Fitness Challenge: Week 6 Update

It was great to hit the halfway point and showcase the hard work that our challengers have been putting in, and that continued this week. Another terrific week of training was put down by all involved.

Hitting the halfway point in any challenge is a great feeling. It’s like getting to the top of the mountain and seeing the bottom on the other side. The finish line is in sight; all you need to do is stay on track and push towards it. This can sometimes be a struggle depending on how difficult someone has found the first half of the challenge. If they find it very hard, getting to the top of the mountain and still knowing that they must navigate their way back down can be mentally challenging. As I spoke about previously, this is why it’s a challenge. It is not all going to be a walk in the park. This is why it’s great to have someone in your corner, like a coach or PT, that can push you through those hard sessions and dark days.

For our challengers, it is about finding the right balance between exercise and recovery to keep them motivated for the next half of the challenge.

Starting with John. John is training six days a week between hot yoga, three PT sessions and classes at Chalk Training Ground. We have to monitor his workload while also keeping it fun and enjoyable. He loves getting a good weights pump in a PT session, so we mainly keep that resistance style of training rather than using any HIIT training style. He gets that when he does a class. As I said, the main thing is that he is recovering after each session so he can enjoy life outside of the training and keep himself fresh for the next one. This week, we did a three-day split of upper, lower and full body. This allows each muscle group to recover fully before attacking it again. We have a few weeks coming up, and we hope his trend of adding lean muscle mass will continue.

Onto Niall. Niall looked very lean and strong in his halfway-point pictures. When trained right, he has the type of frame that will look lean and strong quickly. We must keep progressing with his training while also being mindful of the football season. Any week like this one where there is a tournament, we stick to upper body strength with some core. There’s no need to go near the legs the week of a football tournament, as I want him as fresh as possible in that part of the body as he can be. Next week we will have time to get stuck into some lower-body work. We will aim to keep him lean and strong over the next week or two and then cut down a little more weight for the last two weeks to get him in the best shape.

Finally, Roisin. Roisin has been killing it. She has so much motivation when she comes into the gym, and she has all the signs of it in her pictures at the halfway mark; she looks fantastic. She will never miss a session, she’s never late, and her work rate is outrageous. With Roisín, we are starting to push her more and more each week on the resistance side of training. She loves HIIT, and we do that on a Friday to end the week with a sweat session, but her progression in her compound lifts has been brilliant. She’s getting stronger, and her technique is getting better. She’s looking and feeling better as the weeks go by. I’m super proud of her, and she’s just warming up!

It’s been a brilliant challenge so far, and I hope everyone is enjoying seeing how hard our challengers are working!