So as some of you may know, I am on a quest of discovery and self improvement. I have been working with Ian Chaffey of the P.U.B. gym in Bangor, check out their FB page here:

https://www.facebook.com/parafitpub?fref=ts

The premise is I am making a self filmed documentary on getting fit (something I have never done properly before), so I thought id challenge myself at something I know I was rubbish at and see what happens to me ! I have already done a number of episodes that I put on my YT channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxZiMQ8riY1DChuC3McWD_DoJi2gH5wd

The above explains what happened at the start and towards the beginning, I am ~3-4 months into it now, and I can happily say my fitness has improved and I have lost weight. Ian is a fantastic instructor, clearly passionate about what he does and this shows through in the quality of the personal training I am getting.

There has been around a month's + wait since my last update, in short, wedding season struck and so I was limited to what I could video edit other than wedding videos, (although we kept up the PT sessions!). But nearly all that is done now, and as I had a new website I thought I would keep up more of a training record in my blog !! :)

So from now on I will blog each session - let you know what happened, then gather the footage together for video updates as much as poss :)

30/10/2014

I felt mildly rough this morning, nothing bad, just a little run down. Still I didnt let this stop me, I always have a billion things to do each day. PT session with Ian was around 3 by which time I felt somewhat better. As ever a challenging session, but you simply won't make a difference if you don't sweat and reach the point of effort where you can no longer talk/barely stand up !!! lol (Have picked up a lot of aspects of mindset from PT training as well as fitness training)!

Usual brisk walk/jog to warm up

Then the dreaded.............the name escapes me at this point in time (wing something test?), anyways in short where the treadmill is 15 degrees up angle and not on, you have to push the train around yourself and build up momentum. Ian describes it as the mortgage test - sure you can reach the end of 5x sessions of insane effort to power the train around the tread mill, but then my god - you pay back for what effort your body just put in, usually in the form of being very light headed, a heart rate (for me) that maxed at 195 ppm and an overwhelming feeling of feeling sick! lol And of course dripping in sweat - its punishing but it WILL improve my fitness!

Following this we headed on over to the weighted squats. I say weighted, at this point im just using the bar (~20/25kg I think?), the weight is fairly reasonable, but that's not what were doing here. To me as a beginner its a somewhat 'alien' posture to be in, my arms and back are not used to being in the position they have to be in (arms back behind me holding the bar - all will be seen in my video), so actually the pain I feel is my arms stretching to an odd place and not the weight of the bar really (this does kick in after a few reps of course) - Here we build up slowly, 1 rep, rest until a minute is up.........2 reps from the top of the minute, until the next minute (you can rest during the remaining time), then 3 reps.......rest until the next minute, 4 reps......rest until the next minute etc....................etc............ we got to 7-8 reps within the minute and it got REALLY challenging, my muscles wobbling, arms aching like hell from the odd positioning, I took a moment to rest, flex my arms, then we did 10 reps in a minute for the last push - I kept in mind the tread mill test - you CAN do it, then just put up with your body paying you back for the effort that was put in - the thinking I am going with now!

Following all this, I ended the session with a boxing cardio session with Jamie Edwards, recently crowned the new 66kg novice welsh champion, he knows his stuff! This session was similar to the weighted squats, building up reps, 10 punches left, 10 right........then 20 left, 20 right........keep repeating up until 60 left/right........at this point I was just exhausted, laughing at my legs trembling, my body reached its (comfortable) limit for this session.

I say comfortable, in that, I wasn’t unconscious! Lol but I couldn’t even use my phone after for a few minutes as my arms and hands were trembling, presumably fighting to get oxygen back into my body!

This was only one session, and we got all that done – Something I would even say as a beginner is, people DO have the time to gym – they just need to make it happen, anything is possible if you decide it so.

On my way out Ian was tucking into his dinner he earned after training me! :P

Stay tuned for the update soon, meanwhile if you’re interested, keep popping back to this blog to see what really goes on at the gym, if like me you’re a beginner and have no clue, hopefully this will reveal the mystery of the what getting fit and healthy involves :)