Training Review of 2022
And Plans for 2023
It’s hard to beat the clean slate that only the passing of an old year into a new one can bring. It brings a freshness and an opportunity to start over, set some new goals and look ahead with excitement to what is to come in the next calendar year. This doesn’t need to involve a life-altering change in direction, even the small shift in mindset that the new year brings can be enough to spur the next bit of motivation or creativity.
I’ve been a fan of setting goals for myself for a few years now. They add some accountability and direction to my actions, and while I tend to set goals for many aspects of life – work, travel, learning, this blog – the category I tend to care most about always ends up being sport and exercise.
Of course, setting goals is a pointless activity if you don’t occasionally spend a little time reviewing your progress towards each. So, as we roll into 2023, I thought I’d take a bit of time to reflect on how my year in training went. I don’t want this post to come across as a ‘look at me, look how much I’ve done’. It isn’t that at all. We are all (or at least all should be) on a constant journey to improving/ optimising our physical health My goals this year related to the stage of the journey that I was at the start of it. For some people they will seem outrageously straightforward, for others they would be entirely unachievable. We are all at different stages, what is important is progress.
This post may come across as a bit serious for a completely recreational athlete. The reality is that when you love training and love analysing things nearly as much, this is the result…
My year was sub-divided into three loose periods:
Jan-May – Running
May-Sept – Strength focused gym work/ GAA
Sept- Dec – Functional training/CrossFit
Running
In October 2021 I completed my first marathon at the Manchester Marathon. It was an amazing day that you can read more about here. The experience was such that I very quickly forgot about the pain and going into 2022 I had two marathons marked in the calendar in April and May that would make aerobic endurance training and running the centre of my focus over the first third of the year.
The races were the Lake Garda 42 at the start of April and the Belfast Marathon at the start of May.
I had run my first marathon in 3 hours 29. But I knew with added experience and a longer training block I would be able to significantly improve that time. My target for Lake Garda was a sub 3.15 marathon.
As mentioned, the length of this training block was significantly more optimal than for my first marathon, I had a solid fifteen-week prep over the seven that I had in 2021. I was also able to incorporate more speed sessions and longer runs as well as some training races. Namely a 10k and half marathon, both of which I was able to get new PBs at, which added some excitement to an otherwise long and tough block of work.
Ultimately, I finished the Lake Garda 42 in 3 hours 17. Two weeks out from the race I was the most aerobically fit that I have ever been and was quietly confident that I could achieve my goal time. But marathons are unforgiving, and unfortunately, I got unwell with an unnamed respiratory virus the week before the race. While the temperatures and fevers had subsided by race day, my lungs simply didn’t have enough time to recover to be able to break the target I had had in mind.
As I flew back to Manchester after a couple of glorious days drinking Birra Moretti straight from the source in a hot tub overlooking Lake Garda, I remember realising how much the experience had taught me about the process of goal setting. Before this, I believed any goal left unachieved was a failure. However, given how well I trained for this race, and the situations with my health prior to it, despite not hitting the goal I still felt proud of the achievement. The goal was the motivator, the drive to go out and run for hours, often alone, on cold dark nights when many other things were more appealing. But it was not the be-all and end-all. The experience of both the process (the training block) and the race itself mattered most.
Speaking of experiences, running Belfast Marathon was a pure bucket list activity that was never going to be about setting new PRs or goal times. Running through the streets of my home city with one of my best mates, with my own people including friends and family cheering me on the whole way was somethings I won’t forget.
Running gave me so many happy memories in 2022, and the best thing about it is that I know I have so much more potential that has yet to be realised.
Strength/Gym
After Belfast marathon at the start of May, I put the running shoes away for the most part and switched focus to gym work. The plan was clear:
3-4 months of dedicated bodybuilding-style gym work.
A switch towards CrossFit-style training following the move to Aus.
During both phases there would be a focus on gaining lean mass. The reasons for this are multiple. Firstly, I am naturally an extreme ectomorph – meaning that I’m very tall and thin. It has therefore always been difficult to make discernible gains in the gym. Gaining muscle was a priority not just to improve my performance in physical team-based sports, but also to just improve my overall health and prevent injury. There are few people in the world that wouldn’t benefit from increased lean mass due to its correlation with overall physical health. The problem is that – especially for me – it’s very hard to gain muscle naturally, but comparably easy to maintain once you have it. So, I had to put the work in – both in the gym and at the dinner table.
In terms of the gym work, I was hitting roughly 4 sessions a week. Usually with one compound lift per session accompanied by three super sets of accessory work.
I’ve never strictly counted calories for various reasons. Mainly because there is high risk of it becoming an obsessive habit. This said, I know that maintenance calories for me are roughly 3000. Since May, I have been adding at least one meal or high-calorie shake per day, aiming for a calorie intake of roughly 3500. I’ve been obviously trying to keep protein as high as possible, but other than that nothing has been out of bounds – it’s been great!
Since moving to Australia, I have moved to a functional style of training – namely CrossFit – and have been hitting sessions four to five days a week. I had done two months of CrossFit back at the end of 2021, but this has been my first time giving it a consistent go. I think I will probably dedicate a whole blog to CrossFit early in 2023, such is the strength of the positive impact it has had on my life, but I will just say here that it has pushed me on to a new level of physicality. If you’ve ever thought about giving it a go, don’t wait for me to tell you again, just do it!
If you follow me on insta, you might have seen a recent post of my quest to learn the bar muscle up (BMU) – if you showed me that video at the start of this year I’d have thought you were an extremely good video editor... Yet, the BMU is only one example of countless new skills I have learned since starting CrossFit. It really took me back to square one in a lot of ways and has made me appreciate the power of combining hard physical work with neuromuscular learning.
Looking back, the plan to train hard, eat lots and gain lean mass has been a huge success for the first time in my life. I have been going to the gym for years, and that foundation was an undoubtable help, but I stepped things up a level this year and it has really paid off. I am now the heaviest I have ever been at just over 85kg. I have gained at least 3kg of lean muscle over the course of the year and can safely say from a physique perspective I am in the best shape I have ever been.
Team-based Sport
This was the one area of relative disappointment this year. Being my final season with St Lawrence’s, for whom I had been playing Gaelic Football with for the previous seven years, I was sincerely hoping we could add to some of the success and progress that the club had enjoyed over that time.
Unfortunately, the squad just never got going. Momentum was absent and although we had a few enjoyable wins, there were too many disappointing defeats that outweighed them. Although my last game for the club was a resounding win against local rivals, I had to leave amid Championship, and we eventually were knocked out the week after I left.
While this was a disappointing year on the pitch, the lack of team sport and team dynamic and atmosphere that I had had recently has made me motivated to prioritise this in 2023.
Plans for 2023 and Concluding Thoughts
Firstly, if you’ve made it this far, you’re a legend and I wish you every success with whatever your ambitions are going into the new year.
My priorities this year are for new experiences while continuing to build on the gains made this year. My main training/fitness related goals are:
To join an AFL team and play a season of footy while here in Australia
Compete in the CrossFit Open
Run an ultramarathon
Become a competent surfer
I’m pumped to make strides towards these goals because of their diversity and extent to which I know they will challenge me.
My year in 2022 was far from extraordinary, but I did make some very solid gains and achieve some things that I am very proud of. Within the confines of full-time work and uprooting my life to the other side of the world, I was able to stay incredibly consistent with my training. This is the single attribute that will take you further with your fitness than any other.
If 2022 wasn’t your best year, that’s fine. It’s done now and it’s time to get going again for 2023.
Keep showing up and you will get to where you want to be, it is that simple.
Getting fit isn’t a choice, being fit is mindset and a way of life.