Optimal Life Fitness, for health, fitness and a new lifestyle outdoors.

After a very hectic week of travelling around the UK, I was hoping to round it off with a good day, a long one, but a good one. So as Andy and I set off from London at 4.30 this morning, we made our way to DW Fitness in St Helens. Where I would be teaching my final Move It Course before handing over to Andy to do the next 4 while I'm away in the Sun!

Arriving at the club at 8.45 we had a little look around to see how the refurb was going. It is early days for St Helens as most of the work is happening over the Christmas period. However the Move It training space had been installed and was ready for OLF to get this training team Moving It! Joining us from Blackburn and Bolton DW's were a few more trainers. They just can't get enough of it up here!! So we had a big group of 14 to deal with which makes my job interesting.

Starting with the usual dynamic warm ups, SAQ and plyometric work we got the group mentally and physically ready for my hour long speech about the fundamentals of movement and principles of lifting. Yes, I do go on a bit about this stuff, but it's so important and transforms the way people thing about training. Thankfully these guys were well versed and ready to take on board these fundamentals.

After ploughing our way through the strength zone and the compound movements we went straight of the power zone. The power zone is where we introduce kettlebell and power bag training. We spent some time working on the key lifts with the kettlebell and then proceeded to integrate the KBs, power bags and SAQ drills into some nice circuits. We had all 14 people ustilising the Move It space, all working at the same time, all moving around, lifting, jumping, pressing and squatting. All of this before lunch?! We were on for a good afternoon!

So after breaking for lunch we took the guys through a few more power bag moves and then it was time for the TRX. With a complete body progression on the TRX to teach there are a lot of exercises to look at, but with the frame set up and the TRX ready we fired through the lot in no time. We introduced the group to complexes, circuits and the 40/40 challenge, which can I just say, was great to see all of them get involved and give it a go.

So, onto Boxing and in stepped Andy to take the group through the progressions and lead them into pad and bag work. Clear to see that we had a very competent group of boxers we felt it ready to start some full Move It circuits. Splitting them into groups of 4 we set up the zones to allow the groups to move around each zone performing 4 different, exercises, complexes and punch drills in each zone. We worked for 4 minutes in each zone, moving them all around after the 4 minutes and basically getting finishing them off! It was awesome to see them all working together and pushing right to the end, especially after the day of training they'd just been through.

"Well done to all the trainers that completed today's training, you all did very well! As I said I look forward to stopping by in a few months so you can show me what how you've been using the space, oh and to give me a session!"
DW, thank you for a great few weeks of courses, it’s been fun! Looking forward to 2010!
For more information on the Move It training course please contact info@optimallifefitness.com

In 2010 we will holding Move It courses from the OLF Training Centre in London.
To see more photos of the training in St Helens please go to our facebook page.