Blockhouse #2: A Workout in Cape Town with Blake Pengelly

and the Canterbury Crusaders

Blake: So how does this work again?

Nic: You’re going to take me through a workout over those 10 songs that you sent through. Did you see my workout with Nic Groom?

Blake: Yes I did. I feel like we’re going to lift a few heavier things than that here today… That was a bit of a backline players workout, wasn’t it?

Nic: Have you won a Currie Cup, Blake?

Blake: That’s a ridiculous question…

Nic: You know who has won two Currie Cups?

Blake: Is it Nic Groom?

Nic: Yes, that’s correct.

Blake is a top guy. We first crossed paths playing sport against one another at school. We also played a couple of rugby seasons together at UCT and both found ourselves living in Johannesburg for the bulk of the last decade. Up in Jo’burg is where we really forged our friendship.

The reason that I wanted Blake to join me in the Blockhouse is that he takes his exercise seriously and can regularly be found pushing heavy things around with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is something Blake always brings. The keen hiker and adventurer he is, it only takes a few glasses of wine for him to invite you on an overnight hike somewhere awesome like the Drakensberg. He has also been known to uninvite people from these hikes. Especially if you haven’t convinced him that you’ve been training hard enough to comfortably traverse the ‘Berg. It's happened to me. Possibly just me.

A fully qualified bean-counter, he plies his trade at Standard Bank in the Strategic Change Team of the Finance Department and recently moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town “to live a bit more”, as he so neatly puts it. Touché!

Strong, smart, full of energy and hard as nails, I’d back him to be one of the last men standing in an apocalypse. And let’s be serious — how we would fare in an apocalypse is something we’ve all considered in the past couple of years.

The Workout

Blake: Do you know about the Canterbury Crusaders workout?

Nic: Not at all.

Blake: Well, when pre-season started and they realised that the big lads ate and drank too much over the Christmas holidays they would make them do this half an hour workout before training started each day. We haven’t done that over Christmas yet - but I think we probably will.

Nic: Not sure we’ve worked off last year’s Christmas anyway.

Blake: Or the year before that…

*and boy did we laugh*

Why are you smiling, Blake?

The workout is pretty straightforward and involves putting some weight on a barbell that you take through a 6x6x6 - six repetitions of six exercises through six rounds. We used a 40kg barbell (2x10kg on a 20kg bar) and the six exercises were 1) Back squats 2) Front squats 3) Deadlifts 4) Bent-over rows 5) Military/shoulder press 6) Bicep curls. In between each round of 36 we ran to the end of the street and back - about 200m.

The first round felt easy and I trotted to the end of the road with some pep in my step. The second round was also okay and I thought “almost halfway”, which was a motivating thought. The third round was tough. The fourth round finished me. The fifth and sixth rounds really challenged me to run that 200m to the end of the road. There was some walking. Not from Blake, though.

Blake said we did it in just less that 27 minutes and I made a point that if I knew it was for time I could have gone faster which he just laughed at.

It reminded me of a workout I used to do with my brother Matt in the Kelvin Grove Gym in our Varsity days - “The 300 Workout”. The workout was pushed by Men’s Health as one of the reasons that Gerard Butler and the rest of the cast looked so sharp in the movie The 300 (link to the workout here). I remember doing it with Matt a bunch of times and occasionally grunting “SPAAARTAAA!”.

SPAAARTAAA!

The Playlist

The 10 songs Blake sent through is available on Spotify here or through the link below.

My biggest worry about Blake’s playlist is what it might do to my Spotify algorithms. None of the music had featured on any of my playlists before but that’s not a bad thing - I’m here to learn and Blake works out more than me.

Blake: I imagine this is a little bit of a change from your hipster music?

Nic: True. No one ever got ripped listening to Father John Misty.

Blake: Who?

Notable mentions:

Quan - Flexin’ On Them (Ronnie Colman)

When I messaged Blake about the playlist his immediate response was “I’ll send them through but it is essential that it starts with Flexin’ On Them with Ronnie Colman”. Ronnie Colman, I’ve now learnt, is a very famous body-builder. So that’s something. I agreed that this song set the tone for us wannabe Crusaders.

SAINt JHN - Roses (Imanbek Remix)

Roses is a very cool song and cooler than a lot of stuff that I listen to. ‘All I need is roses’ she says as well as ‘Standing on the table, rosé, rosé, f**k the waters’ — both poetic and profound statements. Maybe this will actually help my Spotify algorithms?

Daft Punk - Around The World / Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster

On the final song of the playlist Blake brings in something a bit more familiar, some Daft Punk. Except… Wait. This is a mashup between Daft Punk’s Around The World AND Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster. Naughty little sausage.

Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster. Now that’s a mantra!

Nic: Let’s just get one of you and the Blockhouse sign. Wait, why are you touching the wall, Blake?

Blake: I don’t know.

*Laughs*

Warm down

As we were finishing our well-earned beers, Jules and her sister Mary came down to the Blockhouse in their running shoes and asked if we wanted to join them for a walk. Of course we did!

There’s an easy route that we found that goes from our place in Vredehoek into Table Mountain Nature Reserve through Deer Park which loops around to the other end of Vredehoek on a contour path. It spits you out just above the Spar. Yes, THE Spar.

So the four of us spent an hour on the mountain chewing the fat over a range of topics including a discussion on how to import 500 water pistols. Most of the talk though, was about who and where we’d be spending the December break with and what we’d be eating for our Christmas dinner. Which makes me think that it might be essential to to get some Crusaders workouts with Blake into the diary in the New Year.

Blake, Jules and me (📸 by Mary)

A workout, mountain walk and a couple of beers in good company. What more could you want?