When Nic arrived, I was painting the first letter of the BLOCKHOUSE logo onto the wall. I apologised about being behind schedule but he agreed that the logo was important — even though he didn’t know much more than the few short messages we exchanged earlier in the week.
“I’ve set up a home gym in my garage that I’m calling the BLOCKHOUSE. Would you be interested in doing a home workout with me based around 10 songs of your choice? I want to write about it though…”
Nic is one of the kindest and most enthusiastic people I know, and after I outlined my very basic vision above, his immediate response was “That sounds bloody awesome”, and then two days later he followed up with “Let’s get cracking on that Blockhouse idea! You need anything from me?” I asked him to send through the 10 songs and meet me at 5pm that day if he could make it.
This little project was suddenly coming together far quicker than I imagined. Jules helped me with the design of the logo on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday I set up this Substack profile with the 12 word bio, “BLOCKHOUSE is about walks and workouts in Cape Town with good people.” I thought I would at least have the weekend to paint the logo and work out the rest… But on Thursday Nic was saying“Let’s get cracking on that Blockhouse idea!”, so I did just that.
I think there’s something to this. It took Nic only a couple of short messages to get excited about my idea, and within two days he had rallied me to get it off the ground. It’s no wonder that he has so often taken on leadership roles throughout his life — Nic Groom believes in people and supports them in achieving their goals.
I made this point and thanked him, and he was naturally humble in response: “I need to workout and hate doing it alone. So I love this idea!”
We spent some time catching up while I painted. We last saw each other in January 2019 in Johannesburg just before he and Erin moved to Scotland. We were both living in Jo’burg at the time, and now we’re both back living in Cape Town. We were also both christened Nicholas James — but that’s neither here nor there.
Since we last saw each other, he played couple of seasons for Edinburgh Rugby and had a loan spell with London Irish before wrapping up in the UK and making a return to Cape Town. Catching up this time, the big change to their lives is that they brought back a wee Scotsman with them from their travels: Lachlan Groom was born in Edinburgh in October 2019.
Nic should be in Israel this week playing for the Tel Aviv Heat in the Rugby Europe Super Cup, but the travel restrictions imposed on South Africans due to the Omicron variant have thwarted his plans at this moment. The Heat is Israel’s first ever professional rugby team and has a strong South African contingent as it is coached by former Ikey Tigers head coach Kevin Musikanth. Nic’s Currie Cup winning halfback partner from his Western Province days, Demitri Catrakilis is the backline coach (two Currie Cups btw - 2011 and 2014), and Scotland International, Josh Strauss lines up at eighthman.
Nic is part of the UCT Ikey Tiger’s management team for the 2022 Varsity Cup, and has a role in marketing an innovative CBD sports nutrition brand that is about to launch in South Africa, Impact Sports.
The Workout
Warm-up:
Nic must be doing some yoga as we did a bunch stretchy movements that I’m going to struggle to name. We did a few push-ups, air-squats and leg swings too. I love doing those back rolls when your back sometimes clicks so I asked if we could do those and he said “For sure!”. What a guy!
Interval training:
For the remaining nine songs we agreed that we should do an interval training workout for the duration of each song - one guy works while the other rests. Nic suggested we rotate between upper body, lower body and core. Who am I to argue? So we did in total three upper body exercises (push-ups, reverse rows and bicep curls), three lower body exercises (kettlebell swings, reverse lunges and air squats), and three core exercises (mountain climbers, straight leg sit-ups and burpees).
We mostly did 10-15 repetitions of each exercise and chose a number that we knew we could get in at least 3/4s rounds of in a song. But we did the sit-ups, bicep curls and burpees as a ladder from one to ten (you do one repetition, then two, then three … up until ten).
I really enjoyed the workout and like the way he structured it. I often don’t have a proper plan before I workout so this will be quite an easy structure to iterate on. I also think that this lends itself so well to working out with a friend or your partner, so I am excited to try this again in future.
The Playlist
The 10 songs Nic sent through for us to workout to, is available on Spotify here or through the link below.
Notable mentions:
Talisk - The Millhouse
We did our warm-up to the seven-minute long The Millhouse. It’s from a Scottish folk band named Talisk and sounded very Scottish, no doubt inspired by Nic’s two years in Edinburgh. It would have been good of him to confirm this assumption of mine, because I would have felt really silly if I asked: “Did you get into this Scottish band when you were in Scotland?”
(Gentle reminder to choose longer songs to warm-up to, and avoid them for the burpees round)
Elton John + Dua Lipa - Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)
This was a very good song to get the blood pumping with alternating rounds of 10 pushups. Until recently I thought this song was a mashup of Elton’s Rocket Man and a Dua Lipa song: How wrong was I? It’s a mash-up of FOUR Elton John songs. I hope that this helps you in a pub quiz one day.
Chaka Demus & Pliers - Twist and Shout (Feat. Jack Radics)
As my mother-in-law would say, “This is inspired!” While working out to a reggae cover of Twist and Shout may not have crossed your mind before today, I’m going to suggest you do that pretty soon. Much like George Wilson’s maxim “If a book is really so good I guarantee they’ll make a movie for me to watch one day”, I wonder whether something similar could be said about reggae covers?
Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself
Again, another selection that surprised me from young Nicholas. If I remember correctly, we were doing kettlebell swings at the time and thoroughly enjoyed this one. There’s something about an 80s pop hit that fits right into any gym playlist.
—
We had discussed having a beer after the workout. It was Thursday evening and I had a couple of icy Castle Heavies in the fridge - but Nic had to run to get to a dinner. I blame my tardiness on the paint job. Then again, it was a great chat that’s leading to another, as Jules and I have a plan to meet up with Nic, Erin and Lachie next week.