How can two brothers be so different? Whilst young Peter is diving deeper and deeper into the world of blood and steel with his 100kg Workouts, I who for the better part of 10 years have worked to keep cardio to a minimum have put down the barbell and embraced the world of cross fit.  So why the change, well like my brother I too am running the Tough Mudder but unlike my brother I am, well to put it bluntly a hell of a lot less fit and whole lot older. So after studying the course I realised that need to train my body to handle real-life situations, such as say running a 12 mile assault course on the 13th May for example, not just bench or deadlift as much as possible. I needed to become, gulp, more athletic. Now anyone who knows me can vouch that the word athlete is not the way most people would use to describe me. I needed help and I found it in the form of a charming fellow called Jamie a personal trainer at my local gym. After describing the problem to him he quickly deduced that a cross fit program would be a great way to start my transformation.

After an intensive warm up including a five-minute row and 10 minutes of stretches and squats Jamie told me he was going to put me through a Cindy Work Out. This is not as much fun than or as easy as it sounds. It turns out that a lot of the cross fit work outs are named after girls to give the impression they are nice and easy, this is not the case. What Jamie asked me to do was as follows

·        5 pull ups

·        10 push ups Cross fit style (chest to the ground and full lock at the top)

·        15 Air Squats again Cross fit style so below parallel and full lock at the top.

The above is one circuit; the goal is to do as many circuits as you can in 20 minutes. By the end I was a quivering wreck, gasping for air and felt totally exhausted. That first attempt I managed a shamefully low circuit total of 8, but after just 3 weeks of doing Cindy and one other cross fit work out once a week (thank god my other half knows what Cindy is) I am up to 13 2/3 which is a grand total of 70 pull ups, 140 push up and 195 squats. My body fat has dropped by 2% my bench has gone up, my lats and abs are popping and my run times have come down. This work out is a killer but delivers.

The best thing is it is simple and customisable. Cannot do pull ups fine do jumping ones where you use a little jump to help you up. Not a fan of push up, drop the knees. Think squats are too easy fine swap them out for burpees you psycho!

As an added bonus in these tough economic times, this does not require a gym hit as the park is all you need for something to do pull ups off monkey bars, swing rings even goal posts will do. However, if you are using a children’s play area (as I do) I would suggest that you head down there early in the morning sweating, grunting and swearing in front of small children will always end badly for you!

So give it a go add Cindy to your work out for a month and let us know how you get on but please remember to warm up and cool down thoroughly.

If you want to know more about Cross Fit check out their great web site here and I will post more Cross fit work out ideas soon.

http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/what-crossfit.html

Top Off Muscle Man - Posing and Being Sexy!

Enter the Mudder.

Evening Mudders, how have you been? I know some time has passed since my last blog. This was due to a 3-week work trip to Hong Kong. Now this trip could very easily of derailed all of my previous six weeks hard work. Hong Kong is a city that does not sleep and caters to every vice a man or woman could want. Booze, check, we had a free hotel bar with free cocktails from 5 to 8. Food, Check, it seemed every third building was a restaurant of sought. Finally a fully stocked mini bar within reach of my bed filled with bags of peanut M&Ms (my personal kryptonite) calling me and tempting me on a nightly basis. So I can hear you asking with baited breath did I submit to the BELLY and pig out 24/7? Am I now back bigger and slower than before?........
Nope I managed to “just say no” the M&Ms (most nights) say no to the Booze (well apart from the one night in Hard Rock) and keep to the heather choices on the menu which to be fair were many. I managed this gargantuan task by being inspired by the people of Hong Kong. They like their number one son Bruce Lee kick a lot of ass. On my morning runs at 6 am (the only time the humidity was below 100%) I found the local parks filled with people of all ages practising Tie Chi, Running, Boxing, Aerobics and even Crossfit (which I have now dabbled in but that is another blog).
The most spectacular sight I saw on my runs was an army of 30 odd 50-70 year old ladies practicing for about 40mins with Chinese’s broadswords (they are not light). They cut the air in perfect symmetry back and forth slicing and dicing their imaginary opponents. I ran the track in that park four times each of the weeks I was in Hong Kong and those sword swinging ladies were there every time at 6.20 you could set your watch by them. Impressive, to say the least. This taught me two things. One we should never mess with the Chinese, not only are they the largest economy in the world they also have army’s of Ninja Nana’s at their disposal. Secondly, just like the people of Hong Kong I need to make fitness a part of my life, embrace it and not look at it like a chore. It’s part of my lifestyle and I choose to embrace it. How Zen.
Anyhow I have been instructed by my editor (the all powerful Si) to keep the blogs to 400 words so that is it for this week. Just my stats to go…..

Stats 5 March 2012 (End of Month 2)

Weight 110 that is a nice drop of 6kgs and 3.5Kgs in Hong Kong.

Run time and distance 35min and Distance is up to 7km which is nice

Chin Ups 4. With my new Personal trainer (again another blog) I hope to drive these up to 20 soon.

Days to Tough Mudder 69 days a sexy number for sexy time.

That’s it from the Big Guy TTFN Mudders.

Fart Slap S&M Fitness

The Unsung Heroes

Tomorrow night I will be leaving for a three-week work trip to the orient. I will keep training and hitting the gym and the road but I will be doing it without my support team who have kept me going over the last six weeks. So I thought it was time to shine a light on the other parts of Team Wallace, without whom I am sure I would have given up during week 1.
So who do I want to thank? There is my personal trainer, who kicks my flabby ass out of bed every morning to hit the road running and drag me the park every Sunday morning. Motivating me to work harder and push myself to the limit every session.  My personal photographer, who come rain or shine captures my workouts and publishes them on line in effort to help raise awareness and interest in our cause to raise money for Cancer Research.  My Chef who prepares delicious and nutritious meals to ensure I have the prefect diet (well it would be if the M&Ms would stop calling me) to lose weight, gain muscle and recover from my intensive workouts. My Sports Therapist, who talks me through the low points and pushes up my self-confidence to know that come May 13 I will not only survives but also thrives on the TM course.

The crazy thing is that my PT, Photographer, Chef and Therapist are actually just one amazing person. Yep my own personal superwoman, the love of my life Mrs Samantha Wallace. Despite being horrified at the prospect of her uncoordinated and asthmatic husband running through fire, and being electrocuted she has been my rock and loudest supported. Without her, I would have given up or not even stated. For the last six weeks (and 4 months to come) she has been woken up with 5am alarms, dragged out for early morning weekend trips to the park, held ice packs in place, massaged sore muscles, rubbed Vaseline on chaffed … well let’s just say areas , given up wine at weekends, the list goes on and on. Not once has she complained well apart from the one request I had but apparently that’s only for Birthdays and not Tough Mudder related.

Even when I am going to be away on the most romantic day of the year, she just moves it to another day. Samantha  Jayne Wallace you are my protector, my lover, and my best friend you are my everything. When I get down it’s her who talks me back up, when I get carried away it’s she that reins me in.  I love you Boo. Even though I will be half a planet away I know she will be with me….Well with Skype, mobiles, texting Facebook and email she pretty much is. Plus look how much she does she need a break from all this Tough Mudder craziness.

So there you have my thank you to my support team of one Mrs W. Also big love to all of you who have sponsored us we are just over ½ way to our £1000 target, but in Wallace style we would like to smashes it so if you have not done so yet click the link and part with some of that hard earned cash. I mean come on we posted an Incest vid on you tube, our humiliation is surly worth a few of your golden ducats even in these cash strapped time.

No stats this week but I will Post them fresh after one week of training in Hong Kong so as a wise old china man once said “Distance tests a horse's strength. Time reveals a person's character” Yer twist your brains around that one Mudders.

TTFN The Big Guy

How to work out for free.

I thought I would Post the full list of my current Sunday morning workout to highlight how you can have a great workout without the cost of joining a gym.  Here my workout from this Sunday, it was tough but fun and only takes about 45mins. Give it a go and see what you think, or make up your own and hit the park.  You can check out the Tough Mudder Facebook page for some vids of how these exercises look (and how much I suffer lol). http://www.facebook.com/#!/wallaceboystoughmudders

Rest between exercises kept to no longer than 2 mins

1.       4 sets of 25 Jumping Jacks to warm up (30s rest between sets)

2.       Mini Circuit, Work for 40s then rest for 20s:

·         Wobble Board Squats

·         Push ups with Feet on Wobble Board

·         Dumbbell Swing Squat

·         Go back to top and go again until you have done 3 sets.

3.       5 runs of the Parallel bar

4.       10 sets of 20 Meter Sprints, 20s rest between sets

5.       3 sets of Duck Walk with dumbbell  of 20meaters (1 min rest between sets)

6.       3 sets of Walking Snow lungs for 20m (1 min rest between sets)

7.       3 Sets of Swing plank push ups (just do as many as you can only 3 or 4 for me at the mo)

Big love from the Big Guy.

PS, doing this in the snow was tough tough tough.

Incest - Great for the Quads?

This is how my brother Kris decided to work out his quads during training for the Tough Mudder competition.

It was pretty weird but all for a good cause. He's raising money for Cancer Research so it's worth being humiliated and slightly violated!