Air borne adventures

My flying is going great with two flights a day, I hope to take my brother for a flight next week, he’ll be my first real passenger!

I got to go exploring in the helicopter, my instructor circled all the little huts in the shotover/skippers/mototapu area and sent me and another instructor out to find them, I haven’t flown navigating off a tramping topographical map before, there is a lot more detail, neither myself or the instructor who came with me had ever flown in the area we were headed to and it was rainy with low cloud, so it was challenging and exciting conditions to fly it – but as a commercial pilot I wont be able to only fly on good weather days, so it was good experience. We found all the huts, even landed at one, there are some beautiful remote spots up there. We got to fly over Shania Twains mansion she is building, checked out the old chinese gold miners water tunnel they built to divert water into another river, and saw massive waterfalls with all the rivers in flood from the 3 inches of rain the night before. We flew home via Skippers Canion, and through the Queenstown control zone, it was very cool.

Back in Wanaka

I'm well into my new program, and now back in Wanaka and training is going great, the weight of my dead lifts, bench press and clean pulls are still limited by my right shoulder, but that is to be expected with surgery only 12 months ago, but the weights are going up and the box jumps and knees to feet jumps are getting easier, and the Turkish Get Ups are amazing for my shoulders. My front squat harness is a godsend, the strength and stability through my core that I used to have is finally returning. That painful, tired and achy body reminds me daily that I’m getting stronger and faster, the only problem in my training is that every time I decided to do a speed session it starts raining, I miss the athletics track in Timaru, it is much easier to train on than wet grass. But the big benefit of training here in Wanaka is the ice at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground, soon I’ll be back up there practicing my push starts on the ice high in the mountains. I cant wait.

A new trainer and a new program gets me moving forward.

I have a new trainer, Ashley Jones, he has been great and he is use to working with athletes who have shoulder issues. YAY. He has also arranged equipment support for me from www.speedpowerstability.com, THANK YOU!