Les Ferdinand's Blog by Les_Ferdinand

Hello and welcome to my blog. I’ll be trying to give you an idea of how I manage to juggle keeping fit with a broadcasting and coaching career. And I might mention Tottenham once or twice! Great result for Spurs last night and Jermain Defoe is a man on fire right now, although Leeds did make it tough for us.

Right to fitness matters now and like Dicko (Lee Dixon), I am involved in the first leg of the Sport Relief Grand Slam Challenge which starts on Feb 12th in Rome. My bike leaves these shores tomorrow, so we are almost there! Despite the lovely Emily and Specialized helping me out with a great new bike, I must admit I have struggled to get out on the bike enough during the cold weather. My hands kill me in the cold so I've done less work outside on the bike than I would have wanted to. So I’ve done it on the turbo trainer at home instead. I keep telling people I’m from the Caribbean – that’s why I struggle with the cold  - hah ha hah.

The others on the ride (e.g. Dicko) have been panicking that I haven't done enough, as Stage 1 is meant to be tough, but I train most days at Spurs so think I'll be fine. To make up for not getting out, I've been doing interval training on the bike at the training ground. I've been doing 6 mins at or above 125rpm at level 4, then the rest for 2 mins at level one. I do that 6 times and you should cover 4km in each 6 minutes on. Also I've done some light leg weights and core exercises which one of the fitness coaches devised for me, which includes a set of lunge squats (6 each leg with 10KG in each hand). 

Then from the lunge squats, I do some core exercises three times (arm lifts from plank on a balance board), which is repeated three times. Then next set, I do lunge walks (6 each leg, 10kg) and then hip extensions (repeat 3 times) Finally I do normal squats with 20kg, then leg lifts on the balance board (repeat 3 times). Last week I did my first big ride-81 miles in 6 hours and I felt good. I followed that up with some hill training in Highgate and another ride out to Surrey last weekend.

It’s been a good motivation to try and lose a bit of extra timber and I’ve been watching what I eat as well. But when you’re burning 4000 calories a ride, you must refuel properly, so I've been eating porridge before rides and eating Lucozade bars, gels and drinks while we're out. I've really enjoyed the cycling but you just need so much kit, it's cost me an arm and a leg so I’ll definitely carry on after we finish. Got too much gear not to!

With the matches coming thick and fast and a bit of work with the BBC, it's going to be hard to get many more long rides in before the off, so I will have to hope my gym work over the last few months has given me enough of a base to get me through it! Well I’ll be back next week with an update. If you decide you want to sponsor us, then just go to www.justgiving.com/Mel-Ferdi-Nicky Have a great week. Les.