Training at The PT Barn

I have written a few posts before about The PT Barn and Coach Scotty.  This is Scotty:

I first heard of The PT Barn on a training day there with the Mudd Queens, which you can read more about here.

After talking to Scotty about training I signed up for his body transformation course and my god was it tougher than I thought it would be but the results were amazing!  Here is the write up for that.

I then signed up again, and you can read about that here – must be a sucker for punishment but as hard as the sessions were the sense of achievement made it worth it.  And I’d recommended it to others too who’d signed up and I am sure would echo anything I said about the courses, training and coaching.

I was even crazy enough to sign up for one of his six hour bootcamps – one of the toughest days ever!  Don’t let me put you off though – have a read here and sign up for yourself!

I’ve said before one of the things I love about OCR is the people and the fact that there is always a helping hand or words of encouragement or a boost up a wall from an absolute stranger.  So the fact that there is such a variation in ability does not matter at all.  I always seemed to get partnered at the bootcamp with a guy called David.  David was like a speedy little spider monkey and would speed through everything from running to bear crawls to strength workouts.  I always felt terrible when he was partnered with me as we were at very different ends in terms of ability but we worked together and got it done and if i carried the sandbag uphill for 100 metres he might take it for twice that so we were both putting in equal effort.

I recently took part in the new Tough Mudder 5k at Stratford with The PT Barn and again there is a post and you can read more about that here but again it shows what it is all about – teamwork.

I’m not just doing this blog post to share previous posts, it’s a build up to give a bit of backstory as to how I got involved with training at The PT Barn.

My latest session was on Sunday and I signed up to a beginners OCR session.  Yes I have been doing OCR now for a while but I do it for fun and I just give it a go or I will be honest if here is a queue I don’t want to hold people up waiting for me so I let them go ahead or have before even opted to skip it and then feel gutted after.  Or if I feel intimidated (which is often) I might fumble something I’ve done before easily.  So whilst I do the events for fun it would be nice to do them for fun but do them well and I knew this session would take me back to basics and refocus.  So my training recently has been focused more on technique, homework exercises Scott set me to help with grip strength and trying to get more quality rather than quantity from my training, which is great as my best friend is a PT and we do these events together so I have her expertise and knowledge also, and the majority of my training is with her!

There were five of us on Sunday, plus coach Scotty and his better half Karen, who I am so so grateful to for filming parts of the day, always being there to give me a nod when I was about to have a wobble and to tell me she would slap me when I said I can’t do it.  (Don’t worry there were no Lisa’s hurt in the training as I did it all so no slaps needed.)  Being in a smaller group like this is amazing as there is so much focus on each of us and the support is brilliant – you start out as strangers and pretty soon in you are cheering each other on and clapping each others achievements.

I learned so much during that one day.  It was almost 6 hours and that amount of time doing OCR training with a lot of work on the hands is tiring.  You fatigue quickly but it was structured in such a clever way with a good warm up and moving from a specific technique to something else to allow for some recovery.  Scott says he will not be making any of us better in that one day but he breaks each obstacle down step by step that it makes the obstacles more achievable.  That coaching and knowledge is invaluable and is all about training smart! I read something recently and it was saying how it doesn’t matter how heavy you can lift, how quickly you can do something or how many times you can do it if it is with poor technique and these sessions really focus on getting the technique bang on.

We tackled rings, traverse rope, cargo net climb, high wall, low wall, spear throw, traverse wall with rings, slack lines and balancing, ropes, the weaver and the monkey bars.  And I did them all.  There were bits I was so nervous about and bits I’ve tried several times before and never got far but it all just clicked.  Although I did think we were doing the traverse rope hanging underneath but Scott explained this could be done under or over and without thinking he saw the look of fear on my face at the thought of balancing my body on top of the rope and moving along he then explained (with a smile) that we would be doing it on top.  I just laughed – poker face Lisa, remember your poker face when around Scott!  We didn’t have to do anything we didn’t want to but I felt like I had to face this, I am trying to face my fears lately and rather than take the easy way out give it a go and figure out what needs work.  After the recent Spartan weekend I did just this and made a note of obstacles I failed so I know I have from now until October to work on those before I tackle Spartan Beast.  Anyway back to the rope traverse, I mean this thing is roughly about six foot off the floor and when you lay on it it lowers a lot so you are probably 1.5/2 metres off the ground so not exactly high but when you are balancing on it it is high enough and it moves as you move and so with every movement I was telling him not to move away and to catch me if I fall.  I didn’t fall!  I did it.

I also swore a lot through the whole day.  I know I swear but really didn’t realise how much.  Although this was in a good way as I was so pleased and it was either swear with excitement or cry and then feel silly so swearing it was!

I came away absolutely buzzing.  I don’t have the most confidence and Scott knows me enough to know exactly what I can do and it was just bloody awesome. I’m never sure who is more pleased when training there if it’s me for accomplishing something or Scott watching me get there!

Last night I was sent a video of my time there on Sunday by Scott and Karen.  This was a total surprise to me and I am not too ashamed to say there may have been a little tear or two or three, more because of their kindness at taking the time to put this together for me.  I am my own worst critic and when other people believe in you there are two options – to think they are just being nice or believe them.  I usually think people are just being nice but I can see improvements myself from this video and it makes all the training so worthwhile and I am very grateful to these people for their help.  I’ve made a lot of friends through this OCR malarkey!

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So in short get involved!  Get down there and see what it is all about.  There is an open weekend at the end of April with pay and play on offer so you do what it says on the tin and turn up pay and go on whatever you want and Scott will be there if you want to ask questions.  I won’t be in the UK for that one so will miss it but I will be at the next one and the one after and the one after that.  Alternatively there are OCR classes, different levels of these sessions on offer, bootcamps and more.  All event details can be found here.

See you there!