It’s advantage Kirsty after opening round of fitness challenge
Gym Challenge at Nuffield Health Centre, Sixfields. Jefferson Lake and Kirsty Edmonds go head to head in the Circuit challenge.
With the gym challenge entering its second month, it was time for our trainers to have a look at both myself and Kirsty in a competitive environment, so they could see what areas we were improving on and what areas need work.
To do this, we went head-to-head on a circuit made up of 10 separate exercises, which would we do for 45 seconds each.
The circuit was laid out by one of the other trainers from Nuffield Heath to avoid Craig (my trainer) or Scott (Kirsty’s trainer) tailoring it too much to suit either of our strengths.
It was an experiment that we all agreed went pretty much as expected.
I performed better at the exercises I’m more used to doing – basically any involving weights or the upper-body area – and Kirsty likewise in her specialist subjects, which was pretty much everything else.
Our scores were surprisingly close in just about all of the areas, although I have to admit, Kirsty blew me away in the skipping, trebling my total.
In my defence I’ve never done skipping in my life but then Kirsty has never done a bench press, so it evened itself out.
In a couple of categories we scored exactly the same. We both managed to complete 45 seconds of the ‘sitting against the wall’ exercise (see picture) and we both did six sprint shuttles.
What was interesting, from a sports psychology point of view, was that we both tried harder in exercises we knew we could do better.
I definitely upped my game when I was on the chest press because I do that almost every time I visit the gym and knew I would get a good score there. Kirsty was the same with the ‘stepping up and down on a box’ exercise.
Almost as a test of endurance, we did the circuit for a second time to see how our scores compared and whether fatigue would be an issue – it was, but only on the exercises that were not our favoured ones.
The aim now for our trainers will be to get us to a position where we treat all exercises equally, where we like them all and relish doing all of them regardless of where they sit on our own personal spectrums of enjoyment.
With gym beginners this would be easier because they do not have comfort zones but for Kirsty and I, who have set ideas about what we should be doing in the gym, it will be harder.
The plan from this point is for Kirsty to strengthen her upper body while maintaining a high level of cardio.
For me, it’ll be all about ramping up the cardio – through the kind of all-over-body circuits Craig has been punishing, I mean, training me with so far.
That, and learning to skip.
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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