DisabilityBodybuilding.com

Your Disability. Your talent. 🎉

Converting a dislike of my disability to acceptance & love.

I disliked my hand, couldn’t see it, would hide it, cover it (wanted it gone at one point). It was different, and at particular age, that is singled out…but I ask this looking back…for who?

BUT NOW! more than EVER, I see it as one of my strengths. No, maybe not in terms of purely physical, but the experiences, to push through, to find a way…it builds a different strength, I wouldn’t be here today without that.

Your Disability!

Your Talent!

The Wood from the trees…

There are so many conflicting opinions about what is best for your goal, the diet, weight loss, muscle building. Finding the answers to all of the above won’t be found in one article, one day or even from one person.

The initial steps to your goal are significant ones to take, but I’ve (eventually) found so much joy in the actual journey, the discoveries, the tweaks, the knowledge along the way.

We’ve so much data and opinion, it’s hard to know what is best.

I’m still searching. But what I’m searching for now isn’t an ultimate end result anymore. It’s a road which looks out for areas where I can improve, things I can share….so it’s many elements to take in along this path, which will always be worth reviewing & updating…often.

Use what you can…A new concept?

We started with nothing.

Before we took the gym membership, what access did we have? before we started reading the books, what knowledge had we gained?

There’s that delicate balance of not spending too long looking back on what was, searching for what could be better and being present to what is front of you right this moment.

There were so many factors into the fitness journey that have got you to were you are now and a number of unknowns right now that will be faced that will determine where you’ll be in say, 2 years.

Right now, I have a “trajectory” of where I know I can be in 3 months and 2 years, but for tommorow, I would like to wake…and train my ass off 💪

There have lots of changes since lockdown, but the gratefulness I feel for what I have now is even greater than it was 4/5 months ago, that much I have realised more and more with each passing day.

As Jim Rohn quoted.. “every new discipline affects the rest”. A start to spring yourself forward can happen every day. You may not have the right tools from the get go, but as you develop, the more things you try, the more things will become available to use.

Taking Home Adaptions Back to the Gym…

After months of trying to figure out and adapt training at home, it was all back..not just the rack or the leg press, but ankles straps & wrist assisted cable crossovers – the items that had become a path through the obstacles when trying to train particular muscle groups.

Yes, it has great to have better access, but given the changing climate, I don’t want to take that for granted. In continuing to try and take some developmental learning from this time, instead of dropping the whole of the routine I established home, I wanted to see if I could use some of the new/adaptive movement back at the gym, but with a little more weight behind it!

For example, at the beginning of lockdown I had some bands I’d use to pump up with prior to my competitions – it was useful to discover & research the range of movements they can produce wth a little immigination and creativity and isolating the right muscle groups, particularly on my disabled side by attaching it to my wrist via the sofa as an anchor.

Taking this crossbody band movement back to gym as an accessory move has been really useful.

What is has also done is automatically freshened up the workouts (thinking a little differently about the impact), could it be that having to try things at home & reset some form, focused more on the effectiveness of simple muscle movement? I’ve certainly eased back in the last few days not expecting the numbers I was getting in March yet but I feel I have an even deeper understanding of how to get the best out of limited space and working around broader challenges, in and out of the gym.

Getting Some Connections Back…

Seeing old friends (from a distance) the weights, the growth, it’s the routine I’ve looking forward to too – This period has become part of the journey – A horrid diversion we didn’t expect – but as the book says “The Obstacle Is The Way” (See Ryan Holiday, it’s a brilliant read).

This is a small connection to a new normal, not everything is going be as it was, some are still waiting, people are going at their own pace, everyone has their own paths to create and obstacles that will come with it, let’s continue support each other, whichever stage you are at.

Training Reaction – Home v Gym…

Like many, I was faced with a range of emotions when lockdown hit. Here I’m reflecting on the changes in approach to training specifically, but it cannot be unsaid that it wasn’t right at top of priority when we were told to stay at home.

However, one of the biggest lessons out of this environment has been to question how to make the nessasary pivots that would help a host of things work or consider mirroring what we had before in someway? I tried to focus on what I could settle on when developing an adapted fitness programme.

Competitions suspended and with a shortage of equipment, there were subsequently no specific time frames to plan toward for a while, it made tricky to curate the right path to develop a solid plan in the early days.
I acknowledge that, in hindsight it personally would have been good to possibly pause for a length of time, but in all honesty, I think I wanted to get a structure, any structure in place, for my mind as well body. Faced with the challenge of a new routine, again, it was case of “OK, how do we use what we have at our disposal for the time being, even for for health, for maintainable, for mental health too”.

So, I tried to break lockdown…well, down.

Smaller chunks to digest, to aim for – the important thing was to keep moving, what can I do and get around limitations. I tried to see this as somewhat as a test, something which I know won’t be the only obstacle but one of many. It’s a big one, but not the last in life. OK, what body weight exercises did I do at the gym? What can I find to mimic the movement as a starter and build from there.

It’s from this that a “new” routine was built. As equipment availability began to trickle through, I tried to get a few bits to take on another level – bit by bit day by day – but just always having a daily practice in mind. Even with the limitations I’ve tried to take lessons in using what is available and working around it – and I don’t want to lose that perspective as we come out of this period, I want to learn the lessons of adapting through this and making it part of a journey.

And onto the next chapter…

Adapting – Doing it again and again!

Back in January, I posted about “Adapting through Fear”.

Recalling experiences about struggling when trying to get around equipment training a few years back. It was daunting, scary & I felt vulnerable. I delved into those moments you realise that everyone is pushing to achieve their own goals, fine tune their own habits but in addition, happy to help along the way.

Back then, much like over the last few weeks, I realised it’s actually ok not be ok – I learnt that it’s ok to use Fear as a tool, to feel it, take some time to see through it, BUT to see and realise and apply that previous change of mindset again, I can determine how to react to this situation.

Anything that it is thrown our way will get a reaction, what response, any response, is down to us. We can also help along the way, share experiences, listen and learn from others and it can help us adapt to the situation in front of us.

So, as some of us prepare to get back in the gym in a couple of weeks, we will all have to adapt some changes, we react & I’m thankful for opportunity to do what I love & we’ll find a way to make it happen…again!💪

Back to the Bar (No, not the Pub!)…

To build it up, you gotta break it down.

Whether it’s training, work or even writing a blog*- is it easy to break things back down to such extent after building a robust system? Or was that system too robust in the first place. In training terms, is it right to sometimes take it right back to the training bar to look at technique again & again? Can we apply that to other areas too?

Here is what I mean…

On a number of occasions, to hone a lifting technique, I’ll remove any weight from that particular movement and look at my form (positioning) using just a bar and raise the weight back up. Ensuring that as and when the weight is added, I don’t lose emphasis on a correct lift.

The same can be applied to other areas too.

BIG, BIG GOALS can sometimes feel like mountains that are impossible to see a way up. Be that work and personal development targets, books to read, articles to write. Overthinking the goals can sometimes lead to losing sight of, forgetting the basics or the very reason why you do what you do.

During lockdown, I thought I had lost my robust system. Or had I?

There were so many things that changed, consider and adapt to – tackling challenges that pulled me in directions at home I hadn’t faced before.

A complete shake up of not just a todo list, but a way of life appeared in front of me. Now, this isn’t a woe is me tale, I remained grateful for everything in my life… BUT, I admit, I felt a little lost for a short time. However, after a while, what I came to recall was it was the routine, the system, that was serving me so well was a practice, a journey without a definitive end, which embodied everything I was working toward.

This was and is still part of it. In actually fact, it’s been a timely period to look at lots of aspects again – Go back to that ‘training bar’ across my life – was my routine serving the correct purpose in all areas? Were there areas I could redefine, refresh or even drop all together?

The key elements required in our routines never went away – The discipline needed, the purpose of trying to improve…Yes the tools may have to been adapted but the practice was never taken away. I took that thinking away from myself for a few days, (The ‘readjustment’ period!) But the key takeaway is that this period has been a huge reminder of the essence of routine, to make it part of a journey than an end destination. Ant Middleton (Channel’s 4 SAS) commented in his latest book, the Fear Bubble “A well-lived life is like an Everest with no summit. You never get to the top of your mountain, and therein lies the joy.”

Fine tune & keep moving!

*breaking down the writing over time.

The Old Routine in a “New Normal”?

Habits..

Built over time, with consistent daily efforts.

A routine…

A structure put together to bring support to those habits, which in turn, lay the path to a goal.

The lockdown has challenged this. The Lockdown has certainly changed how it’s constructed, yet not why it’s conceived.

Thoughts did drift…Have I lost? I was wrong. It needed tweaking, the path is still there. I looked around and there was still a lot I can use from my previous routines in much of my life.

I have to find the way forward, to keep going, my other option would be to stand still and that’s ok, but when I look around I have tools to make things work. We use what we have and make it work…together.

Keep Going Folks…

Stay Safe.

Looking back to press forward…

It’s been a while! To process my thoughts through the Coronavirus lockdown, ensure I’ve looked at all my personal priorities but also then think of documenting my feelings – but where, how and it what way?

How do you process something that’s so personal to everyone in different situations and also unprecedented, there is no manual and everyone is approaching and dealing with this in their own way.

I’ll pen some thoughts here as a means to blog about how I’ve learnt (and still learning) to tweak rather than reset my previous routine, the mental, emotional and physical challenges and try to interpret my day to day experience and engage with everyone through this.

I initially paused on pretty much everything in life to make sure my family were safe and I found a way to work through. I felt quite lost, I’m sure I’m not the only one. It was a couple of weeks after that I realised that the routines I had worked hard to implement were all still available to me, I just had to tweak either the time to do them or adapt to my new surroundings…

Including

Exercise / Training / Goals to set

Writing

My Reading

Meditation

We may be entering a “new normal” ( I keep hearing ), we all have a personal journey through this & I’ll continue to use this and other channels (instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn) to try and make sense of this part of life!

Wishing you all the best,

Stay safe folks…