Women with Power!

Edging out the competition, generating power, increasing performance and looking good doing it?!

When someone asks you what you train to increase your speed, power and stability, what do you tell them? For a few of us it will be sprints on a treadmill, for others it will be pause squats. For very few there will be Olympic lifting.

So let’s look at that, in Olympic lifting you have to get the bar from A to B as fast as you can, then control it either overhead or on your shoulders. Performing cleans and snatches gives you benefits in strength, power, accuracy, flexibility, speed, coordination, agility and balance to name but a few.

The Great British hockey team have recently achieved great success in Rio becoming the female Olympic champions. Unbeaten in all their games on their way to the final, every one of those athletes have been training more than ever in the gym. Lifting heavy weights to get faster, stronger and more stable.

Having had a 5 year sabbatical from playing competitive hockey at what was an International standard…coming back to playing was a bit daunting. I thought I would have lost all my speed, endurance and skill. However, where my skill has dropped, my speed and endurance has actually increased. I’m now humbly hopeful that the old adage of ‘form is temporary and class is permanent’ is true in my case as the skills I possessed with stick in hand are slowly returning to make me a better all round player!

This is I know is due to my Olympic lifting and weight training in general. Which all started back in Wales about 3 years ago! I used a personal trainer with a small group to help me get stronger and my body a bit firmer. The results from lifting weights were almost immediately visible, after 12 weeks I was where I wanted to be but I had absolutely got the bug and just wanted to lift heavier and heavier. Fast forward to today where I am now the personal trainer helping others achieve that same goal. There is so much that we can all benefit from re strength training and the understanding that Olympic lifting is ultimately the basis for ALL sport. At URBANFITNESS London we are one of the few facilities in the city that actively promote this ’train 2 train’ approach. The entire team and I are passionate about this message and especially when it comes to women so please come and chat to us about what it can do for you, whether its a firmer physique or athletic performance, lifting is simply one of the most positive activities you can do to see quick and impressive results.

Power to the people!….Ruadhan