Everyone needs to reflect.
In fact, those who don’t reflect, normally end up making the same mistakes, time and time again. Is the definition of insanity doing the same thing time and time again, but expecting a different outcome. Human beings need to learn, move, and improve.
I come from a dysfunctional family. My neurotic dutch mother was never able to overcome the psychological and physical damage that came with being a dutch girl in Nazi occupied Holland, my father , I discovered later in life, suffered from a mania that meant his mood could swing from euphoria to the deepest blackest depression.
Tragically, my brother inherited this “mania” and killed himself.
Marvellous
If it taught me one thing, its that you don’t have to be a victim of your upbringing. At any age you can decide what you want to do. You have to make some tough decisions, you may have to give stuff up, you may have to go without.
Worse stuff happened in Occupied Europe.
But it wasn’t all bad, My father was gifted clergyman, and from an early age I was given a unique perspective on the role that religion has in peoples lives, how it helps, damns, cures condemns and how thought processes can be manipulated and twisted to suit the intentions of an individual as a group.
I was taught to aspire and study. I was also taught how to smoke. It seemed to be the family trait. Other families have coat of arms. I got a pack of fags and a hatred of physical activity.
But to make a long story short, when I reached 37 I gave up what had escalated to a 100 day cigarette habit, stopped drinking so much, changed my life, became active, did martial arts, boxed, thai boxed ( and competed) did some body guarding, and ended up as a (part time) bouncer (see below for my security services) and brawled most weekend: I also qualified as a fitness instructor and became a surprisingly good swimming teacher at the age of 40 ( which amused many people as I was a non swimmer when I was 39) all whilst running a sort of respectable estate agency, book shop and a variety of community based organisations.
I think one thing that I had missed out on was a forgotten desire to do gymnastics. Now and then Id sign up for a gymnastic session, and every time be sold a low quality kinder garden version of the sport. I think this gymnastic desire is partially what led me to Crossfit. Anyway once I got my certification in Crossfit in 2005, it was heads down to spread the word in the UK and set up Crossfit London UK. In the early days we held skill masterclasses which developed into the i-course. This meant the few people scattered around the country who wanted to do Crossfit could come together and get some UK tuition.
What I brought To the Crossfit arena was the swimming teachers love for drills. Teaching football is easy. Get some kids, let them mill about a bit with a ball, Voila you have a game of football.
Take some kids, throw them in a pool, and voila you have a coroners inquest!
Swimming is, properly, taught through drills, Confidence building drills, getting in and out of a poll drills , floatation drills, the 1st kick drills. Swimming is based on the ability of the teacher to break things into manageable chunk, “put your foot here” “swivel there” “lower there”
According to other people I also bought humour, charm and an insane array of mad coaching cues to the sport: I also bought an annoying amount of ability to the UK fitness market. When Crossfit was initially reviewed by the Uk’s self proclaimed “fitness gurus” they confidently stated that no one could combine Olympic weightlifting, muscle ups, thrusters, kettlebells handstands etc in the way that Crossfit suggested. The implication being that only elite people could do this.
Well, at the age of 47, I could stand in front of an audience of young fit men and teach them how to olympic lift, kettlebell, muscle up, kip etc. Skills that Crossfit had taught me within a year. Crossfit had given me a skill set that I could only have dreamed of, and it has been my delight to pass these skills on, through drills, and to help develop a team of trainers who can deliver these skills to really high standards.
So I think I’ve made my big contribution: a focus on teaching method and an insistence that teaching is drill based.
You can email me at Andrew@crossfitlondonuk.com.
I’m basically an East London and city based personal trainer, based in Bethnal Green E2
ABOUT ME AS YOUR SECURITY ADVISOR:
My somewhat confidential life as a security advisor/consultant really began at university where i found myself unexpectedly in charge of the management of events involving all types of security reviews, from door staffing to collection and accounting for the money collected to returning and maintaining the property used for staging the event.
My appreciation of security and crucially its reliance on rock solid procedures which attempted to prevent issues rather than react to them, was consolidated by 3 years in a Clearing Bank. In these good old days the stuff you protected was real, real money, real documents. Stupidly I tackled a bank robber and had quite a dramatic chase through the streets of london: but he ran faster than my smoking habit allowed! but to this day, I like to see double check cash control systems and am constantly shocked by how often people object to their work being checked.
After this it was 17 years running a busy Estate and letting agency with the constant need to improve the security of money collection of rent, the safety of staff when on duty at reception, the safety issues involved him frequent home visits, and taking potential buyers /renters to view properties. Over the years we dealt with violent attacks against staff, theft and break ins. All the time learning and refining so it didn’t happen again.
During this time I became involved in a lot of business units set up as, or run by Quango’s. At this time cons against businesses were common place; everything from the letter from ” abroad” , to fraudsters claiming they could get you rate refunds and EU grants. So I set up and ran a ” conwatch” project and frequently set up strings to expose and assess the patterns the fraudsters use. We even hit the press with the Daily telegraph identifying some of the methods we had examined. i learned early on that the more people write about and expose cons, the less people fall for them.
Elsewhere I detail my growing interest in keeping fit and I found that my personal conversion from weakling to martial artist meant my interest in personal security and physical intervention grew. i was able to work with an organisation that promoted safety for school children and we got to assess and consult on issues as diverse as domestic violence and bullying. I also, too eagerly, jumped on “the door ” and joined a very “slap dash” close protection team. Still, it was a nice way to pass some of my midlife crisis.
As part of my door and close protection work my interest in self defence grew and grew. I was lucky enough to talk with the likes of Jamie O’keefe, and Geoff Thompson, and train with an amazing array of fighters, martial artists, close protection experts and those who focused on the events leading up to crimes.
During my later years I became very involved in contributing to my local neighbourhoods and frequently supported community partnerships with the police and private security organisations.
These days I teach self defence and protection, and crucially, I advise some of my corporate clients about basic security and lone working .
What has all taught me? Violence and crime rarely comes out of the blue.
If you are fighting or eye poking or kneeing people in the groin you have failed.
We all need to develop better predictive instincts and systems!
Me as your physical therapist.
So we are going to hook up and do all that hard work: we are going to run/sprint, lift weights, do gymnastics do pull ups, look at weight loss. muscle building stuff .Now you to recover.
So get this. You don’t get stronger lifting weights. You get stronger recovering from lifting weights ( or running/whatever). Sports massage accelerates this process . I do sports massage.
Let me get my hands on you, and drive my thumbs and elbows into those bits that need it!
