bringing back some balance to the force…

Body’s not 100% at the moment and I’ve been dealing with it.

My left knee’s still playing up – I tried to do a pistol this morning and the pain was enough to make me collapse which is pretty frustrating because I was able to do one on my right?!

I’m still battling to put all my body weight into a full hang (monkey bars) on my left shoulder socket, or at least I’m so apprehensive that I don’t trust it enough to. I can still do bar muscle-ups and monkey bars (with bent arms) but it certainly doesn’t feel great when I go for full ROM.

Because of these couple of niggling issues, my training’s been pretty average so I’ve dialled that way back too and while I’ve been able to deal with it, it’s certainly put a damper on my mental state.

I’m probably a little bit snappier than usual and while I usually get pretty excited about heading into the gym – lately it’s been more of a battle. Add to that some clients that have required arse kickings of late and you’ve got me sitting on a chuff level of about 3.2 and that’s low.

One of the things that does bring me joy (or brings ‘balance to the force’) has been my new (secondhand) Bezzera coffee machine. I love drinking coffee but probably even more than that I love making coffee. It’s part of my morning routine at Adapt. I get there at 5am, 1. turn on the lights and then 2. the coffee machine (it takes 10 mins to heat up). I’ll make Sean and myself a coffee and anyone else who’s floating around…

When it recently broke down (only one week after getting it plumbed in) I really hit rock bottom. I mean, I couldn’t really train and I couldn’t make coffee! Nooooo! It’s totally been stressing me out. I’ve probably been a little snappier than usual but hopefully not too many people have noticed. Hopefully…

If I can’t train but I can make coffee than I feel like I can offer something to my Adapt peeps. Obviously I can still coach and if I can’t do the movement (like pistols) I’d just get one of our many capable guys to demo the movement. I feel like I also need to be able to make coffee for them to be totally fulfilled – you know, for things to feel ‘just right’?!

I’ve spent a fair bit of time on the coffesnobs forum reading other peoples coffee machine stories as well as speaking to people like Tim and Dan from Beppe’s, trying to work out what the problem could be. The Bezzera has been in pieces for the last week as I checked all the pipe work, solenoids and boiler for blockages. To no avail though. I’ve got steam. I’ve got hot water but nothing through the group. No bingo. I am sad.

Success

Wednesday’s generally a day off (from coaching) and I usually go and train with the 5.30am crew. I wasn’t really feeling it today because of the aforementioned niggling issues so I decided that my time would be better spent trying to troubleshoot the Bezzera (again)

It took almost the full two sessions (back to back 5:30am-7:15am) to sort things out but I was finally able to locate and free up the blockage (which was in the group head — not a solenoid, a pipe or the boiler) and voila! I finally got water through the group – Yes – I did a little jig! Obviously I had to double check the ‘fix’ by pouring some test shots and after that I used up the last of the coffee beans we had to hook up Sean and myself with a couple of very tasty espressos. Yes Bingo. Ben is now whole again.

What’s your thing?. What is ‘that thing’ or ‘things’ that bring balance to your force? Do you even have one? It could be your family, your spouse, your children, a pet? Or perhaps like me it’s a second hand coffee machine that you’ve painstakingly pulled apart and put back together so you can make epic coffee for your peeps?

Whatever it is – it has to bring you joy. But I’d also say that there has to be more than one thing too. Because if there isn’t what happens when that one thing, your one hundered percent isn’t functioning at 100%?