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Perseverance & Performance, 16 Tottenham Parade, West Footscray (2026)

04/06/2025

has done it again and surpassed my best efforts at the rope hang challenge this time!

This grip challenge involved hanging from a vertical thick rope which is an entirely different beast to handle compared to hanging off a bar.

There are two categories of muscles that control your grip: your intrinsic and extrinsic muscles. The former are the muscles within your hand and the latter are the muscles on your forearm that attach to your wrist and fingers.

When you hang off a bar or hold a barbell in your hand your fingers hook around the bar however, your intrinsic muscles including your thumb aren’t working very particularly hard (unless you go for a thick bar). Even then your thumb isn’t being forced to work hard because you can easily move your thumb over the bar into a thumbless grip.

When you hang from a vertical bar such as a towel or a rope you are forced to use both your intrinsic and extrinsic muscle grips including your thumb! It would be actually be impossible to not use your thumb in this case.

This means all your gripping muscles are being thoroughly challenged providing a stimulus for a vice like grip.

This has great transfer to martial arts especially grappling as when you grab gi’s or wrists it’s essentially demanding the same as the towel/rope hang.

An elite goal would be 120s with two hands and 60s on one hand.

Give it a go and comment how long you get!

07/01/2024

It was great to have most of the P&P crew with their families come together for a picnic at the park to celebrate the New Year!

It’s wonderful to see the community being built under the Perseverance & Performance banner and I’m looking forward to another year of helping everyone improve their physical and mental health!

11/10/2023

Farmers Walk Challenge

This simple exercise is one of the most functional movements you can do. If you’re not doing some variation of farmers walk, incorporating it will help your day-to-day life by a good notch.

If you think about it, moving objects from one place to another has been an integral ability of humans since humans have been alive. In today’s age how often do you need to carry groceries, move around furniture, carrying luggage or even move someone else such as kids or even your pets!

The farmers carries work every muscle in your body as your entire body needs to have a certain amount of stiffness to maintain good posture as you are carrying an external load bearing more weight on your skeletal structure.

The stability required is trained in a subtle manner. Every step you take there is a brief moment where you are only standing on one leg. If your body was not stabilising adequately, you would laterally flex your body but by maintaining an upright posture you get to work your stability with every step.

At P&P, we held a farmers walk challenge where the goal was to get as close to carrying double your bodyweight for a lap down the gym. All you’d need to do is divide the weight your carried by your own bodyweight for a ratio.

, was the winner for this challenge so huge shoutout to how much stronger you have gotten since you started!

To incorporate farmers carries into your routine, simply choose any variation and perform 2-5 sets of 10s-60s at the end of your training session.

14/08/2023

The use of grip strength as a health biomarker has been widely researched and documented for older adults.

The reason is because hand grip strength has been associated with many health markers for current and future status of individuals such as:

-       General overall strength
-       Bone mineral density
-       Fractures and falls risk
-       Nutritional status
-       Disease status
-       Comorbidity load (the presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions)
-       Cognition
-       Depression
-       Sleep
-       Hospital-related variables
-       All-cause mortality

Just because these studies are about older adults over 65 years of age doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to you if you’re younger.

The older we get the more difficult it is to increase our fitness. It’s not impossible but it’s much easier to build as much strength when we’re younger and to maintain it as we get older and inevitably have a decline in our strength and muscle mass.

It’s smarter to build a strong foundation and pre-emptively mitigate our risks rather than wait until a problem appears before taking action.

In kilograms the minimum cut-off range of strength for men and women were 37kg and 21kg respectively.

During the month of July, at P&P a hanging challenge was announced with participants asked to hang from a bar for as long as possible.

Hanging is a fantastic exercise to build grip strength but also many other benefits such as shoulder health, spinal decompression and muscular strength.

A good standard to aim for is at least 60+ seconds in a hang. At that point, I would start integrating one-arm hangs into the mix to further increase your grip strength. This can be done incrementally but simply releasing individual fingers from the support hand.

Just by hanging, you are automatically carrying half your bodyweight in each hand and when you move towards one-arm hangs it is your entire bodyweight.

This means most adults would achieve and easily surpass the minimum hand grip strength standards outlined prior.

become the gyms crowning champion in the hang challenge.

Congratulations to Daniella for her mighty effort!

25/07/2023

Paulie came to me with a history of lower back pain from deadlifts which was unfortunate because he loves doing them!

Upon seeing his deadlift form it was clear to see his lower back was dominating the lift with the glutes and midsection relatively dormant.

Lifting is simple and a lot of people do it very efficiently. Meaning they get the job done by any means necessary.

To lift effectively to target the right muscle groups, for strength and longevity is another animal.

There are many subtleties to performing the deadlift and what we did was start at a moderate weight and focused on breathing, bracing, positioning, cues and lots of practice.

We started deadlifting once a week but found the technique wasn’t sticking and old habits crept back in.

Instead we started deadlifting 3x a week incrementally increasing weight (from 60kg) session after session. This allowed Paulie time to hone his technique and more importantly make it stick.

Most people in this situation would rush to a weight that felt heavy and inevitably their form would compensate back to their old ways.

Patience is a virtue as Paulie now just knocked out 5 clean reps at 120kg and the best part is that he has no lower back pain and he is doing what he loves.

If you want to be able to perform better than ever, pain free contact me via direct message or my website.

04/04/2023

Shoutout to Andrew who has been consistent with his training for just a little over a year achieving mindboggling results!

Deadlifting 160kgs for 5 repetitions at a bodyweight of 67kg!

If we were to calculate his estimated one-rep max by the above performance Andrew theoretically could’ve hit 180kg for one-rep which would equate to a 2.68x bodyweight deadlift!

Just FYI, deadlifting 2.5x your bodyweight is considered advanced and 3x your bodyweight is elite.

This was achieved by focusing on the basics, sensible progressions and getting rid of any superfluous training that hinders your results.

11/12/2022

By high request I will be sharing my oats dish that I have been having on a near daily basis for the past several years. It’s jam packed with nutrients and allows me to nail a lot of daily serves of the recommended daily intake and supplements in one go.

1. Steel cut oats
2. Banana
3. Mixed berries
4. Flax, chia and h**p seed mix
5. Medjool date
6. Turmeric
7. Blackpepper
8. Matcha tea
9. Creatine
10. Protein powder (Brand: Earth Protein)
11. Algae calcium powder (Brand: Green Calcium)
12. Brazil nut
13. Cacao nibs
14. Peanut or almond butter
15. Oat/soy milk
16. Maple syrup (I don’t do this anymore)

The great thing about this is that it’s easily customisable so you can add whatever fruits you like in or take out. I like to put in apples when they’re in season.

Personally everything from 1-12 is the foundation for me and everything else depending on what I feel like!

I cook my steel cut oats in an electric instant pot with water and I prefer this to rolled oats (these are still a good option) because they have a creamer and thicker consistency.

I always cook up a big batch.

The chia/flax/h**p mix is a great way to get in my omega 3s

The turmeric and black pepper combination is an easy way to sneak this into my daily diet for the plethora of health benefits deserving of an entire book!

Matcha which is ground up green tea is a powerhouse of antioxidants and nutrients providing an array of benefits such as fat loss, cognitive function, etc, etc.

Creatine is well known for its performance enhancing benefits and more research is coming out about its cognitive benefits.

The protein powder is simply to provide a boost in protein content as the meal is lacking a significant source so it rounds out the meal very well.

I have found little difference between using water or plant-based milks to heat up my oats so I prefer the former to reduce the caloric load. Plant-based milks are great if you’d like and they have added calcium. When using water I’ll use an algae calcium supplement to make sure I’m hitting my recommended daily intake.

Let me know how it goes if you give it a go!

17/08/2022

Got a bench? You’ve got something to work on your thoracic extension!

12/07/2022

A simple drill I learnt from Chad Waterbury is the postural stability hold with neck movement.

By engaging the larger muscle groups around the centre of the body, it provides stability outwards.

Stretch the band (keep the big toes on the floor) and reach your elbows to your hips

Move slow and focus on deep exhales when you reach a trouble spot.

If any sharp pain occurs, consult an allied health professional.

05/07/2022

Bench Press Set-Up

When you do push-ups or overhead pressing, as your arms move so should your shoulder blades.

However when you’re laying on a bench or on the floor this changes because now the shoulder blades are being pinned to the floor and cannot freely move.

To set-up in the safest and strongest position we want to set our shoulder blades back and down. A good cue to is think about setting your shoulder blades in your back pockets.

If you’re doing a barbell bench variation, you can pull your torso up slightly as you adjust your shoulder blade position.

Once it’s set, lay down and wedge yourself in-between the bar and the bench to lock it in.

Two things I like to think about to maintain this position as I perform my repetitions is to:

1. As I lower the weight, I want to row it in as I attempt to reach my chest to the barbell
2. As I push the weight up, I think about pushing myself back into the bench

You may need to wiggle yourself in position if you’re doing a floor press or a dumbbell variation.

When you do this correctly, the range of motion will be shorter, you’ll feel much stronger and you’ll notice an arch in your lower back which is desirable.

Keep the abdominals braced as if preparing for a punch, squeeze your glutes and drive your heels into the floor to stabilise the rest of your body.

16/06/2022

Chest/Shoulder Stretch

Here’s a simple stretch you can do to open up the front side of your upper body.

Holding onto the barbell with a palms down grip, lean your body forward so gravity will assist in stretching your chest out.

Focus on bringing your shoulders back, down and externally rotating them.

Because the chest is an internal rotator (think your arms turning in towards your body), the act of externally rotating your shoulders will elicit a better stretch.

The more horizontal your body the more gravity will stretch you out.

This move can also be done on rings for freedom of rotation.

This is an excellent stretch if you sit, drive, work at a desk, eat in front of you or do jiu-jitsu!

If you’re feeling tight, throw this in and take a handful of deep breaths to relax deeper into the stretch!

Perseverance & Performance

04/06/2025

07/01/2024

11/10/2023

14/08/2023

25/07/2023

04/04/2023

11/12/2022

17/08/2022

12/07/2022

05/07/2022

16/06/2022

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