Wild Geese
Fitness Training

Running. If you believe the internet then running is: Going to make you fat and weak, cos “cardio” Not natural for human beings Will ruin your knees Will hurt your back Will cause plantar fasciitis And a whole lot of other misconstrued, conformation bias lead claims. Claims that are mere correlation, not causation. If you follow my work, you will know that I approve of running. It IS completely natural for the human being to run, to run well, to be able to run at a variety o

“It’s all about movement isn’t it!” exclaimed my client yesterday morning. I looked at him a little perplexed thinking maybe I’d missed something. He sees this and expands, “I’m probably the weakest I’ve ever been, but the power I’m putting through the pedals is the best I’ve ever done” You see, he rides mountain bikes like a mad man. Races them. He’s always trained, always been strong but never been “strong enough” to ride like he knew he could. He continues, “I used to war

“Dave, when can I start training properly?” Asked a new client as he came in and started warming up, “I mean, I definitely feel stronger, and I don’t get out of breath so easily, even though all I’m doing is a bit of stretching” As he said this to me, it was clear that he was missing the irony in his question. “When can i start training properly?” Followed by: “I’m stronger and fitter” I guess the problem was that when he looked around the room, everyone else was lifting kett

He’s only gone and done it again! This is my client Jamie Whelan who just messaged me that despite a terrible last run, he’s won the last race of the Gravity Enduro Mountain Bike series. Not only has he won the race, he’s won the series. For the second year running. Jamie joined me last year on recommendation from a friend. When he came to me he was in a heap. He was considering pulling out of the series as his old injuries were getting too bad that he doubted his ability to

Here we go with an Ask Dave post about posture. The question came up during one of the lunchtime sessions in my gym when one of the lads, Shane, popped the question out of the blue. I promised to answer it, but he got busy training, I got busy coaching around the room and before we knew, we’d both forgot, he’d gone and I’m thinking, “bollocks, that would have been a fun question to answer” So here it is in a video, because there would have been too many words to type. Watch i

This mornings first client is a keen amateur runner. Over the weekend he went out to Amphibian King, he preferred running shoe supplier to buy himself some new kit. The guys in the shop do a gait analysis to help decide which shoes you buy. He’s always been told to buy shoes to prevent “over-pronation” He was wearing them on the day he went to get a new pair. The guys in the shop were baffled as to why he ever thought he needed over-prontation shoes, as this gait analysis sh

I know I talk a lot about the competitive athletes that train with me, the fighters, the mountain bikers, the Kettlebell sports guys etc But if I’m fair, most of my guys are simply in to train for life. Which if we think about it, is the only competition really worth entering as it’s one that we ultimately all lose. But as the saying goes, it’s about the taking part, not about the winning. So when one of my older clients, a man named Shay who has had more struggles than most

With the client base I work with the most at Wg-Fit, ie those involved in Combat, Contact and Extreme sports, it’s not unusual to see people in getting their training done despite being injured. So much so that an area of our gym has become affectionately known as “cripple corner” by my clients. And cripple corner is getting busier and busier as more people are coming in specifically for rehabilitation purposes which we offer by way of the Anatomy in Motion assessments follow

Well, it’s 2016 and everyone is just getting back on their feet and finding their rhythm again after the Xmas break. While I’m not one for sentimentality, the end of the year does remind us to look back and take stock of what we have done over the last 12 months so that we can be better armed for what is to come in the next 12 months. So what did happen in 2015? Anatomy in Motion has really taken off! I’ve been using AiM in the gym both as part of peoples regular training as

On Monday I posted about the worrying amount of knee injuries recorded in field sports. The article I referred to was from Ireland’s native GAA, but it’s the same across most team field sports. While I have several rugby, GAA and even a Hockey player in my gym, most of my crew are in the martial arts. A large chunk of whom are BJJ. So while the predominance of knee injuries in field sports happen off the ball, ie the player hurts themselves. In BJJ (and many rugby injuries) t

One of the most common complaints in sports is Knee pain and / or knee injury. If you look at injury statistics, most common field sport injury is the knee. David Moran, from Kerry GAA blew out his cruciate last year This article in the Independent yesterday for example: http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-football/gaa-counting-cost-of-injuries-26839935.html The best part? The statistic is for non-contact injuries. How is this so? Why is the knee so vulnerable? Is it reall

So I opened up the laptop to write a blog post about shoulder issues in BJJ. That didn’t happen. I started writing and got distracted when I got a message notification from a power lifter I’m working with down in Tipperary (which for my international readers, really isn’t that far away!) He’s asking me questions about the kettlebell snatch. And I’m asking him questions about his return from injury. You see he got in touch around a month ago when he was in ribbons. He couldn’t

Every now and again I asked my opinion on Movement Screening. More often than not the asker has been reading about the FMS or “Functional Movement Screen” created by Grey Cook. The FMS thought process, according to their website, has been around since 1995, their book Movement was published in 2010. I’ve been a fan of Grey Cook’s work since about 2010 or so. I thing thats when I got his other book Athletic Body in Balance (published in 2003 and featuring a version of the FMS)

My brain is mush. Honestly, if I tried to write my own name right now, I’d probably get it wrong. And that’s the fault of the two guys in this photo with me here: Gary is the creator of the Anatomy in Motion system. If he is the Lone Ranger, then Chris is his Tonto. lone ranger pick Between them they’ve just put myself and a group of physio therapists through the Anatomy in Motion level 3 module. 4 days of detailed instruction, theory and practice on how we can break down the

Welcome to Wild Geese. Yes, I know the training area is barren, but that’s how we like it. After all, we are training bodies, people, not equipment. Over there is the squat cage and the kettlebells.  And that area beside it, we call that Cripple Corner. Helping out a Muay Thai fighter in Cripple Corner And yes, it gets a lot of use. You see the average (is there such a thing) Wild Geese client isn’t your normal human being. They’re usually that bit more adventurous. Most are