I came across this great parody of modern life today, made me smile.

Reminds me of the people who spend 20 mins trying to find the closest parking space to the supermarket, instead of parking futher away and have a 2 minute walk.

Jamie Oliver is currently in America fighting the crusade against poor eating and obesity.

In much the same way as he did in the “Jamie’s School Dinners” series on Channel 4, he is visiting schools and communities and using the power of knowledge to help transform people’s lives.

So profound has his impact been, that the good people at TED have awarded him the TED 2010 prize for his work.

Here is the video from Jamie’s passionate lecture at TED:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” – Jamie Oliver

I’ve just come back from a fantastic day at Exeter University.

I went with James Marshall, of Excelsior Training, to help him run a support day for gifted athletes from all over South Devon.

We spent the morning running through warm-ups, circuit training and agility exercises suitable for all athletes to help improve their abilities and reduce their chances of injury.

In the afternoon we sat down with the resident physio Dave MacLellan and the athletes individually, taking them through a musculoskeletal assessment to screen out any possible problems and impairments.

It was a great chance for me to learn first hand how James and Dave assess posture and movement efficiency in athletes.

The most inspiring point of the day was watching how, during the assessments, James and Dave would almost pre-empt one-another as they picked out various compensations. It showed that they had a real synergy between them and I think its a great thing to have the strength and conditioning coach there first-hand to witness everything that the Physiotherapist does, rather than simply relying on written reports.

Things I learnt over the course of the day:

• Young female athletes are generally more flexible than their male counterparts.
• Nearly all young athletes lack a solid and robust foundation for everyday movement, let alone anything sports specific.
• Lower back problems seem to be worryingly common among young athletes of both sexes and nearly always is caused by bad posture, inflexibility in the spine and being coached into the ground when they do have a problem.
• Some equestrian riders seem be more agile than a lot of athletes who play team sports, such as Rugby and Football, even though it is not as important to them as it is the team sport players.  Makes you question what the team sports’ coaches are actually doing when they train their athletes.
• A great synergy between coaches and therapists produces the best results by far.
• The young athletes who we worked with had either zero or next to no appreciation of the quality of the services, knowledge and skill that was being made available to them – for free!

Overall a great day and I thank James and Dave for allowing me to help out, watch and most importantly learn from their wisdom.

That’s a deliberate misspelling on the title, to find out why you’ll have watch the source of the inspiration behind today’s post.

I must admit I am sucker for tales of triumph over adversity and the film “The Pursuit of Happyness” is probably one the of the best I will ever see.

Why? Because it is based upon the true life story of one extraordinary man called Chris Garderner.

The film focuses on Chris’s battle to become a stock broker, and in the process, forever change the fortune of himself and his young son.

Chris manages to successfully complete an internship and secure a new career, all the while he is homeless and undertaking the responsibility as a single parent.

Here is a an interview from 2007, which gives an insight into his character and determination:

And here is a trailer for the 2006 film, starring Will Smith:

“You want something. Go get it. Period.”

Today’s post is about legendary Strength coach Joe DeFranco.

Joe is famed for his balls-to-the-wall training and for getting serious results with the athletes he works with.

Joe’s training philosophy is based around the maxim “No gimmicks, just hard work”

He has successfully combined elements of power-lifting training (West-side Barbell methods), traditional strength training, functional training, agility training, corrective exercise and athletic conditioning to produce complete programs to bring out the best in those he trains.

One of the key elements to every workout is the element of competition, which helps to drive his athletes to work consistently hard in the gym.

I will be using one of his programs as the basis for my next training block, with the aim of improving strength in the key movements of the bench press, pull-up and squat. So I am looking forward to some hard work, tough workouts and great results.

You can find out more about Joe at his website: www.defrancostraining.com and at his YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/joedefranco

In the meantime, here is a video of some of his work:

Today’s inspiration comes from non-other than Mr Will Smith.

Yes he’s been the Fresh prince, a man in black, Muhammed Ali and even a superhero with a bad attitude called Hancock.

But, today he is my Friday inspiration…and heres why:

“Greatness exists in all of us”

Adding a link to the blog of a renowned strength and conditioning coach called Robert dos Remedios, or coach ‘Dos’ as he is affectionately known.

Coach Dos has been training athletes for over 20 years as was recently featured in an article in the UKSCA journal.

Famed for his tough, no-nonsense and passionate approach – Coach Dos has created a solid reputation amongst other S & C coaches.

Dos’ principles for building training programmes:

• Cover the major movement patterns
• Learn to deal with your own bodyweight
• Use unilateral exercises and work laterally
• Maximise effciency by using supersets, complexes and compound movements
• Keep the sessions short and sweet.

Here’s a link to his site.