Resources All Community Journal Wellness

Gyms are reopening. For many of us, we haven’t had access to a fully-equipped training space for months, possibly even a year. Navigating the shift back to mixed environment training shouldn’t be taken lightly. Here we share our Back Under The Bar Toolkit - advice from female coaches, gym owners, and personal trainers, on what to consider as you start transitioning back to the gym. 

We spoke to 17-year old Emily Sweeney, an elite Olympic weightlifter. She has spent the last year working on Olympic lifting in her garage and continues to progress in her lifts. In the English Championships, held virtually in February, she hit an 80kg snatch and 100kg Clean and Jerk.

This month we read Sisterhood in Sports - an in-depth look at women and girls in sport, telling the stories of a variety of female athletes. Dr Joan Steidinger is a licensed clinical and sports psychologist and a former competitive ultrarunner.

At Blue Elvin it's International Women's Day every day of the week. While reflecting on the women who have shaped our journey, we started to think about reflection more broadly. This year we invite you to make space for reflection. We've created four 10 minute exercises for you do this week, each grounded in our training.

We sat down with Tamara Akcay, Coach at District Fitness and Mindset RX'd, to discuss daily journaling as a tool for mindset training. In this interview, we cover what journaling is, how we can build a daily practice, and how to apply it to our training.

Mindfulness is a state, one where we are grounded and more able to rationally converse with our negative thoughts. Meditation is a tool that can help us achieve this. As athletes mindfulness can help increase our chances of achieving a flow state, which is associated with higher levels of athletic performance.