Fitness Competition! PTS at the Kents Hill Rumble 16th Aug 2015

So on Sunday 16th August 2015 the PTS crew of Kerry Gowen, Leanne Clifford, James Lee and myself (Ali Wilson) headed to Kents Hill in Milton Keynes for the Rumble Fitness Competition which had the subtitle and theme of ‘Feudal Japan’!

Organised by Dave Peters and his crew from the Energise Mud Runners, this was their second Rumble Fitness Competition. Kerry and Leanne had competed in the first one earlier in the year and had come second (it’s a same sex pairs team event) and had reported back two main findings: 1) It was awesome fun and that I should have a go and 2) It fucked them up proper for a few days! Now these girls have pretty good fitness (as in, ridiculous levels) and are pretty robust, so them talking about getting fucked up sounds like fun! I put a shout out for a fit man to join me for a weekend of fun away in Milton Keynes and James answered the call!

So the theme of Feudal Japan brings the logical question ‘What the fuck does that mean?’, well Dave and crew themed not just the day with decorations and appropriate music and also little swords as trophies (seriously cool!) but also all the events were done in such a way to inspire a feeling of the old Japanese lifestyle. I have to say, what these guys have done with the most basic commercial studio gym equipment was just brilliant, serious levels of thought, effort and innovation went into the day and it was fantastic!

This weekend in general was a bit of hardcore one, as I had competed in the English Powerlifting National Championships the night before (as in I finished my deadlifts at about 9.15pm Saturday night!) and then registration for this competition was 8am the next morning! But to be honest the powerlifting went fine, no problems and injuries, in fact I felt fresh as a daisy! But before you think I’m a hero let me draw your attention to Kerry (who hates attention hahahahahaaaaa) who completed the 18km Dirty Dozen Obstacle Race the day before, came 3rd in her category and qualified for the OCR World Championships later in the year! So yeah, fitness is Kerry’s middle name! James was also going for hardcore points, by drinking heavily the night before at the rugby in Twickenham. But fair play to him, he was there bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning!

The first event was an obstacle and agility course. The room was turned into a nice lap of balance, hopping, diving, jumping, weaving and sprinting, all very ninja like! The format was simply partners take turns to complete laps. I have to say, I fucking loved this! It was an absolute blast trying to sprint this lap as fast as possible, although I quickly learnt that attempting to slide under a beam on a waxed leg causes knee burns very quickly!

Event two was on paper an absolute fucking nightmare, so when it turned out to be even worse in reality you can imagine the fun that was had! This event was alternating front squats (boys had 30kg, girls had 20kg) for ten reps and then what was known as a ‘leg drag’. Put yourself in a push up position with your feet on a laminated piece of paper and then drag your feet by using your arms up, round a cone and back again. One partner squats, then the other sprints off and does the leg drags, swapping exercises every 5 minutes. This was utterly horrible. I think this would have been horrific no matter what, but I went into this with my right elbow ulna joint sprained, and it was just horrid! My right arm very, very quickly became fatigued, every muscle just screaming and getting pumped to what felt like twice the size. Although James, Kerry and Leanne also found this hard, they made it look easy compared to the flopping around I did! Imagine my surprise when I discovered that me and James won this event! But true to being a PTS body we all managed the volume of squats with relative ease, which held us all in good stead. Several days later though that same volume is making me wish to amputate my legs!

Event three was the ‘weaponry’ round. We were intrigued. Was it a fight to the death? I felt the odds were in my favour if that was the case, but instead it was a simulated use of a bow and arrow and also a spear, using light barbells. Again partners alternating rounds, with a lovely sprint around the hall before picking up your weapon. This round ‘looked’ not very challenging, but the changeovers were fast, the sprints were fast and the weapon drills were also fast, so quite quickly you arrived at Fucked City! This was also tricky to get the timing of the movements to do it as quickly as possible, so once more hats off to the guys who thought this up as it was far more challenging than it would first appear!

Event four was the first of two individual events, where points counted towards the team totals but also went towards an individual title! I was excited by this and wanted to have a good go at taking on James, as we’re both competitive dickheads who don’t like losing! The event itself was simple; everybody line up against a wall, sprint to the other side of the hall, jump over a barrier and then duck underneath it sprinting back to the original wall. The problem here… the barrier was a little bundle of twigs, balanced on little nails, and if you knocked it off you had to put it back in place before continuing. The last person back was eliminated each round. I hate those fucking twigs! I must of knocked them off about four times, and I got lucky a few times as so did other people, but as I was also pacing myself to get to the later rounds of this, when I knocked it off again around about halfway through I was alone.. and therefore out! Annoyed as I didn’t feel fatigued yet, but that serves me right for being clumsy! However James came through and won this event, which would have probably felt like death having to do this sort of shuttle sprint around 20 times in a row!

Event five was possibly one of the most rage inducing things I have ever endured. This was an interesting concept, one I thought would be a bit impractical, but once again the lads came through and this event actually worked very well! There were two exercises; one partner would hold weights out to the sides with their arms locked whilst the other carried buckets of weights (15kg each hand for the boys and 10kg each hand for the girls) with lovely fat handles over a balance beam, and you had to do four lengths of the beam before swapping exercises. Now this balance beam was really narrow, and it was quite unstable, AND it was on some mats that you weren’t allowed to touch, you couldn’t just step on the beam, you had to reach with your foot to get over the first bit of mat, which meant testing out the beam couldn’t really be done… OH MY FUCKING GOD I GOT ANGRY AT THIS. James went first on the balance beam and made it look easy, he just casually walked over it and then it was my turn…. I tried to get a foot on it and just kept falling off after one step. The problem was because I was unsure I was going at it like a pussy, with tentative steps. Every time I fell off the rage was increasing, to the point I had to walk off for a bit before I set the building on fire. When I came back to the buckets I was still seething with rage and I just grabbed the buckets and charged… and got over it with ease. For fuck’s sake! So that was it then, just run at the fucking cunt and leap like you’re a scaffolding action hero! Once I got this down I quite enjoyed myself, only to have an unusual thing to get tired…. Not my grip or shoulders like everyone else in this event but my quads started cramping really bad! Like they were playing the drums! After the event had finished they were twitching away like a psycho’s eyelids! When I watched Kerry and Leanne do this event the difference in their levels of calm was apparent, they just methodically kept working away in a nice rhythm, although most amusing was Kerry’s little dance while she was doing the isometric holds, needs some different style music, bangles and hula skirts!

Event six was one I looked forward to in theory, we had nick named this ‘shopping’. Load a bunch of items into a tyre, drag the tyre, unload the tyre, carry the empty back to the start and begin once more. Lots of running back and forth, which I love (no sarcasm), but then horror struck… When I first started dragging back the tyre my abs cramped like nothing I’ve felt before! My ab muscles actually felt like they were trying to leave my stomach, they were poking out like rocks and it was incredibly painful! This didn’t ease off for the whole 20 minute round, which was pretty fucking awful. It made me overheat and I had to go all ‘crossfit’ and take off my top, which got me much deserved mockery! But apart from the awful dragging, we chugged away and quite quickly, without actual communication, settled into a good pattern of running and resting, which when we finished we then relayed to the girls for them to repeat. Tactical instructions! If you can get a strategy from the start that is clear then you can benefit from it straight away, with all your effort going into putting the plan into full speed, rather spending energy guessing. One of the reasons I enjoy competitions like this is implementing and carrying out sound tactics at full speed!

The seventh and final event was another individual event. When I found out what it was I was seriously fucked off. Bear crawls. Fuck. Now I’m quite a big advocate of bear crawls, I make people do them very regularly at the PTS gym as I feel they can build good agility and conditioning when ‘out of position’, but with my stupid elbow sprain I knew this was going to be at best very, very tough. It was single elimination again, bear crawl to the wall and back again. Well I gave it a go! …And was the first person eliminated. Annoyed! James was also not enjoying it very much, I think he made it about half way through the pack. But Kerry managed to get fourth in this event, which meant she had to do about 14 bear crawl sprints to get that far! And the final race between the last two lads was epic, with both guys falling a few feet from the wall but only one managed to get back up! Exciting stuff!

So at the end of the day myself and James came 2nd in the men’s team category, which is ok but of course we wanted to win! But Kerry and Leanne came 1st in the women’s team category, with Kerry also coming 2nd in the ladies individual contest, and just to show the girl’s power and fitness they also scored 2 more points overall than us PTS lads! So there you go, PTS girls really do rock! I have no problem getting beaten by PTS girls, just makes me proud!

I have to say again that I had an awesome day, and the organizers have already given the date of their next competition which is on Sunday 29th November 2015, the Kents Hill Rumble – The Order Of Knights, so who knows what fun they’re going to come up with for that! But I can’t wait!

This fitness competition was part of out head shave charity raising mission for Cancer Research UK, if you would like to donate you can do so at www.justgiving.com/FayeAndAliShaveTheirHeads