Do you really know how to train? What hard work truly is? Probably not. I didn’t. I thought I did—thought I understood effort, the grind, the satisfaction of pushing myself. Then I met Ian. And Ian shattered that illusion. He exposed how weak I really was. I didn’t understand strength. I didn’t understand capacity. Not until I walked into Ascension.

But Ian isn’t just a coach. Coaches are everywhere. Ian is something else entirely—a mentor, a provocateur, a mirror reflecting your weaknesses, both physical and mental. He doesn’t just teach you how to train; he teaches you how to think about training, how to build resilience, and how to set goals that truly matter.

Ian’s a character—there’s no other way to describe him. Unapologetically himself and a master of his craft, he’s the person you want in your corner. Whether your goal is to look good naked or reshape yourself for the mountains, Ascension is the place to make it happen. This isn’t just a gym; it’s a crucible. If you’re ready to face that, step through the door.

The word community gets thrown around a lot, and like most words, the true meaning has been bastardized, manipulated, and hijacked. However, if one seeks and is open to, they can still find it. I have found a community since entering the halls of Ascension. A fellowship of fascinating individuals from different walks of life and experiences. At the centre of this controlled chaos is Mr. Ian Holmes. Friend, mentor, training partner, confidant. A person that will take your dumb idea for a workout, laugh, add something even more ridiculous to it, and then suffer along by your side. When finished, will sit and talk, share laughs, wisdom, and if needed, tears; always ending with a big hug.

When I first joined Ascension, I was struggling to find a sense of purpose and direction for myself. Up to that point, training and sport had always given me the outlet and the confidence I needed to thrive in other areas of my life; but then I lost that. The stresses of life, running a business, simply feeling lost in my mid-20’s, it all caught up to me.

Before joining Ascension, I was more or less just going through the motions with no intent or sense of why I was doing all the things that I was. Ian has really given me the perspective and the support I’ve needed to steer myself back in the right direction. He is there not to just guide you through your training, but to listen to you when you need to be heard. Ian and the community at Ascension have instilled that confidence I’ve always craved with training, which has allowed me to find a direction for myself outside of the gym. If there’s anywhere community and support is emphasized, it’s Ascension. As long as you aren’t against a little hard work, this is the place for you.

So our science around the miserable things that happen to our bodies without enough sleep is pretty good. I will proceed as I often do by not actually providing any real references to the material that I am thinking of, but rather shall simply make passing references to “studies which have shown…”. The reader can blame this either on my laziness while caught up in the flow of writing, or on my general need to make things up to prove my own points. However, in the age old tradition of armchair science I shall present personal anecdotes to prove my point.

I recently went down to the states to train with a friend of mine and take a well needed break from work. The issue ended up being one of sleep. Somehow Sunday night I ended up getting to bed later than expected, so by the time that I actually did fall asleep I was running short on my usual start to the week. Monday night I managed to do this again, a late night before an early rush to the gym. So it was little surprise when half way through the day I tangibly felt my immune system shut down. I cursed under my breath and headed to get more fluids. A hot yoga class and an attempt at napping didn’t make up for the two nights of four hours of sleep. By the time I did get to bed that night I was getting stressed about not sleeping enough and managed to repeat the same stupid cycle of not being able to fall asleep. This situation in no way got any better by the time I headed to the airport on Thursday afternoon. I was sick.

Or was I.

See that’s the question I wonder at. Every extra hour of sleep I got left me with less sinus issues and feeling better that weekend. Sure I would still find myself coughing a bit by the evenings on the week following, but as soon as I nailed down another 7-9hrs of sleep I would wake up feeling refreshed and largely free of illness. So here we are, Tuesday evening. I managed to not sleep last night once again and likely only got four hours sleep. This evening I am tired, I am coughing every now and then. So what did I do this afternoon? I finally got around to blacking out my room completely to remove all ambient light. Tonight I don’t intend to let the long summer days in Calgary keep me awake. Tomorrow will likely see me almost fully recovered. By the end of the week when I head off to do some high altitude alpine in the Icefield Parkway I am hoping to be back at the top of my game. Yet that took four days for someone who never gets sick to go from fully healthy to being a miserable excuse for a human being, and then a week of sleep to return to healthy.

The next item of note would be Adrenal Fatigue 3.0, a retreat that I ran in Mexico a few weeks ago. Both of the guys who went through the fifty hours of training over the course of the six days suffered mild insomnia, stomach issues, extreme fatigue, and were beaten to the ground by the end of the week. For the next week neither of them did much other than lay low, eat bacon, sleep, and avoid serious training. Yet then something interesting happened. When their bodies were done with the state of induced hyper-recovery, they crushed things. Moves that had seemed months away were crushed out easily the following week with apparently no effort. PRs were achieved. Now this was of course an extreme case of both training and the resulting need for recovery, however the results need to be looked at.

So there is a balance that needs to be sought after by both coaches and athletes in finding that point of how hard to push and for how long. However where that line is is often something that I think we skew. I wrote this while the boys were napping one day during that week in Mexico:

“It is an amazing thing to watch one’s students excel; when the last of the blocks crumble and they grasp it. The bodies begin to obey once they have been broken away from the limitations of what the mind has been telling them that it is supposed to be able to withstand. The mind and its petty limitations must be broken, it must be reshaped to know that anything is possible. This is a rather pretty crucible, a gorgeous descent into madness. It has taken four days of training for things to start to really come together. One day of rest to recover for a breath and they we plunge back into it. The difficulty increasing yet again. We just broke 34hrs of training this morning, with another 4-6 yet this afternoon. Yet the improvements in the last few hours have been breath taking. The body begins to get desperate, there is no break from the madness.
Adaptation is forced as the mind gives in; it cedes defeat: impossible is nothing. The soul is traded for perfection.

Those who believe this can not work have never been a part of it, the condensed beating down of the mind’s limitations of what the body can do.”

I am not suggesting people over-train all the time. However I find myself mulling on the strange duality of being pushed beyond our limits and then, with the appropriate level of recovery and sleep watch plateaus crushed by new visions of what is possible.