New Year...

My first post on this blog and first of the year.

In a retrospective look on 2009, I have recovered from two badly herniated lumbar discs and a twisted sacrum. This is an injury from 2008 when I last went snowboarding, took a bad fall and was laid out for a week. Two weeks later thought it would be a good idea to do some heavy deadlifts, it was not. Anyway through a very good chiropractor I made a speedy recovery and by July started training hard again. Gained 10kg in bodyweight and made leaps and bounds in Olympic lifting technique and strength.

Lots of other things have happened, college finished, jobs came and went, love was lost, friends were made. Mistakes were made and situations taken advantage of. Far too many things to really give a full picture but needless to say I learnt a lot and am hopefully better off for it all. I usually land on my feet but have been walking over very rough ground since moving here.

So I begin this new year afresh. I am moving from Edinburgh which has been my home for the past 18 months, back to Basel, Switzerland. Yes the land of chocolate, cheese and banks. It is very nice there, not really much in the way of weightlifting but I will get by with whatever I can find. There is the uni gym, a bodybuilding gym that has an Eleiko set and a Crossfit gym. If it comes down to it I will just get some money together and buy myself a decent set and set up in my flat or something.

I am not making new years resolutions, rather goals. Goals that are actually achievable. I don't expect compete at a British national level, though it could be possible by the end of the year if I make exceptionally good progress and total over 240kg before October. I do, however, expect to make consistent progress and based on the progress I have made in the past six months I am going to set goals that I think I can reasonably achieve.

My goals are, listed to the right for the more astute, but will be put here anyway:

- Compete in a competition in the 85kg weight class, snatching over 80kg, C&J something over 100kg

- Once that is done. Make a 70s Big inspired effort to move up a weight class. At my height, just under 6 foot, I could easily do with more weight and that would aid in getting stronger and why would I be weightlifting if I didn't want to be stronger.

- From there snatch over 100kg and C&J over 130kg

- As a side note I would obviously have to increase all other lifts considerably to get to that level of strength. Though I have not figured out by exactly how much yet. A possibly future post may hypothesise this.

Those are my training related goals. My personal goals go something along the lines of, make tons of money in Basel, train hard, play lots, get back into actually doing some music and theatre, socialise, engage in anything that will bring any self-improvement and happiness and generally make my life better, happier, more productive...etc...

I wish everyone the best and I hope that this year is a vast improvement on the last one!