After visiting Clarence Bass late last year I received 2 separate inspirations. One was to move out of my comfort zone with my weights and cardio training and secondly to consider indoor rowing as something to work on with a goal of self improvement. I refer to the Concept 2 World rankings for our age and weight. Although I have been weight training for 40 years I had never touched a rower apart from an occasional warm-up of a minute or so before a workout.

Due to my constant travel to tape contests around the world I was not able to start any serious training till February of this year and that was on the road in USA between contests. So this was the first time I touched a Concept 2 rower for a training session in late February. I thought I was pretty fit due to years of jogging and some air-dyne training so imagine my shock when I discovered just how hard rowing really is. I am talking about the 500 metre row in particular. The first time I attempted 500m in February after a couple of days rowing, I could not break 2 mins. In fact my best time was a fairly slow 2:03.0.

This really got me interested as I love a challenge. I had some reservations at first that at my age of 60, I would not be able to make very much progress at all. In these rankings you will find men and women who have been rowing for many years and quite a few of them have no doubt been top notch water rowers prior to this. But I was confident that with some dedication and lots of perspiration plus the weight training, I could do much better. By early March I had broken the 2 minute barrier with a time a couple of seconds under 2 mins and I really felt encouraged to push on harder.

My training in the gym had also moved out of maintenance mode into "Challenge Yourself mode" which means Periodization training whereby you are pushing ahead all the time to harder mini goals, reaching them and moving on again. I had not trained this way before and my wife Tina trained along with me in all this, both in the gym and in the rowing. 

For example my weight used in the squat has increased by 60% in 2 months and similar increases have taken place in the bench press and deadlift. I had not done squats and deadlifts since I retired from power lifting 30 years ago! I thought my days of competition and real improvement were over. In Tina's case she had never done squats and deadlifts in her life, and she is really enjoying the feeling of strength. She is a young 56 years old. 

After a few weeks of training, It was time for another test to see if we were really progressing in the rowing or whether it had been a short term flash in the pan.

The next Concept 2 ranking attempt was carried out at a public gym near where we live in Australia, as we only had an old rower in our home gym without a proper computer or distance measurement. See the Concept 2 site at www.concept2.com for more details about this wonderful competition. Tina and I find it stimulating, exciting and motivating.

This attempt was just before I left Australia in late April prior to the bodybuilding events I am here in Europe to cover. Imagine our joint excitement in making further substantial improvements in our rowing times. In my case by 11 seconds and for Tina by 9 seconds.

This really had me fired up for more improvement. Although it is very hard to train seriously when on the road I managed to find a gym in Essen, Germany near the FIBO Expo Halls, and get in several good workouts. They didn't have a single rower, but plenty of heavy weights. Now I am in England and fortunately I found the perfect gym here in Cambridge, as it had 5 Concept 2 rowers. Over the last 2 weeks I have been training hard to both improve my weights and also my rowing via lots of Tabatas and intervals. 

Today is the big test as this is my last day at this gym before work takes me on to a new gym up in the north of England. So it is now rowing D-Day being 1 week before my 61st birthday. I was very pleased to be able to post a time of 1:41.9 as a 74 kilo lightweight. This was an improvement of 4.6 seconds on my ranking effort 1 month ago and ranks me (temporarily) # 1 in the Concept 2 World Rankings as a lightweight, or 5th overall in my age group. But I do not expect this position to stand for very long with Clarence waiting in the wings to pounce!

Poor old Tina is working out the best she can on her own in our home gym but she is just a bit nervous of training with heavy weights on her own. The only thing that keeps her happy is that we have just taken delivery of our very own Concept 2 rower, so now she can train with a vengeance! Her goal is to beat the 2 minute mark. I just hope that she'll let me have a go on it when I get back home again!!

All this goes to prove that what ever age your are you can make substantial and steady improvement. It may not be that you will bench press more than you did when you were 25. But there are many different areas you can explore to find ways of self improvement both in rowing times, or in weight used, or reps achieved with different weights. The possibilities are endless. I plan to go on improving in different areas for as long as I can get into the gym. What ever I achieve I always feel I can beat it next time! This sort of competition gets the best out of yourself and you don't have to be # 1 in the world rankings to be a winner.

Tina has also gone up remarkably well in training poundages and improved in her rowing times and is a force to be reckoned with in the women's rankings where she was # 2 in Australia in her class at the end of the 2003 season, and 11th in the World.. We have discovered through Clarence Bass that it is never too late to improve. We both have a new perspective on life, on training, and on diet. We plan to train hard and smart and preferably in a stable environment and not always while living out of a suit case!

Even while we are on the road we always make sure to stay in motels or hotels which have a fitness room (some of them mediocre, and some surprisingly good), or when we stay with friends, we can usually find a decent gym somewhere in the vicinity. It has even been known for our friends to take up training themselves after having experienced the lifestyle with us!! Plus we have had a distinct disadvantage at home recently. We are having some essential renovations done in our home gym (we get horrible water problems every winter, so this is courtesy of our Bank Manager!!), and hence had to move some of our heavier equipment outside. Training in the open air has rather a good feel to it, so we are planning to have our Olympic bar & weights set up in an open area behind our house, so long as we can protect ourselves, and the equipment from the winter weather!

(We visited Clarence to make a video with him – GMV-511 Ripped The Video).

PS  4th June 2003 - Wayne achieved the fantastic result of 1 min 38.3 seconds in his latest trial today over 500 metres.  This puts him still at the top in the world in his age and weight class, and 5th in the world for his age group overall (light and heavyweight classes).

On 17th August, Wayne further improved his time by 1.5 seconds. to 1:36.8