Author: Stanley Haigh

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Want to get fit and loose weight but don’t know how? These four things can help you get there!

Getting fit is always the hardest part, but once achieved you can stay fit easily. Having a good diet and plenty of sleep is also necessary to keeping fit and loosing weight. Depending on how fit you are wanting to get and what you are getting fit for, these exercises will help you with whatever your goal is.

LOW INTENSITY WORKOUTS

This could include, walking, running, cycling or rowing. All you need to do is set a rhythm and stay at a steady state that you can hold for 30mins to an hour. if your doing it for the first time then you may go harder than you think at the start and end up dropping the pressure towards the end. This is okay. Once you have finished the activity, look at what the average power output was, weather that be Watts or a split showing how long it takes you to do 500m/1k, and set that as your steady state for the next time you do this exercise.

PYRAMIDS/FARTLEKS

This can help you burn calories fast. A fartlek is where you do a high intensity piece for a short period of time and then go straight into a low intensity piece for a longer period of time e.g. 20 seconds hard 40 seconds soft, and repeat 5-6 times. Fartlek’s can be used on almost anything so they are pretty useful to include in your workout.

A pyramid is basically the same thing to a fartlek, but used for rate. I’d usually do this on a Rowing erg, but it can be done with other activities. What you want to do is set a time for 22mins and go up rate every 2 minutes, and then when you get to halfway, you start to bring the rate back down.

HARD NTENSITY WORKOUTS

Now, instead of going in and out of hard intensity like the fartlek’s, this will be constant. These workouts will vary depending on what machine or activity you will use, but the benefits will stay the same. If your on a bike for example, you could set a distance of 1k and intervals of 2 to 3 mins. this would be repeated 6 to 8 times. You would go all out on the 1k, but settle around 10 seconds in to hold the power. Then rest for 2 to 3 minutes after the 1k. You could also change the distance to time, so the session would become 2 mins on 2 mins off.

Doing this will help you loose calories fast, and will increase your aerobic fitness and ability to sustain high intensity efforts for longer.

WEIGHTS

Depending on what your wanting to do, there are two types of weight programmes.

  • Bodyweight
  • Heavyweight

Bodyweights is, you guessed it, using your own body as the weight, so this could include squatting, press ups, core exercises, and pull ups. These will help with the natural movements of your body, and help a lot with gaining muscle.

Heavyweights, is using barbells, goblets, plates and bars to do exercises such as, back squats, bench press, cleans and deadlifts. These are all good to do in your workouts as they can help build more muscle and tone you out which can slim you down. These also help with the movements of your muscles and skeleton, and can make your joints a lot stronger just like bodyweight exercises can also do.

These activities listed above all help you to get fit and keep fit. They also help you to loose weight and increase your resistance to fatigue. So if your starting out in fitness and don’t really know what to do, maybe try some of these. If you want to do heavyweights, I’d suggest finding someone who knows the techniques so they can show you what to do.

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Henley Royal Regatta…Back on?

There has been many sporting events called off or postponed in the last year – one of them being Henley Royal Regatta (HRR). Last year, in 2020 marked the third time the annual race was to be called off, the first two being the world wars.

The statement (that can be found on the HRR website) informed us “with much sadness and regret, the committee of management of Henley Royal Regatta has agreed that the 2020 regatta must be canceld.”

This didn’t come as a shock, as the worldwide pandemic wasn’t exactly getting any better, but this did destroy many athletes hopes and dreams to race on the famous course.

Now a year has passed since that message was sent out, and there has been an update. “As a result of the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee of management of Henley Royal Regatta has reluctantly concluded that the 2021 Regatta cannot be held from 29 June to 4 July at Henley on Thames as originally planned. However the committee has decided against outright cancelation at this stage, and is instead exploring the potential to stage the regatta in august, in Henley should conditions allow, or if not, at Dorney Lake.”

This is great news as it gives us athletes something to plough towards. Due to the pandemic there’s still going to be many problems to get around. With increasing numbers of new variants and countless countries going into the ‘red zone’, no one can travel too or from these places. will it be difficult to have the oarsmen and women participate in the event as internationals?

A lot of the competitors in the race wont be Olympic level, but will be club talented athletes. Could this stop them from coming over, as being an athlete isn’t their job title? We have seen the European Rowing Championships take place in Italy earlier this month, but these athletes are top of their game, ‘professionals’ , therefore they can travel to such events. Could we be seeing a HRR with only world class rowing stars against ‘Only’ UK club and university crews?

I do believe that the international crews will be able to attend, as they are not coming on holiday, but attending an international sporting event. They have trained hard, and obviously deserve to come if they have qualified to race. The whole Regatta itself will be completely different this year anyways because of all the regulations and guidelines people must follow.

This also makes me think, where are these international crews going to stay? Yes, by then hotels and other forms of overnight stays will be running smoothly ‘I hope’ but from my experience Henley on Thames is a small town. when I went with my crew we stayed in someone’s house, and the house owner said her neighbour has a German crew. This was 2019 however, in the midst of a pandemic would you want an international crew coming over into your house to stay for a week. Okay they would of been tested and most likely had some form of vaccine but for some people the fear of the virus could still be there. I, personally wouldn’t mind (if I had a ginormous house) but I would still have a few concerns.

I’m not saying any of this will happen, its just some thoughts that came to mind about what could possibly happen the this world renowned regatta. Obviously the fait lies within the next few months as anything could happen from now till then.

This also links in with the 2020 now 2021 Olympic Games as they have postponed, and are possibly in the talks of complete cancelation. However that’s a talk for another time.

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The Basics of Coffee

It’s one of those items that is most likely on everybody’s shopping list, but what does it actually do?

As a coffee user, I haven’t really understood the full depth of what coffee can do. So I decided to look into it to see what I could use it for, and to maybe help others in similar situations.

One of the main things we all know about coffee is that it makes us more awake. The caffeine stimulates the central nervous system making you feel more alert. This is why most people drink it in the morning, myself included. I do like to indulge myself with a cup once in a while as it has its benefits.

These ‘benefits’ being; when drinking coffee, the body releases dopamine in the brain that produces euphoria and happy feelings. So if your miserable in the mornings like me, it might be a good thing to start having a cup.

Another benefit is if you have a coffee shortly before a meal you could possibly decrease the intake of calories, However consuming coffee 3-4.5 hours before the meal will result in no effect on the intake.

Coffee is known by many fitness “gurus” as a source of trimming down fat. This is usually with caffeinated coffee in particular as it might possibly increase the amount of calories/ fat you burn. Yes you will have to exercise for it to work… sorry.

However all of this being said, the research for all of these ‘theories’ was done mainly between 1980 and 2000, therefore more research should be done to provide better evidence to back up what’s already been written.

This leads me on to talk about possible negative side effects that could occur if you consume more than four cups (three to five eight ounce cups) of coffee per day. Having too much coffee could lead too; jitteriness, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and even heart palpitations. Although some of the health problems associated with ‘too much coffee’ haven’t exactly been proven, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have recommended 4 cups of coffee a day as there is no negative evidence against that. Unless you already have a health problem against caffeine but that’s just leading into common sense.

For myself, I have coffee in many form ranging from; hot black coffee to a iced latte. Although sugar mixed with it gives it that better taste, I must say that I have grown to like it without. It makes me feel like a fitness fanatic as I take a sip of my iced coffee latte with a metal straw sitting in the sun.

Anyways I’ll probably return to this topic in the future as there is defiantly more to talk about, but for now that’s the basics.

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Blog Number One: A brief introduction

Who am I

Well first off, Hi I’m Stanley. I’ve created this blog to start writing more and talk about fitness and other things I do in my life. These “things” are ranged from food to gym work to rowing and cycling, and many other day to day activities like reading and looking after a dog.

At the moment I don’t really know where to start, so I’m just making this post to say I’ll be on it shortly.

About me, I’m an athlete for my “local” rowing club, so I pretty much go down there everyday to train in various ways. It’s a very fun sport especially in summer. Winter training isn’t too good as your training mostly in the dark and freezing cold temperatures. But it’s still manageable as the social life I’ve gained from it has changed me.

I also cycle a lot, mainly because I have to get myself to and from training. But also it’s been a excellent way of keeping fit through each lockdown in the past year.

Weight training is also a big part of rowing and my own life. However, I haven’t done this for awhile as gyms have been shut and are only just reopening.

All of this being said I’m no pro at any of it, although it would be nice, certain factors about myself do not fit in with the ones with rowing, AKA height and weight for the heavyweight and lightweight categories. I’m also not a body builder but I like to think I know what I’m doing in a gym.

Why I’m blogging

One of the main reasons I’m blogging is because I enjoy the creativity of writing. Especially in non-fictional work like this. Another reason is the idea that someone might be going through the same situation as me and might want help with it, or maybe just wanting to learn.

I’m hoping to get a coaching qualification in the future sometime, and I also help out on occasions with the learn to row course at my club so teaching and helping people comes quite naturally with me.

What am I hoping to accomplish

Honestly I don’t really know, I may in a week or two but I think it would be awesome if I could help people out in the sporting community. And help people with life and maybe show people a new adventure they can take.

For myself, I think blogging, and writing about things going on in my life will help me massively. I have been affected by mental health throughout the last few years being in school and then sixth form. So to be able to write about it and get it out would be a big positive change. And maybe other people could follow my path.

For now that’s all I have to say, but I hope to be writing something soon. To start getting the grips with things and learning what to do. see you for my second blog.

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