This incredibly useful exercise had almost disappeared completely from the training playlist, surviving only in the darkest reaches of the powerlifting and olympic weightlifting worlds. Fortunately it is now coming back into favour.

What is a good morning?

The good morning is a compound movement working the back and hamstrings. It is used as an assistance exercise for strengthening the posterior chain.

With the bar on your back, bend forward at the hips until your torso is parallel to the floor, then return to a standing position. In other words, take a bow with a weight on your back!

Why is it such a great exercise?

The good morning is an effective way to strengthen the back. It also requires confidence and control to perform well, which are useful skills to master.

Although it might look a bit dangerous at first glance, it is perfectly safe if performed with proper technique and an appropriate weight.

Good mornings have been a standard assistance exercise in olympic weightlifting for many decades. Heavy good mornings and concentric good mornings have been popularised for powerlifters by Westside Barbell.

How to perform the good morning

Practise this movement with just a barbell until you are confident with the technique and body position.

Step 1: start position

Take up a position as if for a back squat: legs slightly wider than hip width apart, barbell across your back resting on the traps (top of shoulders) not the neck.

You can experiment with different stances; a wider stance will work the hamstrings more while a narrow stance will work the lower back more.

Grip

Your hands should be as close to your shoulders as is comfortable (this will vary with your flexibility).

Position of barbell on back

Breathing

As in the deadlift, take a deep breath and hold it throughout the lift or at least until you are on the way back up. This breathing technique creates intra-abdominal pressure which helps to stabilise the spine.

Step 2: bend forward from the hips

Start the movement by bending forward from the hips, keeping the knees soft. Think about pushing your butt out behind you.

Legs

Keep your legs almost straight, with a slight bend in the knee so that they are not locked out completely.

Back

Be careful not to round your lower back; maintain the curve in your lumbar spine. (Note: there is such a thing as a rounded back good morning but this is not in the scope of this article as it has specialist applicability.)

As you bend forward, the bar is held in place on your shoulders by pushing your shoulder blades back and your elbows up.

Push shoulders and elbows up

Head

Keep your head in a neutral position. This means that as you bend over, your gaze will be directed towards the floor, not ahead of you.

Don’t be tempted to look up in an attempt to keep the bar on your back; the bar will stay in place if you keep your shoulders back, elbows up and a slight curve in your lower back.

Step 3: descend to parallel

Bend forward as close to parallel with the floor as you can go without rounding your lower back. For many people, this will not be quite parallel as they will be limited by hamstring flexibility but try to go for maximum range of motion rather than maximum weight on the bar!

Remember to keep the head neutral all the way down, keeping the bar in place with shoulders and elbow position.

You should feel a stretch in both the hamstrings and lower back in the bottom position of the good morning.

Step 4: return to standing position

Reverse the movement back to a standing position, maintaining the position of the head and back. Make sure you bring the hips back in fully before starting the next rep – in other words, stand up straight.

Concentric good morning

A concentric good morning is a variation of the standard good morning exercise, where you perform the second half of the movement first. You start in the bottom position, almost parallel to the floor, and lift the bar to a standing position.

The idea is to mimic the position of the back in the deadlift, but to focus more on the spinal erectors than a normal deadlift would do by taking a lot of the leg power out of the equation.

Concentric good mornings are usually used by powerlifters as a back assistance exercise or as a training alternative to the deadlift (as some advanced powerlifters do not deadlift very often).

How to perform a concentric good morning

Set the bar to the correct position in the rack. You will need to be able to lift the bar with a flat back, so don’t set the rack too low if you don’t have the flexibility to get into that bottom position.

Concentric good morning - start position

Take up position under the bar as you would with a normal good morning. Lift the bar, driving up against it leading with the shoulders until hips are fully extended and you are standing up straight.

Concentric good morning - top position

Then return the bar to the rack in the bottom position, being careful that you rack the bar properly before letting go.

How to use the good morning in your training

The good morning functions as an assistance exercise for the posterior chain, especially the lower back. It is a good option on days when you don’t deadlift but need a back exercise.

If being used as a back assistance exercise, good mornings can be done with light-to-medium weights for 6-10 reps.

If being used by a powerlifter as an alternative to the deadlift on a ‘heavy’ day, heavy weights for 1-5 reps can be used.

Good mornings can be used in warm ups (with light weights of course, maybe just a barbell) to warm up the back muscles. They can also be used as part of a barbell complex, for example: front squat – push press – good morning.

Powerlifters and olympic lifters in particular will benefit from heavy good mornings such as 3×3, but anyone who wants to build lower back strength will find these useful. Just remember not to compromise range of motion for more weight.

Watch a video demo of the good morning and the concentric good morning

More from gubernatrix

How to deadlift
How to front squat
Assistance exercises
Why you should full squat

Let’s break the false link between building muscle and becoming less feminine.

Women have muscles, it’s a physiological fact, and if we want to do anything useful or impressive with them and look sexy to boot, we’d better start training them!

Here is an incident that happened to me recently. I was talking to a bloke in the gym about the fact that I was training for strongwoman and I happened to mention that I would like to put on a couple of pounds of muscle.

He said, with a grimace, “Really? But you don’t want to lose your femininity, do you?”

So putting on a couple of pounds of muscle is going to make me lose my femininity, is it? This is typical of the casual ignorance displayed by many people about muscle building. I’m an athletic-looking size 10, I weigh 136 pounds. What difference is a couple of pounds of muscle distributed around my body going to make to my appearance? I doubt most people would even notice.

Me (right) and Caroline Pearce, aka ‘Ice’ from Gladiators. Note the tragic loss of femininity experienced by these two strength training females. Don’t let this be you!

I’m not trying to dictate what men or women find attractive. Long hair, cute bob, big tits, curvy, athletic, muscular, long legs, nice bum, spiky hair and tattoos, tanned and outdoorsy, pale and interesting… there are so many ways to look sexy and feminine.

A powerful woman needs powerful arms! I bet POTUS isn’t complaining…

Muscle, whether you realise it or not, plays a huge part in looking feminine. Pertness of bum? Gluteus maximus, baby! Shapeliness of calf? A toned gastrocnemius, of course. ‘Michelle Obama’ arms? Bi’s and tri’s my dears, not to mention the delts.

And you can’t build muscle using 3lb pink dumbbells. Your handbag weighs more than that! The weight’s gotta be heavy.

(Not convinced? Read Why lift weights? for a simple answer to that question.)

The truth is that for some people, any mention of muscle building is an automatic no-no. This merely reveals ignorance about the human body and the importance of muscle.

Although we can use muscle to scuplt particular parts of our bodies into nicer shapes, this isn’t the primary role of muscle.

In fact, everybody needs to be concerned about building muscle, since we spend most of our lives slowly losing it and becoming more and more frail.

Even this poor girl has muscles, but wouldn't you agree she could do with some more?

We all have muscle in the first place and we all need it in order to lead active, healthy lives. From the way some women talk, you’d think they didn’t even possess muscles!

But they do, and they are neglecting them because of this pernicious link.

For most people, building additional muscle doesn’t happen automatically, it has to be done deliberately (especially after your early twenties). What we do build automatically is fat. It’s very easy to get fatter, more difficult to build muscle.

But building muscle helps us to lose fat. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so the more of it we have, the more we can burn excess calories. Muscle also takes energy to be built in the first place, energy that would otherwise be stored as fat. This is true for both men and women.

These days most people want to look lean and athletic, with less fat. The way to do this is to build muscle but still in the eyes of many people this is only deemed acceptable for men. No wonder so many women spend years dieting unsuccessfully or acquire dangerous eating disorders that keep them weak, malnourished and either too skinny or too fat.

Why do guys like this picture?

So back to the guy who so baldly expressed his opinion on my femininity. Of course, we know what’s really going on here. We know that the image he has in his head is of a female pro-bodybuilder on stage under the lights with all the fake tan, dehydration, flexing and so on. He has equated this snapshot image (which doesn’t even reflect the everyday reality of a pro-bodybuilder, let alone anyone else) with general weight lifting of any kind undertaken by a woman – and moreover has decided that this is not what he finds attractive.

(Incidentally, there is an issue about people associating weight training with bodybuilding but not other sports. You might be talking about strongwoman or weightlifting, but it is the bodybuilder image that immediately appears in people’s minds and not, say, the slim and athletic Marilou Dozois-Prevost who graces the top of this post.)

What’s odd is that Random Gym Guy is quite admiring of my figure as it stands at the moment – a figure which has been developed over several years by muscle building and heavy weight training.

So there’s a serious disconnect between the evidence of his own eyes and his preconceptions and prejudices about ‘muscle building’ and ‘femininity’.

Apparently I have reached some mysterious boundary where I look good at the moment but if I build a smidgen more muscle I will suddenly turn into a she-hulk!

Two female bodybuilders: the difference is DRUGS, not lifting weights

With pictures like the one on the right, I guess it is not surprising that people get hugely distorted views about women and muscle. The media love to dwell on the ‘freak’ aspects of any activity but it is drugs not weights that are the cause. Just say no, kids.

(The original female bodybuilders still looked feminine. Read more here about what went wrong. Clue: it wasn’t lifting weights!)

Ironically many men will find particular bodies attractive that have been built by careful dieting and weight training – but they don’t realise it. This is about education, about breaking that seemingly automatic link between the desire to build muscle  – for health, looks, performance or whatever – and loss of femininity.

Allyson Goble, trainer at Bodytribe Fitness, tackled this thorny subject in our recent Women’s Strength Symposium. She comments that if masculinity is defined by strength and muscle building, does that mean that femininity must be the opposite: weakness and fat? Femininity = weakness? Surely we are past that in the 21st century.

The truth is that you can look very feminine (whatever that means to you) and also build muscle, lift heavy weights and generally enjoy yourself.

Here is some of the positive testimony from Allyson’s discussion.

Katydid: “As a person who has gone through challenges with eating disorders and body image for a very long time I’ve found weightlifting and being a powerlifter, and the resultant strength to be the best medicine in the world.”

Louisa: “Until I started weight training, with fantastic results (not only because my body shape improved but because I felt more confident and got a buzz out of it), I really didn’t believe how good it would be for me. I have never really worried about getting bulky. I know I look better and feel fitter than I have for over 20 years. However, people around me do ask if I’m not worried about bulking up. And I have struggled to get my husband to understand that I’m not going to end up looking like a female body builder on steroids.”

Allyson: “Girls deserve to have strong muscles and bones and ligaments and tendons, etc. AND look good in their undies too!”

The beautiful and be-six-packed Allyson Felix

Men care what you look like – they are visual creatures after all. But men also care what you think you look like.

Lack of confidence in your own looks is not sexy. Obsessing about whether your bum looks big is a real turn-off.  If you have a nice bum from squatting, be proud of it! If you have a great six pack from training and dieting, show it off. I am a big fan of the female six pack myself, I think it is super sexy!

So back to where I started. You might be wondering, ‘why do you care what Random Gym Guy thinks anyway?’

Well, I don’t, as he’s just some random guy down the gym. But what about the men who do matter in our lives? I know from discussions on the Women’s Strength Training Network that many women do have these issues with their other halves. We can’t just say ‘well I don’t care about your feelings’. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Louisa, who was quoted above, says “I have struggled to get my husband to understand that I’m not going to end up looking like a female body builder on steroids.” Time will prove Louisa right, and perhaps her husband will get used to her having a bit more muscle than before.

I know that my perception of muscle on both men and women has changed, the more I have been around it, seen it, and most of all, experienced the amazing things you can do with it!

This is why I am committed to changing perceptions, and why I believe that eventually a cultural shift will occur and women will no longer be considered less feminine because they have muscles and can use them.

More from gubernatrix

Girls and Strength Training: Are We Able To Shift Our Perceptions? How Else Are We ‘ABLE’? By Allyson Goble

Women’s Strength Training Network

Strong is beautiful

The toning problem: why women are missing out when it comes to weight training

Opportunities for play are never more present than in these long, hot days of summer – of which we in the UK have been enjoying many recently and I hope you are too, wherever you are.

This weekend I went to a garden party featuring a ‘summer olympics’ of mad games including such classics as welly wanging and tug of war, as well as more unusual challenges involving the carrying of objects in weird ways (have you ever tried to run holding a potato between your legs?), lots of wet sponges, cartwheel races and general larking about.

What I noticed (aside from the fact that I am useless at welly wanging and I ached in unusual places the next day) was the way everyone behaved, both adults and children. The kids threw themselves into everything and were full of beans all day. Their energy is astonishing, as anyone who has kids will tell you. It’s inspiring as well.

The adults were torn between being competitive and just having a laugh. As the day went on, the cheating got more outrageous. It became clear, however, that the best time is when people are being competitive in the context of the game without actually minding who wins. In other words, getting involved in the process without worrying about the outcome. That is essential for true play.

The day was a great reminder of two important things: first, to put a bit of play back into training, even if its just getting a few people together and seeing who can throw a kettlebell the furthest (as we did recently at Crossfit Reading‘s open day). The great thing about ‘silly’ games is that you can persuade people to participate who otherwise would be afraid to do something more ‘serious’. But if you are prepared to wang a welly, why not a tire or a kettlebell?

The second is to focus on the process rather than the outcome. At Wimbledon, the most successful tennis players are those who focus not on the outcome (‘I must win’) but on the process, playing each point as it comes. One point at a time, one throw at a time, one lift at a time. Try to make each lift the best lift of the day.

By the way, Bodytribe has a new DVD coming out this summer based on the notion of putting play back into training. Watch a preview here.

This is not a stupid question. Not any more. A hundred years ago, maybe it was. But these days it’s difficult even to tell what is ‘food’ any more, it’s so processed and packaged and prettily presented.

Don’t you wish there was just a simple list of foods you should eat, without any of the complicated stuff about macronutrient splits and what cavemen ate? Well, this is that list.

It’s a quick trot around the different types of food and some examples of each. The information applies whether you are male or female, trying to gain weight or lose it. Simply adjust quantities to suit.

Fish

Any fish is good for you. Fish is high in protein and oily fish is high in good fats as well, so you really can’t go wrong with fish. Avoid fish in batter; breadcrumbs are okay unless you are trying to lose weight. Try to buy fish that is caught sustainably or not over-fished.

Meat

Meat tends to have a higher saturated fat content than fish but you can limit the amount of fat you take in if you choose lean cuts of meat. White meat is less fatty than red meat. Meat is high in protein so is generally a good thing from a diet point of view unless you are vegetarian or environmentally conscious.

Be fussy about meat, know where it has come from – eat free range, grass-fed etc. Avoid meat that has been processed or reconstituted, e.g. chicken nuggets. There could be all kinds of crap in there!

Beans/legumes

All beans are good for you. They are a good source of protein (especially for non meat and dairy eaters) and complex carbs.

Vegetables

Any vegetables, in large quantities, with every meal (yes, even breakfast if you can). Dark green vegetables in particular are good for you (spinach, broccoli). Potatoes don’t count!! (see Starchy carbs below)

Rule of thumb: whenever you make a meal, e.g. evening meal, lunchtime salad, include three different vegetables

Starchy carbs

Otherwise known as white foods and alarmingly high in the modern diet. They are not evil but try not to over-indulge. We tend to consume more carbohydrate than we really need, so limiting it where possible is a good thing.

Rule of thumb: have as an accompaniment rather than the main bulk of the meal. For example, don’t have a dish that is mostly pasta with a few shreds of vegetables thrown in; have the pasta on the side and make sure the meal is mostly vegetables and fish/meat.

Dairy

Dairy products are high in protein. They also contain saturated fat but if you go easy on portion sizes you will be getting good nutrition without too much saturated fat. If you want to really cut down on the fat content, stick to egg whites and skimmed milk. Try to avoid ‘fat free’ yoghurt though as it is high in sugar and additives.

Rule of thumb: great in moderation – unless you are vegetarian, then you might need more to bump up your protein intake.

Nuts, seeds

Great source of protein, good fats and complex carbs. Eat in moderation as fat content can be high – unless you are trying to gain weight.

Fruit

Everyone knows fruit is good for you. But don’t make the mistake of eating fruit instead of vegetables and think you are getting your nutrition. You should eat more vegetables than fruit.

Beware of fruit juice and smoothies if dieting – they are nutritious but also fairly high in calories for a drink. It might be better to drink water and eat an orange than to drink orange juice.

Sweet things

Honey (great to add to yoghurt, porridge etc as a sweetener)
Dark chocolate (good for you in moderation!)

Supplements

Protein supplements are a very useful source of extra protein and are surprisingly filling. However they are usually very sweet and sugary as well. Protein shakes are better than protein bars, since the sugar content of bars tends to be high. Useful for non meat-eaters of course.

Many people supplement with fish oil. This is high in the good fat, omega-3, and very useful if you don’t eat much oily fish.

Don’t consume/severely limit:

• Alcohol (useless calories)
• Foods marketed as diet foods or low fat foods (low fat = high sugar!)
• Sweets, cakes etc
• Crisps
• Chocolate (apart from high quality dark chocolate)
• Takeaway pizza, kebab, curry
• Ready meals
• Any junk food really. C’mon, you know that.

Common misunderstandings

Soup is a good diet meal. Most soups are predominantly carbohydrate with very little protein so they won’t fill you up and don’t contribute much to your diet, nutritionally or calorie-wise. Soup is often eaten with bread and butter – again very little protein, extra carbs which you don’t need. You would be much better off with a nice big tuna salad!

Diet foods are good if you are on a diet. Although they are trumpeted as low fat or fat free, the fat is simply replaced with sugar in order to make them palatable. They are also not very filling as they tend to be full of sugary carbs and not much else.

Fruit and nut bars/flapjacks. Although these are marketed as healthy and nutritious because they contain fruit, nuts and seeds, they generally have a very high sugary content (syrup, sugar, honey etc) and lots of carbs (oats, maybe chocolate etc) so they should basically be treated as sweets/cakes. If you want the goodness of fruit and nuts, just eat actual fruit or a handful of nuts.

Fat is bad. It isn’t all bad – there are ‘good’ fats and ‘bad’ fats and we need the good fats, so don’t automatically avoid all fat. See above for foods which contain ‘good’ fats (oily fish, seeds, nuts, olives). Even a moderate amount of saturated fat (egg yolks, butter) won’t do you as much harm as having cake on a regular basis. Avoiding dietary fat often leads people into eating excessive sugar, which will make you fat.

Pasta is a healthy meal. No it isn’t. Pasta itself has very little nutritional value, it’s just starchy carbohydrate. You can have good stuff in a pasta dish (e.g. vegetables, chicken) but the amount is crucial. Pasta you get in a restaurant has – in my experience – very little else but pasta (great profit margins)! If you make it at home, pile in the veggies and protein and keep the pasta portion modest (70g per person), then it can be okay.

Toast is healthy. Again, toast is mainly carbs and a bit of fibre (but if you are eating plenty of vegetables you don’t need any fibre from bread). Not much nutrition, loads of carbs. The odd slice of toast with a protein topping (peanut butter, sardines, baked beans, cheese) can be a nutritious meal/snack. But too often toast is eaten with jam or marmalade – not good.

What’s the issue with carbs?

Most people eat too much of them and they get stored as fat. It’s the nature of the modern diet. It’s really hard to avoid carbs, they are everywhere. So actively limiting them results not in low carb but in moderate carb.

Don’t forget that vegetables and fruit are excellent sources of carbohydrate. So you don’t need other sources like bread, rice etc.

If you focus on eating more protein, you naturally end up eating fewer carbs, because the protein makes you feel fuller and therefore less likely to fill the gap with carbs.

Women are unlucky because many more high carb foods are marketed specifically to women. Pasta, ‘diet’ snack bars, cakes, chocolate and so on are all targeted at women. So we need to be extra vigilant!

Classic example of what not to eat: Pizza Express has recently introduced a pizza with the middle cut out which they are marketing to women as a ‘healthy’ pizza. It is no such thing. It is just a pizza that is a bit smaller and has a side salad. It’s still full of saturated fat, salt and white carbs. Do have one if you want to, but please don’t kid yourself that there’s anything healthy about it. It’s like having half a cake instead of a whole cake – it’s still a cake.

And by the way, the same applies to that ‘skinny muffin’ – in fact anything labelled ‘skinny’ that is clearly a cake.

So…what should I eat again?

Food that you make yourself (so you know exactly what’s gone in it). Food that your great grandmother would recognise as food (so that doesn’t include pop tarts). Food that looks fresh, smells nice, looks like someone grew it or farmed it or plucked it out of the ocean.

If you want a cake on the odd occasion, have a cake. It’s only a problem if you have cake every day. Kidding yourself that it is ok to have one every day for breakfast because some clever marketing person labelled it ‘skinny’ is just asking for trouble.

Need a bit of inspiration? England rugby player Riki Fluety on his 30th birthday apparently had a chicken breast with a candle in it instead of a cake. There’s dedication for you!

More from Gubernatrix

Dieting rules of thumb
Staying focussed over Christmas
What’s your food personality?

Squat workshop by gubernatrix (Photo: Kate Pankhurst)

Strength. It’s 99% about how strong you are.

I don’t know whether it’s the circles I move in, but I tend to meet people who are more concerned with how good their technique is than how much they are lifting.

These well-intentioned students of strength are the opposite end of the scale from the idiots in the gym who load the bar up with more weight than they can handle and then proceed to invite maiming with appalling technique and absolutely no understanding of basic safety. But as far as I know, none of those people reads this blog (though they should!).

I’m known for being generous where technique is concerned, not a stickler for the perfect position so long as people are reasonably safe. I am willing to entertain other opinions but I tend to think not ‘is my technique perfect?’ but ‘is my technique good enough’?

When I teach workshops, such as the squat workshop pictured above, I focus on technique and strength. When you’ve got the basic movement, it’s time to stick some more weight on the bar and challenge yourself.

I didn’t get into strength training to do pretty moves, although that’s part of the fun. But I got into it to lift ever heavier things – that’s my own personal buzz. Will I sacrifice technique to lift something heavier? Yes, sometimes. Not all the time, not every day. I’ll train sensibly and then go for it on the platform, for example.

And before you raise the hydra of injury – yep, been there. In fact I picked up an injury just a couple of weeks ago while deadlifting in a strongwoman competition. Am I annoyed I got injured? Yep. Do I regret going for that weight? Nope.

Strongman is an interesting sport since many of the events are performed using what most people would think of as bad technique – rounding the back in the atlas stones, hyperextending the lower back for the log press and so on. But strongmen train specifically to perform the events like this. It’s in the nature of odd object lifting. It’s part of what it means to be a strongman – being able to lift in some very awkward positions.

And for you functional fitness fans, this is vital. In an emergency situation, are you likely to be presented with a finely crafted eleiko-bar-shaped object to lift? Or is it more likely to be some awkwardly-shaped heavy bastard of a thing?

Try telling Laurence Shahlaei he should lift with his legs not his back

In a very technical sport such as olympic weightlifting, technique is vital in as much as it allows you to lift more. If you can’t snatch properly you’ll never snatch very much because there is a limit to the amount of weight you can get from the floor to overhead by just muscling it up there. If you don’t have the technique in olympic weightlifting then you just miss…and miss… and miss…

But can great technique be an aim in itself? Maybe, if that’s what turns you on. Maybe you want to have the most beautiful moves in the gym and you don’t care how heavy the weight is.

But you also have to think about how you are applying the technique. Are you applying it with confidence? Are you diving under that bar with complete commitment? Or did you start lifting and think ‘christ, that feels heavy!’

In other words, having perfect technique with a light weight may not mean jack shit once the weight gets challenging.

How much mental energy should you spend worrying about technique? What would happen if you stopped worrying about technique and put some more weight on the bar?

Many people seem to think that they are not ‘ready’ to add weight until they can perform a lift perfectly. It’s a combination of fear of injury, fear of the weight and the desire to practice with something easy. I know these feelings all too well!

But adding more weight teaches too. Adding more weight can in some circumstances actively improve technique (a big heavy weight can force you into the correct position) and in other circumstances simply make you work harder to get it right.

With sub-maximal weights, you can sometimes make adjustments during the lift to compensate for deficiencies in the technique – for example, not having quite the right starting position, or not catching the weight in exactly the right place. With a maximum or very close to maximum weight, if you don’t get it right, you’ll probably fail the lift. So you’ll know damn well when you do get it right.

There are some lifters who are known as good technicians. These are the jammy bastards whose technique is exactly the same, lift after lift, never really deteriorating (eventually the weight just gets too heavy). Realistically, most of us won’t have this talent.

So as with most things in life, there is a balance to be struck. You probably don’t want to end up on the wrong side of either opinion.

If you agonise about your technique, take some time out and just think about lifting more weight. Don’t forget that all that time you are spending on perfecting your technique is time that you are not spending getting stronger.

Conversely, if you chase the numbers every day and you are just desperate to put an extra few kilos on your lifts, consider that taking time to work on your technique might actually improve your numbers in the long run.

For the vast majority of us, our technique could always be better but in strength sports, you don’t get points for style. If we allow this thought to paralyse us, we may not make progress or get stronger.

So where do you stand on the technique debate?

More from gubernatrix

gubernatrix on squat technique
Paralysis by analysis
Mystery of the squat

All photos by Matthew Nourse

On 29-30 May I went to the World’s Strongest Man Experience at the Excel Centre in London. The event comprised a two-hour competition featuring some of the biggest stars in WSM – including current World’s Strongest Man Zydrunas Savickas – preceded by an opportunity to meet the strongmen on the exhibition stand, have your photo taken, get your programme signed and generally marvel at these man mountains.

I thought it was a great idea for strongman fans, allowing you to experience in person what you’ve only seen on the telly at Christmas! The coolest part for me was getting to rub shoulders with the strongmen on the stand (not literally of course, as I’m only 5 ft 5) and interviewing Zydrunas Savickas (see the clip here).

Of the Brits, Terry Hollands, Mark Felix, Jimmy Marku and Darren Sadler represented in style. Laurence Shahlaei was also on the bill but pulled out in order to compete in a qualifier for the WSM 2010 finals (he successfully qualified!).

It’s worth saying that some of these guys are competing every couple of weeks. Terry Hollands, for example, did a Strongman Champions League event in Finland two weeks before, and another SCL event in Ireland two weeks after. Although these weights seem superhuman, it’s all in a day’s work for the professional strongman.

World Record from Felix

On the Saturday before the main show we were treated to a world record attempt by Mark Felix in the left handed deadlift.

Mark is well known as an absolute deadlift and grip monster, current Rolling Thunder world champion (Rolling Thunder is a notoriously difficult revolving deadlift handle). So I don’t think anyone was in any doubt that he would take the record easily. It stood at 221kg; Mark went for 225kg and got it.

He could probably have smashed the record and lifted more, but he did have a whole two days of strongman competition ahead of him, so perhaps he held back a little.

The events

After Felix’ new world record, the competition itself got underway. The line up included: Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania), Terry Hollands (UK), Darren Sadler (UK), Stefan Solvi Petursson (Iceland), Thomas Nowotniak (Poland), Jimmy Marku (UK), Kevin Nee (USA) and of course Mark Felix (UK).

That’s a lot of power to fit into a small arena!

The competition was adjudicated by strongman legends Geoff Capes and Svend Karlson, and hosted by Caroline Pearce (aka Ice from Gladiators). She was a good choice of host, I thought. It’s nice to have a woman amidst all the testosterone; moreover one who isn’t a) just the female foil to a male host, and b) not just a pretty face. Pearce, who is an ex-athlete herself, has presented a few strongman events now and is getting to grips with the specifics of the sport. Could she be the Gabby Logan of strongman? I don’t see why not!

Events

The events were:
•    Farmers walk 160kg each hand – 15m
•    Dumbbell clean and press 93kg – reps in 60 seconds
•    ‘Axle’ deadlift 330kg (16 inch deadlift with olympic bar) – reps in 60 seconds
•    Log press 130kg – reps in 60 seconds
•    Atlas stones

A menu of classic strongman events here. Due to space constraints, the events chosen tended towards the static. However, as many events were a particular lift for reps, it was a good opportunity for strength fans to witness the strongmen’s technique, particularly in the overhead events – which for many of us recreational strongmen/women is our nemesis!

I was particularly interested in the dumbbell press, as I have seen many people struggle with this event. The event favours the short-armed guys, so Jimmy Marku and Darren Sadler did well. Savickas, who has excellent overhead strength, won this event.

Clip: Savickas dumbbell clean & press 93kg – 7 reps

Clip: Darren Sadler dumbbell clean & press – 6 reps

As you might expect, Mark Felix destroyed the deadlift event – this after getting a world record in the left-handed deadlift. Straps are allowed in strongman deadlifting, as it is not intended to be a test of grip.

Clip: Mark Felix deadlift 330kg – 14 reps

The 130kg log press was done in a head-to-head style. In the clip below, Jimmy Marku goes up against Mark Felix.

Clip: Jimmy Marku log press 130kg

We finished with the atlas stones, always a crowd pleaser. Professional strongmen these days are very adept at this event, which involves an unusual technique not normally seen in lifting. You pick the stone up off the floor with a rounded back (‘sacrilege!’, a fitness instructor would cry!) and wrap your body around the stone in order to roll it up your chest before pressing it onto the platform.

The stones is usually the last event in a competition and can therefore decide the overall winner if places are close. So it behoves the professional strongman to get very good at this event!

Although height is a factor, as the platforms for the stones can be quite high, a number of the shorter strongmen have proved that you can still be competitive at this event if you work hard. Darren Sadler, the shortest guy in the competition, put in an incredible performance in the stones.
(Watch Darren do a 10-stone lifting demo in 2007 and you’ll see what I mean)

On the Saturday ‘Big Z’ Savickas came out on top, with Terry Hollands second and Darren Sadler, the shortest and lightest guy in the competition an impressive third. I’m told that Savickas and Hollands also came first and second respectively on the Sunday too.

It was a pity Laurence ‘Big Loz’ Shahlaei couldn’t be there as I’d have liked to see how he stacked up against Hollands – both British men are really in form at the moment. They will both be competing in Europe’s Strongest Man in London on 19th June though, so perhaps we’ll see a fine competition there!

I also spoke to Jimmy Marku about his training but he wasn’t giving anything away! As reigning UK’s Strongest Man, he’s clearly got game. And with Mark Felix getting yet another record under his capacious belt, things are looking good for British strength at the moment.

I also liked newcomer (to me, anyway) Stefan Solvi Petursson, an Icelandic strongman with a big personality who clearly has fun and communicates well with the crowd. He was one of the tallest strongmen and won the stones event with a lightening fast time.

All in all, this was a great event for strongman fans, getting up close and personal with the athletes, watching them compete at close quarters and seeing what quality we have in the British camp.

The sport of Strongman

One of the most interesting and exciting things about strongman for me, both in terms of competing and spectating, is the range of techniques and facets of strength and fitness that are employed. To be a winning strongman, there’s a lot you need to be good at. If you’ve got a monster deadlift but are weak overhead, you will suffer in the events. So it a real spur to work on your weaknesses.

When I spoke to Geoff Capes he commented that, “strength is only measured with the disciplines you give them to do and the guys are actually competing in the event. Change the event, change the disciplines, you’ll get a different result.”

Naturally, strongman is a punishing game. You’ve got to train the lifts in the gym and focus on getting stronger, but you’ve also got to practice your event technique. Although the equipment is more sophisticated these days (we don’t just hike into the forest and chop down a tree for the log press any more), it is still easy to bruise, bash, scrape and generally injure yourself as you train.

American strongman Kevin Nee, who had to pull out of the WSM Experience competition after a couple of events through injury, and has endured two bicep tears and a pec tear in his career so far, talked about the dangers of doing too much too soon:

“Some advice for those who are starting out in the sport, just don’t rush it too much, take your time, stick with it, stay dedicated and you will get stronger”.

There seems to be good camaraderie between the strongmen, who see each other regularly on the circuit. I saw a lot of big physiques and big lifts but didn’t see any big egos. Even Savickas, whom I assumed would be rather intimidating, was great fun to talk to and modest about his achievements.

Perhaps it is too easy to be humbled in this game. Of course you must have self belief and you must be dedicated to the goal. But it is a sensible strongman who refuses to entertain the hubris of an enormous ego.

More on this topic

WSM athlete profiles
Another review of the event by The 5th Stone blog

More from gubernatrix

Strength revelations: what I’ve learned from strongman
Lifting and carrying: are you getting enough?
Five secrets of more effective training

Photo: Cory M Grenier

There are different philosophies of what a training community looks like these days (perhaps there always have been). Aside from the commercial chain gym model, with which most of us are familiar, a few others emerge.

Shaolin Temple
There are gyms who proclaim the fact that they are private by design, that you can only train there if you can prove yourself in some way. What goes on inside is not to be revealed or only to be revealed in limited ways. A well known example is Gym Jones:

“Our culture, dedicated to The Art of Suffering, is both safety net and inspiration. Individuals push hard and risk more alongside trustworthy peers. To maintain this spirit we choose clients who resonate with it. Gym Jones is private, but not closed.”
- Mark Twight, Gym Jones

Locals only
There are other clubs or gyms which are private simply by dint of not publicising themselves and not being particularly interested in attracting new audiences. The logic goes that if people are interested enough, they’ll find them.

These tend to be gyms who are not on the information superhighway and prefer to foster their community locally, in person. Expertise is handed down from lifter to lifter, rather than being read in books or on the internet.

Hyper-connected
Then there is the model of putting it all out there, like the Crossfit affiliates who post pictures of every workout and the results of every training session. This may also encompass creating videos, articles, podcasts and other media detailing training methods, rules, advice and examples.

CrossFit is noteworthy for its use of a virtual community Internet model. The company says this de-centralized approach shares some common features with open source software projects and allows best practices to emerge from a variety of approaches
- CrossFit’s Wikipedia entry

And there are a whole load of organisations occupying places along the spectrum, or combining elements of each.

What kind of model do you prefer and why? What do you make of accusations of ‘elitism’ or ‘cult-ishness’? Does every training community have a duty to be inclusive? Should anyone even care what ethos a particular gym adopts?

All the fabulous photos by Helen Armstrong

Earlier this year I was approached by a young woman called Chantelle who had been lifting weights for a few years, loved it and now wanted to share her passion for lifting heavy things with other women.

Chantelle wanted to set up a series of weight training workshops for women only – and this is why:

“Like many of the women reading this, I train alone and have made very few friends in my weights room in all this time…I could say that my girl friends think I’m insane for lifting weights, or think that it’s not for them; that the guys in my gym think I’m a freak for lifting so don’t talk to me, or stare because I have bad form.  What’s missing from the analysis is what I’m doing and who I’m being….

I learnt almost everything I know from fantastic internet bloggers like Gubernatrix and Stumptuous, but have never passed any of this on, or given anything back.  I think I just worried about ridicule or rejection. Realising this made me decide to turn my passion for weights into action.”

You can read the full story in an article Chantelle wrote for the recent Women’s Strength Symposium called Turning passion into action. As you’ll see from the comments, this idea generated a lot of interest.

In the meantime, Chantelle got right on with organising two workshops and enlisted myself and personal trainer Ade Abudu to develop and teach the sessions.

The workshops are described below and I have also included some of the feedback we received. This is not to make us sound awesome (no, really) but to show that the concept and format really works.

I can safely say that a few of those brave souls who turned up were a bit sceptical, suspicious and otherwise unsure whether this was really what they wanted to be doing on a Sunday morning. But by the end, everyone was smiling!

Philosophy

Right from the start we knew we wanted to hold the workshop in the weights room itself. The idea was to help to demystify this space, break down the barriers (psychological, emotional, physical) preventing women from entering it and train on proper equipment.

Hiding away in a studio lifting plastic bars was not the plan!

We also wanted to hold the workshop in a normal, commercial gym – rather than a weightlifting club or Crossfit box – because we wanted people to be using the kind of equipment that they will find in their own gyms. Our workshops took place in LA Fitness.

We decided to teach the big, compound free weight exercises such as squat, deadlift, bench press and so on. We didn’t want to do ‘girly’ versions or avoid the ‘heavy’ equipment.

“I would never have been brave enough to try barbell lifts without this opportunity, and after this I was emboldened to go down to my local council leisure centre and ask if they have a squat rack.”

We wanted the atmosphere to be positive and enabling. We wanted participants to have fun but also to be pushed further than they would push themselves on their own. What better opportunity to challenge yourself when you have a supportive group of like-minded women around you?

“it was very non-confrontational and I didn’t feel that I was being tested or looked down on which made me more willing to really try things out”

We held two workshops, two weeks apart, and we encouraged people to come to both. In the end, for the second workshop we had a mix of those who had been to the first workshop and some who were newcomers.

Workshop content

In both workshops, we started the session in a studio so that we could all get to know each other and do a warm up together.

We also looked at squat technique to make sure that everyone was comfortable with the movement and had no major issues before we headed to the weights room.

I find that women generally have good movement, balance and better flexibility than a lot of men to start off with, so it is delightfully easy to teach movements like the squat! None of the participants failed to perform a decent bodyweight squat within twenty minutes, which was very impressive.

We then moved into the free weights area where we split up into smaller groups and worked on back and front squats, deadlift, bench and overhead press and inverted rows.

The weights area was being used by normal gym punters as well; we didn’t have the room to ourselves. This was both good and bad – the atmosphere was that of a normal gym day, but we did somewhat hog the equipment! Still, kinda funny when a bunch of women chuck the hapless bicep-curling bloke off the squat rack…

I’ve found in the past that the gym instructors I’ve worked with have been very reluctant to put weight on the bar (or even give me a barbell), even when I’ve clearly been perfectly capable of lifting more. In our workshop, despite the fact that most participants had never squatted with a barbell before, everyone worked up to lifting with a good deal more than just the bar.

At the end of the second workshop, we finished off with a group bench press session where everyone went for a personal best! This was great fun and ideal to try for a best when you have a group cheering you on.

“I really liked the bench press and being encouraged to try heavier weights. That Ade thought I could do more gave me the confidence to push myself harder.”

What particularly pleased me was the fact that people were willing to attempt a lift and fail! I have heard from many women that one of the things they are most nervous about is failing a lift in front of other people – and this used to be a big issue for me as well. In the workshop we made a point of getting people deliberately to ‘fail’ a squat just to feel what it is like (and to see the safety bars on the squat rack in action!). When it came to the bench press, people were so confident and ‘up for it’ that they really didn’t mind going for a heavy weight and not getting it. Knowing that they had pushed themselves to the limit was more rewarding.

It was fun, as you can see from the pictures. We didn’t force people to smile while heaving weights over their head!

Chantelle wanted to give people something to take away both as a reminder of the workshop and also as a spur to further action. So every participant got a free workout journal with a workout programme developed by Ade which covered all the exercises we had learned in the workshop. Chantelle also printed out an exercise technique handout so that participants had something to refer to when trying the movements on their own.

“Great instructors, good content, and great vibe from all participants”

I don’t know how many people went away from the workshop and started lifting immediately. I have been in touch with one or two whom I know are getting into their lifting with enthusiasm, which is fantastic. For others, the experience may work its magic in the background and may have a less tangible but still postive effect.

The aim was not to turn out an army of female powerlifters but to give women a positive experience of proper lifting and introduce an alternative to the ‘cardio bunny’ model that we are used to seeing in the gym.

“It was a really positive experience and I don’t honestly think I know of any way it could be improved, sorry!”

I personally was monumentally stoked to be part of this project. I came away from each workshop absolutely buzzing. It didn’t feel like teaching, it felt like training with a group of friends.

I plan to put on more of these in the near future so watch this space!

Gubernatrix shares her secrets (Photo: Kate Pankhurst)

Okay, they are not really secrets but the more accurate ‘five things that people generally don’t do but probably should’ doesn’t read so well as a blog post title.

There’s plenty of information about workout programmes: how to get a beach body, how to get a bigger chest, how to look like so-and-so actor.

But rarely do people talk about the catalysts that can jump-start progress again. That’s what I’m talking about in this article. There are more than five, of course, but I personally rate these five in particular and have benefitted from all of them.

Speed work

Speed work is training your lifts at lighter weights but moving fast and explosively.

Training your body to lift faster is a bit like fartlek training in running – you want to get used to different paces otherwise your body adapts to lifting at a particular tempo and finds it more difficult to change. For an athlete or all-round fitness trainee, being able to move or lift at a variety of tempos is very functional. For a strength athlete, training the muscles to fire faster will help you to lift heavier weights.

There are two main ways of doing speed work. You can do the official Westside method which is very effective, particularly for powerlifting (read more in this post). But you can also do a more informal style of speed work, where you simply use a lighter weight in the movement you want to train (around 50% of your max) and focus on moving the weight as fast as possible. Keep the reps low, using sets of one, two or three. High rep sets simply result in deterioration of form and general fatigue, which is not the training effect we are looking for in speed work.

Speed work is best applied to the big compound lifts such as squat, deadlift, good morning and so on. Do speed work at the beginning of your workout or in a separate session; you should be fresh, not pre-fatigued to get the best out of it.

More about speed work

Carrying stuff

I’ve written about the benefits of carrying heavy stuff around before and the more I do it, the more I become an advocate for it. I think it is an excellent finisher to any workout (or indeed a workout in itself).

As a strength trainee I find it includes aspects of my fitness that may not be properly covered in the ‘main’ workout – such as sustained cardio effort, grip, balance and core training.

You can carry any object, in front, by your side, overhead – each position has its own challenges. Moving with weight is a great way to cover many things in a short space of time, and very functional too.

More about carrying stuff

Heavy farmers walks (Photo: Emmie Bates)

Deload week

Due to the popularity of Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 programme, many people are discovering the benefits of the deload week. This is something that experienced powerlifters have been doing for a long time. I have failed to do it in the past – and regretted it!

A deload week is simply a lighter training week, around once every three or four weeks. You do the same key exercises that you would normally do but at lighter weights. ‘Lighter’ depends on the lifter, the programme and the goal, so it can be anything from 50 per cent to 75 per cent of maximum.

Taking a regular deload week helps to guard against the burn out that many of us suffer from, where we work very intensively through perhaps two or three cycles in the run up to an event, burn out afterwards and end up having to take too long off lifting.

It’s worth saying that although Wendler’s 5/3/1 stipulates very strictly that only 40-60 per cent weights should be used, this is a rule of the 5/3/1 programme, not of deload weeks generally. As a rule of thumb, the more advanced a lifter you are, the more you need a frequent deload week. For an experienced powerlifter, cutting right back every fourth week is a wise thing to do. However for someone relatively new to strength training or someone not close to their strength potential, a 50 per cent cut every fourth week is not necessary in my opinion. If you have a four-week cycle where you go up to 90 per cent or above in your third week, your fourth week can drop back to around 70 per cent. You will make progress more quickly while staying fresh.  It may be wise in this situation to take a 50 per cent deload week every eighth week or tenth week, rather than every fourth week.

Of course if you are actually following the 5/3/1 programme then do what the programme says. But if you are simply trying to apply the principles to your own training, be honest about what stage you are at and make choices that are appropriate to you.

Testing

Testing simply means checking to see if your programme is working. It sounds simple but most people simply don’t get round to it and it could save a lot of time.

Testing is particularly useful if you have passed the beginner/novice stage (where progress is pretty much guaranteed almost every session) and need to know whether your programme is working. Sometimes waiting for the final outcome, such as your performance at a particular event, is a bit late to find out!

For olympic lifters and powerlifters testing is easy as you can simply do a one rep max session on the main lifts (see Testing your one rep max).

At a recent workshop at Crossfit London, explaining how I test my squat max (Photo: Kate Pankhurst)

For those training for general strength and fitness a good option is to use a benchmark or regular workout.  Crossfitters often use ‘Fran’ (a full body workout involving squat presses and pull ups). There’s also the British army fitness test, which consists of running and bodyweight exercises so no equipment needed (here’s a version used by British Military Fitness). Or simply pick a favourite workout that you consider works all the aspects of fitness you want.

For those playing a team sport, I recommend deciding what ‘standards’ you think you need to reach for your sport. For example, if you squat as part of your strength regime, how good does your squat need to be? Do you need to be training to lift as much as you possibly can, or do you just need to get to a useful level for an athlete? Read this post for more about athlete fitness testing.

Don’t forget to do a test before you start your programme so that you have something to compare the programme with. And don’t test every week – give the programme a chance to work! Otherwise you are just testing the testing.

Recovery

Maybe its because I’m getting older (I’m now in my mid-thirties) but recovery seems to be as important as the training itself. Signs that your recovery may not be as good as it should be are: getting injuries, picking up colds and bugs, losing weight, feeling demotivated, not being able to fall asleep at night or wake up in the morning.

I’m not going to go through all the different recovery methods – that would be a whole post on its own (perhaps I should write that one too…). My point here is to make sure that you are monitoring your recovery and making space for it in your life. If you ignore it, you will suddenly find yourself not wanting to train and not really knowing why.

One useful tip is to make sure that your workout is something that you can recover from. In other words, design the training around the recovery that you have available. If, for example, you have very little time to sleep you are not going to be able to do a heavy lifting programme successfully.

Light workouts are easier to recover from than heavier workouts, so bodyweight exercises or kettlebells are ideal if time is limited. On the other hand, if you have a nice lazy Sunday available, a heavy deadlift session could be just the ticket as you can have a nice feed and a snooze afterwards!

Summary

Some of you will be jumping on these ideas immediately, to others it might all seem like a lot to think about when you are just getting your head around training at all.

If you are not sure which to prioritise, I would suggest that recovery and testing are the most universally applicable and are great habits to get into from an early stage if you can.

The other three suggestions of speed work, carrying and deloading are useful if you have been strength training for a while and want to broaden the scope of what you can achieve.

Have you tried any of these five ideas? Do you have any of your own?

It’s election fever here in the UK as we are about a week away from the closest fought general election for many years. The parties have been publishing their manifestos and I thought I would get in on the act. I’m not running for Parliament, but I want to make a difference in my own way.

What needs to change?

I am passionate about strength training and its benefits. I love all aspects of the activity: the competitive sport side, the physical and health improvements, personal empowerment and feeling good about myself.

But still, whenever I go into a gym where free weights are being trained, the clientele is almost entirely male and between the ages of 20 and 60. Because of this, the environment is often geared entirely around the needs of that group – perhaps unconsciously. This makes it harder for anyone who doesn’t belong to that group of people to feel that they belong or even to enter that environment in the first place.

There are some people who like things that way. They don’t want other types of people in the weight room. They don’t want that atmosphere diluted. It’s easy and comfortable for them; any change would be a challenge and they don’t want to have to deal with that.

I’ve been aware of this for years but I had pushed it to the back of my mind. I wanted to get on with my training and I thought that I just needed to accept the status quo and get on with it. There are people who will try to make you feel bad if you don’t do this.

But I have always felt uncomfortable behaving in this way, accepting bad behaviour and perpetuating a status quo that I know isn’t fair. The people who try to maintain these little exclusive enclaves think they are strong and special, but in fact they are weak because they cannot cope with any change, anything challenging, anything that is a bit different from themselves. They make no effort to understand people who are different from them, nor accept that they might actually have the same passions and aspirations.

It is perfectly possible to have an ethos in a gym that is inclusive of all types of people, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, disability, dietary requirements, favourite colour or preferred brand of breakfast cereal. Here are some of the values that I would hope any serious strength training gym held dear:

• Train hard
• Support each other
• Be passionate advocates for strength
• Inspire others

Are these values only available to able males between the ages of 27 and 43? I think not.

Why it is important

This is about busting open the old myth that a particular activity like strength training is only for one segment of the population.

When the consequences of engaging in this activity are so beneficial, it’s important to involve as many people as possible. Everyone should be able to learn how to lift free weights safely and well, everyone should be given the opportunity to build muscle and strength – and take it as far as they want to take it.

Strength training is important for everyone’s health, now and in the long term. We lose up to 10 per cent of our muscle mass every decade after the age of 25 – and this loss noticeably accelerates after the age of 60. Lifespans are increasing, so it is becoming even more important to make sure that we hang onto our muscle and do not spend many decades in a frail state of health. There is an unacknowledged public health issue that our government institutions haven’t yet got to grips with.

As far as sport, including elite sport, is concerned, there’s a huge pool of untapped talent out there. As a Londoner I’m excited about the opportunities that might arise from the 2012 Olympics, where there has been a great emphasis on the Olympic legacy as well as the Games themselves. But in the UK the state of strength sports is parlous. We’re simply not investing in, inspiring and building the talent of the future.

And perhaps the most important aspect of strength training is its effect on you as a person – as an individual, a member of a community and of a global society. Like many people I came to strength training for reasons relating to aesthetics and fitness, but found so much more than that! Inner strength, confidence, fun, healing, reward and a strong desire to help others experience the same. I really do believe that the world will be a better place if more people take up strength training. It’s not the only tool for personal empowerment, but it’s a pretty good one.

But there are still too many barriers, prejudices and misconceptions about strength training at every level of society.

What I’m going to do

Lately I’ve been getting involved in projects and activities designed to support and encourage more women to lift free weights, including the Ladies Who Lift workshop project.

It is something I initially shied away from, not wanting gubernatrix.co.uk to be seen as a website ‘for women’. But having made initial forays into this arena, I am more than ever convinced that there is a great need for support for women to get involved, break down barriers, educate and be educated and be able to empower themselves through strength training. Some pioneering souls are already heavily involved and I would like to join them.

This does not mean that gubernatrix.co.uk is going to become a women’s website. A lot of my women-specific work will be carried out under another title. I have always seen gubernatrix.co.uk as a website for everyone and I want to keep it that way. The future of this website is inclusive.

In acknowledging all of this, I don’t want the website to lose its passion for strength for strength’s sake.  Gubernatrix.co.uk ain’t a fluffy site for people who just want to dabble. It is for people who want to make a commitment to strength training because they see benefits for themselves and those around them. This is something that can bring people together, not split us up into different factions.

Gubernatrix.co.uk was always about putting out good information and raising standards, and we’ll still want to push boundaries and expectations. But the fact is that it is a whole lot easier for some people than others to access appropriate information, facilities and role models. Gubernatrix.co.uk will do its bit to change this, so watch this space.

I hope you guys will continue to read and comment on the site and help to shape it in the future, as you have done already!