This was the year that fun started sneaking back into my life and I no longer felt held back from physical exploits. I was swinging rope and mace and learning strange landmine university moves. It truly felt like the year the warrior started to wake up again.

I’ve written previously about my training with some truly inspirational people that have encouraged me with their unconventional approaches to fitness. This year I trained remotely with Edward Troise, Jared Michael Thomas, @alpacaflow and joined some amazing fitness communities on Skool - most notably Tim Shieff (Tim’s gym), Edward Troise (Train with ET) and Nsima Inyang (The Stronger Human).

Tim’s Gym

LMU Still getting so much value from this. Tim continues to be inspired by David Weck and early in the year released a brilliant course on the Landmine University (LMU). It came at the perfect time to support my own fascination with the modality. LMU basically offers a relatively safe way to introduce ballistic, dynamic training, rather like Olympic lifting but with a lower skill level.

Also with Tim I did another rope flow workshop in London.

Edward Troise

I had some remote sessions with Edward to go through some Weck method techniques, particularly Landmine University but also coiling core methods in general. We also covered some rope techniques and it reinvigorated my enjoyment of that practice. I really enjoyed the exploration involved in these sessions and I felt free to experiment in my own sessions again.

His Skool group is evolving at pace and has some exceptional instructional videos covering all things Weck method.

Apaca Flow

Sinisa’s 6 week matador mastery course taught me how to move. I don’t know how I managed to get to 53 and only now am I learning how to turn around.

Sciatica

This finally started to improve early in the year. I was still feeling numbness down both legs after waking but it mostly clears after a short while so it didn’t affect my morning dog walks as much as it had been doing.

I attribute the improvements to the style of training I am now focussed on. My training styles are much more expansive as opposed to compressive forces associated with power lifting. The different flow modalities, especially rope, encourage a both sides utilised approach.

When I first started rope flow I had a very pronounced lateral scoliosis and I had lost the ability to be able to stand up straight - I look weird in every photo from that era.

scoliosis improvement shown in dexa scan

Even stood in front of a mirror where I could see the kink in my spine, I was unable to control the position of hips and shoulder to improve my posture, it felt like I had lost the way to control all the elements.

However, the gentle (whip you in the face) teachings of the rope seemed to give me all the feedback I required to slowly straighten up. I had another dexa scan today and it shows a side by side of me back in my pre-rope flow days vs now and you can really see the impact of my spine lengthening and straightening.