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Showing posts from September, 2017

Managing Fibromyalgia flares

I've written before about living with EDS and Fibromyalgia ,  much of my personal fitness and health practices are geared around managing those conditions and keeping me as well as I can be. When managing a chronic health condition, particularly one that involves fatigue and potential flare ups, pacing, good nutrition, good sleep and generally taking care of yourself is always the first priority. Ideally we want to have as few flares as possible. But sometimes they still happen, and when they do, it's good to have a strategy in place. And I'm going to be talking in fairly general terms, because while EDS and Fibro are my personal experience, there is so little understanding of the mechanisms behind these conditions, that most strategies are going to be applicable to a number of conditions where crashes of exhaustion and pain are a feature. So what is a flare? A flare is a period where someone with chronic illness suffers increased symptoms for a short while. The

Becoming a powerlifter - peaking sucks

Dying Human noodle Too much hench.... And that's basically your update for my powerlifting meet progress!! But lets back it up a bit. Last time I updated I was dealing with some back issues , which really put a dampner on my progress. Well things are looking up. Firstly I took a visit to Lucie Spraggon , who is an amazing local soft tissue therapist. She did some poking around and came to the conclusion that I had - I had tweaked a muscle in part of my mid back, and in order to "give itself some space" it was drawing in everything around it. Lucie did some kind of magic which separated out the dodgy bit, allowing the rest to work properly again. Then she did some acupuncture for good measure. Immediate relief. I was back training deadlifts (just trap bar to start with and not too heavy) the next day. For a week or so I could still feel the original tight muscle, but it wasn't interfering with anything else. Lucie also suggested I should work on ac

Reflecting on a year as a Personal Trainer

My Facebook memories feature is bombarding me with my updates from a year ago, which of course is perfectly usual - but right now, those posts are all about my first steps into life as a Personal Trainer . It's caused me to spend a little time reflecting back on how things have changed since I made the decision to broaden my fitness skillset from dance , yoga and perinatal things. I was never going to be a very "conventional" personal trainer, but then I'm not really sure many trainers really are! In the last year of continually seeking to better my practice, I have encountered lots of truly inspiring trainers and coaches, who really are breaking the mould. At the same time there are aspects of the fitness industry that I have found myself embracing more as I get to understand them better. The ethos. When I first started, I set up this blog and bookmarked the first post with my Free Living Fitness Manifesto . Occasionally I check back in with that, to see

Becoming a powerlifter - the first bump in the road

It was all going so well..... I was a good way into my training programme . I had just done a deload week and I was feeling pretty fancy. I rolled up to the gym on deadlift day, ready to kick some ass. Maybe I would stick an extra 5kg on my working sets this week and see what happened. Guess what happened? Well your guess is as good as mine because I'm not sure. But it didn't feel good. I dropped my working sets by 5kg because my core wasn't feeling very strong. Then I had a weekend which involved a lot of sitting on a hard surface (not good for my super flexible pelvis ) and the back pain started. Dagnabbit. Next week training went OK, but come deadlift Friday, I was feeling a little stiff. My warm up set at 70kg wasn't feeling good, in fact I felt like a ratchet was tightening my posterior chain on every rep. I went in to start my 90kg warm up set and couldn't get it off the floor. Balls. That was 2 weeks ago. I haven't deadlifted since.