With summer fast approaching, everybody starts to panic about getting their winter bodies out. Most of us had grand intentions over the past few months of getting in great shape and some of us have. Unfortunately though many of us have slipped up far too aften and the results we should have achieved didn’t come to fruition.

Add to this, the party season approaching in December and we have a recipe for 1 piece costumes at the beach and ankle length skirts for the girls. Guys, that 6 pack you dreamed of sporting at the beach this year looks more like a keg than a 6 pack.

But, there is hope. Make November your best month to date!

Join the No sugar challenge!

Here’s the rules:

All rules apply for the entire month of November. 

When you mess up, which I am sure you will, at least once. You have to write down what you did on the blog for everyone to see. This alone will help to keep you on track. There is nothing like being accountable to keep you on track, let alone being accountable to everyone in the challenge!

No refined sugar at all.

No sugar in tea or coffee.

No artificial sweeteners either! 

No cakes, chocolates, lollies, soft drinks etc

No bottled fruit juice

No alcohol

No dried fruit

Only 2 serves of fruit per day

No sweetened yogurt

No white potato

Only mulitgrain bread if you must have bread

Only basmati rice if you must have rice

Pasta no more than twice a week

If you follow this, you are sure to trim away the bodyfat. I don’t like to make outrageous comments, but I am positive if you follow these rules, you will get leaner!

It really doesn’t take that long to change your tastebuds and reduce the amount of sugar in your diet. Try it for 30 days and see how you feel. Other than being thinner and healthier, I bet you won’t crave it as much either!

If you are keen to join the challenge, enter your name in the comments and any other info you might like to add and then consider yourself part of the challenge.

I hope by the 31st October we have a large list of names to join the challenge.

I came across this photo today. This is how a gym should look in my opinion, no fancy machines, no treadmills, no membership consultants and no televisions!

New York Sports Club 1927

Sweet!

This morning was the last X Fitness for the month and I think the best class so far this month.

What a horrible morning we were faced with today, but 6 brave souls ignored the rain and surprise, surprise…. none of them melted in the rain, their skin didn’t catch on fire and none of them passed out from rain exhaustion.

About the only thing that happened was they got wet, burnt about 600 calories and got fitter & stronger!

And here they are, 6 happy faces!

We perform X Fitness once per week. It is based on CrossFit methodology and is a great way to test your fitness as all challanges are results based by either time or repetition.    

We had an awesome race last weekend up on the Central Coast for the start of the adventure racing season, even if we did make a major mistake at the start line.

The race started out tough with a long beach run from Shelley Beach to the Entrance. We made the mistake of heading to the streets to avoid the first section of sand. This unfortunately put us behind the pack and we ended up at the first transition area in 106th place out of 153 teams. Oh well, that is what it is all about, making the correct navigational decisions.

We then had to swim across the channel at the entrance, which was short and intense with an extreme current running through the mouth of the river.

The next leg was a kayak from The Entrance to Wyong. Kayaking is always our least favourite leg and this was an extremely long kayak, seeing us completing this leg in 1hr flat.

After a quick swim across the Wyong river in the freezing cold water, pushing aside the masses of jelly fish that floated in our paths, we emerged dripping wet and with a mild case of hypothermia. (well it felt like it for 10 mins anyway)

We got onto our bikes and headed to Ourimbah State Forest. Sweet! I love those trails. Unfortunately, we were stuck behind so many poeple and it’s all single track, so hard to make a break for it. The upside is that I saw some scenery I have never seen there before as I have never been along the tracks so slowly before.

The next leg was running and navigation. We had a great run, no mistakes on the navigation and managed to make up some ground on this leg.

Back to the bikes and the dash for the finish. When I say dash, I mean 1hr 5mins intense uphill and single track mountian biking. Awesome fun! For those of you who know Ourimbah, we had to get back to the top of the Roller Coaster before heading back to Wyong.

Then it happened… I got a flat tyre! Luckily we are somewhat fast at changing flats, so we were done in around 7 mins. Unfortunately, this put us back about 8 places.

We finished up the race in 52nd position. not our best result, but we thoroughly enjoyed the race! (other than the kayak)

Our direct competition was Jack Peacock’s team – “The Calamari Brothers”. Jack was my team mate in April at Lake MacQuarie. We beat his team by 6mins and 10 places.

Our other competition was Mark Smith’s team – “Giant Gonzalez”. Mark was my team mate in last October’s Cattai National Park race. We beat them by 41mins and 51 places.

The next race is on the 28th November, let’s get a few teams together and have some fun!

We perform X Fitness once per week. It is based on CrossFit methodology and is a great way to test your fitness as all challanges are results based by either time or repetition.    

Thought you’d get a laugh out of this…

Tired of lugging kettlebells home from my studio on a daily basis, I decided to pick up a new 24kg kettlebell just to keep at home. Unfortunatetely, my supplier is out of stock of the cast iron 24’s. Rather than wait a month or pay over inflated prices from elsewhere, I decided their rubber dipped kettlebell was a good alternative. The problem is, the 24kg is flouro pink???

Oh well, it still does that same job, I’ll just have to dirty it up a bit!!!

Here she is in all her glory…

With the clocks winding back last week for Daylight savings, we were greeted with dark mornings reminiscent of those cold winter months, but already one week into daylight savings, it is practically daylight at 6am again. Today’s workout was Body Weight Blast, what an awesome way to kick start the week. 

We grouped the exercises into multiples of 2 , 3 or 4 and repeated each exercise 3 times for 1 minute. 24 people took part and it was, as the name suggests, A BLAST!!!

Here’s what we covered;

Squats, push ups, sit ups, good mornings, sprinter walking lunges, spidermans, roll ups, slow bicycle, single leg stand ups, dips, bench split feet, duck walks, knee to elbow planks, crunch to single leg lowers and side plank lifts.

Wow, we covered the whole body head to toe. Sore muscles will prevail tomorrow, so we’ll do boxing for a bit of fun, movement and aerobic activity.

If you want to get fitter, healtheir and leaner, join us for our next intake, enter here >>

See you in the park - Troy Shipsey

Centennial Park Group Outdoor Fitness Trainer