Challenge Cup final and a cheeky trip to London

Its been a really exciting week, although I haven't managed to get in as much training as I would have liked, I've managed to substitute for other things and my motivation hasn't been lacking!

A good friend of mine is making 2012 his year of sport, inspired by the Olympics and Paralympics being held in London, he set out to get to as many sports events as he possibly could throughout the year and take a secondment from his lovely girlfriend and make this year all about sport! You can catch up on his adventures here http://coxysyearofsport.blogspot.co.uk/. 

He managed to get to the six nations, Heineken cup, Tour de France, Olympics, Paralympics, SPL matches, The Crucible and even Silverstone for the Formula 1 to name a few. I have no idea how he managed to afford all this but he has done it and I don't think he will be allowed to go to another sports event till at least the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Me, Coxy and Shadow at Wembley Challenge Cup Final

Overall he has manged to hit 52 events (probably more now) over 30 sports in 17 Cities in 6 countries and shockingly he has only managed to rack up 9 wins for the individuals or teams he has supported. Maybe he is bad luck! Why am I telling you about this you may ask? Well Sport wouldn't be as much fun to watch if you went on your own and Coxy has got friends to join him for each of the events he went to and I was lucky enough to be the  friend who was chosen to chaperon him to the Challenge Cup along with Mark (shadow). Who will always now have a special place in my heart for taking us to possibly the best south indian curry place in Wembley - it was phenomenal!

This meant a break from training (or so I thought), a nice relaxing time down in the capital and a cheeky trip to Wembley. I mentioned to Alex (S&C) that I was heading away and back on the Monday the following week and on that comment, he prescribed my London programme to do at home whilst I was away. What a nice guy! It was interesting getting this new body weight programme done in my cousins living room but I still managed to get a good sweat on. I even managed to get a little flexibility session is a quiet corner of Gatwick Airport before heading home.The things you do!

I was still a little stretched for cash as most people are the week before payday when I headed to London but I was adamant that I could spend a ridiculously small amount of cash and get away with it. I pretty much did that by not taking any public transport and walked everywhere as much as possible. I worked out that I walked atleast 16 Miles over the course of the weekend. Pretty mad when you consider I was only cruising about the London tourist sights.

Challenge Cup Final at Wembley - Warrington vs. Leeds

The Challenge Cup Final itself was pretty good. 79,000 people almost filled Wembley and we took our seats next to Zeus and Odin up high and watched as the ant like figures of Leeds and Warrington fought it out for 80 minutes. Adrian Morley still looked huge. Warrington came good in the end but not before the lighting and thunder hit. It sounded like a bomb had gone off somewhere distant as the Thunder echoed around the stadium. The storm lasted all of 20 minutes and that's a good thing about being up high, not getting wet!

The exciting #mission2014 developments came on Friday whilst I was away, I mentioned in my last blog post that Mike Cavanagh was coming into ENGAGE to do some coaching, he is in on Monday lunchtimes which is awesome and even better we are actually getting a wrestling mat at ENGAGE which is going to be phenomenal for training. I can't wait to get into training properly and start grappling and wrestling. Unfortunately, I'm missing the 1st session because I'm away but come the second week in September, I'm all over it. Actually, I am thinking about setting up a community club properly and getting a coaching badge to help run on a day over the weekend. I'm pretty sure we would be the only pure wrestling club in Edinburgh and the East if we were to do it.

I was doing a little bit of work with Jig on Tuesday at the throws training, we did some ground work stuff, Bear joined for some punishment and Jig worked us pretty hard which is always good (maybe not for the bear). No dropping on heads this week but there was an accidental bollock in the face moment, its all character building! I'm swopping in Training next week for a trip to Alton Towers, so i'll have to make it up somewhere.

Finally, back to my training I'm away next week to Emma's grandparents 60th Wedding Anniversary which is a pretty awesome accomplishment. Alex very kindly has prescribed me some training to do for the next two weeks whilst he ventures off to France on his motorbike. There is a lot of running in this block and back to the circuits and the dreaded wattbike tabata intervals, which may kill me off. I should be starting to look that little bit fitter come two weeks time. The key for me is to try and maintain a little weight! 

It's the Scottish Wrestling Open Championships next week, I elected not to enter this year, simply because I don't feel I have done enough wrestling yet to warrant a decent competition but next year! I will hopefully be Scottish Champion and well on my way to qualification for Glasgow 2014!

As always, thanks for taking time to read the blog, feel free to share it around and again as always you can catch me on twitter @shocksjr #mission2014

Oh and if you are interested in Wrestling in Edinburgh, drop me a line, I'm starting to collate a database of interested people:
mikewallacewrestling@hotmail.co.uk

Circuits - VO2 Max - Circuits

Me promoting Community Sports Development

I'm delighted to say that I made it through week one of my training and week two is now pretty much done. I feel good. I feel like i'm making progress, I've lost a reasonable amount of weight in the last 3 weeks, just through two weeks intense exercise and 4 weeks diet. I've dropped 8kg (about the weight of a West Highland Terrier) That puts me down at 115.9kg

I feel alot fitter and stronger than this time last week but that might be because i've reintroduced carbs at a low level back into my diet to get me through training.

Last week was pretty brutal, my legs took a pounding and by the time I got round to circuit training on Thursday I still wasn't sure how I was going to do it. The warm up on the crosstrainer was difficult as my legs were screaming with DOMS but I managed to get to the platform for the circuit. 

The circuit was a muscular endurance circuit that did really test me. 8 sets of 12 repetitions featuring the good old 50% weight (60kg) parallel squat, push ups, TRX rows, Leg raises and sprints. followed by a 21 minute boxing circuit. New levels of tiredness that i've never experienced before.

Michael Cavanagh, kindly gave me a ring at the end of last week and we are moving to set up the Wrestling club at [EN]GAGE. Michael is hopefully donating a bit of time to help out with the coaching, so if you are reading this and interested in Wrestling, get in touch with me and i'll give you all the info when it starts. I can't wait for that! very cool that its happening!

By the end of training last week. It left me wondering how the hell I was going to get through the next 18 months if I could only get up and down the stairs without bending my legs but 3 Stretching sessions later and Monday was back around and i'm still here!

The weekend was Awesome, Giles, one of my best mates got hitched to Becky - it was a cracking day, they lucked out on the wedding and everything went smoothly. I had a few drinks as ordered by Alex but nothing too extreme.

I've also got another in kind Sponsor. Ross Grady is now officially doing my massages as and when required which is fantastic, he knows how to cause me pain (good pain obviously) but another person i'm grateful to have on board.

I rocked in on Monday, actually dreading what was going to happen, but Alex sat me down and told me that week one was all about shocking the body and getting the mindset right to push you to levels that you need to get to and continue on. What a B*****D!

I say that but I got through it and that's the main thing. Week two was a lot more gentle. I'm not into 10 weeks anatomical adaptation and prehab, basically getting my body ready for Hypertrophy and Max Strength. Monday's session was tough but really good and Tuesday's session was later on in the day after Throws with Darren "Bear" Steadwood. It was pretty hard going but I was feeling pretty good. I threw Bear but "accidentally" dropped him on is head, occasionally stuck the knee in his side a few times and landed on him a couple more times. Bear, sweating out 4 days of booze joined me for my circuit as well, it wasn't as phyisically taxing as I would have liked to see bear go through, but it was great for technique, we were squating, overhead (OH) squatting, push pressing, OH lunging, Deadlifting and a few others, all in all the volume was high (160 reps) but the intensity and load were quite low. Still, pretty hard work!

Wednesday hailed a rest day, well I say rest day... I actually find flexibility a bit tough, but I am getting more agile and more flexible as the days go on.

Thursday - Not so fun! I had to do my 1st VO2 Max test in 9 years. Alex will give you a bit more information in the video below:



VO2 Max test

And here is me starting...

This wasn't the most fun I have had over a Thursday much time, but I guess it needed to be done!

Below you will find two video clips... the first is me really beginning to struggle and the other is me at exhaustion. Wonderful stuff!

I keep telling myself that it will all be worth it 2 years down the line if/when I make the Scotland Squad for Glasgow 2014.

We are underway

[EN]GAGE - my training venue

Having absolutely no idea what I was walking into with the Strength and Conditioning side of things. I was actually a little nervous heading into the [EN]GAGE at Edinburgh Napier University and as it turns out, rightly so. 

I'm now only  at the end of the second  day of the programme and absolutely wrecked, my body is in shock and I can barely walk up the stairs.

The nutition side of things is not too bad, expensive but on the whole not too bad, got some nice stuff in there and my only criticism is that it might get a little repetitive but that's not to say that's the nutritional programmes fault, more my lack of knowledge on what to do with it. My very own gourmet chef is doing pretty well to keep me going in the evenings with some good meals.  No spuds, bread, pasta or rice though which hurts my soul everytime I see someone eating something.

So to training...DAY 1... I rocked into the gym at [EN]GAGE raring to go, had my weigh in and which I was sitting at 119.6kg. Exactly where I want to be in about a years time but sporting less fat and more lean muscle.

First port of call was the cross trainer for a gentle warm up of 7 minutes then another 5 with the RPM sitting above 65. Not too bad. I still hadn't seen the format for the session but knew it would involve some 1 rep max stuff on the platforms and it did. After some more warm up drills I got onto the platform and battered out a few sets of parallel squat (arse to knees) before reaching 120kg and loosing form, so I was given 115kg baseline max. Not too shabby for a guy who hasn't lifted properly in a little while.  Especially as my squats normally are a curtsy's and I rarely made it past 1/2 squat.

I was happy, was being the key word in that sentence...why? because Alex announced that the next section would be circuit training to mimic the 6 minutes of anaerobic exercise that wrestlers have to do. This wrecked me. It included skipping, lunges, squats, medicine ball throws, push ups and rotational Bulgarian bags. I should point out I learnt to skip a couple of months ago with Steve, whilst he was training for Tough Mudder but give me three weeks and i'll be better than most 10 year old girls. 

3 times round the circuit was enough to have me bucketing with sweat and almost on my knees. This was day one. Lots of stretching, helped but not enough. 

I very kindly was given a session of Kinetic Chain Release (KCR) from Laura (one of our lovely staff) and that chilled me out and brought my hips back into alignment. Was very good, slept well that night! If you don't know what KCR is it's a protocol designed to fix leg length differeneces, however to do that the joints have to mobilised, muscles releases and the connective tissue stretched. I think its great and and it definitely helped me, I had a small discrepency at the start (about a thumb and a half) 20 minutes later I was back to equal and my squat had improved a bit as well. Good work Snedden!

So to day two. Weigh in at 118.6kg (happy to loose some weight as we go through the conditioning phase before hitting hypertrophy before Christmas) Which means from starting to think about giving this a bash I've dropped 6kg in 3 weeks.

I arrived into the gym at 7:56am again raring (not so much raring this time) to go and same thing, onto the cross trainer for a bit and into the sports hall. Alex almost killed me, the warm up was a session in itself and after more bloody skipping, bear crawls, squats, overhead lunges, push - ups, jumping jacks and split squats I was brought to my knees in the third set...with two exercises to go I took solace in the toilet, got to my knees and acquainted myself with the the big white bowl and said a farewell to my breakfast. Took my teeth out first having learnt my lesson on numerous nights out!

I actually looked like I had been swimming and went back finished the session and jumped in the shower. My quickfire session was over because I had a training course to start at 9:00am, realised I had left my work trousers at home and had to go in shorts. Great! even better, I was late, my shorts are covered in paint and I was still pishing out sweat. Happy times!

A beautiful picture of Jig

I was in pieces come 1:00pm but had session two of the day to get underway. James Millar (Judo coach extraordinaire and my throws coach) arrived an hour later and straight to business, a reasonably sized warm up with increasing difficulty turned on the sweat taps again and I was ready to be thrown about. Luckily Clive and Kev were doing this with me and gave me some really good opportunities to throw. We learnt two throws today which was awesome, really enjoyed it, I was beginning to get it but am a bit of a lump, so it will take me a little longer to get the speed and agility up, I swear Jig can move at Mach 3. Same time next week! Big units welcome.

This evening Cameron for some reason was crawling all over my legs prodding as I screamed in pain - little sadist... So a Muscle Therapy Bath and Sleep is on the agenda! it is much needed. 

Tomorrow hails day three and its again a circuit (new least favorite word) and flexibility training. So fingers crossed no puking tomorrow. I'm sure Alex has other ideas.

If you want to keep up with my rants @shocksjr on twitter

Calm before the Storm

Having had a pretty hectic couple of weeks at work, I managed to book in for some much needed annual leave. I decided that the best thing to do was to catch up with the family, so took the wee man and the wife up north to Pittenweem (my home town) for a couple of nights before heading further north to catch up with my in laws. This of course is my relaxing time before hitting the gym and training next week, not that i've gone OTT. Just the calm before the storm.

I'm a little bit relieved this week to be honest, I came away with a niggling pain in my knee after playing my final game for the eagles against Aberdeen and it wasn't getting any better last week with a lot of running around and walking but this week it's been no issue and probably just needed a break. I'm hoping that I'll be a able to strengthen it over the next couple of months anyway to reduce the risk of injury.

Pittenweem for those of you who don't know it, is a small fishing town in the East Neuk of Fife. It's a beautiful little spot and somewhere when you live there take for granted but always nice to come home. My mum was reluctant to move here about 25 years ago because she thought it was called (and I quote) "Piss and Wee". Muppet.

Pittenweem from the West Braes

Many a good time in Pittenweem. I went to school about a mile away in Anstruther at Waid Academy which is only a small school considering its catchment area but met some good friends.

Emma and I took the little guy for a long walk around the town yesterday. It was a beautiful day and well worth a walk. The place looks fantastic, looks like its been tarted up for the Pittenweem Arts Festival and it was great to donder around. 

Fishing at the weem

Cameron enjoyed a long walk of a short pier, I was crapping it about having to jump in after him if he plummeted off the edge but we got away with it and decided to keep him in his buggy.

Even though I'm hanging out on holiday, I'm still getting myself in the zone for whats happening next week and still really looking forward to it. In fact I could say that I've been wrestling all week with Cameron, every time I try to change a nappy I have to get him in some sort of hold to pin him down.

Last night, was BBQ night at the Wallace household, my dad has bought a new charcoal BBQ which I like to think is from my input in thinking that gas takes the fun out of it and charcoal and building fire is manly! That said we struggled to get it lit last night, had to use "Easy Start" (the stuff that could start a diesel truck) to get it going. I class myself as a bit of a BBQ pro, but last night I lost down a sausage and a bit of chicken off the grill into the charcoal - devastating for a BBQ chef of my calibre. Not that anyone noticed! I say I'm a pro but my timing was a little off last time I had one with the bear and it ended up being a twilight BBQ.

A couple of interesting potential developments this week on the Wrestling side of things as well. I had a chat with Neil Gibson (360 Conditioning) who said he would take a look at the S&C programme and see if he had any comment. Neil is very experienced in this field, is a sports scientist by trade and i'm usually happy to take his word as gospel on these issues. Hopefully Alex and I will be able tie up with him before Monday. 

The second one was on twitter, Jim Whitehouse, a mate from uni said he was going to have a chat with the Bank of Scotland about their local heroes programme for emerging sporting talent. We shall see what comes of that, but because I haven't started competing yet and the Scottish Wrestling haven't really heard of me yet I would be surprised if anything actually came of it but you never know. That said, the funding would be mega useful, the nutrition plan isn't cheap and i'm going to start heading through to Glasgow for training which will be costly.

Unfortunately for me, there aren't any wrestling clubs local to Edinburgh, but Steve Riley, a friend of mine and a former RL player I used to coach suggested I check out the grip house in Glasgow to do some training, which I will do. 

Final development this week is that I signed up to Scottish Wrestling and am going to venture along to the AGM to scope the lay of the land and then head along to the Scottish Championships on the 8th September and see what competition I have for Glasgow 2014. I'm confident I can do this and there is nothing more important than self belief.

The family and I are off to Aberdeen this afternoon for a couple of nights before hitting my last proper BBQ before training on Monday! 5 Days to go before the real stuff starts and I can this Blog will get a bit more interesting.

#mission2014 #5daystogo #startthecountdown 

Soaring with the Eagles

I wasn't planing on updating the blog this weekend but I did promise one of my best mates that I would.

This weekends sporting action has been phenomenal, Team GB have been dominating things in the Olympic Stadium, in the velodrome, on the water, on the tennis court and even in the Gymnastics hall. Not bad considering the press were moaning about how crap we were doing a few days ago - a distant memory. We are now sitting pretty with 34 medals (16 Gold, 9 Silver, 9 Bronze) compared to Beijing where we racked up 47 medals (19 Gold, 13 Silver, 15 Bronze). We've still got a week to go and I'm sure there are a few more medals in the pipeline for Team GB. Makes you proud to be British! 

The highlight of my sporting weekend didn't come from London or the Olympics. Funnily enough it came from Sunnyside in Falkirk where Edinburgh Eagles Rugby League soared to a 36 - 10 victory over Aberdeen Warriors to claim their 9th championship title in 14 seasons. That means that in the history of the League in Scotland the club have a championship completion rate of 65%. That is sporting dominance. 

I was helping out with the coaching which was great and its still an awesome club to be involved in.

Edinburgh Eagles 2012

This weekend has been pretty good fun, I managed to get in a quick half hour session in the gym with the Darren (the bear) Steadwood. He dominated me, I had absolutely no energy but managed to get through it before heading off to the rugby. 

I also managed to squeeze in a quick demo of what I saw on Friday's wrestling demo in the form of the leg lock and roll. I remembered it which was good but my demo buddy Clive used to be a marine and almost snapped my elbow with a submission move.

Watching the Grecco Wrestling today, I think its safe to say I'll be going to try for Freestyle. I think the strengths of my wrestling will be through the rugby stuff that I've done and the ability to hook the leg and wrap up on the ground.  

I'm still being hit with people thinking that i'm joking but I guess they'll see once #mission2014 takes off properly in a weeks time!

In the mean time, i'm on holiday for a week, heading up to see the folks and the in laws before gettting back to head to Steely's leaving BBQ on Saturday night. (Obviously no drinking).

Final words for the weekend, congratulations to the Eagles boy on a fantastic effort and great win. Credit has to go to my friends in Aberdeen as well though. To get three teams out on Grand Finals day in their second year in existance is no mean feat. Congrats and commiserations to them, i'm sure your day will come. 

#mission2014 = one week to go.

Off to a good start

It's been another exciting day.


Well...The kid is in bed, still jumping around it, but in bed. The wife is on a pass tonight and in town and i'm chilling out at home on baby duty, so figured i'd update with what's been happening.

Yesterday and today have been pretty awesome. I've not really kicked off my campaign to get into the Commonwealth Games Wrestling Squad, i've been dabbling a bit with the gym, mainly sitting on the bike and just trying to shift a few pounds before the mental training starts, the diet has been pretty good the last couple of weeks and I haven't been eating any crap and i've been off the booze completely. 

Even though I haven't started yet things are starting to come together. I received my nutritional plan and diet yesterday - It looks pretty good, no starchy stuff and loads of veg. I've seen a lot worse, so it should be pretty easy to stick to. Could hit the wallet quite hard though! Yesterday I announced on facebook (obviously that makes it official) that I would be embarking on this quest and within hours of that I got offered a cheeky sponsorship deal with my mates company (Tysonfitness) to help with supplements. Looking forward to hearing what he has to say on things. Quite a few folk thought I was joking, but alas i'm not. I've been needing a goal for ages to get me back into shape and i've found it.

Today was pretty wicked, I took a trip down to the Loch Centre in Tranent of all places to watch Michael Cavanagh (Chairman, Commonwealth Games Scotland and former wrestler) deliver a session to the SRU age grade lads. It was awesome to watch and I got my first real taste of wrestling up close. There is a lot of cross over with Judo - happy days as my throws coach is a GB judo lad. Today was all about Tsuri - Goshi,  I learnt quite a bit and the chat was good afterwards. I should be getting in touch with Scottish Wrestling's performance director over the next couple of weeks (after the Olympics) to discuss the plan of action which is great news for me. 

This evening was good fun as well, I popped into Edinburgh and Caught up with Matt and Kev from Uni and bumped into my best mate from school Rich. Awesome to see all of them and was nice to hear their thoughts on my new venture, they all gave good support for me even trying to get to the CWG but honestly, I reckon its just to see me in lycra (bunch of perverts).

Thanks for your support so far. 

Scottish Wrestling

Back again - Day 2

The Goal

As you can probably tell, I'm really excited about this new venture into the Wrestling world and am really positive that I can qualify for Glasgow 2014. I can't wait to start training properly. It's been ages since I've had a proper focus for sport and ages since I've had the motivation to do something. Almost feels like a switch has been flicked and my focus completely restored. I have got too many people involved with helping me get to where I want to be to pull out, so either way this is going to be happening.

I've been doing a bit of research into how things work with the Wrestling and think I've managed to get my head round what needs to be done. I'm hopefully catching up with Michael Cavanagh tomorrow who will be able to give me some guidance and make sure i'm on the right track. 

At the moment my target is to compete and win the Scottish Open Championships in 2013, then Finish in the top 3 of the British Championships in 2013 before finishing top 8 in the Europeans in March 2014 before the Commonwealth Games in July 2014. That should allow me to qualify for the CWG... in theory although the official seclection criteria is still to be realeased.

So, that gives me a year to learn the ropes of wrestling and get into really good shape to be able to compete.

My training is officially starting on 13 August with fitness testing. VO2 max testing, anthropology and 1 RM testing. I'm dreading it a little bit... haven't done a VO2 max since my second year in uni almost 10 years ago. Plus I know that I'm not that fit and am sporting more fat than I would care to have for this sort of testing. I suppose the final thing is that I haven't been hitting the weights very hard over the last couple of months but can probably still shift enough to get me started.

Alex Rawcliffe - my S&C coach

It's all relevant anyway, everything will give me a baseline a that will gauge my progress and in that sense I'm looking forward to it.

My new training diet also starts on the 13th, a friend of mine who is clued up in that field in sorting me out with that side of things.

Tuesday the 14th will be the first day of the programme and my S & C coach Alex hasn't given me any details except to say that "he is going to break me in that session." Which is fine. #gohardorgohome

James Millar - my Grappling / Throws coach

Tuesday also sees my throw coach coming in to burst me on the mat and start to give me some basic know how on grapples and throws. James Miller is my throws coach, he has represented GB judo on a number of occasions and is a good friend of mine. Looking forward to working with him. Jig as he is affectionately known is a lot smaller than me, but I cant wait for him to put me through my paces.

Wrestling itself in Scotland is a bit of an anomaly, I want to join a club but the nearest one is about 60 miles away from me in either Stirling or Glasgow but needs must and I'll be joining one in January to improve my wrestling skills and of course learn the rules! That is of course until we have a club set up out of [EN]GAGE in Edinburgh.

I'll get my first taste of wrestling coaching tomorrow and see what's what and how its done. very excited about that and the next few weeks.


Twitter: @shocksjr

Where better to start than at the start!

Well... This is my Blog - i've never done one before so we shall see how it goes. 

This is all about the journey i've decided to embark on to try and get myself to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games as a Wrestler in the 120kg weight category. 

A bit about me and why i've decided to do this? 

I would class myself as a very average guy, there isn't really anything special about me. The basics are that i'm Scottish / American (My old man is from Edinburgh / and my mum from Kansas), I'm 28 and married with a little boy. I'm 6'2 and a little bit over weight, the last time I had a 6 pack I must have been about 8 years old. I'm a graduate from Edinburgh Napier University in Sports Science and one of the few to work in my chosen field in the Sports Sector. My mates call me "Shockers" after my brothers before me and I suppose the other thing that makes me normal is that I have financial worries just like every other new family man. Pretty bog standard.

I've played sport as long as I can remember, rugby was my forte but I was always pretty good at Athletics in particular the shot putt and discus. Towards the latter days of my school career I played for Fife Chargers in the county rugby set up and played midlands rugby union before getting dropped just before the making a regional team called the Caledonia Reds. To be fair I had a shocker of a game and that was the end of my climb up the rugby union ladder. 

My brother Adam after a tour to France

My older brother Adam used to come back from uni with all sorts of cuts and bruises and once with a broken thumb and that got me interested. He was playing rugby league for Scotland Students and got me involved in the first ever Scotland Rugby League under 18 squad. We played France in Peebles and got humped by about 40 points, but it was a good experience and since I went on to play for Scotland Rugby League about 60 times at various levels. Never made it pro though.

I've had my share of injuries. I'm 28 now, 11 years ago I had my first keyhole surgery on my knee which was a bit of a bugger, it set me back a little bit having my cartillage out. I made it back to form and to a national level and blew my knee out completely in 2005. I was playing for Scotland Students in the World Cup in Australia against New Zealand. 

When you get an injury like I received that day everything happens so quickly but I seem to remember it in slow motion. This monster of a kiwi came running towards me I stepped forward, planted my left leg and threw my shoulder into him. This guy was a mutant and just ran over me, I remember trying to pull him down, realising my leg was stuck, it hyperextended as I fell backwards and twisted, completely tearing the ACL. very painful. If you ever see a footballer on TV rolling around, you know they aren't really injured. When that happens and you hear your knees cracking, you don't move a muscle.

Anyway, I made it back to play for Scotland and it was a great achievement for me after thinking I was done. Actually my comeback was a complete fluke, in 2009 I was helping out with the coaching of the Scotland A squad and we had a few injuries which meant I was drafted into play against Wales, did alright and that was me back in the fray.

Playing for Scotland 'A' against England (2010)

In 2010, after a fantastic international and domestic season I was playing in the Scottish Grand Final for my club "Edinburgh Eagles" and in the last moments of the game jarred my knee against someone. It was sore but not too bad, on MRI I found out the PCL had torn and from then I decided my competitive sporting career was over.

In fact, it was over until about a month ago when I decided to play Rugby in a friendly match. I miss playing competitive sport dearly so it was nice for a run out. I managed to show the young bucks how its done a little and like anyone else, its nice to know you still have it! Anyway, I played my last game of rugby last week for Edinburgh Eagles 2nd team and got hammered 84 - 4. You'll never guess where the 4 points came from!! 

More to the point though... Wrestling!

I know pretty much bugger all about it. All I know is that Michael Cavanagh who is the Chairman of Commonwealth Games Scotland and a wrestler himself popped in for a meeting at my work about setting up a wrestling club, he was looking for a 120kg man with a sports background who might take up wrestling as we (Scotland) haven't really got anyone in that weight category. 

I joked with him about me getting back into training and going for it and his parting words were "aye, see you at Glasgow 2014". I went home reflected on it, spoke to the wife and a couple of others and now here I am, ready to start training for the Commonwealth Games 2014. 

I've managed to get myself a Sport Scientist, Strength and Conditioning Coach and even a nutritionist and a throwing coach to start me on my quest. So i'm all set and the 13th August is my start date.

Honestly, I have no idea how it will go, I dont even know the rules of the sport or what style i'm going for... but what I do know is that i've been inspired by the Olympics and inspired by my friend Euan Burton. He won't know this but he is a two time Olympian and his commitment really is inspiring and I want to have that. Euan has had a tough time at London 2012 but he'll bounce back. I'm 100% motivated to do this and want to compete for my country but most of all I want to try a new sport and fall back in love with competing. I've never really done any individual sport, so this will be a test but I'm confident I can make it!

So to sum up - I'm an average bloke, who has been inspired and is motivated to try this and see if its possible. I don't have a clue really about the road ahead but for me all signs are pointing to Glasgow 2014 and that's where I want to be in 2 years time!

watch this space!!

Oh and you can catch me on Twitter - I've only just set it up, hence hardly any followers: @shocksjr