30.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 6:36 pm by Colin McNulty
Thanks for all the messages of support, I can confirm that I did win my category at the 2010 BWLA British Masters Olympic Weightlifting championship finals this weekend.
I was expecting to be lifting against Anthony (Tony) Down, from the Empire Club in Bristol, but it turned out that he came in overweight for the 77kg category at 78kg, which left me lifting all on my own. (I weighed in comfortably under at 75.9 kg.) All I needed to do was get a total and I was home and dry. To be clear then, here are the relevant rules:
- To qualify for to be able to compete, you must lift the qualifying total in a BWLA officiated (3 judge panel) competition in the previous 12 months. I did this when I lifted a 165kg total in the Northern Masters Weightlifting Competition in 2009, which is the qualifying standard for Mens Group 1 (35-39) in the 77kg body weight category.
- On the day then, you must open within 15kg of the qualifying total, so I had to open with a minimum of 150kg. I opted for easy openers of 65 Snatch and 90kg Clean & Jerk. I could/should have opened 5kg higher on each (70 and 95) which was my plan had I been facing Tony, but there was no point risking it. Especially after my recent shambolic training performances.
- You need to get at least one Snatch and at least one Clean and Jerk to make a total.
That’s it, all I needed to do was get my openers and I was the winner. Sadly I started the video camera too early and it ran out of juice (I may try to send it back as a full charge only lasted 70 minutes!) so I only got a video of the snatches, which I may upload at some point. I’ve pondered whether this default win detracts from the occasion? But the way I see it, it means I actually won it back when I lifted 165 at the Northern Open, as I was the only person (apart from Tony) who made the qualifying weight, I just didn’t know it yet!
The snatches went very well and I easily power snatched the 65, then the 70 and finally did a full squat snatch (though had to chase it across the platform!) for 75. Which considering my body weight of 75.9, was less than a bag of sugar away from a body weight snatch. To be honest, now with hindsight, I regret not opening at 70 as I’d originally planned, as I reckon there was a snatch PB in the offing (current PB is 77).
C&Js didn’t go quite so well. The 90kg opener was trivial, but then I made a mistake and jumped straight to 100kg. It seemed like a good idea at the time, 100kg is an =PB lift for me, and 95 meant nothing so going for it seemed the right thing to do. In reality, the 10kg / 11% jump in weight caught me off guard and I dropped both my 100kg attempts. Note to self: 5kg increments only in future.
So I finished with a 165 total (70 + 90). But I suppose the real question is, how would I have done if I’d been facing Tony? Tony it turns out is a very nice fella. Well of course he is, he’s a 5 year Crossfitter! We shared a warm up platform and generally encouraged each other throughout. It is hard to say what would have happened as it turns out that his personal best total of 177 is exactly the same as mine!
Tony got a 70kg Snatch and 100kg C&J, and he was competing against a Scotsman in a close run race, so on the face of it, he would have beaten me. However had we been competing, I would have started at 70 snatch, which I got, as I got the 75 and reckon I would have got a new PB of 78. Similarly I’d have started at 95 C&J which should not have been a problem, and I reckon the smaller 5kg increment would have seen at least one of my 100kg lifts come off which I’ve got several times before, giving a 178 total. But then, maybe Tony would have lifted differently if he was against me? Who can know, it’s all academic.
I do know several things though. 3.5 years ago I was a fat couch potato who hadn’t done a jot of exercise for 15 years and now I’m British Champion at an official Olympic sport. How does that happen?!? Here’s how, and I owe a debt of gratitude to all involved:
- I decided to change my life, but I didn’t know how.
- My mate Ian Sturrock put me onto Crossfit.
- Mark Beck and Karl Steadman opened Crossfit Manchester and filled it with a great bunch of supportive people.
- They got me on the Zone Diet which has morphed into more of a Paleo Zone.
- Mark especially has coached my weightlifting form over the last 3 years and always selflessly gives his time to coach me when I’m at a competition, and generally be helper extraordinaire. I am very grateful and would definitely not have done it without his help and support.
So what’s next? I think I’m going to take some time off the weightlifting focus and get back to more regular Crossfit for a while. Crossfit is a whole load of fun, dropping snatch after snatch whilst training on your own (when I’m away from home) is not. As a result, I’ve left the gym I go to in Cardiff: Aspire Fitness, especially as my contract should be finishing up shortly. They’re a nice bunch down there, and I’m sorry to leave them.
There are 2 things to aim for I think, one is the European Masters Championships. I need a 182 qualifying total so need to get my snatch up to 80 and clean and jerks up to 102. But it irks me that both the 2 biggest Masters competitions of the year: the British Masters and the Northern Masters, are outside the qualifying window for qualification. That’s bad planning! Also there’s the simple fact, that if I wait a couple of years till I’m in the 40-44 category, the qualifying total comes down to 172, which is much more doable, lol!
The second thing is the the English Indoor Rowing Championships (EIRC), which I’ve had my eye on for a couple of years, but always chosen the weightlifting in preference, as often they are both on the same weekend. I’ve got my eye on the 500m title, which if I can make the 75kg lightweight category, I could win easily. Judging by this years numbers my personal best is 7 seconds faster than the 1st place time! So I need to be good this Christmas and not pile on the pounds if I’m going to make 75kg by 3rd week in Feb.
Anyway, it was an exciting weekend and I’m currently very chuffed. I’m sure the feeling won’t last long.
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18.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 8:35 pm by Colin McNulty
I’m pleased to report that my hamstring tweak had mostly cleared itself up by Tuesday, so I was able to train as I’d intended. There was still a little soreness there, but 98% there. However, that didn’t prevent the disaster that was Tuesday’s snatches!
Tuesday followed my normal routine of snatches for 45ish mins then some form of WOD. I’d hoped to recover from last weeks debacle, quickly move up to 70kg and pop out 3 good 70kg snatches. Well, that turned out to be ridiculously ambitious! I only succeeded in dropping six 70kg snatches in a row, and pretty must destroying what little confidence I had in doing them.
I think that over a year of working out on my own in Cardiff at Aspire Fitness, with no one to watch my form, has really taken its toll on my technique. After the BWLA British Masters, I think I need to go back to the drawing board with my snatch. Even now, 3 years on, they still don’t feel right and there’s too much variability. So it looks like I’ll be starting at 65kg in the comp.
Not wishing to do myself another injury this close to the comp, I finished with a named Crossfit WOD: Annie. I scaled it by dropping the first round, making it: 40-30-20-10 of double unders and situps, which I achieved in 9:57
On Wednesday things got a bit better. Clean and Jerks are harder to cock up on technique and I worked up to three good 95kg C&Js, which will be my starting weight, making a total of 160 to start with, which is more than the 150kg minimum starting total for my category. If you don’t know, your starting total must be at least the qualifying standard minus 15kg.
I followed this with a derivation of Crossfit 3D’s WOD from the other day:
AMRAP in 10 minutes of:
- 3 x 60kg power cleans
- 6 push ups
- 9 kettle bell swings @ 16kg
In which I managed exactly 8 rounds. Again this was scaled down after 40 mins of clean and jerks and so as to not do myself a mischief.
In other news, my weight *just* about on target but I still have a few pounds left to loose. Fingers crossed it won’t be a major drama. I’ll post up a weight chart from 1st Jan next week. To be honest, I’ll be quite happy when this competition is over, I’m deep in the “why am I doing this” stage of preparation, but I know I always go through this, it’s just you mind playing games with you. Ho hum.
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03.08.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 8:59 pm by Colin McNulty
This is the video I made of my snatch practice at Aspire Fitness in Cardiff last week. It’s 90 minutes condensed down to 2 for your viewing pleasure:
Whilst it looks like it wasn’t going that well, I was actually quite pleased. Since getting 77kg in March, I haven’t felt capable of even attempting more than 70kg, but the warm up to 70kg went very well so I pressed on. If you watch carefully, I’m trying a new starting position where I’m leaning a little further back. You can see me adjust backwards just before the pull.
This has made a difference, but I think I need to sit back more. It’s all about getting the bar to land right over my centre of gravity when it’s over head. You see that every time I lose it, I lose it forward, which means that I’m still not getting it right. Whilst I didn’t get it, I was pleased to have 3 good goes at 77.5kg which would have been a PB by 0.5kg, lol.
That body weight snatch is within my grasp I think, it’s only a matter of time.
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15.06.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 8:30 pm by Colin McNulty
Looking for a Crossfit friendly gym can be a frustrating task. When I was looking in London, I put together a long post on all the Crossfit capable gyms near Farringdon, London. It’s about time I did the same for Newport and Cardiff.
When I started working in Newport it was obviously one of my first jobs. Clearly it would be great to find a Crossfit friendly gym on my doorstep, but that was too much to hope for. I also didn’t expect to find somewhere in Newport so expanded my search to Cardiff from the off. Moving to a new town I did what everyone does now when looking for local information: I searched in Google and spent several days phoning and visiting gyms.
It’s probably worth listing here what makes a gym suitable for doing Crossfit? At least in my mind anyway, in rough order of my importance (obviously more of each is better), this is my list:
1. An Olympic weight lifting bar. Eleiko would be best.
2. A modest selection of bumper plates for said bar. By bumper plates, I mean rubber weight plates that don’t break the floor or themselves when dropped from over head.
3. A suitable floor to drop the bumper plates on, with enough surrounding space for safety. Basically, can I do clean and jerks, snatches, thrusters, push presses, shoulder presses etc?
4. A squat rack for back squats and front squats.
5. Somewhere to do deadlifts.
6. A rower, Concept 2 is preferred.
7. Somewhere to run, outside would be best, but treadmills are likely to be the norm obviously.
8. A pull up bar, stable enough and with enough room for kipping.
9. A selection of rubber dumbbells.
10. Boxes to jump on.
11. Medicine balls to throw at walls.
12. Walls to throw medicine balls at! Though I do hate wall balls.
13. None bouncing balls for ball slams.
14. A set of gym rings… yeah fat chance of that.
Armed with my mental list, these are the list of gyms I checked out:
- Peak Physique Gym, Rhymney River Bridge Road, Cardiff, CF23 9AF, 029 2046 2040
- I called, they didn’t have any Olympic lifting facilities.
- Newport International Sports Village, 01633 656656
- I called, seemingly a normal gym, the woman didn’t really get what I was asking.
- Sun Health, Risca Road, Newport
- I visited this small independent gym. It had a lot of potential but was quite cramped with no possibility for olympic lifting.
- Daves Gym, Cardiff, 029 2046 0232
- Again I called, they didn’t have any Olympic lifting facilities.
- The Welsh Institute of Sport, Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, CF11 9SW, 0845 045 0902
- A large complex, but the gym is split between 2 cramped rooms. There were olympic lifting platforms there, but there wasn’t a lot of room and not very Crossfit friendly.
- Elite Fitness, Unit 2, Fairwater Industrial Estate, Norbury Road, Cardiff, CF5 3AU, 029 2055 5272
- This gym had potential, especially with 2 Avanco oly bars, but both were rusty and very obviously bent, which was a real shame. Their video motion capture setup was cool though.
- Train Station 2 (TS2), 14-15 Curran Road, Cardiff, CF10 5NE.
- Aspire Fitness, Sanitorium Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF11 8DG, 02920 23 55 23.
It’s worth mentioning the runner up first, which was Train Station 2 in Cardiff. TS2 has a lot of room and uniquely a 90m running circuit round the outside. It’s also allegedly the home of Crossfit Wales, which is a slightly ambitious title, especially as when I went to see the place, they weren’t doing any Crossfit classes. That’s actually changed now, and I know there is a Crossfit class being run on a Saturday morning, by a certified Crossfit instructor called Dav. I’ve got his number if you’re interested.
However I decided against Train Station 2 primarily because of the oly bar and plates. Whilst possibly adequate, there wasn’t a proper lifting platform and I was concerned about dumping the bar on the 1st floor. Having seen many places by now, I was thinking I’d been spoilt by Crossfit Manchester’s dedicated lifting platforms.
That was when I found what is undoubtedly the best gym in Cardiff to do Crossfit. I’ve mentioned it before, it’s Aspire Fitness on Sanatorium road. I should put the record straight right now: when I mentioned them before I called them a “Globo Gym”. Now when I said that, I meant that they appeared (at least to my inexperienced eye) like most other “normal” gyms out there, and not like a sparse Crossfit gym. I didn’t mean to allude to them being part of a large chain, they are not and the benefit from the very friendly small business atmosphere they have. What really sold me on Aspire however, was the brand new Eleiko oly bar they had, and the very nice personalised lifting platform in the corner.
At the time I looked, they had some dodgy Apollo bumpers that were falling apart (Apollo bumpers do appear to be rubbish):
But they assured me that they would maintain a decent set, and true to their word, they now have a full set of good quality York bumpers: 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25kg:
Off my shopping list of requirements, Aspire Fitness cater for very nearly everything else as well as the Olympic bar and bumper plates. They have 4 power cages (I think they’re called) for doing squats in, plus a free standing squat rack. They have plenty of weight and space for dead lifts; 2 Concept II rowing machines; I think 8 treadmills; a selection of variable sized boxes to jump on; room for floor work like press-ups (push ups for the Americans), skipping etc.
Each power rack also doubles as a pull up station, by hanging on the horizontal bars at the top. They are even cunningly designed for just such a use. The designers were so nice, they thought they’d be really helpful: the knurled the bar! I strongly suspect that most people (like I hadn’t) have never tried kipping pull ups on a knurled bar… take my advice… don’t! It will rip your hand to shreds. Fortunately the second bar at the top, whilst painted with a rough finish, is not knurled and is usable, you just have to move the bar out of the way and put it on the floor.
So pretty much the only thing Aspire don’t have, is a set of gym rings and a selection of medicine balls. They also suffer the ailment that most normal gyms suffer, it’s called mirror-itis. There are far too many mirrors for my liking, but to be fair, they are by no means everywhere and I strongly suspect that just 1 mirror, would be too many for my liking!
However there is really only 1 place to do wall balls, and even then I need to move the bin, fire extinguisher, and ensure no one is using the power rack next to it. There’s no ball slam facilities either. I tried once with one of the heavy basket balls they had, nearly knocked myself out!
Oh yes, they also have an assortment of mysterious devices, contraptions and machines which I stay well clear of, but again, not too many as most gyms have. And as you can see, if you’re prepared to go a bit later, it’s pretty quiet too. This photo was taken about 20:45 :
The point I’m making is that nothing but a dedicated Crossfit gym is going to be 100% perfect for Crossfit, and even then, not always. Aspire is not perfect, but I’d put them 90% there on my “Crossfitoscale” and that last 10% can usually be subbed, as most Crossfit elements can be, e.g. sub wall balls for empty bar thrusters.
So if you’re looking to do Crossfit in Cardiff, or even Newport which isn’t that far away, Aspire Fitness is where I’d recommend you go. They are reasonably priced, but you should measure these things on value, not just price. If you are going to go, say hi if you see me, I’m most often there on a Tuesday and Wednesday around 5-6pm. Or let Pete (one of the owners) know you found them through this blog. Oh and one more thing, if you do see me, don’t hog my oly bar! 
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18.05.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff at 9:02 pm by Colin McNulty
Last week was a relatively normal week: I left home on Monday morning for the working week away, went shopping Monday night for food for the week, went to work Tuesday, went to the gym Tuesday evening… all pretty normal. Until that is, on Wednesday morning I spotted something that was decidedly NOT normal!
My neck normally looks like this:
But on Wednesday morning whilst shaving, I noticed it instead looking like this:
Where the hell did that hickey come from?!? I couldn’t believe, what’s more I didn’t think my wife would believe it either! I go away for 5 days on business and come home with a mystery love bite on my neck, this I’m reliably lead to believe, is just not the done thing. This was seriously bad news in it’s own right, but even more so because I had no idea how it had happened.
After some thought and no small amount of panic, I came to the inescapable conclusion, that it was Crossfit’s fault. You see on Tuesday I’d been to the gym. Now I don’t actually follow the Workout of the Day (WOD) from the main Crossfit.com site, instead I do the previous day’s WOD from Crossfit Manchester, my regular gym back home. I do this because it guarantees an hours workout, it helps me to keep in touch with the members of the gym whilst I’m away, and I get an element of competition because I can see what weight / time my peers have done.
As it happens, the workout I should have done at Aspire Fitness (my Cardiff gym, more on them another day, I still owe them a setting the record straight post for erroneously calling them a “globo gym”, my bad) was this:
Deadlift: 5 – 5 – 5
Then 7 Rounds of:
- Run 200m
- 15 Wall Ball
- 10 Pull Ups
- 5 Push Press, 55kg
- Rest 1 min
But I’d done heavy deadlifts the last time I was there, and they don’t quite have the setup for things like wall balls. So instead I did this from the Crossfit Manchester WOD the Thursday before, which was:
Clean and Jerk: Doubles
Then:
- Run 860m
- 3 Rounds of;
— 5 Knees to Elbows
— 10 KB Swing
— 15 Box Jump
- Run 860m
There was my love biting culprit: the clean and jerk doubles. I’d worked up to 85kg and was getting pretty tired. I made a last effort for a 90kg double, I got the first one but it was an effort, I repositioned my grip on the bar, I set myself, I pulled for all I was worth, the bar was faster than the eye:
But I was trying too hard, was off balance, my legs were tired, I twisted slightly, over pulled, dropped under and promptly smacked myself in the neck with 90kg (200lbs) of Olympic Weightlifting bar! Not surprisingly, I didn’t make the clean and tried not to gag as I threw the bar away.
Still 85kg was respectable and I moved on to the rest of the workout.
You can see how it’s easily done, the above mid-clean photo was actually taken this weekend at Crossfit Manchester doing power cleans followed by front squats, here’s the bottom of the front squat position, which is where I would have been receiving the flying bar at the bottom of the clean (there’s 85kg on the bar in the pic):
And so there you have it. Doing Crossfit = doing clean & jerks with heavy weights = getting tired = hitting yourself in the neck = bursting a blood vessel = a dodgy looking bruise which gets you into trouble with the missus when you get home from a week away! Actually to be fair, I didn’t really get into trouble, well at least I don’t think so, yet….
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