Don't ask me why, but in the gym world for some reason prominent veins are envied. so superficial and vain (hahaha I'm good) I know but that's just the way things are. One of the girls I train with has very superficial and large diameter veins, so she gets some nice vein definition with every session. As our gym husband would say...'oh the vascularity!'.
Our other training partner is not so vein-y and her current training obsession, is biceps. That has been her goal for a few weeks now - get her biceps vein out.
This morning was the first session following surgery that I tried some left side only upper body work. Some one handed push-ups, pec fly's, biceps curls and upright rows. For me, biceps curl number two and BAM there was the vein. I couldn't help but laugh! I have done nothing with my arms in over a month and two curls in and the vein comes out.
Maybe because it is a bit deconditioned or maybe just all the stars aligned. But had to giggle at the ease I could getting it out with after our other training partner has been trying for so long.
It's official, we have jumpers!!! And I can not even explain how excited we all got by them! We have the WA Fitness Industry Convention happening in Perth this weekend, and lets just say, FitChix are going to take the expo by storm!
I am super proud to say that the FitChix family is growing massively and we are all loudly excited about what we have in store over the coming few months for our members and the wider community of Perth.
So while I am excited about a new and comfortable jumper that I am now in possession of, I am more excited about what it all represents. I truly believe that at FitChix we are onto an amazing thing that is going to inspire and empower women all over Perth, Australia and world wide about living active and positive lives and am sooooo excited to see what the future holds for us and all those involved!
I honestly have the most incredible people in my life. There's no hiding the fact that over the last week in particular I have been getting increasingly frustrated with my arm and having to rely so heavily on others to help me out with things and take me places. I normally pride myself on my independence but recently that has been taken away to some degree and I have had to get people to do things like opening sliding doors for me, carry a mat....just little things that would make others think 'oh I would like someone to open a door for me'. But when you are so dependant on other people for these things the novelty wears off.
A group of my friends - some of whom I train, teach and work with decided that I was in need of a bit of 'sunshine'. One girl so nicely put it that I am such a sunshine person to others, that they wanted to give some back. I was teaching a class last night, which all but one were in and on its completion I was getting ready to walk home again (still not allowed to drive) when I got called back to one girls car, one was insisting she was driving me home but they were all standing around the boot of a different car. Which was when I was presented with my box.
Apparently I looked so worried that something bad was going to happen, but in the end I was completely overwhelmed and had to hold back the tears until I got home. The effort these four girls had gone to I sourcing I swear every yellow smiley thing they could find is unbelievable. I have everything form a rubber duck, to a Frisbee to a wonder woman head band and a banana (personal joke between one girl out of the four). I am still honestly in shock and awe of these amazing girls and unbelievably thankful of the thought, effort, love and care they have put in and given to me today and over the past three weeks. I am still completely lost for words!
I am HUGE about commitment. If I have said I am going to do something I will bust my arse to make sure it is done! Whether that be run an errand for a friend, compete in a sporting event, write a program for a client or even just hang out the washing. I make my weekly plan days in advance and like to know what I've got on and when. People who know me well know I confirm plans with them well in advanced. If I have said I am gong to meet them, I am damn well going to be there.
So what drives me up the wall and really annoys me then, is people who cancel last minute! Yeah fair enough if your car broke down or your grandmother has been rushed to hospital, but if you tell me that you slept in, your hung over or some other pathetic excuse...not happy. You commit to something, you follow through, stay loyal and stay true to your word. Plain and simple.
This is something I have come across quite a lot recently when it comes to training. People often ask me how do they achieve certain fitness goals, lose weight, get some more muscle tone. It all comes down to commitment. I can tell you exactly what you need to do and how to do it, but if you don't commit to the plan and keep going even after the initial thrill and fun has worn off and things get hard. The biggest thing I want to teach people is that nothing worth having comes easy. Commitment leads to results, you get what you work for!
I like to think that I am a committed person. I commit myself to others to my training and I am working on committing to myself. It's work in progress, but I am thankful that I have a history of good commitment and I will get there!
I will be honest. I was a bit sceptical about kettlebells. I didn't really fancy the idea of swinging, throwing and lifting a big round ball of metal. But I gave them a shot anyway. When I first quit swimming I had an ongoing back issue that had stemmed from when I had stress fractures through my spine and pelvis when I was 15. At the time I was required to take three months off training and was not allowed to walk for more then 10 minutes at a time. When I was finally allowed to return to sport I had some pretty massive central sensitization due to the pain I had been living with for the past 2 years. As a result of the chronic pain I also had some pretty massive imbalances, all of which took a long time to really identify.
The biggest of all my imbalances, my left glut did NOTHING! I'm saying didn't even know how to switch on. This was magnified hugely when I did quit swimming and started taking on other types of training. So I started doing some kettlebells training, which if you have never really done before, is all about using your arse! So where do I start because my arse did nothing? With dead lifts.
I did normal dead lifts, stiff leg dead lifts, single leg dead lifts, dead lifts up right rows, burpee dead lifts....I did dead lifts to the death (hahahaha I'm good!). I would throw in a few swings every now and then but because my butt was so terribly weak any more then 5 swings and my butt would give out and my back would take over. So I dead lifted for I would say a good 10 months.
In about April this year (almost one year later) I started high reps of swings....pain free!!!! yeah I still get a bit of back pain after 50 or more but that is most definitely to be expected of anyone- back injury or not. Kettlebells use a functional training method to give you a whole body, full chain workout that needs everything working with good time, control and contraction.
On a side note I am excited to say that yesterday I bought my first two kettlebells. I am thankful that I was introduced to this training technique to really help a lot of the weakness I had developed because of my injuries and can't wait to share it with more people.
This weekend I went to watch the Allstar Affiliate Series, a team Crossfit competition that is being held in the major cities around Australia. It is a team competition where teams of three chicks and three guys work together to get out reps as a team, in pairs and on their own. There were over 430 athletes competing in this weekends events over a massive two days of competing.
The organisation and conduction of this event was pretty incredible. The staff managed to put 430 people through 4 workouts a day on two consecutive days like you wouldn't believe. There was a time line posted and they stuck to it. Impeccably.
Watching an event like this one - enforces how much I respect volunteers - those who work incredibly hard to make events like this happen; and two - kills me that I cant get back to stuff this this sooner, however also makes me wayyy more determined to prove people wrong once again!
Hats off to the people at AllStar Sports Affiliate Series. You guys put on one hell of a competition.
Supporting a good charity, helping to raise awareness about a movement or an issue I feel strongly about is something I regularly like to be involved in. The major charity I support is Telethon - a big, well known WA charity which raises money for the states children's hospital and research development institute, all aimed at helping kids with illness. There is nothing worse then a sick kid and this charity does AMAZING things!
There are a few community issues I feel quite strongly about. The publicly well known and obvious one is active living. Exercise and healthy eating of foods tat are as close as possible to their natural state is how I live my life and try to get everyone around me living theirs too. This is the stuff I live love and breathe.
The one above has been introduced to me by this friend who is actively supporting this cause for her own reasons. #screwthetaboo is a suicide prevention campaign which is encouraging people to talk about one of the biggest topics that is taboo in todays world, suicide. The leading cause of death in Australians under the age of 44.
Almost everyone has some kind of connection to this topic - friends, family, loved one or just people they know. More often then not it is brought up very quickly and being an extremely confronting, distressing and overwhelming topic of conversation, it is quickly stuffed back down again. It brought up quite a bit of emotion on my behalf also.
I am not yet in a place where I can openly discuss my experience with this subject, but I am more the thankful that people are trying to break down the taboo that is associated with suicide. If we have more people in the world not afraid to address the topic, you have no idea how much a simple conversation can literally change someone's life.
