the surf, I don’t see much point in rushing too much at the start, would just mean everyone would swim over me and before we hit the first buoy. Today the swim was tough with the swell and on top of that my goggles fogged up so I had no idea where the far buoy was so I could only go off the main bunch which fairly quickly left me behind. Basically I zig zagged my way in the general direction. Although Today I only decided to quit about 5 times instead of the 10 last race. And each time I made that decision I pushed through that little bit further before all of a sudden I was only 15 metres away from the buoy, I only had to get around that and I could then swim towards land so I swam back out to it (I had gone off course again) and then headed for the beach.

Just as I thought I would never reach the sand my hand hit the bottom and without realising I was back in knee deep water. Another race without drowning.

I was sucking in some pretty deep breaths here and my transistion felt slow. I enventually got the bike off the rack and looked at my stopwatch, roughly 12mins had gone past. I was two minutes slower than my first swim. Need to learn to swim in a straight line The swell obviously accounted for some time too as did a very slow transistion.

Now for the real test - I have only had my cycling shoes for about a week and I haven’t gotten used to walking in them yet let alone run on the greasy wet road to the mount/dismount line. I hobble and I hop on the bike, again because of the road surface I gingerly take off, my intention was to really but the big power done out of the turnaround points but because of the road we have to really slow down to get around the turn and then it took a couple of turns to get full power out of the turn. I was dissapointed I couldn’t really get a good idea of how much improvement I had made since the first race because of the difficult conditions but I know I was faster and when I looked at my watch about 36minutes had elapsed. Average speed was roughly 30kms per hour including hobbling through the transitions trying not to slip over.

The run started well. It wasn’t the fastest ever 3kms I have run but it felt ok. And when I got towards the finish I picked the pace up a fair bit. I finished strong with a total time of around 48minutes. Roughly 30 seconds slower than the first but faster than the second and in pretty average conditions.

I am satisfied with this. Today for the first time I felt like I competed instead of just dragging my ass through it (well except the swim). I mowed down about 5-6 riders as if they were standing still and ran down another 5 or 6 on the run. I wasn’t last out of the water which was a race goal and I think that I should have achieved my other two goals of top ten splits on the bike and run. 

I am eagerly awaiting the official times  

Now to eat some more so I can get in a good weights sessions this afternoon