In the interest of full disclosure and avoiding any accusations of being a hypocrite, I will fully admit to being a bit of a trainer/shoe whore. I love trainers, and pretty much always have. Different types, styles, colours and brands; love’em. As a child I vividly remember telling my Mom ‘when I grow up, I’m going to have at least 100 pairs of trainers’. Suffice it to say, ‘mission accomplished’; sponsored by ME and those who love me! Disclosure made and interests declared, I’ll continue.

With the sales of the past few weeks seeing all sorts of things reduced (sometimes drastically), I found myself looking at new shoes, new training kit, new bags, lifting belts, etc. Yeah, I have all of this stuff, but yet I found myself thinking that a particular pair of trainers were ‘really cool’, not to mention the lifting belt that would be great (and no doubt add kilos to my lifts), the compression gear that would keep me warm and the t-shirt that was ‘awesome’.

Then it hit me, I was getting more concerned about what I would be training IN than my actual training. I’m pretty positive the plain t-shirt will perform just as well as the (arguably) overpriced ‘hype wear’ t-shirt; ditto my gym bag carrying stuff as well as a new heavily branded bag. Don’t get me wrong, I do think there are, and can be differences in kit/equipment, but if you’ve got kit/equipment that works, do you really need more?

Watching the recent World Weightlifting Championships I was struck by the number of lifters wearing one of the less expensive models of lifting shoes produced by a large manufacturer. If lifter A at the World Championships is using shoe X and an average athlete/gym goer is using shoe X, why the huge difference in their lifts? It’s certainly not the shoes!

Despite what I suspect will be a lifelong trainer addiction, my attention will be focused far more on my training as opposed to what I’m training IN!