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[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