02.01.10
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, The Zone Diet Blog at 12:01 am by Colin McNulty
I really can’t make up my mind if I think that New Year’s Resolutions are: A) A load of old cobblers, or B) A useful annual reminder for self improvement. Some years I don’t bother and some I do, like this year for example. However I do know that written goals can be a powerful thing, and I also know that sharing your goals brings culpability, so thanks for reading this as your participation will help me to achieve my aims. In fact, if you feel so inclined, you can do be a huge favour, I want you to hold me to account an what I’ve written below and challenge me if I don’t do it. Feel free to let me know you will to. 
Without further preamble, I’m going to dive straight in and list this year’s resolutions, in no particular order:
- Give up booze for the whole of 2010, no exceptions.
- Give up sugar in all its forms. Yes that means chocolate, for all of 2010!
- Earn enough money online to be able to give up paid office work by the end of 2010.
Taking these in turn then:
1) Give Up Booze
I drink too much, simple as. If I realistically think about what might kill me first, I’d put some kind of liver issue top of the list. I’m not going to say how much I drink, partly because it varies from week to week, but also actually I think I’m probably rather ashamed of the truth. It is something of a middle aged man’s disease and there have been times when I’ve wondered if I’ve got a problem. I don’t think I have by the way, but the thought has occurred to me and that in itself is warning enough.
Indeed December has not been a good month at all on the booze front. Hangovers over Christmas are one thing but when you’ve had a bad day at work, buying a bottle of wine on the way home is never a good idea. Whilst it may take your mind of things in the short term, alcohol is a depressant I’ve not felt good this last month and the booze has contributed, not helped that.
Now giving up completely sounds rather drastic and maybe it is, but it’s also a reaction to knowing myself. I know I can have an obsessive compulsive personality and I struggle to do things by halves. I know that if I have a glass of wine, I’ll drink the rest of the bottle for example. Or that if I have a drink today, I’m more likely to want one tomorrow. As a result, I can control myself better with abstinence than with moderation.
So that is what I’ll do, no more wine, cider, beer, spirits, or any other form of alcohol for a year. Then I’ll see what I will do in a years time.
2) Give Up Sugar
This is in some ways both more and less controversial. As I’ve posted previously about paleo eating, my diet is 90% sugar free anyway, but it’s that 10% that has got out of hand. Ironically going hand in hand with the all too frequent trips to the off license for a bottle of wine, first there was one chocolate bar, but that soon became 2, then 3, then 1 of the big ones, then more! It’s not just chocolate either, I can easily dispose of a litre (2 pints) of ice cream all to myself of an evening.
The really sad reality is, that the sugar never satisfies me. I am satisfied only whilst I’m physically chewing it. The moment I even thing about swallowing, I’m already reaching for the next bite, and I’ll do that till whatever I’m eating is gone, usually in less than 5 minutes from start to finish.
Nicole Carroll 
wrote a great article entitled Getting off the Crack in which she equates sugar to crack, and I really think it is that addictive. And you know what? It’s ok to be addicted to sugar! In fact, we have a million years of evolution that has highly specialised your body and taste buds to seek out and crave the stuff, so it should come as no surprise to anyone who finds themselves binging on sugar occasionally, or *cough* more regularly.
As with my reasons for going cold turkey with the sauce above, I have similar issues with sugar. Not only does it not satisfy me, it doesn’t make be feel good about myself. Also that’s the whole putting on weight issue that comes with the empty calories with alcohol and chocolate etc brings. I can tell you know, I weigh more today, on the 1st Jan 2010 than I have for over 2 years, and that’s not good. I certainly don’t have the abs that Nicole had, but I’ll find those suckers!
3) Give Up Work
I honestly think dealing with (1) and (2) will drastically improve my state of mind and feeling of well being… but why does it need improving? The honest answer is I’m not currently happy with the way life is panning out. Yes I have marketable skills and earn a very good salary selling my soul, but there are 2 major problems: 1) It’s desperately dull work and 2) In order to get the best freelance rates for my skills, I have to work away from home, and I miss my family terribly.
There is a solution though and the annoying thing is, I’ve known about it for some time: this wonderful thing called the internet. Sure everyone things about making money online, but the annoying thing is, I know how to, I just don’t do it. Let me give you one example: I had an idea 12 months ago, on which I spent 1/2 a day researching it, I paid someone £50 ($75 USD) to do a bit of work for me and spent another 1/2 day getting it up online. I then left it untouched for 12 months. To day, that one small and insignificant idea, has made me £250 (about $400 USD). That’s a 500% return which is completely zero touch and I have no reason to believe that same idea won’t make the same money next year.
Ok that’s small fry, so here’s another example. 2 years ago I setup an eCommerce store selling drop ship items. My site took the order and some other company delivered that to my client. In the first month I turned over £15,000 (about $22,000 USD)! My profit margin was about 20% and I was quite pleased, but for several issues, the most serious of which was a new UK law that made it illegal for most of my target market to buy what I was offering… doh! And no, it was nothing dodgy, but a fall out of the climate change Kyoto agreement on green house gasses. Bummer.
My point is, I know how to make money online and I have a list of ideas as long as your arm, ideas are easy to come by. Even this insignificant blog makes 3 figures a year off the adsense (the Google adverts) from people who are kind enough to click them. What I lack though is the motivation to implement them. OR more specifically, when I come home from a job that bores me, with a bottle of wine and a fist full of sugar… motivation is very low to spend more hours sat in front of my laptop on my own in my small room in my digs. And at the weekend, I want to spend time with my family, not shut up in my study.
So…. I’m giving myself a year to be earning enough online cash to be able to give up work. Note, I’m not going to try to match my current income from consulting in 12 months, I think that’s unreasonable, but I should be able to get to the point where I’m making a take home profit enough to justify quitting work. I’m going to define that as £100 per day and because we’re talking about the net, that’s 7 days a week not 5 for an office job, i.e. £36,500 (about $50,000 USD). Again, I’m not saying I have to have earned that in 12 months, but be earning at that rate per day by 31st Dec.
Now to the hard part, what am I going to do to make this happen?
I’m going to be mean and say: I’ll tell you later! Due to the length of this post (and the fact it’s nearly midnight), I’m going to split this post into 2. I will give a detailed explanation of how I’m going to give up work in 12 months in my next post in a few days time.
I hope that 2010 is going to be as exciting for you as it is for me. Don’t forget, if you want to help me out then do so by letting me know that you will hold me to account on these commitments. Feel free to ask me how I’m doing, on a regular basis. I will as ever, answer honestly.
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15.12.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff at 7:14 pm by Colin McNulty
As we approach the end of 2009 I’m taken to pondering how I’ve spent this year and whether it’s been a good use of the reducing number of years I have left of life. As my daughter pointed out to me whilst out walking recently, at 37 I’ve most likely lived about half my life already! That’s a sobering thought.
Working away from home and on my own a lot, I get the opportunity to mull over life, the universe and everything. What’s the point? Why am I here? You know, just the trivial stuff! I have come to the conclusion that there are many potential answers to that question, which are right or wrong for different people, depending on their viewpoint, outlook on life, upbringing, religious beliefs, geographical location, economic position etc. For a career research physicist for example, their life long goal would be to extend the boundaries of human knowledge, and of course become immortal by inventing an anti-gravity car.
For me, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably not going to change the world. I’m not going to be the first astronaut to Mars for example (lol), nor invent something earth shattering, nor create some marvellous work of art or piece of engineering. History will most likely forget pretty quickly that Colin McNulty from Stockport ever existed. As depressing as it sounds, that realisation is fairly liberating in its own way. Many people go through life desperately looking for the great meaning behind it all. Acceptance that there is none, breaks you free from the shackles of needing to satisfy some future purpose, allowing you more brain time to devote to the now. The point is, contrary to Ludwig Wittgenstein (20th Century philosopher) opinion when he said:
“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
For my fairly mundane existence, my main goal *is* to enjoy my life. I’m mindful of another quote, this time by Alice Morse Earle in the 1902 book, Sun Dials and Roses of Yesterday:
“The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present.”
I don’t have a lot of hobbies or personal goals. Crossfit is making me fitter and stronger; and the Zone Diet is making me healthier; but they are both a means to an end. There are some transient personal goals that can be achieved, trinkets of success if you will, to be collected along the way: weightlifting is one of them. Coming 2nd in the British Masters weightlifting this year was fun and I hope to improve on that next year. The go karting in Cardiff last month was fun too, and my team and I have been invited back to an invitational only “Best of the Best” race in January. A small nugget of imagined (insignificant) success I’m sure. I’ve also started to take up rock climbing, which one day I hope will be a hobby I can share with my daughter. And I’ve read more books this year than I think I have in any other year of my life so far, which can only be a good thing, right?
I do wonder too about our genetic predilection for procreation. I have one marvellous daughter and it occurs to me whether I should have had more offspring? There is indeed some guttural part of my psyche that demands it, in order to further duplicate my genes. The pull of all my ancestors going back a million years, demanding the continuation of our combined genetic line, is a strong biological force.
However this is countered by my belief that the world is already over populated and the human race needs to be breeding less, not more. The world and the resources on it are finite, and yet the world’s population is growing at an ever faster rate. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that this can’t continue. I could pontificate about this ad nauseam, but maybe another day.
Getting back to the point, I’ve had 100% gainful work for all of 2009, something many people would be envious of in these tumultuous times, and I’ve earned a tidy sum by most people’s standards, however I’ve not enjoyed my work. Whilst the project I’m working on had a lot of potential, I’ve been a very small cog in a monstrous government IT machine, that has slowly lurched from… [REDACTED for preservation of income reasons]. It’s ultimately soul destroying, paper pushing work, which does absolutely nothing to further my sense of personal satisfaction or well being. Furthermore, it’s kept me away from my family and my gym for most of the year, which is always a poor outcome.
So I come to the conclusion that 2009 has been a mixed bag. On the one hand I’ve had some new experiences, learnt new skills and have been financially secure. On the other, I’ve missed home and family, and achieved little growth professionally. I have high hopes for 2010 however, and intend on making some significant personal changes in order to facilitate them. Wait for announcements in the traditional form of New Year’s resolutions. This time next Rodney, we’ll be millionaires!
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16.09.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 5:01 pm by Colin McNulty
I’ve started the build up to the North Open Weightlifting competition in 9 weeks, and have started following a vaguely Hungarian influenced training program. I can only manage to train 4 days a week, not the 6 prescribed, but we’ll have to see how it goes. Here’s the first week’s program:
Day 1
- Power Hang Snatch – 6 sets of 3 reps at 65%
- High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 reps (I’d look to do these at about 70kg)
- Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 5 reps (work at your current snatch max)
- Back Squat – 5 or 6 sets of 5 reps at 65% (of your 1 rep max)
Day 2
- Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 reps at 70% of 1 rep max
- Power Snatch/Power Hang Snatch – 5 sets of 1+2 at 65% of Snatch (this means 1 Power Snatch followed by 2 Power Hang Snatch)
- Power Clean/Power Hang Clean – 5 sets of 1+2 (as above)
- Split Jerk – 4 sets of 2 at 70%
Day 3
- Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 70%
- High Pull of Clean – 5 sets of 3 reps (I’d work at 100kg for these)
- Dead Pull of Clean – 4 sets of 5 reps (start at 100kg go up to 110)
- Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 reps at 75%
Day 4
- Power Hang Snatch – 7 sets of 3 reps 72%
- High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 reps (about 72kg)
- Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 5 reps (work up to 82kg)
- Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 72%
I’ve not really done the slightly oddly titled: “High Pull of Snatch” and “Dead Pull of Snatch” before, so recorded a short video to so my Crossfit coach could inspect my form:
As you can see, the first day went quite well, however I did wake up this morning with a sore back. It’s not used to that level of back related effort I think. It’s just DOMS, so a days rest to make sure I don’t tweak anything on Day 2, and it should be fine.
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14.09.09
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, The Zone Diet Blog at 9:18 pm by Colin McNulty
At the beginning of September, I decided to have a go at the Paleo Diet. In brief, you could call this the caveman diet, the stone age diet, the “don’t eat anything invented in the last 10,000 years” diet. So you can see that there’s a lot of things that you can’t eat when eating Paleo(lithic)ly. No:
- Bread
- Pasta
- Grains
- Cereals
- Flower
- Dairy (Milk)
- Cheese
- Sweets
- Chocolate
- Alcohol
- etc etc
Now I should say, that I agree with most of that, but I wasn’t doing the Paleo for the reason most do. I wasn’t doing it to lose weight. There’s no doubt at all, that if you follow a classic western diet, or even the recommended high carb, low fat diet, you will definitely shed the fat on this diet. No question. Not only that, you will feel full of energy and probably the healthiest you’ve felt since being a hormonal teenager.
But I am already at a good weight. In fact, many of my friends and family think I should be putting a few pounds on! I also have good energy levels and rarely feel tired. That’s what 2.5 years of the Zone Diet has done for me, a story I’ve told a few times on this blog. So the reason for trying Paleo, was to see if it would make me feel even better… and the short answer is: it didn’t.
You see my diet was already close to a Paleo Zone diet, as recommended by Crossfit. The Crossfit dietary recommendation is simply:
“Eat meat and veg, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar.”
However for me, I would have to rewrite it slightly, to be more like:
“Eat meat, fruit and dairy, nuts and seeds, some veg, little starch, occasional sugar, no wheat.”
Yes my balance of fruit to veg is probably off, but that’s down to lifestyle and lack of time to prepare veg for every meal. I also don’t eat wheat as I’ve discovered it simply doesn’t agree with me. The major addition is the dairy though. I drink a pint of milk a day + eat cheese regularly. That was the thing that really put the stopper on a proper paleo diet. Removing dairy would mean no:
- Milk
- Cheese
- Yoghurt
- Chocolate *
- Ice Cream *
- Cakes, even wheat free ones *
- Even salami!
* = these foods can be “zoned in” on the Zone diet, and so are not taboo from a Zone perspective.
Milk crops up in a lot of places that I must confess, I hadn’t originally thought about. I like the zone diet, because you can eat anything you want, so long as you adjust portion sizes to compensate. So that occasional chocky bar, whilst not condoned, can be fine, so long as you balance it with some protein. Or indeed, a few glasses of wine are ok with a meal, as long as the meal is light on carbs to compensate. The point is, with the exceptions of bananas, offal and egg yokes, nothing is off limits on the zone. (And they are only strongly advised against, at least in most circumstances.)
Whereas a straight Paleo diet is the opposite. It heavily regulates *what* you can eat, but places no limits on when or how much you eat. The zone diet is quantitative; the paleo diet is qualitative. So ironically, doing a Paleo Zone diet is actually the worst of both worlds, you are restricted in what you eat, and you can only eat certain proportions!
Either way, I simply decided, that for the gains the paleo might have brought me, it simply wasn’t worth the sacrifice. That’s a personal choice and I applaud the Paleo diet’s goals and ideals and heartily recommend it, if you are hoping to lose weight and currently struggling. Personally, I’d try the Zone diet first, it’s worked for me. And indeed I mostly follow a paleo zone diet, but with dairy and the occasional sugar and wine, however 90% of the meals I eat are simple meats, nuts and fruit & veg. A healthy and balanced way to live in my opinion.
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18.08.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 5:53 pm by Colin McNulty
The competition at the weekend went very well. Interestingly, it didn’t feel like it went that well, considering I missed half the lifts. However the results speak for themselves. I had 3 goals, in descending order of importance:
- Lift 165 total to qualify for the BWLA British Masters Weightlifting competition in 2010 (77kg body weight category)
- Lift a body weight snatch for the first time ever.
- Lift a 175 total to qualify for the 2010 British Masters in the 85kg category (in case I’m over weight come March).
I planned to do these lifts:
- Snatch 1 = 70kg
- Snatch 2 = 76kg (body weight)
- Snatch 3 = 80kg
- Clean & Jerk 1 = 90kg
- Clean & Jerk 2 = 95kg
- Clean & Jerk 3 = 100kg
As you will see in the video below, I got my first snatch and the 76kg body weight snatch on the 3rd snatch. The 90kg C&J then gave me the 165 total I needed, so I went up to 99kg C&J in order to have 2 goes at getting a 175 total. Well, why don’t you watch the video and you’ll see what happened. Click through to YouTube if you want to see it in HD:
As you can see, a scrappy affair really. The Snatches never felt really comfortable. To be honest I messed up the warm up, for both Snatch and Clean and Jerks, I warmed up too soon and then had to stretch them out. Things I need to work on:
- Snatch – I still need to get the bar landing consistently over head.
- Clean – I’m still hitting the bar too low down on my thighs, which is shooting the bar forward instead of up.
- Jerk – Dipping too low is sending the bar forward and also not getting my hips under the bar, as I showed in the freeze frame.
Despite the 3 drops and the poor form shown, I still managed to qualify for the BWLA British Masters next year, and get a body weight snatch which is a milestone I’ve been working towards ever since I started snatching (and level 3 on the Athletic Skill Levels, if you’re interested). So it was a successful day.
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08.04.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 5:14 am by Colin McNulty
I’ve just realised that I never got round to posting up the picture of me and Giles Greenwood, one of the coaches at Bethnal Green. Well here it is:
If you don’t remember me mentioning him before, Giles is the British Record holder for the Snatch (180 kg / 396 lbs) and Clean & Jerk (207.5 kg / 456 lbs) in the 105+ weight category. As such, he’s lifted more than any other British person, since they reset all the records that is.
That photo is taken when he did both those lifts in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, he had less hair back then, though he’s since shaved it all off again. Giles took Gold in the Snatch, Bronze for the C&J and Silver over all. Along with Patrick Atteridge, he’s a dedicated and committed weightlifting coach, with a cutting and typical English sarcastic sense of humour.
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15.12.08
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, The Zone Diet Blog at 9:51 pm by Colin McNulty
This was a hard post to do as I’ve actually not got that many photos of me from a few years ago, but here are 2 pairs of before and after photos, I’ll let you work out which is which!
Both the before pictures are from 2006, before I’d heard of Crossfit or the Zone Diet, both the after are from 2008. Click the picture for a bigger version:
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01.12.08
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 10:09 pm by Colin McNulty
On Saturday I went to Mytholmroyd in Yorkshire to compete in the Yorkshire and North East Counties Open Weightlifting Championships, officiated by BWLA (the British Weight Lifting Association). There were 6 of us in total from Crossfit, including 2 others who were lifting in their debut competition too.
If you’re read my last post on Olympic Weightlifting warmups, you’ll know that I was hoping to qualify for the BWLA British Championships. I needed a total of 175kg to qualify, well I won’t spoil it, here’s the video so you can see what happened.
I have to say, I’m slightly disappointed, but it goes to show I’m getting close to the 75 and 100kg I need, and I still have the Northern Masters in Feb 2009 to qualify, which is at Mytholmroyd again. Things I need to work on:
- Keeping the bar much closer to my legs on the first pull.
- Hopefully that will fix my erroneous forward jump.
- Keeping my bum down and shoulders up on the first pull, so they both rise together.
- Catching both the Snatch and Clean lower in the squat.
- Not dipping so far on the jerk.
That lot should keep me going for a few months!
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14.09.08
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff at 9:07 pm by Colin McNulty
At the risk of sounding like Bill and Ted, day 2 of the Crossfit Certification at Manchester was another totally awesome day. The day started off with a lecture from Todd on the 3rd set of the 9 core Crossfit movements: Deadlift, Sumo Deadlift High Pull (SDHP) and the Medicine Ball Clean, followed by practice outside.
After was an open floor Q&A session with Coach Glassman. I’ve read a few things online about Coach, but Greg is in reality a most unassuming man. This is me with Coach, he was very gracious to pose for so many pictures.
For someone who heads up an international exercise movement with an estimated 300,000 followers, he’s surprisingly modest about his achievements. I took several key points away from the session, which covered a whole host of topics:
- Glassman is not precious about the Crossfit way / WoD (Workout of the Day) He actually hopes one day someone will show that they have a better, more efficacious approach than the WoD!
- There were various conversations about other approaches and variations of Crossfit, for which Greg was completely happy to entertain the idea and watch the experimentation of people doing it. Of course his reaction was simply this: If some other approach is better, let’s see it do well at the Crossfit Games. Then I’ll take notice.
- He admitted to making mistakes with the WoD’s on occassion. E.g. 400m of 10 lunges + 15 reps of 35kg Push Presses. Sounds tough but doable? It took Greg Edmundson (a Crossfit poster boy) over an hour to finish it! Coach described it as “An Abomination!” lol
(I can laugh cos I didn’t have to do it.)
- There was talk about the future of Crossfit and where it can go and Greg made the point that they have more ideas than they have staff to cope with them.
- I was also surprised to learn that Crossfit Inc has only just turned a profit for the first time this year. Bare in mind that Crossfit, it terms of what Greg Glassman has been doing, is coming up 30 years old now! That’s one hell of a gestation period.
- On a Crossfit note, Glassman really stressed the point that the heavy days, e.g. the 5 x 1 rep Dead lifts etc, are *really* important to the Crossfit methodology, and shouldn’t be considered easy or rest days. They really should be absolute max strength days.
One thing that I really came away with was simply this: Greg Classman has a great manner about him, he’s an unassuming but capable orator, who engenders trust and loyalty in those that listen to him.
After lunch was a lecture by Nicole Carroll on nutrition and recommended Crossfit diet: The Zone Diet. In case you can’t guess, I’m the not the pretty one on the left!
The Zone diet stuff was nothing new to me, I’ve been on it for 18 months after all, but it was interesting to see some of Nicole’s slight variations on the Zone prescription in terms of things like the frequency of cheat days and the minimum blocks to prescribe for small people.
There followed the main workout activity, which included 5 stations:
- Push Press practice
- Medicine Ball clean practice
- Kipping pull ups and rope climb technique
- Muscles ups
- And the main workout of the day: 30 – 20 – 10 each of Thrusters and Burpees. To coin a phrase from Crossfit Manchester coach Karl Steadman: That sucked a fat mans arse!
Later Todd talked again about general Crossfit methodology, the ways to combine the 3 main types of workout: Weightlifting, Gymnastics and Mono-structured (running, rowing etc). It included topics on the 3:1 work to rest day ratio vs the 5:2. Also an example of how to scale a WoD for different ability levels of Crossfit client.
Ultimately that was it. There were photo sessions and plenty of time for questions of all kinds to all people and I don’t believe anyone went away with anything they wanted to ask unanswered. All together, the weekend was great, and that’s all I can say about it. If you get the chance, you should go on a Crossfit cert. This is the Crossfit Manchester crew with all the Crossfit Coaches: Greg, Nicole, Todd, Jimmy and Andy:
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