So as usual and as always…it looks like absolutely nothing is going on and as usual and as always you’d be half wrong…I say that because I never want to admit anyone else is right. Over the past couple of months I have been busy moving house for what I hope is the last time in a long time and settling into a new routine. I have still been investing a little time in the website but mainly it’s behind the scenes. Going forward though I hope that you’ll see that it will pay off in terms of content.
Why? Why? Why? I get asked this question a lot and I get asked it for lots of different reasons. I will tell you some of the ‘why’ questions and hopefully some answers.
Why do you bother with this fitness and training thing? Well in truth it’s because I have always been interested in it since I was 13 and started Orienteering and running cross country. I was a fat little kid and when I got involved in Orienteering and started training and getting coached I always wanted to know why I was doing what I was doing and that continued on through my own sporting career in its various guises and iterations and obviously through my professional career as a coach and trainer. So I have always studied and always asked questions and have always searched for answers. It has continued to the extent that even though my current career has taken me down a completely different path I am still studying in the field of sport, exercise and health science at university right now because I have always been interested in knowing why just for my own sake and have kept my finger in the pie at various universities as I still do to this day…because I just gots to know. I have always wanted to know why what works works. Sport Science as a field is really a study of the science of training history. Nothing happens the way it appears to happen….nothing is discovered in the lab and then is brought onto the sporting field. Coaches and trainers are always following their hunches and trying new things….some things work and some things don’t. When they work and work well….as usual and and always that information leaks out into the elite/professional via athletes moving teams/clubs or coaching staff doing the same and other people try it and modify it and improve it and eventually it becomes such common practice that some nerd in a university hears about it and takes it into a lab and studies it….sometimes well and sometimes poorly (that’s another story) and then eventually the results of that study get out into the general community and we hear about a scientific breakthrough and you see people in gyms doing it. That transition from elite sports practice to sports science to the community used to take decades but with the speed of information travel now it only takes years. I love being able to stick my nose in and getting to have a peak at what is going on in the lab as well as seeing what is happening on the field…it is a huge privilege. So based on past experience I am going to be interested in fitness, exercise and health until I die though the lack of one or all of those. Till then I will always want to share what I know.
Why are you bothering with a website? Good question. What I really want to try to with this website is just have a place to organise all my information. I think what I did during my career was pretty unique and I am proud of my body of work. I developed a template and a training system that was being applied to housewives looking to get back into shape after a baby, to professional athletes earning an income from competing in their sports of choice and Olympians competing at the highest level in multiple sporting disciplines and everyone in between. They were all training sometimes side by side and using exactly the same training template and the same training philosophy to achieve their own results. I think that’s unique. So I want to get this website to a place where I can share that template and philosophy with everyone and for it to be clear to see and understand….and if it isn’t…then I want to make it clear to see and to understand for everyone. So that is what this website is about.
Will Heffernan 