Heidi Strickland-Clark

So, this weekend I am on another two day course (yes, I have been a bit of a course whore this month, but it’s nearly over now!). This coming weekend sees Phil Richards coming to Bracknell from Swansea which is fantastic for us as it saves on hotel and travel expenses! (Sorry the rest of you who are traveling across the country to see him.)

For those of you are mumbling ‘Phil who?’ Phil has worked with, and consulted for the best in premiership rugby, premiership soccer, super league, county cricket, boxing, cage fighting, athletics, weight lifting, strongman, golf, swimming and triathlon.  All at the highest level of professional sport. He has also studied with many of the world’s leading doctors on hormones, nutrition, cell microscopy and healthcare.

The Anabolic Drive course is set to be a industry leading. It’s taken him over a year to pull all the information together for this two day explosion of information. When you attend one of Phil’s courses, you get more information than you can handle. His passion for his subject is infectious, his knack for retaining the information, quoting books and authors off the cuff and coming up with the most outrageous one-liners is compelling. I always leave his courses on a high, he brings you down with all the crap and mis-information we’ve been told first of all, but then builds you up to a peak of information that you can’t wait to share and try!

I’ll report in next week with a follow up on his two days. But for now rest in the knowledge that I may just become a bit obsessed with all the information I am going to get this weekend. I love it! My brain loves it! Can’t wait! 🙂

This Saturday I was at the Natural Food Finder Conference in Lambourn in Berkshire. It was held at a fantastic venue called Sheepdrove Eco Conference Centre . It was perfect for the day as it was in the middle of the gently rolling Berkshire hills, hosted in the beautiful conference building and lunch was made from organic produce from the farm.

I was already looking forward to this day. I’d seen the speaker line up and was hooked as soon as I saw Malcolm Kendrick’s name. He wrote a book called ‘The Great Cholesterol Con’ which I read earlier this year and loved. It’s a health book, but it’s funny. His spin and humour on the controversial matter of heart disease and cholesterol are to the point and filled with research and back up.

Anyway back to the day. The line up of speakers was exciting.

Ben Pratt – Founder of Natural Food Finder and Author of Nutritions Playground

Malcolm Kendrick – Scottish doctor, talking very openly about the rubbish information we are subjected to regarding the links between heart disease and cholesterol. There are none.  Brilliant!

Sir Julian Rose – an advocate and exponent of organic farming, locally sourced foods and raw milk.

Peter Kindersley — owner of Sheepdrove Conference Centre and Farm. Very passionate about his farm and what he has achieved and rightly so.

Dr John Briffa — a GP who spoke sense on nutrition and health. He spoke so fast he must have delivered a 90 minute presentation in 60 minutes! He was funny, demanded audience participation and told you quite clearly what he thought!

Joanna Blythman — a food journalist who gave us 20 top tips for food buying and sourcing.

All the speakers spoke with passion about their area. The audience were rapt and generous in their appreciation of each of them. It’s a nice feeling to be in an environment when everyone there has the same ideals.

You know when you’re in a good place when you don’t want the day to end, when you haven’t started to drift off to sleep in the post lunch presentation and when the Q&A at the end is cut short and you get disappointed! That was me.

You also know you believe in the Law of Attraction when you win the first prize of a great hamper because you sat there saying, ‘I’m going to win, I’m going to win’ over and over as they pulled the ticket… to say I had the best day for a long time is not an understatement. I loved it. It made me completely rethink a lot of things, and I don’t think I’ve found my true niche yet! I’m getting close to it, but not quite there yet! Fantastic event and will be back next year.

As many of you know I am about to embark on a 3 year Diploma in Nutritional Therapy. The past year has been spent completing and passing a Science Access course at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in Richmond. Now the real work starts in October with weekend lectures and lots of homework….

Anyway in preparation for what we will be doing, we are invited in to be guinea pigs for the year 2 students. You’re treated the same as a fee paying client and recommendations are made at the end of the hours consultation, however the person conducting the session is videoed so her peers can watch in and she is also observed in the room by a tutor who does nothing but write notes!

I was late. This wasn’t a good start. I really, really hate being late. Ask any of my classes, I start bang on time and finish on the dot. I don’t like keeping people waiting. So I was frustrated that my journey hadn’t gone to plan.

She was so nervous. Shaky in hands and voice nervous. I felt so sorry for her. The main part of the consultation is to go through a completed food diary and questionnaire that I’d sent in a week ago. I think she’d hoped to get someone who ate Pop-Tarts for breakfast and microwave meals for dinner, with snacks of Monster Munch and Mars bars inbetween. Despite the fact that the 3 days food diary had been out of the ordinary for me, they were still in fairly good shape and I think she found it a bit tricky to pull enough stuff together to give me some good feedback for the purposes of her assessment.

She asked me to a quick test for zinc deficiency. I had to swish some water in my mouth which she put some other liquid (zinc sulphate) in and then swallow it. The time delay and the taste you experience, if any, determines your deficiency or not of zinc. (I’ve just read what and how this works on-line, this bit wasn’t explained too well). Apparently I am moderately deficient.

In summary she suggested I took some pre-biotics and some fish oil and do some relaxing activities ( I don’t do much of that) like meditation…oh lord I now need to do this for the next month and report back ! I did have to admit at one point to agreeing that her suggestion was worthwhile, but in reality it wasn’t going to happen! I didn’t want to make her life too difficult as it will be me next year writing this blog from the otherside!

I’ll be back with her in a month to see how I’ve got on! I’ll keep you posted!

Right, no time for relaxing. Got Fit Camp tonight, shopping and preparation for my next weekend day of exciting stuff. The Natural Food Finder Nutrition & Health Conference awaits … I’m like a kid before Christmas! I love this stuff!

Massage has both therapeutic and remedial benefits. How many people actually take time out for themselves to relax? Watching TV isn’t relaxing, going out and partaking in sport isn’t relaxing. It may be a change of activity or scene which can be a release but it isn’t allowing the parasympathetic side of your nervous system to rejuvenate and repair.

A regular massage can help with this. I am a mobile therapist so this gives you even greater benefits. You don’t need to have the stress of  traveling home after your treatment, or arranging for someone to look after the children so you can leave the house and for many being in their own home allows them to be more at ease.

Treatments last between 30 minutes and an hour.

I treat men, women and children of any age:

• elderly clients who find moving difficult benefit from the regular treatments.
• teenage children suffering with exam stress
• office workers with upper body tension from being desk or car bound
• young mothers coping with babies or toddlers
• sport and fitness people with overused muscles

This week I’ve treated a body building champion, a stressed office worker, an 85 year old pensioner and a fitness instructor. All welcome!

If  you’d like to know more or to book a treatment, please contact me to arrange a suitable time.

I’ve heard two stories this week involving medical intervention that have been alarming and sad all at the same time.

I read today about a  woman who was going for a routine cortisone injection into her neck/shoulder. She’s been having it for years. This time they accidentally injected into an artery and caused an aneurism and haemorrhage. She is now in ICU and not yet in a stable condition. No one knows how well she’ll recover.

Another story of a woman in her early 30s who was overweight and needed to have her gall bladder removed. Given that the gall bladder is fairly important in your digestion, I’d want to change my habits and avoid an operation so I could keep mine.

Why do we feel compelled to follow medical intervention rather than thinking, ‘why am I not working properly? what do I need to do to fix it?’

I realise that it’s not always black and white. But the body is an amazing machine, feed it right, move it properly and regularly, give it rest and fun and it will function optimally. That’s what it wants to do! 🙂

So, I survived a pretty long two day kettlebell course at The Chelsea Club, a very prestigious gym in the grounds of Stamford Bridge football stadium.

The Kettlebell Academy, owned and delivered by Ramon English, produced an excellent course that not only broke down each basic move but also detailed how to correct, common faults, work with common problems that clients present with and how to use the kettlebell in the rehabilitation programing.

The first day was a level 1 course.  There were about 11 of us, day 2 was a separate course, level 2, 🙂 and 5 of us carried over into this second day. Day two introduced the power moves and once again showed how to break down and build confidence in clients by giving them good technique from the beginning.

We had an assessment on day 1 (unexpected! — must read pre-course notes properly in future!) and we had to complete a series of kettlebell swings and  Turkish Get Ups. Results later this week!!

Day two saw us discussing more than just kettlebells. From nutrition to pea protein, to metabolic typing to NLP, to 4 months off work (nice eh?) and time management. Ramon has a lot to say on these subjects and more, I could have skipped the kettlebells and listened longer, but that doesn’t make you better! So on we went and managed to make progress with cleans, clean and jerks and military presses (I liked those).

Assessment for day 2 is to be videoed so I have some work to do!

All in all a great weekend. Meeting like minded people wanting to improve themselves is always inspiring and being on the other end of fitness instruction makes a nice change too!

The tag line? “you haven’t trained.. until you’ve swung a bell!TM”
given that I have that pleasant, post exercise ache, I can agree. Off now to swing that bell!

Welcome to my web page and blog! I’ll update you with interesting health related tidbits, tasty healthy recipes, offers on treatments and answer any questions you may have.

If there is something you want answered, then please drop me a line and I’ll try to cover it in a future blog item.

To your good health!

Heidi