Back in March 2020 Damien Browne posted a 14 Day Burpee Challenge to Instagram. The goal was to perform as many hand-release Burpees in a minute on day one. On each subsequent day you have to beat your previous score in the same time and then add another minute of torture! Ireland had just entered a national lockdown and with nothing better to do I decided it would be an easy way to keep myself occupied. Boy was I wrong. It was a horrible challenge (which I secretly loved, lol). You can read more about my first experience of the 14 Day Burpee Challenge by clicking here. Afterwards, I swore I’d never do something so stupid again. Fast forward eighteen months later and I’m back at it again for a second time. So why, oh why, did I do the Burpee Challenge Again? Read on and you’ll find out my reasons as well as what I got from it this time around! But first let me give you some context. 

If you know me as a coach, you’ll know by now that nose breathing is where it’s at when it comes to health performance. But just as a quick reminder, let’s find out why nose breathing is so great and then give you 3 top tips for nose breathing. 

This year I decided to join in on the #Freezbury challenge from the start. The purpose of doing the challenge for me was to bring a focus to my life. I thought jumping into the cold water on a daily basis would inspire me to forge ahead with three other major long-term goals I’m working on in my life. I find it’s always important for me to understand Why I’m doing a Challenge and to find meaning in it. I find no benefit in ego-only-driven-pursuits any more. This way I can take the lessons forward into life with me and it benefits me as a whole. 

 

#Freezbrury2020 ended for me today, on Day 12 of the event. In ending my time early, I pass on the baton to all the other participants around the country. I wish them the very best of luck in their endeavours over the course of the remaining 18 days. It was yesterday really that I made the decision I wouldn’t continue and I sit in peace with that decision today. As I write this post I am 95% content with my decision, there is always the feeling of “the grass is greener on the other side”. There is always the feeling of “I could continue”. In fact, if we were to call a spade a spade, I probably feel better, more energized and more able to go in the water today but that isn’t what my heart is telling me. And that begs the question: “why would I continue”? To answer that question I need to return to the beginnings of #Freezbury and of me. 

Recently I’ve been taking an ice bath first thing in the morning, three times per week. The purpose was not to adapt to cold exposure and gain the physical benefits of training the cold. Rather, the focus was to train my mind. Train it to do something hard first thing in the morning. It’s been a fascinating journey. Fun at times and hard at times too. Essentially, this is an experience of fear and of understanding our body’s wiring to safety. It is an experience of what happens when you move through this fear, become friends with it and find out what’s on the far side of it. By sharing this story, I hope my insights give a glimpse of your own innate strength, the battles that exist to become strong inside and out and the mechanisms we have to pass through to find peace and joy in life. Enjoy. Now let us begin…. 

New Year’s Resolutions. Most trainers are now advocating you shouldn’t write them. They think it is fickle. Something you will stop doing within a few days or weeks at most. And while that might sound like a wise decision, I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath tub. In fact, I think New Years is a great time to set goals and refine the life you want. Here are 3 reasons Why You Should write New Year’s Resolutions. 

Last night saw the first full moon of winter. Today the temperature has dropped to single digits and there’s a bitterly easterly breeze blowing. “Winter is here”, as Game of Thrones would say and so is winter outdoor training. For most sports, this means the long hard slog of off-season or pre-season training has begun. Creating a base of fitness can be difficult at the best of times and it’s made even worse in the bitterly cold. The cold adds another dimension to training, it starts us off from a lower base of readiness and so we need more time to get up to the pace of the session. This means we’re more susceptible to a poor quality warm up. A poor warm up increases our risk of injury and reduces our performance in our session. But how do we know if we are warming up well?  

It sounds so silly right? After all everybody knows how to breathe. We do it all day every day of our lives. From birth to death there isn’t a day goes by where we don’t breathe, in fact, there isn’t even an hour goes by without breathing. How then, can we over-breathe and does over-breathing really kill us? We’re going to dive into these questions and then give you 3 Ways Over-breathing is Killing You. 

If you know me as a coach, you’ll know by now that nose breathing is where it’s at when it comes to health performance. But just as a quick reminder, let’s find out why nose breathing is so great and then give you 3 top tips for nose breathing.