Wild Geese
Fitness 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

Combat athletes are my favorite athletes to train. It stems from my own extensive background in martial arts and security work. It’s the entire basis of the training carried out in Wild Geese. It’s why we don’t over emphasise any one element of training over any other. While many worship strength, others flexibility and the ever growing trend of super high intensity saggital plane circuit training. The WG-Fit method worships the well rounded, the adaptable and the focused. St

We’re only a few weeks away from the legend that is Mr Steve Cotter landing on our shores! Steve was one of the founding fathers of what was the RKC headed up by Pavel Tsatsouline. Back then, Pavel, the Steves (Cotter & Maxwell) and Mike Mahler were the authorities in the world of kettlebell lifting. But not only that, they all demonstrated a holistic training method incorporating mobility, movement, endurance and a long term viewpoint. Of the them, Steve Cotter shows the mo

I’m exhausted. The last few weeks have been completely off the scale! I didn’t think that one body was capable of handling such an amount of awesomeness! But here’s what’s gone down: Irish Kettlebell Sports Championships – where Wild Geese Athlete Maria Moran came home with the winners trophy for the Women’s Long Cycle event, and the other guys put up great performances. 1 Mile Walking Swing Challenge – where myself and a handful of my guys took on 4 laps of an athletic track

2012 is looking like the year of the Irish Kettlebell. Just look at whats going on: 25th March: Kettlebell Lifting and Conditioning Training for Sports I’ll be at Dolan Fitness, Tullamore to present a workshop looking at the use of Kettlebells and other “non conventional” methods to build an unstoppable athlete. This is particularly relevant to the Combat Athlete but anyone involved in sports will benefit. This is a steal at €20 for around three hours. All I ask is you come

I’m lazy. It’s one of the reasons I train the way I do. My background is in the martial arts, specifically Karate. My instructor was forever trying to instil the idea of efficiency into us, economy of motion and maximum return for minimum effort. This kind of thinking is absolutely vital to a martial artist, or anyone involved in a fight / high risk scenario. I liked this idea of maximum return for minimal effort, it suited my lazy streak. So I’ve tried to implement the same

Specific training leads to specific improvements, it also leads to specific weaknesses. For example, many of our kickboxers experience elbow pain that is a direct result of the volume of elbow extension (punching & push ups) thankfully easily fixed with a few reverse curls. I have worked with many cyclists and triathletes, most of whom made great gains on the bike after stretching the quads/hip flexors and bringing up the hamstring strength. The athletes mentioned had all t

Fitness. What is it? Back at personal trainer school they tell you that it is “the ability to carry out the daily tasks with enough energy to spare for recreation” or something equally wishy washy. For me and most of the Wild Geese regulars, fitness is so much more than that. Fitness is about the ability to do and keep doing, it’s living without the fear that your body will fail, it’s about having a mind that can override the bodies pain signals, ignore it’s pleas for mercy

The event was fantastic, the lads really have got the running of a competition down. There were in the region of 30 men and 20 or so women competing in the Biathlon event, which is Jerks followed by Snatch. Many of the competitors had experience but there were still a good number of new faces, which is great to see. From here I had two lads with me competing and one who was forced to sit out due to a recent injury. The two lads were Mark Kennedy and Graham Bird. This was Gra

Wild Geese Fitness members enjoy a good bit of variety in their training, Kettlebells, bodyweight, barbells, sandbags, strength focus, endurance focus. Just plain old variety. But in order to ensure that progress is being made we have a few benchmark tests or challenges that we throw out every now and again. Usually these are either a max effort lift, max repetition set or a timed challenge. It’s the time challenges that really get everyone going, they seem to create the m

I WISH the military looked like this I have been known, on many occasions to stand and take the piss out of these “military” bootcamp classes that are all the rage right now. I find the marketing and hype far outstrips the actual quality of training, and as for any resemblance to actual military training…. Lets not even go there! So I find it slightly embarrassing to announce that I will be running a Bootcamp of my own. I’m not embarrassed by the training on offer, or the f

Since myself and a few of my lads are entering the 1st ever Irish Kettlebell Sports competition down in Kilkenny I thought I’d keep you posted on my training over the next 10 weeks. At the end of week ten, we will be competing. If all goes to plan I’ll get good numbers on the day and this program has worked, if not, it won’t. Over the years I’ve trained for a variety of things from Karate tournaments, Black Belt tests, Marathons, Half Marathons and simple goals such as adding

A quick note to announce the dates of the next Kettlebell workshop. 9th May – Level 2 Workshop, 12pm -2pm. Building on the foundation of level 1, we introduce the Clean, Push press and the Turkish Get up. Places will be limited to ensure quality of instruction. 13th May – Level 3 Workshop, 12pm-2pm. This workshop introduces the classical Kettlebell lifts, the Jerk and the Snatch. These are technical in nature and so this workshop is open only to those with existing kettlebe

Everyone has their pet lifts, the drills and exercises that are the most fun to do. For blokes it’s usually bench pressing and bicep curling, women it’s those daft inner thigh (adductors) machines and anything involving those paperweights called gymsticks. And while this is fine, it does leave the question asked, could my pet lifts be improved by training other areas of the body? Or even more importantly in my book, can my main skill set be improved by working on specifics of