MP Must See - Week 1!

It’s not all about training at MP!

Rest and relaxation are just as important. And since we’re all housebound for the time-being we thought we’d start a weekly “MP Must See” service! 

Each week one of our coaches will recommend a television watch that is in some way related to sport, training, exercise or fitness. It might be a documentary, fiction or perhaps a feature film based on a true story. We will include some classics, but will also showcase things that are a little less well known. Some weeks recommendations will be on free platforms like YouTube, other weeks on paid streaming sites like Netflix or Prime. 

We hope that this will alleviate some of the lockdown boredom and maybe even give you some inspiration for goals to train for once we’re all allowed back in the gym again! 

This week’s first recommendation is freely available on YouTube and is Paul Tierney: Running The Wainwrights.

Photo credit to: Pete Aylward

Following ultra runner Paul Tierney on an epic adventure to summit all 214 Alfred Wainwright Lake District peaks in one go. His goal - to try and beat the record time of 6 days 13 hours and 1 minute, set five years earlier by fellow fell runner Steve Birkinshaw. 

Needing to cover a distance of approximately 318 miles and ascend the equivalent height of four times Mt Everest, Paul knew this was his biggest challenge to date and enlisted the help of friends and family. 

Battling sleep deprivation and everything the Lake District weather could throw at him, what transpired was a story that gripped not only the fell-running and ultra-running communities but also the wider sporting world. 

Enjoy!

The MP Team

News | Meet Sam

I am really excited to be joining Macclesfield Performance. I am a strength and conditioning coach and a personal trainer.  I specialise in strength and conditioning for outdoor athletes – anyone who enjoys the great outdoors, either competitively or purely for fun. 

Although there can be some old-school thinking/reluctance around strength training in outdoor athlete communities, the bottom line is that if you’re a cyclist (road or MTB), climber, mountaineer, runner, triathlete, wild swimmer, skier, snowboarder or even paraglider, targeted, individualised strength training can make you faster, stronger and more injury-resistant. All of which mean that you can perform at a higher level, train more consistently and enjoy your sport more.  Strength can help you keep you racking up those great adventures for many years to come!

Having spent many years in a busy, stressful, time-poor (non-fitness) job I know how hard it is to keep fit and strong in and around the other pressures of life.  Because of this, I also provide personal training for anyone who would simply like to get stronger and fitter, but who might not know where to start or how to fit it into a busy life.  There is a lot of confusing information out there and sometimes we all just need someone who knows what they’re talking about to point us in the right direction.  

I have a life-long love of sport, exercise and the outdoors.  Previously a county- and university-level badminton player and coach, most of my 20s and 30s were focussed on outdoor sports, in particular climbing, cycling and winter sports.  I’ve been cycling (including competitively) for 30 years, climbing for 11 years and snowboarding for 20 years, and they’re just my 3 favourite ones!  

Although sport and exercise has always been central to my personal life, it hasn’t always been my professional life.  After originally starting a sport science degree at Glasgow University, my interests evolved a little, and I eventually gained a PhD in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from The University of Bristol, via a couple of stints living in Japan.  I worked for a number of years researching the molecular mechanisms behind cancer and other diseases, and later I moved into medical, scientific and health communications here in Macclesfield.

Multiple injuries over the years led me to explore and become passionate about focussed, science-based strength training, and I came to view strength as the absolute foundation for long-term athletic performance, injury resistance, recovery and health, both physical and mental.  Over time I decided to leave my career in science and communications to pursue a new career providing strength coaching and personal fitness training.  

It is my mission to provide highly personalised, evidence-driven training and coaching to athletes and non-athletes alike, blending my own athletic-, scientific-, life- and career-experience to help people meet their own sporting, health and life goals as efficiently, effectively and sustainably as possible.  

If you’d like to explore getting stronger, whatever your sport or motivation, please come and chat to me on the MP gym floor, or contact me via my website for more information.

I look forward to meeting you!  

Testimonial | Client Cristy

I have always fancied myself as a mountain biker and a bit of an adventurer. I have big dreams and love a challenge.  

When my friend coerced me into signing up for the Joberg2C, a 9 day 900km mountain bike race across South Africa, I had little hesitation in signing up. It was absolutely aligned with my dreams.

Fast forward a few months to September 2018. I had an impending sense of dread: “what I was thinking?”. I had been trying to follow an extremely complicated online training plan, with little improvement. My approach (just ride & ride) was not working, and… winter was coming! I was frustrated, unfit, overweight and totally overwhelmed. Self-doubt becomes a slippery-slope!

I had just started thinking that a cycling coach / trainer of sorts may be what I needed when I met Dom in her Cyclone class one Friday afternoon. I consider it a moment of divine intervention that our paths crossed and that I asked her if she knew of anyone who could help me to prepare for the event. That is how I ended up at Macclesfield Performance. At the risk of sounding dramatic, this was a turning point not only for my training, but emotionally and physically too.

It was very overwhelming for me (a “recreational cyclist”) to start a new training program with a completely different approach to anything that I had done before. I was strength training 2-3 times a week and following a bespoke cycling program that Natalie put together for me. The stress and chronic sense of failure I had endured while trying to follow the unmanageable online program disappeared as I started with their joined-up approach. They did the thinking and the planning, all I had to do was put in the time!

I was always dismissive about my status as a “Recreational Cyclist”, Dom and Nat made me feel like an “Elite” and were so committed to helping me smash my goals! Having this level of interest, care, support and, of course, challenge was something that I had not experienced before.

Encouragement for getting a squat right, or having a good Wattbike session, or improving on a Strava segment meant so much to me, at a time when I had been feeling so lost and low. Bit by bit, session by session, my strength, endurance and confidence grew. My countdown app to the event started to excite and no longer scare me.

In April I set off to South Africa to participate in the event. I was excited for it. I took a lot of confidence in the fact that my coaches were confident in me smashing it! Also, I had seen so much progress in my strength and endurance while on the program. Having cycled in snow, rain and mud (mostly on my own) I had built a good amount of mental resilience too. Somewhere along the way I started to believe in myself again.

The Joberg2C experience was incredible, and incredibly tough. Cyclists bikes and bodies take a massive hammering on the trails, some of which are very technical. 9 days and 65 odd hours in the saddle is significant, with little opportunity to recover in between. I was ready though. I can honestly say that I had been perfectly prepared for this kind of event!

Because of the strength training, I could keep form over hours on long smashing descents. Because of the bike sessions to specifically build endurance, I could get to the top of long climbs without my heart rate going out of control. Oh, there were plenty of them (a few days were in an area called “the valley of a 1000 hills”)!

I am deeply grateful to Dom and Nat for their help and thoughtful programming. I would never have managed this ambitious goal without them. As much as I loved the ride itself, it was the journey getting there that made it the so satisfying.