Being a little bit crazy, and having her hockey match cancelled due to Jack Frost (again!), Jenny decided to set herself some sort of challenge.

Ever heard of the 300 Challenge?
The Spartan Challenge?
The Ultimate Man’s Challenge??

These challenges normally go along the lines of:
• 25 pull-ups
• 50 press-ups
• 50 dead-lifts (60kg)
• 50 box jumps
• 50 floor sweeper
• 50 Kettlebell clean and press (16kg)
• 25 pull-ups

All done straight after each other, and as fast as you can.

Well, Jenny decided to do a kind of 300 Challenge that can be done at home, with a Kettlebell as the only equipment needed (well that and a strong mental attitude).

• 25 V-sits
• 50 snatches (25 left/25 right)
• 25 press-ups
• 50 double arm swings
• 50 burpees
• 50 Kettlebell long cycle (25 left/25 right)
• 50 mountain climbers

Again – all done one after the other and as fast as you can!

So – having seen a time to beat 11.16 with a 24kg Kettlebell (some guy on the internet!), off she went.

Her time (with a16kg Kettlebell)??
10.27

Have a go yourself, and see if you can beat the time. The only thing we ask is that you let us know how you did;
Either post you time and how you felt right here on the website, or drop us an email info@creatingchaos and we’ll put up a leader board!
Phill will be doing his challenge this week (with a 24kg KB).
We’ll keep you posted with his time!

Check out our latest article discussing why treadmills may not be the greatest option to turn to in this Years effort to shed the pounds and get back to fitness.

With gym machinery becoming more and more exploited as an industry that provides great and quick solutions for the consumer, the treadmill is now a household recognised term that offer an alternative to running outdoors. What many people don’t realise is that moving on a treadmill is worlds apart biomechanically from running outdoors. Notice that I didn’t use the term running but moving. Firstly, one point to note is that running, typically applies around 2 tonnes of pressure through the joints over just one mile. Therefore, it stands to reason that focussing on stability, strength and function would be a good idea prior to even considering running as an activity.

Click here to read more

A great session yesterday to end the saturday sessions up at Roundhay Park, Leeds. Made all the more special by the snow fall, members were enjoying some impromptu sleigh pushing and adapted crocodile walks in what turned out to be an excellent session. A huge thank you to all members and a merry christmas to all. There’s snow reason why weather should ever dampen the outdoor sessions!

Supporting St Gemma’s Hospice, Jenny got 150 Santa’s into the spirit of things with a festive warm up. It turns out that the first day of Christmas is when Santa’s warm up truly begins as the centre of Leeds was lit up by this spectacle on 13th Dec. The warm up prepared the team of red-coated supporters for the annual santa’s dash which has helped raise a whopping for £10,000 for the fantastic cause.
A great energy to the event on what turned out to be a cold Sunday morning. A huge thank you to the organisers and for inviting us to support.

Getting balance right when it comes to strength work and flexibility work can be tricky. Knowing how muscles behave in nature is essential to get perfect balance and alignment.

Most people make the mistake of never scientifically deciding which muscles they need to stretch and which ones they need to strengthen.

Typically, we stretch everything (or nothing) and mindlessly go down the line of exercise machines without thinking about which muscles we are working and why.

Unless you have had a thorough musculoskeletal assessment, you are undoubtedly ignoring many muscles that are relatively weak and strengthening muscles that are already too strong relative to their partners working at the same joint.

Most people make the mistake of never scientifically deciding which muscles they need to stretch and which ones they need to strengthen.

Typically, we stretch everything (or nothing) and mindlessly go down the line of exercise machines without thinking about which muscles we are working and why.

Unless you have had a thorough musculoskeletal assessment, you are undoubtedly ignoring many muscles that are relatively weak and strengthening muscles that are already too strong relative to their partners working at the same joint.

Click on the image to read more

Tune in soon for our free fitness tips to avoid the festive bulge!

As the days become shorter and the colder weather starts coming in, flexibility is absolute key. Regardless of what your goal is, including stretching, mobility exercises and working to touch full range through all patterns will accelerate you achieving it. What should you be looking to stretch? An easy way to look at your body is through splitting it into 3: hips, spine and shoulders. The alignment of these 3 key areas is dictated by how you live, move and tend to them. By keeping good mobility through hips, shoulders and thoracic spine (the section of the spine where the ribs are connected) and using the range through exercises you do, your quality of movement and ease of movement will improve hugely. If you’d like some help with how to do this, tell us a little bit about what it is that you are looking for and we’ll tailor the help to fit your needs http://creatingchaos.co.uk/free-tailored-guidance/

Stopping your body from stiffening up through colder months will help on many levels. Release of endorphines and other anti-stress hormones will help you psychologically as well as physically. We have a tendancy to hibernate at this time of year and box ourselves into our homes but there has never been a more prevalant time to be outside. Vitamin D, fresh air and exposure to the elements has huge positive repercussions on your health and will help to build your immune system and keep a smile on your face.

People who exercise together appear to have a higher pain threshold than those who work out alone, a study suggests.
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/health/8257716.stm >

I find it quite astonishing how some people struggle so to stay motivated for looking after their own wellbeing? Maybe I could be consisdered a health junkie but I’d say that 2-3 sessions a week isn’t over the top at all. Depending on where you research, that doesn’t actually meet the recommended amount. However, with an active job and a good varied diet, it keeps me well.

Back to the point! It seems that being active and healthy is such a struggle for some people that it can only be in short intense bouts of going all out and not slotted nicely into their lifestyle. It is such a shame because, I totally understand why it can be seen as difficult in the first instance, but it should be something that is enjoyable, stimulating and fun.

I’m not going to micro-disect the causes as there could be so many. What I would suggest is that there are a few simple things that you can look to do that will help ensure that any investment of time, energy and focus is not short lived.

1.  Understand the value of it. How important is your health to you? How would it affect your life if you didn’t have good health? Would having even better health make things different and how?

2. Set your goals. This is an absolute art-form. If you’re not familiar with SMART goal setting then it is worth googling. However, in addition to this, excite yourself with your goal, it has to be tangible. Ask yourself these questions – What would be the ideal you? How would you look, sound like, feel like if you were at your perfect state of health and fitness? What would you be doing if you had perfect fitness? Imagine actually being that person 6 months from now in your ideal location, how good does that feel? Now imagine that you are 6 months down the line and actually, things haven’t got better at all. Your health state has actually gone backwards.

Our generation is a generation of many things and one of them is insurance. We seem to get caught up in all these insurances: health cover, work protection cover, injury cover, holiday cover etc. Wouldn’t the greatest insurance policy be your own habits actually taking control and being committed.

3. Enjoy what you do. There are enough types of exercise, environments and alternatives out there for us all to find something that we enjoy. I would always suggest that your efforts should include either a sport, activity that you enjoy and can see your activity levels paying off or something that involves technique and you can learn. These things keep it mentally stimulating and will keep you itching to go back for more.

4. Be part of a team. With the luxury of the internet, you don’t actually have to leave your home for this one although that isn’t the message that I want to convey. We are naturally social creatures. Having friends, mentors, leaders and learners is a fantastic dynamic to have and committing yourself to be part fo something could be the strongest step that will absolutely prevent you slipping off. Make sure that you have people you trust, people that can really teach you good habits and advice and be confident to contribute with your own thoughts, experience and soon you’ll see your own shift in position.

Just a few observations and I hope this is useful.

Well, after the huge amount of training we were doing for the Wharfedale Mountain Marathon, we have stepped off the pace with the training a little bit.  Jen is running into work every morning, but has now had to find a new route after discovering the pathway along the canal has been rudely closed.

Despite a few naughty people (no – it wasn’t Jen!) pushing the barriers into the canal, the big metal barriers have now been well and truly cemented down while some improvement works take place on the tow path, so Jen’s morning heron spotting run has been turned into car counting whilst running into town along Kirkstall Road.

We have also been complementing our training by frequenting the new bouldering centre just down the road from us quite by accident.  It is brilliant fun, and is such a good workout.  Phill has the strength, reach and total determination but all the grace of an elephant on roller-skates, where as Jen is a bit more careful and cat like (if you’ve ever seen a cat sweat that is!).

So, anyway – on to this weeks favourite workout.  It was Saturday evening after a long day in the sun, so we were both feeling like we needed to do something, but didn’t want to spend hours on it.

We came up with the 30 minute circuit which mixes cardio with all the main aspects of strength – squat, extend, pull, push and function.

We had 5 exercises spanning the aspects, doing each one for a minute, followed by a minute of skipping.  We did 3 sets of the 5 exercises, which when done alternately with a minutes skipping totals 30 mins.

The 5 exercises were as follows:

Try it and let us know how you found it – info@creatingchaos.co.uk

Well, after completing the mountain marathon, we thought what better way to spend the following next weekend than to go and row a 10 mile race on the beautiful lake Windermere. It was a charity race and we were blessed with great camping weather. The campsite was just outside of Ambleside and we stayed there just on Saturday evening.

The event itself was for teams of 4 people to take a standard rowing boat from Ambleside down to Bowness and then back again, a 10 mile loop in entirety. The theme for our boat was piracy. Our team was mostly formed from the Highways Agency in Leeds, the exception being me! It has to be said that myself and Jenny should hang our heads in shame with our lack of fancy costumes. Our two team mates went to town on the costumes and looked amazing. We had a full on pirate admiral and a rough and tough sea gypsy. Our alibi was that we were software pirates but it was lame and unconvincing.

At 0900 on Sunday morning, we took to the water on what was a fresh, bright and slightly cloudy start to the day. Our lesson in rowing started immediately and the need for timing, rhythm and team work soon became very apparent. We didn’t take too long to figure out the trick and made some good ground on the boats ahead. As we approached Bowness, we actually passed a few familiar boats and made some real headway. With the excitement running high with our positioning, we made for a hasty change over at the half way point and almost bounced into the reverse loop.

Aside of emptying a small portion of the lake which had managed to get inside the boat, we had a relatively un-dramatic voyage and managed to make good time as we pulled back into Ambleside. Not having rehearsed our efforts, we made a really good team and we’ve vowed to work harder on the costume front next time.

The day got much brighter and we had to delay the return to Leeds for a few hours whilst the days heat blazed. A well deserved ice cream and some feeble frizby in Windermere served as the perfect reward for our efforts.