Another great training week at BARCH Richmond. Five steady days, five different ways to get just a little bit better. Happy Fit as a Fiddle Friday, friends. Let’s talk stress, recovery, and one of my favourite words, oscillation!
- Monday: Full-body Circuits (Will Taylor bossing you around on Monday morning!)
- Tuesday: Legs & Core
- Wednesday: 3-Way (upper-lower-core)
- Thursday: HYROX
- Friday: Target (Rachel Carr)
That’s the routine. A quiet, consistent drumbeat.
Friday: Target – A New Format
Today was a special one. One of our favourite trainers, Rachel Carr, rolled out a brand-new Target format. We hit all four cardio machines-rower, runner, skier, bike-and at each station ran the same ladder:
- 90 seconds on / 60 off
- 60 on / 60 off
- 60 on / 60 off
- 30 on / 60 off
Four sprints per machine. Sixteen total. By the end, my lungs had questions and my legs had complaints, but in that good “earn your breakfast” way.
Then came the finisher: an EMOM of
- dual hang cleans,
- weighted squats, and
- single-arm devil’s presses.
What is an EMOM?
Very simple, it’s gym speak for ‘every minute on the minute.’
What is a Devil’s Press?
A Devil’s Press is a charming little movement where you:
- Drop into a burpee,
- Pop up,
- Swing one or two dumbbells from the ground straight overhead in one fluid motion.
It’s basically the kettlebell swing’s angrier older brother. Great for power, great for conditioning, terrible for pretending you’re not tired.
Stress + Recovery: The Loehr & Lendl Lesson
All this structured stress reminded me of a conversation with a tennis mate from days gone by, Jim Loehr. Jim is an author, performance psychologist, and one of the great minds in sport and business productivity. Early in his career, Jim worked with Ivan Lendl, then the most dominant tennis player on the planet.
Loehr noticed something. Lendl didn’t just train hard. He stressed his system intelligently, then protected recovery as if it were oxygen. Lendl could go from the highest elevated heart rate after a long point, down to a ridiculously slow heart rate in a matter of seconds. Over the course of a long match, this meant Lendl had way more recovery than his opponents.
Jim shaped much of his coaching philosophy around that insight: cycles of deliberate stress followed by deep recovery. That pattern created champions. And honestly, it’s the only reason the rest of us mere mortals get through Rachel’s Target class.
I’ve often talked about how this same concept is so essential in all our capacities as we go through life: our social and emotional capacities, our mental capacities, our physical capacities, and our spiritual capacities. Stress, recover, oscillate!
As a bonus today, I trained beside BARCH legend, Marcus Wuest. The man does not waste a rep. He shows up, works, rests, repeats. I believe he was one of the first BARCH members, and he is truly a legend!
Short video snippet below, and here’s a fun photo from my first encounter with Jim Loehr.
