Fitspiration

Fitness inspiration

Review – City Strongman #betterthanthetreadmill

/ katieferg89 / 5 Comments

I love tyre flipping. I also love how ‘flipping tyres’ can be used in exasperation if you are easily amused by rubbish puns (it’s the same as ‘rucking shields’ which is a long-running joke in my family…..) I also love sledge dragging, lifting heavy stuff and chucking battle ropes around. Oh and obviously being told I’m alright at it. Which means that, after coming across City Strongman on Twitter and remembering how much I used to love ‘Torture Club’ (aka circuits at the rugby club) I was clamouring to give it a go.

City Strongman was set up by PTs Dave Thomas and Ben Gotting and started out at Rosslyn Park on Saturday mornings. They’ve just started expanding due to a being a MASSIVE success and now hold a mid-week session at the Iron Club, tucked away under the arches by Vauxhall station. Continue reading →

These Girls Still Do – Yoga and physical activity in older women

/ Kate O'C / 1 Comment

As I mentioned previously in our Mothers’ Day special, my mum is a yoga instructor. She took up Hatha Yoga about 15 years ago when she became concerned about her joints and has been head over heels in love with it ever since. After my younger brother was born, she trained as a Yoga teacher as it was something she loved to do and was a flexible (no pun intended…) job that she could work around Dad’s working hours and the hectic timetable of having three, and subsequently four, young children to look after.

I’m incredibly proud of my mum, her business has gone from strength to strength and she offers a valuable service of easily accessible yoga classes to women and men of all ages and abilities throughout the local, rural community. But what impresses me most of all is her clients. The majority of the people who attend her yoga classes, though by no means all, are women of retirement age. I go to class whenever I have an opportunity and let me tell you I am a fit person but these ladies truly put me to shame in the flexibility and strength stakes.

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The Running Bug & Friends: Committing to my first Half Marathon

/ Kate O'C / 1 Comment

You may have heard, Katie Ferguson ran the Virgin Money London Marathon 2015 on Sunday. But she didn’t just run it; she smashed it. 3.33.24. For those of you who don’t know, that is a very, very good time.

Spot the happiest runner...

Spot the happiest runner…

I went to watch the runners whiz past at Canary Wharf  and found myself carried away on a wave of unexpected emotion. As I’ve mentioned before, I am not a fan of running. I’m quite bad at it and I don’t really understand the appeal of running for its own sake – except the fact that it is fantastically good exercise – but something about watching the London Marathon this year really inspired me. When I spotted Katie amongst the throngs I (a) screamed so loudly that I scared an old lady, and (b) honestly almost shed a tear of pride. What an outrageous and ballsy thing it is to set yourself the mental and physical challenge of running 26 miles. What sort of extraordinary person wakes up on a Monday morning, goes into work and at the watercooler utters the words “I achieved a GFA time at the London Marathon” in response to the question “How was your weekend”?

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Last minute marathon prep

/ katieferg89 / 1 Comment

Mentally? I don’t know where I am. I picked up 3.30, 3.35 and 3.45 pace bands and genuinely don’t know how it’s going to go. I’m not sure I’ve got the miles in the legs for the 3.30. I mean two years ago, March mileage, 182…this year…74. LOL. But that did finish off with a stress fracture whereas this year there have been about 4 or 5 full weeks off in my training cycle. After the Achilles faff I’m just shooting for a GFA which unless it flares up and/or I have a massive mental breakdown (entirely possible) should be achievable. 8.34s doesn’t sound that bad. But I know inside my mind I don’t want to ‘just’ GFA. 3.30 is going to be my nemesis and I’m going to keen having to take a bash at this marathon business until I get it (so the sooner the better really!)

I’ve had a couple of decent shorter races recently where I’ve really surprised myself with my grit but it’s a completely different ball game. I’m ambivalent about the weather – I’ve done a couple of my long runs in fairly grim weather (and hungover but that’s another matter) What I am worried about however is the hanging around beforehand in the rain. Bleurgh. Binbags it is. But apparently now it might not rain so WHO KNOWS?!

So here is what I got up to to take my mind off things!

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Kate and Katie go on the Rebound – Class Review of Rebounce London

/ Kate O'C / 1 Comment

Last Wednesday Katie and I went rebounding. No, I don’t mean we hit the dating scene of SW11 hard… rather, we were invited by Missie Frank (dancer, choreographer and founder of Rebounce London) to try a new quirky, sweaty, bouncy exercise class. Being the intrepid explorers that we are, we duly signed up and ventured to Fitness First at Clapham Junction (I say ventured, one of us lives in Battersea and one in Balham so it wasn’t like we had far to go).

Both of us had trampolined before, and there is still a trampoline in the back garden at our respective childhood homes (though, admittedly they are mostly now only used by visiting younger cousins or for sunbathing), but Rebounce is something quite different – it’s fast, choreographed and done to the beat of a pumping playlist!

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10 Problems Sporty Girls Will Understand

/ Kate O'C / 6 Comments

Here’s a popular one from the archives for you peeps – still as true as ever! We’d love to hear your #sportygirlproblems in the comments below or on Twitter

1. Your bedroom is perpetually in need of hoovering.

Especially if you play anything that involves wearing studded or moulded boots… Why is it so damn hard to get rid of every last bit of mud / grass / dirt? Or worst of all, these little blighters:

artificial turf

Whoever thought 3G pitches were a good idea has CLEARLY never spent entire weeks, post-training session, picking rubber pellets out of crevasses they hadn’t realised they had.

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Fit Mammas: A day isn’t enough to celebrate our mothers!

/ katieferg89 / 4 Comments

Let’s face it – neither of us would be where we are now without the most important women in our lives – and we probably wouldn’t have the same attitudes towards health and wellbeing that we do without our mothers playing the laundry lady/taxi driver/#1 supporter/ role that they do!

So, on this rainy Mothering Sunday, when neither of us actually have the fortune to be with them, we’d like to celebrate the top women in our lives and what makes them so freakin’ awesome

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But we don’t need an advertising campaign!

/ katieferg89 / 1 Comment

So let’s tackle the big, popular topic that is ALL OVER social media and the press, Sport England’s “This Girl Can”, which has received the majority of rave reviews thus far. This is actually partly how this blog came about, following a Sunday evening discussion over a steak pie and a glass of wine (Kate’s culinary expertise)

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