Practice What You Preach
After leaving a full time role in top flight football in September last year, I decided to take this opportunity to pursue a personal goal of mine alongside running my business. Having trained sporadically over the last year with single kettlebells and olympic weightlifting, I decided to dial back into the format of kettlebells I love the most. Clean and Jerking (aka Long Cycle) 2x 24kg bells for as many reps as possible in ten minutes is a gruelling challenge, but its a highly rewarding experience if you can train your body and mind to accomplish. I want to compete at the elite level with the 2x32kg bells and go up against the best, so this first step could not be delayed any further. Looking at the competition calendar for 2024, I saw that the European Championships was in April, giving me enough time to train, qualify and compete if I focused.
Being as competitive as I am, I thought I’d throw in another challenge. Weighing in at 93kgs, I was 2kgs below the upper weight category and 8kgs over the next one down. I hadn’t weighed under 85kgs since before I was diagnosed as Type-1 Diabetic and was extremely unwell. Getting back down to this weight in a healthy way was something I had tried in the past and struggled with immensely. But in fairness, I never had a good enough reason to do it! So I set myself the following challenges:
Drop 8kgs and weigh in at competition under 85kgs
Represent England for the first time
Develop my technique and capacity to put up a decent score at European Championships
Coach myself to get there
Practice what I preach by putting myself in the shoes of the athletes I work with
These challenges were set alongside running my business, studying, starting a family, travelling and living a balanced lifestyle with time with friends and family. Whilst training had to sit quite far down my list of priorities, it would still get done 3-4 times per week.
Challenge 1: Losing 8kgs as a type-1 diabetic is a little more nuanced than for those without it. Being well read around nutrition, I knew exactly what to do but actually doing it was the tough part (as it usually is). For me, the added challenge of adjusting my insulin and having to almost consider every step I’d take during the day to ensure I don’t go low was an iterative process of learning from trial and error. Errors meant having to consume more food either as sugar or additional snacks and meals to recover from low blood glucose. This could mean snacking in the middle of the night and not exactly ideal for weight loss. Where I’d failed in the past was not in the snacking to manage lows, but in the way I reacted to this and talked to myself. In the past, I’d have been frustrated about my diabetes being a barrier to my goals as I’d be forced to ingest sugar at midnight or eat more than I wanted to when my blood sugars dropped. This meant that I would feel guilt and anger when I’d eat to recover from lows, a nasty combination of emotions that can really ruin enjoying a sweet treat. This time around, I simply accepted this part of my journey and my life and smiled when those negative thoughts entered into my mind. “Of course you’re frustrated, you don’t want to be eating right now. But you have to, there’s no way around it. Just focus on whats next and let this be.” This conversation would happen regularly in my head as I would stand in the kitchen in the middle of the night, sweating, cold and having to eat foods that would set my goals back from where I wanted to be. As I went through this experience, I got better at managing my insulin on my new eating regimen and got kinder to myself about having to break from it for health reasons. For some, you might be familiar with the 80/20 rule where you eat healthily for 80% of the time and can break from this the other 20%. Well, I just used these low glucose events as my 20% break and dialled in every other meal as part of my 80%. this meant I actually enjoyed my late snacks or extra sugar as I had factored these in as part of my eating plan. In truth, this probably turned into an 95/5 rule by the end of it and to be honest, it got really easy by the end of the 5 months I’d given myself. Weighing in at 84.5kgs for qualification at the end of February felt amazing and I’d proven to myself that my diabetes didn’t have to be a barrier to this, even if it did make it tougher at times. Another underlying driving force behind this was my goal to hit a weight I am happy with prior to my first born son arriving in July. I have no doubt at this stage, training and diet will become harder and sleep will be sporadic at best. But I want my son to grow up in a healthy and active household with a high standard of physical health compared to the general population. So my example is vital in this.
2. Representing England for the 1st time meant I had to qualify before the competition. Qualification was at the end of February and was a close call for my weight which meant that I went into qualification having been on a calorie deficit for months and not having the wiggle room to refuel for the qualification set. So, skipping breakfast, I headed to the gym to do my set in front of a judge live online.
Here’s what went wrong:
My blood sugars spiked up to an uncomfortable level and I felt dreadful, tired and clouded.
I couldn’t find my black tights for competition and had to wear white (sorry judge).
My new belt was terrible and slipped up early on which meant I had no support and my elbows chafed, making me bleed on the belt by the end of it.
Here’s why these were all positives:
I hit my target score whilst feeling horrendous (I now knew I had this in the bag on a bad day).
I managed to set aside the self-consciousness of wearing the wrong gear
When my belt slipped up, the thought popped into my head to stop and ask to start again. However, I managed to let this thought drift off and focused on putting in my best effort regardless.
When we are uncomfortable, our brains will start building a convincing argument to stop, avoid the discomfort and get back to safety. My brain certainly grabbed at the high blood sugar, wrong gear, underfueled and belt slipping up as ‘reasons’ to stop. However, these are just thoughts and I proved that they weren’t facts by still doing what I set out to do, qualified for the England team and equalled a previous personal best.
3 and 4. Developing technique and capacity without a coach
I value coaching more than most people, having worked as a sports coach and PT and paying for supervision and mentorship for years. I chose to do this without a coach because I wanted to experiment with different methods and challenge myself to stick to a plan without any external accountability. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if I had a coach and a training plan from someone with more experience than myself that I would have achieved more. However, the personal growth I experienced and lessons I learned from training and coaching myself was immense. Nobody else knew my training plan, nutrition, sleep or mental strategies. Instead I read articles, watched other lifters and fully immersed myself in my passion for exercise science to program my own training and build the body and skill I needed to compete internationally. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t ego at play in wanting to do it all myself. However, I treated every conversation with other lifters and coaches as if I were a sponge, taking in every tip I could in the lead up to this competition. So, although not having a coach, my work was inspired by many others and not some self-made unique plan without any external influence. Going forward however, I will be getting coaching and I will leave my previous numbers in the dust because of that second set of eyes.
5. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ is a phrase we hear far too often when being given advice from others. Setting an example and being a servant leader is something that stems from my childhood upbringing and schooling. Although I will never be an Olympian or professional athlete, I set my goals around this competition to engage with some of the challenges that these top athletes face and the sacrifices they need to make to achieve their dreams, build their careers and of course, lay it all on the line to win it all. I made a lot of mistakes, but learnt a lot along the way. I hope sharing some of these mistakes and lessons from imperfection and bouncing back can help others believe they can do it too. Whether the stage is bigger or smaller, your backyard to an Olympic stadium, mindset matters.
Fast forward to the week of Paris 2024 (European Kettlebell Championships, not the Olympics!) and things really started to go wrong. Too much time at my desk, a couple of holidays in the month before (best friends wedding in South Africa and Babymoon to Italy), and my back was in pieces. The Friday marking one week before I stepped onto the platform, I put my back out training. Not even doing anything particularly tough. After 4 days of rest, stretching and painkillers (which I never usually take), I felt alright. I then tried to squeeze in a session on the Tuesday (3 days to competition) and something crunched in my upper back and my whole left side froze up. My face dropped, my mood shifted completely and I walked out of the gym fearing it was all over. I’d kept my head up after the previous injury and just thought, '“prepare as if it will heal by Friday.” But now, only 3 days to go and in agony, this same mindset was hard to buy into. The next day, 2 days before competition. I got an email to tell me my flights to Paris had been cancelled. I had a back injury, was having to keep my calories down to make up for the lack of exercise over the past week, had sunk a decent chunk of money into preparation, kit, flights etc and now, I was going to have to spend more on flights to go to a competition I might not even get to compete at. My brain threw these thoughts at me thick and fast, and the fog of doubt was all I had. I spoke to my wife about it and began to settle my thoughts, think rationally and picked one thought to guide me… “But what if you’re fine by Friday and you’re sitting at home instead of competing for your country?” This was enough for me. I booked a flight to get in late that night and arrived a day early.
This meant I could weigh in a day earlier and refuel for the comp on Friday. The silver lining was clearly a big one as I needed the fuel to get past this injury (which by Thursday morning still had not settled). My accommodation did not have a scale to weigh myself, so I restricted my eating the night before and didn’t touch a drop of liquid for over 16hrs by the time I weighed in. Dehydrated and in severe need of caffeine, sitting on the Paris Metro at 7:30am after getting to sleep at 2am after flight delays… I had a good laugh at myself. The last thing I identified with at that moment was a high performance athlete. Arriving at the venue on Thursday morning to weigh in, I was holding on by a thread… but a very strong thread weaved by the months I’d sunk into this and dreams of getting on the platform and representing my country. I weighed in at 84.5kgs… still wearing my tracksuit. I’d completely overshot the mark, but lesson learnt and box ticked. A day of eating and recovery awaited.
I stayed and watched the other athletes compete in their respective disciplines that day, got the lay of the land and stretched my back as often as I could. However, it would still not loosen up and I was still in pain throughout the night. After a great meal on Thursday night and a reasonable amount of sleep, I still woke up tight and in pain on Friday morning, 4hrs before my set.
This metro trip was not as unpleasant physically as the last one, but far more of a mental battle was taking place. Once again, the thought emerged, “but what if you’re fine?” I was curious to see if it was possible and was determined to put my ego aside and step onto the platform and just move, even if I was never going to be able to give my best. I’d give the best of what I had today if my back held out. At 10am, 2 hours before my set, I went to test my back. Starting as light as I could, i went through some reps. I was fine. I went heavier. I was still fine. I then went to the 24kg bells for the first time since hurting my back in the first place… and I was fine. I walked away at that point, not wanting to aggravate anything. Twenty minutes before I was set to compete, I went back to the warm up area. Well fed, feeling tentatively confident my back would hold out and ready to step onto the platform to compete. Even though I wasn’t sure I would be able to, every single day I prepared as if I was going to get out there and do my best for the 10 minutes. I had visualised my pace, what it would be like on the platform, how I’d manage my attention, which spot I’d focus on, when I’d start sprinting, to trust my pace and not get caught up in the hype early on. Although I had my doubts that my back would physically manage lifting the bells, I mentally prepared as if it would go perfectly.
Calm, determined and letting go of every excuse my brain could come at me with, I stepped onto the platform with the mindset of a man who had everything go smoothly in the build up to this moment. Any split second doubts fell away as I chose to step onto the international stage for the first time. I picked my spot, managed my pace, kept focused on what I could control, stayed focused on every individual rep and gave it my best. I was aware the Bulgarian next to me was keeping pace with me, but was grateful he was not miles ahead. I stuck with my pace and resisted the temptation to speed up and get ahead of him early on. I focused on myself and checked in on him at the end of 7 minutes to see if we were still on par. We were. I then dialled back into my ‘1 rep at a time world’ that included nothing but regulating my breathing, making sure my reps were quality for the judge and ensuring I kept my pace. Nothing else. In a final minute sprint I pulled ahead of my Bulgarian adversary and took the win.
Taking the Gold medal in the u85kg 2x24kg Long Cycle at European Championships in Paris. Exactly the moment I had set out for in September the previous year. 7 months later, it happened.
Overall, I am incredibly grateful for how difficult this was and all the additional challenges that came with it. I want to practice what I preach to athletes and demonstrate why the methods I recommend they use can work. The mental, emotional, physical, technical, tactical and logistical challenges I faced moving from where I was to where I am now over a 7 month period all come from mindset and the ability to remain flexible when responding to everything life can throw at us.
I know this experience has been great for me, but I hope that it will be even more beneficial for those I work with in the future.