The 10 things I have learnt from 10 weeks of OLY lifting

I have recently completed a 10 week Olympic Weight Lifting course at my box, under the tuition of the amazing coach Holly Gehlcken.  I absolutely loved it and I can’t recommend this kind of course highly enough to people new to CrossFit and Olympic Lifting.  Here’s what I learned:

1. Progress is not linear.  There were times when I was delighted with the progress I was making and could not have been happier with my performance.  Three days later I could go in and struggle with every lift.  You have to remember that patience is essential and that, even when it doesn’t feel like it, you are making progress.  Don’t be deterred by an off day; if you consistently train you will see results, they just may not happen with every session at the box.
2. What you do outside of the box makes a massive difference inside it.  All of those things that we all know about health and fitness like staying hydrated, getting enough sleep and eating a balanced, nutritious diet do actually make a big difference.  If you are tired and hungry, chances are you will not have a good lifting session.
3. Mobility is key.  I have talked before about how lucky I am to be very mobile.  Others, my husband for example, really struggle.  Without good mobility it will be virtually impossible for you to achieve the proper position in movements such as snatch and clean and jerk.  Kelly Starrett’s book Becoming a Supple Leopard has an enormous amount of first class advice on this issue.  Having said that being hyper mobile is not ideal either as I have discovered over the last 10 weeks.  I am definitely guilty of switching off in the bottom of my snatch position.  Arse to grass is only beneficial if you are able to maintain core strength and tension.
4. The proper kit makes a big difference.  I have found that having wrist straps, a velcro lifting belt and good quality shoes have made a significant difference to my confidence.  I am trying to ensure that I’m not reliant on the belt by lifting without it at times, however I do think it makes a big difference when I am lifting heavy, even if that is just psychological.
5. You can over think it.  My husband is a very smart man and when we first began CrossFit he over analysed every single movement.  Whilst it is really important to think about what you are doing, sometimes when you think too much you can do more harm than good.  An excellent way I have found to overcome this is doing drills.  The more drills you do do, the more natural the movements become for your body.
6. Recording your training sessions really helps (especially if you are a woman).  I talked before about how hormones affect my performance.  Keeping a detailed log of your training sessions, with not only what you lifted but how you felt, is extremely effective in making progress.  It is also a great tool to feel good about yourself as you can look back at where you were months ago and see how far you have come.
7. However you feel at the start of the session, you will always be glad you went.  Even on the days where I have dropped the bar again and again, and felt weak and clumsy, I am always glad that I went to Oly class.  Feeling bad but knowing you have tried is always better than feeling bad, sitting on the sofa, and comfort eating.
8. It is so much fun.  Maybe I am just lucky but the class at our box is full of really funny, happy people that it is a pleasure to train with.  You see people at their best (PB town!) and worst (those days where you are just not feeling it), but it is so much fun.  The feeling you get when you do a really good snatch is so exhilarating because that shit is not easy!  It is an extremely technical and difficult movement but when you do it right it feels great.
9. A PB is a PB if its 1 kilo or 10.  With movements like snatch progress can be slow.  In the ten weeks course I have just completed I have made 2.5 kilos progress.  Initially disheartened I realised from talking to others that a PB is a PB and I have to give myself credit where it is due.  I know that I have worked as hard, if not harder, on my snatch technique as I have on all my other lifts and however small that number may be, it is heading in the right direction.
10. You will get addicted.  Olympic lifting is addictive.  It is such a rewarding and exciting thing to do and the results you can achieve in such a short amount of time are fantastic so give it a go, what have you got to lose?!

Photographs by Rx’d Photography

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The Biggest Loser: Inspiration or Manipulation?

Whatever your opinion of it, like it, love it, or hate it, I personally found that watching The Biggest Loser was a huge source of inspiration to me.  When George and I moved to Ecuador we didn’t have a television, or a stereo, and we lived in a tiny village at the edge of Quito.  We started to watch the American version of The Biggest Loser on George’s laptop and I loved it.   As a television show, a brand, and the catalyst that led to international fame and fortune for its hosts Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper, it has been a staggering success.  What I loved about it was that, in a society where we are very quick to judge overweight people as being lazy and ugly and where to be called fat is deemed to be a worse insult than most, it gave a voice to obese people.  Through the show we learned that many of the contestants had suffered horrific traumas and the fat that they carried on the outside of their bodies was just a visible symptom of the inner pain and turmoil they were suffering.  

One example that stands out for me is Abby from series 8 who lost her husband and two children (one of whom was a newborn baby) in a tragic car accident.  Having worked for many years with people addicted to alcohol, drugs or gambling, it seems clear to me that obesity is just that.  An addiction to food that can lead to devastating and debilitating consequences.  If you dismiss obese people as simply fat and lazy, or perhaps worse, mock them, then you need to learn something about compassion.  Whilst I never reached such extremes as the contestants on the show, I could relate to the feelings of despair, frustration, anguish and disgust they felt with themselves, and how marginalised from society many of them had become.  I had experienced the humiliation of my fat squeezing out of my clothes like the meat from a sausage.  I had wanted to die in the summer as I poured with sweat from the slightest exertion and winced with pain as my thighs rubbed together.  I had wanted to be invisible so that nobody could see how disgusting I had allowed myself to become and I had felt hurt and frustrated when I was invisible to people, when they would look through me as though I was nothing.  I am not saying for one moment that all obese people feel that way, but it is not unusual.

I am not a fool.  I realise that The Biggest Loser is an extremely manipulative show that intentionally pulls at our emotional heart strings but at the centre of it are real people that are laying themselves bare, physically and emotionally.  I cried with them when they told their stories of pain and loss and I laughed and cheered with them as they shed the weight and found strength that they never knew they had.  As they transformed from the old, broken version of themselves into happier, healthier people, amazed at what they were capable of and what they could achieve.  Yes, I was manipulated by the emotional music and clever editing but it helped me with my struggles because I realised that I was not alone.  I was not the only person who was ashamed, and scared and who ate their feelings so that they were numb.

Our favourite contestants of all time are sisters Olivia and Hannah. We loved their humour, their honesty and their grit and determination to succeed.  Olivia and Hannah are true Biggest Loser success stories.  Maybe because they have each other; or because Olivia’s husband Ben took the journey alongside them at home to enormous success, or because they have maintained a close friendship with their coach Bob Harper.  Some people may even attribute their success to the discovery of CrossFit and the support and guidance that the community provides.  Whatever the reason the two women have managed what a lot of contestants have not, they have maintained their weight loss and truly changed their lifestyles.  How can you not be inspired by that?

This year, for the first time since we began watching in 2009, my husband and I gave up on The Biggest Loser.  After the first couple of episodes we stopped watching, so I was particularly shocked to see the footage of the latest winner Rachel Frederickson looking frail and emaciated.  Opinion seems to be divided with many criticising Frederickson and the show’s producers, whilst others defend her weight loss as just being ‘part of the game.’  What I always loved about it was that at the end the winners, both men and women, stood on the scale flexing their muscles and appeared to have become mentally and physically stronger through their experience on the show.  Having not watched the whole series I can’t comment on her personality or experience but I do not think that this year the person standing on that scale was a picture of health and well being and I don’t think many people do.  I fully understand that the prize money is huge.  It is as much a life changing factor of The Biggest Loser as the weight loss, and maybe if I was in that situation I too would do whatever it took to go for gold.  I hope not.  I hope that I would prioritise my health above all.  That the lessons I had learnt along the way had taught me to veer away from extremes and look for balance.

I don’t agree with body shaming.  To me curvy is not better than skinny, and skinny is not better than fat.  I don’t think that the internet trend for comparison ‘when did this become better than this’ is helpful in the ongoing struggle for women, and men, to find happiness and contentment with their bodies amidst the constant assault of criticism and judgement.  We are all naturally different shapes and sizes and that is great.  All I know for myself and the people that I love is that I want to be strong and healthy, and I want my role models to be just that.  

Moaning about Hormones

I am on week five of a ten week Olympic Weight Lifting Programme.  It has been extremely challenging and exhausting but last week I felt that I was genuinely beginning to make progress.  My lifts felt smoother, and although the …

January: You tried, and failed, to break me!

I made it!  30 days of eating fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, nuts, seeds and not much else.  This was my third Whole30 and it was hard, I think in part due to the weather.  It feels as though it has been raining for months here in England and when you get up and leave for work in the dark and come home in the dark it can really grind you down and have you reaching for those comfort foods that you have relied upon for so long.  Historically my mental health really begins to decline in January and I tend to spend a lot of time feeling very sorry for myself.  Not this year!  Despite some intense cravings, especially towards the end, I did not give in.  Having the Whole30 as a focus, albeit an incredibly tough one, really helped.  Not one morsel of sugar knowingly passed my lips (other than those naturally found in fruit), not even maple syrup or honey.  This morning my breakfast of banana pancakes with bacon and maple syrup and a cup of proper builders tea with milk was absolutely delicious, and well worth the wait.

Rebus is a gorgeous, if slightly distracting, member of the box. Look at that face!

In terms of results I lost 7.2 kilos (1 stone 2 pounds), I have felt far less bloated, I’ve had much more energy and I haven’t had any IBS symptoms the whole time.  I have also had the energy to go to regular Olympic Weight Lifting classes at 7pm on weekdays, when I could quite happily have been relaxing on the sofa and watching Breaking Bad (I think I have aged about ten years watching that show) or Community.  We are now in our fifth week of Oly class and it has been incredibly hard.  Despite the fact that I have been CrossFitting for over a year now, there have been very few times when I have gone to the gym and lifted weights pretty much relentlessly for over an hour.  In the first couple of weeks I was blown away by how exhausting the programme was.  Doing 5 x 5 sets of Olympic weight lifting movements, even at 60% of your maximum, is a huge challenge but I love it.  I am naturally very flexible, which means that despite the fact that I am not particularly strong, I am able to easily achieve the positions necessary for Olympic lifting.  When I see other, much stronger, people around me at the box struggling, I realise just how lucky I am.  When we first started my husband could barely squat and struggled with his shoulder flexibility.  It has taken a huge amount of consistent hard work for him to achieve something which is easy for me.  Conversely he is extremely agile and is excellent at gymnastic movements, whereas I have all of the grace of a drunken clown on roller skates, so you know – swings and roundabouts.

Andrea Ager: and that is how you squat.  Photograph by Rx’d Photography

I recently went to watch my first proper CrossFit competition and I absolutely loved it!  The Battle of London was held at The Copper Box arena in the Olympic Park.  A friend and fellow box goer, Christina, was competing in the event and what seemed like most of Reebok CrossFit Connect went along to support her.  I have never seen so many fit people in one place in my life.  I have also never seen so many people eating salads and drinking coffee!  It was a fantastic event and I loved every minute of it.  Christina did us proud and I was absolutely inspired by the athletes I saw, especially the women.  When I grow up I want to be STRONG!

Christina Ando is a total bad ass and one of the sweetest people I have ever met!

Hey sugar sugar!

When you start CrossFit you are quickly introduced to a new and confusing lexicon and it feels as though you are learning a new language.  Sometimes some of these ideas and concepts cross over into ordinary life and its interesting when that happens. Since I started CrossFit I have experimented with eating paleo, have completed the Whole30 and have been the subject of many bewildered questions from friends and colleagues about what I am eating and why.  My standard response when people have asked me why I am doing Whole30 is simply that I am addicted to sugar.  One of my colleagues told me this week that it had been all over the news that sugar is as addictive as nicotine.  Sure enough the next day I caught a glimpse of the newspaper headlines:  ‘Sugar is the new tobacco’ screamed one, ‘Sugar is now enemy number 1 in the western diet’ shouted another.

The Whole30 is, as the name suggest, 30 days of whole foods.  Meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts.  I know I have a sugar addiction because I used to smoke and the signs are all too familiar.  The more I eat, the more I want.  I use it to comfort myself when I am sad and to soothe myself when I am stressed.  I eat it in secret and rationalise that I will quit on Monday.  I binge and then feel incredibly guilty and that I have let myself, and everyone else, down.  When I stopped eating sugar for the first time I experienced an intense, debilitating crash.  I had absolutely no energy and felt borderline depressed for about a week.  I dreamt that I had eaten sugar and woke up feeling panic and guilt (which is exactly what happened to me when I gave up smoking).  I was hungry in a way that was so forceful that I thought I would never feel satiated again.  I don’t want anything to have that control over me.  One of the most challenging aspects of this is that it is socially acceptable in a way that other addictions aren’t.  You aren’t encouraged to smoke at work and yet anyone who has ever worked in an office or school will be all too familiar with the cakes on a Friday or birthday cakes tradition.  Who hasn’t looked sheepishly at their work buddy and whispered ‘I shouldn’t,’ to be met with ‘I will if you will.’  I know I’ve been on both ends of that scenario more times than I care to remember.

It is not just the obvious cakes, sweets, chocolates that are to blame.  It is only when you try and cut out sugar that you realise that it is in everything.  Everything!  I was astonished when I began checking labels at how many products have added sugar.  Perhaps the most alarming was a packet of dried fruit and nuts that my husband bought from a local supermarket as a ‘healthy’ snack.  We have also found it in seasonings, stock and dried meats and it is not always clear that it is there.  It disguises itself in a myriad of forms such as dextrose, glucose, fructose sucrose or ‘organic evaporated cane juice’, but it is all sugar.

In the long term I don’t know how this will pan out for me.  Will I feasibly be able to cut out all sugar for the rest of my life?  Do I even want to?  What I do know is that I want to make informed choices about what I am putting in to my body.  I don’t want to blindly trust a company that they will be making the right choice for me because invariably they won’t.  I am very fortunate to be surrounded by a community of health conscious people, including a paleo expert in the form of the lovely Barney.  I have a lot of free time to do shopping and cooking, I have a husband who is an excellent cook and who feels the same way about his health as I do.  I realise that for others it is not that easy and I feel so incredibly frustrated that it is more difficult and more expensive to eat healthy.

Despite the sensationalist headlines on the subject I think it’s great that information about the dangers and implications of sugar is becoming more easily accessible and that people are able to make informed choices about what they consume.  I am on day 11 of the Whole30 and I feel really good.  Wish me luck!

The world is a playground, are you coming out to play?

I’m not afraid of dying, no more than anyone else anyway, but I am afraid of getting old.  Not grey hair, crow’s feet old but the kind of old where you can no longer care for yourself.  When you are forced to be dependent on someone else, be they a devoted family member or someone earning minimum wage in an unflattering uniform.  When I was in my early twenties I worked as a Health Care Support Worker for a nursing agency.  Many of the shifts I got were in the elderly unit of the local hospital where, in the naivety of my youth, I was confronted with the cruel indignities of ageing.  For those poor, lonely souls, personal care was no longer personal but, regardless of how sweet and well meaning the carer, painfully public.  Incontinence pads, commodes, hoists; a deadly arsenal in the assault on independence, dignity and youth.

I have talked before about the way that Crossfit has challenged my own perceptions of gender both in myself and others.  It has also been a powerful tool in shaping my goals and aspirations and how I view my future.   I am 35 years old and I feel stronger and more physically confident than I ever have.  In the community that I train in age is irrelevant.  All around me I see strong, powerful women and men and many of my real life heroes are my age or older.  In the Crossfit Games there are several categories for masters (over 40) including 60+ and much has been written about starting Crossfit over 40 (check out this excellent blog post for example).   One of the owners of Reebok Crossfit Connect, Holly Gehlcken, won World, British and Southern Masters Olympic Weight Lifting titles in 2010.  She is not just the owner but one of the head coaches, mum of two and a bloody lovely lady to boot.

All my life I have seen sport as something for young, fit people with natural talent and ability but why should they have all the fun?  Why do only young people get to skip and jump and run and swing?  Why do only young people get to play?  The answer, of course, is that they don’t.  Anyone can, you just have to make the choice to get off the sofa and do it.  You have to come to the realisation that moving is more fun than eating.  I don’t really drink anymore and I don’t remember the last time I went to a pub in the evening but I’m okay with it.  If other people think thats boring I don’t mind.  I spent many, many years feeling lost and sad and hating my life.  Now I love my life and I don’t want it to change (there is an enormous change coming up but more about that later, and no, I’m not pregnant).

Since I started Crossfit, I don’t worry about my age so much.  I spend less time looking in the mirror and fretting over my grey hair (which, by the way, I have had since I was in my mid twenties).  I no longer analyse my reflection in the mirror for new wrinkles, I don’t have time!  If I am looking in the mirror I’m checking out my guns for progress or laughing at how funny I look in my crazy new leggings.  One of the great things about Crossfit boxes is that they don’t have mirrors so you spend less time worrying about what you look like and more time thinking about how you feel (at times, like in the middle of a WOD, that is a mixed blessing).  As for my long term goals and aspirations, I hope that one day I can spend my retirement playing and instead of visiting me in the old people’s home or hospital ward, my grandchildren are working out with me at the box.

Reebok Crossfit Connect members Kay and Tony after the Colour Run in September.

Photograph of Holly Gehlcken by RX’d Photography

True Grit

I have been thinking a lot about grit.  I don’t mean that fabled southern (American) food that looks a bit like porridge; I mean the personality trait where you are willing to put interest and effort into something in order to achieve a long term goal.  My husband (who is an absolute brainiac) is working on some research using Angela Duckworth’s Grit Scale and when I watched her talking about Grit, I was intrigued.  In truth because when I really look at my own personality, for much of my life I have not been a very ‘gritty’ person.  I passed my driving test first time and have never driven, not even once, since.  I qualified as a teacher and never taught.  I wrote a book and it is hidden away where nobody can read it.  I am a non completer.  That is definitely something I’m working on and is what Crossfit is all about.  You don’t get instant results; it is a long, slow, challenging process to get where you want to be.  There is no magic secret to success, just many, many hours of hard work and perseverance.  One of the most important guidelines in Crossfit is to train your weakness.  That means not just going to the box and taking the easy option (whatever that may be for you) but specifically working on what you find the most difficult.  That is true grit: deliberate practice of something that is difficult and challenging in order to improve.  In my case there is a long list, the first item on which is pull ups!

When I was a kid I was absolutely convinced that I was rubbish at all sport.  I’m very short, I have big boobs (as discussed here) and for a large majority of my life I have been overweight.  So that was it.  Sport wasn’t for me.  End of story.  But guess what was for me?  Smoking, eating, drinking, partying!  I had found something I was good at! For nearly 15 years I treated my body with absolutely no respect and wondered why I had no body confidence or self esteem.

At several points I reached what I thought was rock bottom and signed up to a weekly diet club (you know the ones).  I bought into the multi million pound, evil, manipulative diet industry and paid my weekly subscription to weigh in, quite often forking out substantial amounts of extra cash to buy their own brand diet bars.  I distinctly remember one such diet club where the consultant (alarm bells should have rung; as well intentioned as she was, she was almost as tubby as me) told us all that exercise, or ‘body magic’ as they called it, was optional and not necessary for weight loss on the programme.  Unsurprisingly I did not show grit and determination, I failed.  Time after time I lost weight only to put it all back on again.  Weeks or months of deprivation were followed by equally long periods of absolute bingeing and if I had a pound for every time I told myself ‘I will start again on Monday’ I would be a very rich lady.

It wasn’t just the diet clubs that took the money I willingly, gratefully offered them.  There were also the gym memberships.  Full of good intentions I would trot down to the local globo gym and gleefully sign up an 18 month contract because that would inspire me to go regularly, wouldn’t it?  Studying the class timetable I would feel a mixture of fear and intrigue at all they had to offer but the few times I forced myself to go I would spend the entire time lost and confused, not knowing the moves and feeling out of place amongst the gym bunnies with their tiny little butts who obviously all knew each other.  So back I would trudge to the exercise bike or the treadmill where I would plod on, whilst scanning the pages of Heat magazine.  Soon my good intentions would once again fall by the wayside and I was paying considerable sums of money for a gym that I never went to.  I think my record was a whole year of monthly payments where I didn’t go once.  Not smart, but I wasn’t alone.

When I saw this photo I could have cried.  This was when I was at my heaviest – 12st 4 pounds (79 kilos)

I am happy to take my part of the responsibility for this wasted opportunity but I didn’t know any better.  I didn’t know what weights I should be using or how to work the machines.  I had thousands of pounds worth of equipment available to me and no idea how to use it.  And as for the free weights, there was absolutely no way I was going to enter the testosterone filled man zone where pumped up guys bicep curled whilst gazing adoringly at their own reflection in the mirror.   I was scared and I couldn’t do it alone.

The first big, real, change was in 2009 when I moved to Ecuador for a year with my husband.  We started watching The Biggest Loser and I joined a gym.  This time it was different.  Instead of just aimlessly plodding I went every day and did Jillian Michael’s Thirty Day Shred there at the gym (I had written down all of the movements).  The faces of those Ecuadorians as they saw this chubby little white girl doing star jumps and butt kicks was priceless, but it worked!  It wasn’t just the exercise, it was my diet too.  My husband and I became vegan, which didn’t last long to be honest, but it was the first time I began to really consider that food should be real and not a concoction of chemicals.

A few months later my husband entered the Quito Marathon and I decided to do the half marathon.  We did it, we were slow and it hurt, but we did it!  For the first time in my life I had shown grit and determination and had successfully trained for and completed something using my body.  I wish I could say to you that I lived happily ever after but I didn’t.  When we came back to England life got in the way and despite good intentions I lost sight of my long term goal, replacing it with short term pleasures.  But this time there was one difference: I now knew what it felt like to be fit.  I understood what my body wanted and needed.  I had shown grit and determination.  I was capable of succeeding.  It may have taken me a while to get back on track but now that I have found Crossfit I know that I am not alone.  If I don’t know how to do something there are always coaches and other Crossfitters there to help me.  If I feel like giving up there are people there to cheer me on.  If I stop going my coaches will notice and want to know what’s wrong.

If you are anything like me then the answer to health and fitness doesn’t lie in trudging away on separate treadmills, watching TV or reading a magazine, it isn’t about paying to go to a diet club and bingeing after weigh in.  When you find something that is fun, exciting and challenging having grit, determination and perseverance is not so hard after all.

WODs and a Wedding: a year of Crossfit

I get really tired of all the negativity that is written about Crossfit, often it is poorly written, childlike mudslinging.  My experience of Crossfit, like many, many others, is that it is an incredibly positive, life affirming and inspiring sport …