Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

There are a million videos of cats on catnip on YouTube, but this snippet from a documentary is superbly put together and shows a mass cat stoning:

I may have mentioned, I’ve entered the Yorkshire Masters as a guest lifter in August. This is my first potential qualifying competition of the year as I have to re-qualify for the BWLA British Masters again for next year. As before, in the 85kg weight category for Men aged 35-39, I have to lift a qualifying total of 175kg (best Snatch + best Clean & Jerk). E.g. 75kg Snatch + 100kg C&J.

The competition is now 5 weeks away and I’m starting my build-up. As I have a month, I’m trying each week to increment the weights I lift by 2.5kg and get 5 good lifts at that weight, before moving up. So yesterday I was at Crossfit Manchester (the Mon-Wed 8pm Olympic weightlifting class) and working on Snatches at 67.5kg (you may recall my PB is 77kg, which I got at the 2009 BLWA British Masters). My weakness is still the variability of my technique, I just need to bang out the reps and work on the fine adjustments.

Of course I have my new Flip Video UltraHD with gorilla tripod to play with, so I took along and filmed a couple of snatches. What do you think?

Now the other thing is, I’m trying to lose weight to get to the next weight category down, which is the 77kg category (169lbs or 12 stone 1). The reason is that the qualifying lift weight at 77kg is only 165kg, not 175kg which will make qualification easier. Also, there’s an outside chance, that I could qualify for the European Masters, as the qualifying lift for that at 77kg is 182, which is only 5kg more than my current personal best.

When I started 2 weeks ago, I was 182lbs (13 stone exactly or 83kg), so I had a fair amount to lose. Here’s how I’ve done and where I’m going (from Fitday), you can see I’m down nearly half way so another half a stone in 5 weeks should be doable, especially with the Zone diet to keep me going.

EDIT: Feb 2011 Since writing this post, a dedicated CrossFit gym has opened in Cardiff: CrossFit Cardiff funnily enough! I recommend you go there (near Boulders Climbing Wall) and get proper CrossFit coaching from my mate Jon Hares, he’s a top coach and top fella to boot. Failing that, there’s also Dragon CrossFit, who operate out of Train Station 2, closer to the city centre.

EDIT: July 2009 I’m not sure what happened to this post, I seem to have lost some of the data, like the list of gyms!! Most of the images disappeared too; those at least I could put back.

Looking for a Crossfit friendly gym can be a frustrating task. When I started working in Newport it was obviously one of my first jobs. Clearly it would be great to find a Crossfit friendly gym on my doorstep, but that was too much to hope for. I also didn’t expect to find somewhere in Newport so expanded my search to Cardiff from the off. Moving to a new a town I did what everyone does now when looking for local information: I searched in Google and spent several days phoning and visiting gyms.

It’s probably worth listing here what makes a gym suitable for doing Crossfit, at least in my mind anyway, in rough order of my importance (obviously more of each is better):

1) An Olympic weight lifting bar. Eleiko would be best.
2) A modest selection of bumper plates for said bar. By bumper plates, I mean rubber weight plates that don’t break the floor or themselves when dropped from over head.
3) A suitable floor to drop the bumper plates on, with enough surrounding space for safety. Basically, can I do clean and jerks, snatches, thrusters, push presses, shoulder presses etc?
4) A squat rack for back squats and front squats.
5) Somewhere to do deadlifts.
6) A rower, Concept 2 is preferred.
7) Somewhere to run, outside would be best, but treadmills are likely to be the norm obviously.
8) A pull up bar, stable enough and with enough room for kipping.
9) A selection of rubber dumbbells.
10) Boxes to jump on.
11) Medicine balls to throw at walls.
12) Walls to throw medicine balls at! Though I do hate wall balls.
13) None bouncing balls for ball slams.
14) A set of gym rings… yeah fat chance of that.

Armed with my mental list, these are the list of gyms I found:

xxx

It’s worth mentioning the runner up first, which was Train Station 2 in Cardiff. TS2 has a lot of room and uniquely a 90m running circuit round the outside. It’s also allegedly the home of Crossfit Wales, which is a slightly ambitious title, especially as when I went to see the place, they weren’t doing any Crossfit classes. That’s actually changed now, and I know there is a Crossfit class being run on a Saturday morning, by a certified Crossfit instructor called Dav. I’ve got his number if anyone’s interested.

However I decided against Train Station 2 primarily because of the oly bar and plates. Whilst possibly adequate, there wasn’t a proper lifting platform and I was concerned about dumping the bar. Having seen many places by now, I was thinking I’d been spoilt by Crossfit Manchester’s dedicated lifting platforms.

That was when I found what is undoubtedly the best gym in Cardiff to do Crossfit. I’ve mentioned it before, it’s Aspire Fitness on Sanatorium road. I should put the record straight right now: when I mentioned them before I called them a “Globo Gym”. Now when I said that, I meant that they appeared (at least to my inexperienced eye) like most other “normal” gyms out there, and not like a sparse Crossfit gym. I didn’t mean to allude to them being part of a large chain, they are not and the benefit from the very friendly small business atmosphere they have. What really sold me on Aspire however, was the brand new Eleiko oly bar they had, and the very nice lifting platform in the corner.

At the time I looked, they had some dodgy Apollo bumpers that were falling apart (Apollo bumpers do appear to be rubbish):

But they assured me that they would maintain a decent set, and true to their word, they now have a full set of good quality York bumpers: 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25kg:

Off my shopping list of requirements, Aspire Fitness cater for very nearly everything else as well as the Olympic bar and bumper plates. They have 4 power cages (I think they’re called) for doing squats in, plus a free standing squat rack. They have plenty of weight and space for dead lifts; 2 Concept II rowing machines; I think 8 treadmills; a selection of variable sized boxes to jump on; room for floor work like press-ups (push ups for the Americans), skipping etc.

Each power rack also doubles as a pull up station, by hanging on the horizontal bars at the top. They are even cunningly designed for just such a use. The designers were so nice, they thought they’d be really helpful: the knurled the bar! I strongly suspect that most people, like me, have never tried kipping pull ups on a knurled bar… take my advice… don’t! It will rip your hand to shreds. Fortunately the second bar at the top, whilst painted with a rough finish, is not knurled and is useable.

So pretty much the only thing Aspire don’t have, is a set of gym rings, and a selection of medicine balls. They also suffer the ailment that most normal gyms suffer, it’s called mirror-itis. There are far too many mirrors for my liking, but to be fair, they are by no means everywhere. However there is really only 1 place to do wall balls, and even then I need to move the bin, fire extinguisher, and ensure no one is using the power rack next to it. There’s no ball slam facilities either. Oh yes, they also have an assortment of mysterious devices, contraptions and machines which I stay well clear of, but not too many:

The point here is that nothing but a dedicated Crossfit gym is going to be 100% perfect for Crossfit, and even then, not always. Aspire is not perfect, but I’d put them 90% there, and that last 10% can usually be subbed. E.g. sub wall balls for empty bar thrusters.

So if you’re looking to do Crossfit in Cardiff, or even Newport which isn’t that far away, Aspire Fitness is where I’d recommend you go. They are reasonably priced too, but you should measure these things on value, not just price. If you are going to go, say hi if you see me, I’m most often there on a Tuesday and Wednesday around 5-6pm. Or let Pete (one of the owners) know you found them through this blog. Oh and one more thing, if you do see me, don’t hog my oly bar! 😉

UPDATE: I’m sure this has nothing to do with this post of course, but as of last week Aspire have added a set of Olympic gymnastic rings too. They are very nicely suspended from the double height ceiling so there is masses of room available to mess about with. Lovely. Now, if I can just crack those muscle ups!

And I thought our cats were stroppy, this cat is seriously unhappy:

Kitten + turntable = inevitable results:

Is this the cutest baby “thing” ever? What on earth is this animal, it’s a head on legs!?!

The 10 minute double under challenge has become my staple “I can’t be arsed to go to the gym, but should do something” workout. (If you don’t know, a double under is when you skip and the rope goes under your feet twice for each jump.) So the double under challenge, is simply how many you can do in 10 minutes.

Well today, it all went wrong. Not only did I get my worst ever score: 123, but each time I fail one, I end up getting whipped by the skipping rope. You may think that’s nothing, and to be honest, whilst it stings, the adrenaline of the event does numb the pain. It’s only afterwards that you really notice it. My right arm took the most damage:

That’s the worst of it, but I do also have lashings on both my ankles, my left shin, across both knuckles, oddly few on my left forearm and somehow some on my stomach too. No one ever told me doing double unders was a contact sport!p

On the 29th May I order a Jabra BT 250 headset for my mobile phone from datakits.co.uk BIG MISTAKE! Stupidly, I went for the cheapest seller, I know I know better, but when 10 people are all selling the same thing, you go for the cheapest one don’t you. Well, this is what happened:

29th May – Order placed, payment by paypal made.
29th May – The order status was: “Awaiting Dispatch”.
1st June – The order status changed to “Will Be Dispatched Within 2 Days” and I got an email saying to allow 5 days for delivery.
14th June – I emailed the site asking where my headset was.
18th June – I get an email from “Mike” checking my address, he had it perfect.
18th June – I email Mike confirming my address and asking what the problem was.
21st June – Mike hasn’t responded so I email chasing again.
22nd June – Mike still hasn’t responded, so I lodge a complaint with datakits.co.uk
23rd June – My complaint is met with silence, so I complain again.
24th June – Mike finally responds, claiming that the package was sent out, apologising that I didn’t get it, and saying he’ll send another.
24th June – I check the website, it still says “Will Be Dispatched Within 2 Days”. I email Mike asking for confirmation.
25th June – Mike didn’t respond, but I note the website finally says the order is “Dispatched”, though it looks like a manual edit.
26th June – I get home from work and the headset has finally arrived, nearly 4 weeks after I ordered it! However, I now relax as at least it’s here.
27th June – I get round to unpacking the headset and notice some odd things:

• The box is rather bashed and dented.
• The security stickers that seal the box have all been broken.
• The contents don’t look too neatly packed.
• The manual is dog eared and scuffed.
• When I start the “2 hour charge time” it only takes 5 minutes.
• And finally: it won’t switch on, it’s completely dead out of the box!

To say I’m annoyed is an understatement! I’ve sent a rather stroppy email back to “Mike” at datakits.co.uk demanding a refund and have lodged a dispute with Paypal. Sadly Paypal’s much vaunted buyer protection scheme, it seems doesn’t extend to being sent shoddy, second hand and broken stuff, and they auto closed my dispute! It has at least been logged against datakits account though.

Now I just have to wait and see if Mike @ datakits really is a shister as it’s starting to look like, or if this is just a big cock up, beyond his control. If he gives me my money back, I guess we’ll have our answer.

Some of these are hilarious. Why do people think these are a good idea?? From: here

Ok, this is probably old news, but FaceBook now allows you to set your own url, e.g. my facebook profile used to be here:

http://www.facebook.com/people/Colin-McNulty/1421747440

Now it is here:

http://www.facebook.com/colinmcnulty

This is very nice, I like. Why they didn’t do such an obvious feature before is a bit of a mystery really. However, getting a custom Facebook url (or vanity url as it’s sometimes called) is now easy, you just go here: http://www.facebook.com/username/

WATCH IT THOUGH: it’s a one time deal. You can’t change your mind and you can’t undo it, so make sure you’re happy with what you chose, and make sure you don’t mistype it!!

Some people say, build it and they will come.  In this instance, if you build it, they will RUN!  How anyone thought an M65 rifle nuke with a range of just 3 miles was a good idea, is beyond me. Just don’t fire it up wind!