Far from it.
However, there's lessons to be learnt from the strength and conditioning sessions that footballers go through, hence I found myself at the London Wasps Twyford road (Acton - West London) training grounds for 2 trial training sessions.
Glorious weather in London all last week, it seems that summer has finally decided to show its face, I decided to walk to their grounds from work- a good 40 minute uphill...and arrived at the gym at 6:30pm.
Naturally, an all boys club. There were around 6-8 in the group, all shapes and sizes, committed to weight loss and keeping fit. Before the start some of them were warming up by rolling little balls under their feet, and plastic pipe rollers on their tight muscles ( it's not a foam roller)!
We broke into two groups, did a bit of stretching, planks etc and were shown our exercises for the circuits, in 10 minutes we do a range of exercises , almost always involving 6 pushups, then some kind of weight lifts such as the farmer's walk With a 13kg kettlebell! (they got me a lighter one), TRX pulls (w shape in arms!) steps with weights, abdominal crunches. Few reps of these and we'd change groups with different routines when 10 min was up. It was quite fun and certainly felt more private than in a gym with everyone watching.
Then as we went into the final minutes of the hour, we were asked to go outdoors. Everyone took their bottles of water so I knew something was up. We all went out to the synthetic turf and lined up, and pushed this basic scrum machine for 100 metres (or for me, up to the 3rd line) on the low handle , and back.
To illustrate what this apparatus looks like here's a more advanced version compared to the one we pushed. It was hard work! Some guys even had weights added onto theirs but they still pushed alright!
I certainly felt conditioned - and earned my complimentary maximuscle protein chocolate crunch bar on the way home. A 60 minute intense session the day after a 10 mile long run! Quite happy about that!
Session 2 - on a friday - I started my afternoon cycling up to Acton, all uphill, but less work and sweat than walking there! We headed outdoors, with a breeze, it was like a natural air conditioning. Loved the blue skies as it reminded me so much of Australia..
This time our circuits involved curls with swiss balls, jumping in and out of huge tyres, bear crawls, Half turkish get-up (why turkish?) - but the explosive arm support is beneficial apparently!
and throwing 35kg weight bags onto our arms and running! (I again, got the easier option which is similar to the picture below) - now I wonder why baggage handlers are only allowed to do 30kg when these workout sessions for amateurs clearly exceed that! But as we've been told, more weight is good. It will trick your body into faster metabolism hence losing fat faster, and supplemented with a protein rich diet, building lean muscle.
There are priorities to be set when one is juggling too many things in life, after 2 sessions of concessions on lighter weights for me compared to everyone else, I was ready to take the learning and shift the focus back to running training. The bike ride home has never felt so good, downhill, and through the bridges that now become so familiar to me - around 6 miles and I'm into Twickenham , the haven of rugby. These 2 training sessions with the boys at the Wasps means I will never look at rugby in the same way again. Caught the next fast train home just in time, and into a rewarding friday night dinner - haha, not a protein shake! :)
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