Wild Geese
Fitness Training

With Wild Geese being situated so close the the Irish Financial Services Centre in Dublin many of my clients are away on regular trips to their international offices. Which means I’m often getting questions on what sort of training they can do if they get the opportunity. Of course, I recommend bodyweight exercise most of the time, as there’s never any guarantee that there will be any gym facilities at their location. In fact, back in my travelling days, this exactly how I tr

“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

You may have noticed that “Movement” is the current new trend in the fitness world. You may also have noticed that many of the drills used my “movers” have been taught in Wild Geese since we opened. Why? Because at my heart still I’m a martial artist, one who became a strength coach. And martial arts are the origin of many of the movement skills we see today. I’m not talking about the modern incarnation of MMA and combat sports, I’m talking about the all encompassing training

Sometimes you just have to get a little bit giddy and excited. Here’s my excited face: But seriously, the next couple of months promise to be awesome! Here’s why, in order of appearance: Upper Body Mobility & Strength Workshop Stuff you’ll learn: Joint mobility from the finger tips all the way to the spine Mobility drills taken from: -Martial Arts -Gymnastics -Anatomy in Motion -and more Scapula control and why it is vital to the shoulder Relationships between the shou

Movement is a word that’s gaining a huge amount of momentum. get it? Momentum…..movement……? No? Ok, less puns, more blogging….. Yesterday I had a lad in for an Assessment. He told me that his goal was to move better. And that he knows that martial arts people know how to move. Here’s a young Jet Li putting us all to shame: Yesterdays client’s own training, while having gotten him very strong, has also left him immobile, muscle bound. Which is all too common. And this is somet

Recently I shared an Instagram video of me doing the Lizard crawl as part of my warm up routine. A video posted by Dave Hedges (@dave_hedges) on Jul 29, 2015 at 8:46am PDT This has generated a good bit of feedback across social media, including people asking how to work up to doing this movement. What I’m going to show you is the teaching progressions I received from Ido Portal last year. If you haven’t heard of Ido, he’s probably the most well known person in the “movement”

Hip Mobility is a constant question here at Wild Geese. Many of the athletes I work with are martial artists and many of the so called “normal folk” have come here after running the gamut of “normal gyms” and are looking for something better. And when they witness some of the movements that my longer term clients can pull off with ease, then they want a piece of that pie. And having open and mobile hips is a big part of the pie. I write fairly frequently about the three prong

Strength training does not improve human movement. Fact. So why the hell do we bother? First a bit of a back story. As you’re reading this I’m sitting the Anatomy in Motion (AiM) Level 3 course, continuing on from the study I’ve done the last 18 months into this method of looking at human movement. Anatomy in Motion in action And in these last 18 months I’ve come to understand movement on a whole other level thanks to the teachings of AiM creator Gary Ward and his faithful si

It’s Monday so it’s another instalment of Monday Mobility. This one though is less of a “How To” and more of a “this is what’s possible” Mobility is about freedom of motion, the ability to move freely in any number of ways., to move without restriction. It’s being able to use your strength to move yourself, not just bar or kettlebell, but you. While many of my posts are addressing specific issues, certain patterns and injury problems. But the ultimate demonstration of mobili