PT and Meaty Monday

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Jo

Post-Christmas review of the fitness programme and the PT and I have agreed some respectable targets.

  1. Complete C25k programme by early April – my choice
  2. Flexibility / mobility / stretching – daily practice for overall improvement – his choice. We’ve made solid progress but now he really wants me to focus on the daily practice.  Also important if I’m going to complete objective 1 without borking my right knee/hip.
  3. Monkey bars at the gym – my choice, I want to swing across those suckers with the ease I used to be able to when I was 14!
  4. Fat loss and muscle definition – (yes OK weight loss) – thought long and hard about this as I’ve always said to him strength, fitness, flexibility, suppleness are my top priorities. I want to be able to bend, stretch, run and lift heavy gardening/allotment stuff. And he’s certainly turned floppy bits into solid muscle over the last 2 years – but the muscle is still hidden under a protective layer of not-muscle and I’m finally ready to commit to tackling that.

So this evening post my cardio warm up I was weighed, measured and luckily not found wanting by the lovely PT. We were both a bit surprised to find my arm and leg measurements were the same on both sides (I’d anticipated some difference since my left side is weaker – but I;m starting from a position of being in balance).

After that we went straight into a a cardio-weights workout (light weights higher reps):

* 7kg dumbbells high pulls x 20 reps
* 25kg barbell bent over rows x 20 reps
* 10kg barbell push press x 20 reps
* 6kg medicine ball slams x 15 reps
* press up position plank to failure

All of that was one set – 1 min rest at end of set and 7 sets.  (I always find it slightly frustrating doing the high reps/light weight sessions as I like heavy lifting, but I can’t lift heavy and do quite so many reps at such speed!)

Then  there was a 10 min fast row on the concept rower, finished with lots of side planks and some assisted hamstring stretches.

I tend to come out of gym sessions with an appetite so depressed I don’t want to eat much (in which case I know I’ll eat ALL THE FOOD the next day) or I come out as hungry as a ravening wolf. It was the latter today which is why I ended up spending £20  in Sainsbury’s on food I didn’t really need (but it looked so good) and ended up with a DEEEEELICIOUS dinner of a giant ribeye steak and a veg medley of squash, broccoli, sugar snap peas and asparagus which could be quickly nuked.

My post-gym refuel meal was on my plate 7 minutes after I walked in the door and I pretty much inhaled it.

DSC_0066.JPG

Advertisement
Posted in cooking, Food, Health & Fitness | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Sunday’s Shots from the Plots

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Jo

I had a much needed break over Xmas and – even though the weather was lovely and sunny for a couple of days – did no work on the plots.

My cunning plan for checking progress this year is going to be taking weekly pics on Sunday so I’ve got a photo record of progress.

The smaller plot looks good – all the work before Xmas in digging and manuring was worth it. The shot below is standing at the back of the plot. You can just about seen the currant bushes along the back border.  The large bed is where the potatoes were. The small scrappy yet to be dug and manured bit is where the oca is and it needs to be dug up. Over the far side between the compost bin and lavender is a manured bed of two rhubarb crowns.

dsc_0040dsc_0038

Looking from the front you can see the herb bed on the left needs some attention as does the bit of ground to the right of the bags of manure. That’s the bit where I need to do some serious digging to remove some brambles.

Slightly closer view of those bits still needing work – herb bed on the left, bed of oca on the right and the brambles and bags of manure and bark chippings below.

 

The big plot needs some serious work!

View from the top of the plot – there’s a pile of old carpet behind the horizontally stacked pallets which needs to go and the brambles all along the bottom of fence could so with being taken out and replaced with heavier fruting cultivars.

 

dsc_0027dsc_0029

And above – the view from the bottom of the plot. As you can see the fence on two sides has been more or less done and held up over winter.  There’s a series of small apple trees and currants planted along the fence to the right of the plot, and a morello cherry and more currants along the fence running across the top of the plot. There’s a small section of fence to be completed in the top left corner – but the pallet for that is already painted so I just need to fix the fence post and attach it.  All the stacked painted wood is to mark out some beds.

Key areas to work on here are to finish the small section of fence linking the new pallet fence to the railing at the bottom of the plot (see pic on left below).  I have the timber post and fence foot and a pallet which fits – I just need a dry day to paint them all.  Then there’s the epic brambles. They really need to come out and be replaced.

The giant pile of carpet and rubbish you can see above all came from just in front of the fence running the length of the plot – and was excavated in November when I dug that section over to plant the apples and currants. All the painted wood in the pic on the left above is for marking out beds.

So plenty there to keep me occupied.

Posted in Allotment, Food | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Movie Monday

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Jo

2017-01-02-rogue-one

I did manage to see Rogue One at the cinema before going into my self-imposed hibernation mode over Christmas and New Year. I loved it and will be popping back to see it again – I hope. It felt like a grown up Star Wars movie and gave a great set up for A New Hope. Of course, having seen it, and considering the happenings over Xmas, I may have re-watched A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. 🙂

In my attempts to reduce the epic To Be Watched list (films I have stockpiled on DVDs and hard drives) I saw the following (all from the comfort of my couch):

* A Little Chaos (2014)
* Aladdin (1992)
* Ant Man (2015)
* Australia (2008)
* Bad Teacher (2011)
* Becoming Jane (2007)
* Before I Go To Sleep (2014)
* Born of Hope (2009)
* Dracula Untold (2014)
* Fracture (2007)
* Gangster Squad (2013)
* Into The Storm (2014)
* Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
* Predestination (2014)
* Serenity (2005)
* Spectre (2015)
* The Hunger Games – Mockingjay Pt 1 (2014)
* The Ledge (2011)
* Zulu (2013)

Which is, I admit, a somewhat eclectic mix 🙂

I loved A Little Chaos – Rickman, Winslet, Tucci, snark and gardening and sex – all in a historical context (though I bet Le Notre was not nearly as sexy as the delicious Matthias Schoenaerts). Also there was a glorious shirt-off-water-cascading-down-ripped-torso moment in Australia which very much reminded me of a similar scene in one of my much loved 1990s/00s TV shows – Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Ant Man was also considerably better than I’d expected it to be.

Luke Evans suitably strutted his stuff as Dracula and Ethan Hawke’s Predestination was an entertaining couple of hours – though I spotted both the big reveals very quickly.

Before I Go To Sleep was very well acted but as creepy as fuck and should come with a giant warning sign. I do not recommend at all.

The rest were entertaining but not remarkable. And I was long overdue for a Serenity re-watch – along with a Jupiter Rising re-watch (space wolves with wings – what else could a girl want?) which was my New Year’s Eve viewing!

I started the New Year with two more films:

* Another Country (1984)
* The Lazarus Effect (2015)

I saw the stage play of Another Country a couple of times in 2014 but I’d never seen the original film which stars very young and floppy-haired Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Cary Elwes. Both stage play and film were brilliant.

The Lazarus Effect was a standard bring someone back from the dead horror movie. Possibly not the best thing to watch before heading to bed.

My cunning plan for this year is to see a few more films at the cinema (and not just cram 20 or so into the BFR Flare Fest and the London Film Fest but catch some more consistently month on month) and also have a designated ‘movie night’ once a week to try and cut through some of that backlog!

Posted in Films | Tagged | Leave a comment

Bringing hope wherever she goes

Posted on December 28, 2016 by Jo

I was 14 when Star Wars: A New Hope came out and it was the first film I’d seen that gave me a female role model.  It gave me a woman who was smart, sassy, sexy, competent, canny, uncompromising, more than capable of rescuing herself, not in the least damsel like, who flirted with all the boys, and knew her way around both a spaceship and a gun.

Between 1977/8 and 1980 (when Empire came out) I saw A New Hope over 20 times…then I stopped counting. 🙂

It took me a while to realise that though Princess Leia was a rockingly cool chick Carrie Fisher was the true definition of epic.

When The Force Awakens came out and there was General Organa – a women who’d lost her friends and family, brother AWOL, lover missing, son turned away – and she was unbowed and unbroken and still putting her big girl pants on every day to fight the good fight I teared up in the cinema.  Someone referred to the pic above as Carrie/Leia’s “done listening to men”face 🙂

Leia Organa may have been a role model for my generation and the ones who came after but Carrie Fisher was indomitable – in her openness and willingness to talk about her mental health, the way she shut down idiotic interviewers who asked her about beauty and weight issues rather than talk about more important things and her continuous epic smackdown of social media bullies.  My Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram feeds this evening have shown an astonishing outpouring of love and respect.

Despite what the reports are saying I choose to believe she “drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.”

I’ve just rewatched A New Hope, am about to dive into Empire Strikes Back and save Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens for tomorrow.  Then I’ll see Rogue One again at the cinema.

There’s a suggestion making the rounds on social media that one way to honour Carrie would be to:

  • normalize discussions about mental illness and its treatment
  • take life a little less seriously
  • destroy a fascist regime

I’m so onboard with that idea.

Posted in Films, In memorium | Tagged | Leave a comment

Five things Friday

Posted on November 26, 2016 by Jo

Technically it’s just tripped over into Saturday but we’ll ignore that!

  1. It’s the weekend. HUZZAH!  My team were off stick today and I hope they’ve not infected me with their various lurgies! I had a couple of days out of the office last week for a training course on integral coaching (taught by the lovely people at thirdspace coaching) – which I eyed with a degree of scepticism.  However it turned out to be incredibly beneficial – the framework presented, taking part in the demo coaching session on the second morning and practice coaching sessions with colleagues meant I came away with a lot of things to think about in terms of reframing my approach to several aspects of my life.
  2. I have a GIANT personal ‘To do’ list – which for once does not fill me with horror! If the weather holds I plan to spend some time down on the allotments/out in the garden over the next two days.  If it rains or gets too cold there will be nesting – I have spectacular amounts of laundry and ironing to do and I’d really like to get some order into my flat before Christmas – including making sure I have enough floorspace to be able to do some daily stretching sessions effectively at home. I also aim begin a giant clear up before the New Year which will hopefully propel me into 2017 with a desire to simplify.
  3. My lovely personal trainer (PPTP) is still killing me with gym sessions and boxing.  We’re lifting heavy at the moment and it is exhausting and resulting in the kinds of (good!) muscle ache I’ve not had for months – we’e both figured he’d been letting me coast for a while. Now I stagger home, feed myself and then have a nap *before* bedtime on training days.  Boxing this evening was awesome with lots of long cobination punches interspersed with power and speed work.  I’m due back on Saturday night for a much-needed mobilisation and stretching session. Also I can leg press 200kgs  BOOO YAH! My chest press still needs a lot of work though.
  4. I’m ridiculously excited that we got three free mulberry trees from Morus Londinium for our allotments!  They arrived yesterday – luckily are in pots not bare-rooted. Hopefully we can get them in the ground next weekend and d make a bit of a National Tree Week event of the planting and do out bit for repopulating London with mulberries.
  5. I seem to have fallen down the rabbithole of BuJo’s. A pal mentioned them a few weeks back, I read up a bit and figured they might work for me.  Tried a modified version at work which has helped enormously with keeping me on track.  Now planning to have a BuJo for the allotments and one for personal stuff. Yes I know having three is a bit of a contradiction of the concept but I like to compartmentalise bits of my life.

Still fuelled by the rage I’ve felt since 23rd June which was only increased on 9 November.  But rage is powerful and translates to positive actions and activism so there’s a plus side.

Posted in Allotment, Decluttering, Health & Fitness, Life changes, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment