KATAstrength

Do American Kettlebell Coaches Suck?

2011-11-02T12:11:00.001-06:00

Provocative post from Rant at the Moynihan Institute

Some good points made. I do think there is some hope though.

The rise of the IKSFA (International Kettlebell Sport and Fitness Academy) in the US with its highly decorated and world class faculty have thrown a lot of light onto the over the top claims and shenanigans of organizations like the RKC and the AKC/WKC. Personally, before the IKSFA came along I had all but thrown in the towel on kettlebells and instructing them because frankly neither the RKC nor the AKC/WKC instructional products offer anything like contemporary pedagogy on how to properly use a kettlebell.

On the one hand the RKC offers nothing in the way of "authentic Russian kettlebell training" and actually protests that its "School of Strength" isn't even about the kettlebell! On the other hand the AKC/WKC offers a single dogma of "proper" kettlebell technique based entirely on the unique, somewhat esoteric athletic gifts of its head coach. Both organizations are kind of locked up in a bizarre marketing tango distinguishing themselves from the other as "they are this and we are not that".

So, I suppose then that I include myself in the group of coaches that Rant claims do not know anything about kettlebell lifting. Or, being a little kinder to myself, at least I know that what I know from my RKC and AKC/WKC training isn't the whole enchilada and arguably isn't even 1/2 the enchilada.

From conversations and email exchanges with IKSFA coaches, seeing the results of their athletes, their own personal world champion level performances and the incredible depth of sports science supporting their methods, I realize that I have wasted a lot of time,money and physical well being on learning and practicing the methods of the other two organizations mentioned above.

Fortunately, I am supervising a couple of athletes who are under the tutelage of a Russian IKSFA coach. As they are coached by him, by association I am getting coached on how to coach them better. All the while letting go of the old and learning new approaches. Maybe in the not too distant future I will suck less.

Updates

2011-11-02T10:57:00.000-06:00

I will try to keep up better with this blog. I have been updating fairly regularly over on the Olympic Weightlifting page at www.flatironscrossfit.com
Much of what I will be posting here will likely be copy and paste from my posts there, minus weather closure updates and the like.
Another page on blogger that I use to communicate with my weightlifting club is www.flatironswc.blogspot.com
Thanks for following and I'll endeavor to post more regularly.

O-bility WOD: The Romanian Deadlift

2011-11-02T10:50:00.002-06:00

There is some fuzzy history on the interwebs about the origins of the Romanian Deadlift, or RDL as it's come to be known. I've spoken with and read accounts by coaches who swear up and down they first witnessed this lift in training halls at European meets, at the USOC in Colorado Springs, etc . Not to cast aspersions on anyone's best recollections, but as far as I can ascertain, the account by Coach Jim Schmitz and journalist Randy Strossen is the best documented (see the picture above by Strossen) and all the other stories about first witnessing the RDL are, well, good stories.

Far from being the "beloved exercise of the Romanian weightlifting team" as one report puts it, according to Romanian Olympic Champion Nicu Vlad, he had simply devised a hybrid deadlifting movement to give himself some extra low back work. Neither he nor his coach at the time Dragomir Cioroslan had a formal name for it, so Schmitz (who was hosting the lifter and his coach for a clinic at his gym) coined the name Romanian Deadlift (and being the king of abbreviations for movements) or RDL. And it stuck. Here is the story, told by Schmitz, as it appears on Strossen's Iron Mind website:

"I get quite a kick out of all the mileage the RDL (Romanian deadlift) has gotten in the world of strength and conditioning. It seems I almost always come across the RDL exercise in every article written about training for power and sport in all the journals on the subject. The reason for my amusement is that the �discovery� of the RDL was in my gym, The Sports Palace, in San Franciscoin 1990.

Olympic and world champion and world record holder Nicu Vlad, of Romania, and his coach Dragomir Cioroslan were conducting a clinic there. They were in the U.S. for the 1990 Goodwill Games that were being held in Seattle and Spokane, Washington. USA Weightlifting, for which I was president at the time, invited Nicu and Dragomir to conduct some clinics while they were here, and my gym was one of the locations. Part of the clinic was Nicu doing a workout where he cleaned and jerked around 220 kg to 230 kg, and then he proceeded to do this lift, a combination stiff-leg deadlift and regular deadlift, but actually neither. He did several sets, working up to 250 for triples.

Someone watching asked what the exercise was he was doing. Nicu just shrugged his shoulders and said it was to make his back strong for the clean. Dragomir also said the same; it was just a lift that Nicu had developed for his back and clean. Well, then everyone was really interested and asked Nicu to demonstrate it with lighter weights and describe how to do it. Someone taking notes asked what this lift was called. There was a long pause and Nicu and Dragomir didn�t have a name, so I said, �Let�s call it the Romanian deadlift or RDL for short,� and every one agreed and there you have the birth of the RDL. MILO publisher and editor-in-chief Randall Strossen was there taking photos.

Let me tell you how to correctly perform the RDL for those who may not be sure. You grab the bar with your clean grip, pull the bar to the tops of your thighs, but don�t complete the lift: knees are not locked out, chest is out, and back is flat. You then lower the bar to about two inches from the platform, keeping your back perfectly flat or arched and your knees slightly flexed, then you return to the almost erect position--but is very critical here not to fully lock the knees--then repeat. Two very important details are 1) your back stays flat or arched at all times, and 2) your knees stay slightly flexed at all times. This lift is almost all low back, glutes, and hamstrings. I recommend 3 to 5 reps with a weight 80% to 100% of your best clean. An interesting side note here is that Yoshinobu Miyake, Japan�s 1964 and 1968 Olympic champion, was at the clinic and he said he did the same exercise back in his prime, the 1960s." http://www.ironmind.com/ironmind/opencms/Lifts/Romanian_deadlift.html

Try the RDL as Schmitz recommends. I would add that the trick to making the RDL effective is to lock the back, hinge at the hips and "reach back' with the butt to lower the bar. Go no further than you can maintain back integrity. Did it work for Vlad? Here's some footage of him cleaning and jerking 205kg at the 1984 Olympic Games.

When he moved up to the 100kg a bit later in his career he became the heaviest man in history to snatch double bodyweight. Of course, if you include the RDL in your workouts your results may vary.

Upcoming Events

2011-02-03T08:14:00.001-07:00

Mandatory Kettlebell Clinic

Just a reminder for all of you FCF members needing to brush up on your kettlebell skills: I'm running a clinic Saturday February 12 from 11:30 to 2:30 to help you clean up your technique. I've arranged for a couple of guest coaches to be on hand who are both excellent practitioners and teachers so don't fritter away this opportunity. There's a Secret Service Snatch test looming out there in the near future: are you ready? Free to FCF members, $20 for general public.

Weightlifting Meet

Flatirons Weightlifting Team member Justin Purcell is hosting an informal weightlifting competition at his facility the Colorado Athletic Club Sunday February 27th. The time hasn't been set yet, but it will probably be a morning event. There is a sign up sheet for FCF members on the white board. Please sign up by Monday the 15th if you are interested. $20 entry fee at the door. This won't be a USAW sanctioned meet. Stay tuned for updates.

Overcoming Injury

2011-02-02T08:04:00.002-07:00

Weighlifting is statistically one of the safest sports activities out there. But like any sport, accidents happen and in elite level weightlifting where even the practice weights are significant, an accident can be devastating.

Here is a video Zach Krych, a great young American weightlifter, put together giving an account of his long road to recovery following just such an accident. This is without a doubt one of the greatest sports comebacks ever.

New Equipment, Thanks to You!

2010-12-21T11:57:00.002-07:00

Congratulations to Stihl Timbersport Pro Mike Eash on winning the US Wellness Meats giveaway. Mike won $200 in tasty, grass fed and sustainably raised meat. (After grilling up some of his prize recently, Mike told me he particulary enjoyed the Bison steaks.)

And a big "Thank You" to everyone else who participated in the US Wellness Meats giveaway to raise funds for our new barbell set. Here is a pic of the new Pendlay barbell set we bought for the Team:

We also had enough money to pick up another squat rack: a nice Iron Mind Vulcan 2. Here's some video of Phil Locker giving it a test run:

Tasty Way to Support Oly Weightlifting

2010-11-02T12:16:00.004-06:00

OK. Like the old Rent Parties of the 1920's, (did you know "skiffle" is another word for a rent party?) Enter to win $200 worth of U.S. Wellness Grass Fed Beef, or any of their other fine organic, sustainably raised products. Donations of $20 and higher (in ($20 increments)will get chances to win.

Funds raised will be used to purchase equipment (barbells and plates etc) for the Flatirons Weightlifting Club. You can donate at Flatirons Crossfit or Tim can also just charge your account.

You can also donate in any amount using the Equipment Donation Jar (formerly the "Virtual Tip Jar") on the right.

Drawing will be Saturday, November 27th. You do not have to be present for the drawing.

Thanks for supporting Olympic Weightlifting!

PR Nite at Flatirons Weightlifting Club

2010-10-29T10:23:00.003-06:00

Sometimes progress in weightlifting is glacial. In fact, the better you get the slower those PRs are in coming. When you are new to the sport, progress tends o be quick as you master technique and become better coordinated. But after that initial flush of progress one has to be consistent and diligent in training.

If you stick with it, though, you will make progress. Last night we enjoyed some fireworks as Phil Locker and Jeff Malpezzi broke into some new territory.

Jeff hit a PR 100kg Clean and Jerk ....twice. The night before he made a PR 77kg snatch. He has also improved his front squat by 15kg in the last two weeks. Phil hit a PR 111kg snatch and then followed up with another record 115kg snatch, which I think is a 5kg improvement. Feeling good, Phil went on to hit a 2kg PR int he clean and jerk (147) and then another PR 152kg for a 7kg improvement on that lift.

Here is video of the top lifts of the evening:

PRs are fun, but you have to put in the work to get them! So get in here and practice. Coach Randy has WL Club hours Monday thru Friday 1 - 5PM and 6:15- 8PM, Saturday and Sunday 1-3.

Finding What Works

2010-10-16T07:35:00.003-06:00

Those of you who have worked with me over the last year here in Colorado know that I'm fond of saying "Do What Works." The Olympic lifts are very technical and we spend a lot of time with each lifter correcting and perfecting technique. Strength and speed of course are two other main ingredients in this sport, but in my opinion it is meaningless to separate technique from strength since technique is the means by which strength is expressed. While there are certainly some hard and fast tenets of weightlifting technique (keeping the bar as close to your body as possible for example) there is no "one true way" to snatch and clean and jerk. There are just too many variables in body types from person to person to successfully impose one way of doing things.

I look at it this way: on the one hand there is an "ideal" technical template we coaches arrive at and use for reference. And then there is the individual they are coaching with all of their particular physical idiosycrancies. More often than not, the ideal and the real are at odds. The art of coaching is finding the happy medium between what you know works in theory and what is going to work for the individual you are working with. For example, you can't force someone built like Halil Mutlu
to lift with the exact same technique as Simon Kolecki.
What I want to accomplish by reinforcing good technique is to allow the fundamentals of good weightlifting technique to be expressed, while acknowledging that the quality of movement for one person will, superficially at least, look very different than the same quality of movement of another person. Rather than attempt to mash someone into a rigid technical box, I attempt to help that athlete find and do what works. Mutlu will never sit up straight in the bottom of a snatch like Kolecki and it would be a mistake to think he should be able to. So which lifter has the more perfect technique? It's a meaningless question.
A young lifter I've known and watched progress over the last 6 or 7 years recently posted some videos on Facebook and he has given me permission to post them here. Dan Gorelik is a tall, rangy lifter. At 6 feet and 85kg class he is light for his height. Most lifters Dan's height are in the 105s, maybe 94s. Dan told me when this video was shot he weighed in at 79kg...so he is barely out of the 77kg class.
Dan has great technique and gets the most out of his frame with it. You will notice he has a very wide clean grip and widens it out even further for his jerk.

Here's some video I took of Phil Locker, also an 85kg lifter cleaning and jerking the same amount as Dan. Phil has just moved up to 85s himself, but is shorter in stature than Dan with different limb and torso lengths and proportions. He can use a more conservative grip and split because he doesn't have to move the bar as far as Dan does, either in absolute or relative terms.The results of these two lifting styles are the same, but the technical issues are resolved very differently.

The results of these two lifting styles are the same, but the technical issues are resolved very differently.

Front Squats and Cleans

2010-10-08T11:16:00.004-06:00

The front squat is a great stand alone exercise for strengthening the legs and hips. It is generally considered to be an absolutely necessary movement to strengthen the legs for the full clean. I take a slightly different view.

Most successful lifters have front squats well in excess of their best cleans. After all, extra leg strength is not a bad thing. But it is interesting to note that it is not uncommon for lifters to get buried in the bottom of cleans that are significantly less than what they can front squat. Why is this?

The clean is a high skill exercise that involves a pull from the floor, explosive extension and and explosive, mostly unloaded, eccentric squat under which elicits (ideally) a powerful stretch reflex in the quads and posterior chain which helpso the skilled lifter "bound" out of the bottom to the standing position. These movements, reactions and skills are not found in the front squat.

The SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands) principle suggests that front squats will not make you a better cleaner. Practicing cleans will make you a better cleaner. Practicing front squats will make you a better front squatter. There are diminishing returns to carryover from the squat: the clean is over relatively quickly. If your max front squat takes 4-6 seconds to execute, this strength will not be available to a quick lift like the clean. However, this doesn't mean you shoudn't front squat to improve your clean.

What it means is that the exercises compliment each other: the explosiveness of the cleans will improve the speed strength of your front squats and the quicker front squats will provide a base for stronger stretch reflex responses and reserve strength for the clean. If your top front squat is 20% more than your best clean and jerk, that is about right. This ratio means that front squat training weights can be moved at appropriately brisk tempos.

But you must practice both to get better at both. Clean explosively and front squat quickly.

Weightlifting club member Phil Locker demonstrates in the videos below. He cleans and power jerks 275 with ease and front squats 315 just as easily. Note the tempo of the clean and the tempo of the front squat.

Front squat to clean better and clean to front squat better. Repeat!

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is an S Curve

2010-10-06T07:40:00.000-06:00

In simplest terms, we always want to keep the bar close to body and over the feet. When the bar is close to the body it is going to be easier to lift than if it is further away from the body. To make use of optimal biomechanics while keeping the bar as close as possible, the bar cannot travel vertically in a straight line. While in most situations a straight line is the most direct path from point A to point B, to accomplish this with the bar in the clean or snatch would put the lifter into some very compromised and weak positions. Here is a good video showing how the bar moves during the course of a properly executed pull and the ramifications of deviations from "ideal".

And here is another video from the 96 Atlanta games of legendary Cuban weightlifter Pablo Lara. Note the bar path and body positions described in the slow motion replays.

Take some time to study these videos and visualize your pulling mechanics and how they measure up to the "ideal". Lots of useful information here.

GPP and SPP: Crossfit as Bricolage

2010-10-05T11:26:00.001-06:00

"The Bricoleur's Daughter" Painting by Mark Tansey, 1987

Variety and specificity are two variables that must be attended to if you are trying to get better at any exercise. Specificity is handled by practicing the exact movements you want to improve, as well as practicing related or similar movements that have high carryover value. For example, power cleans are not cleans, but they are similar enough to have carryover value to the full movement. You could just do full cleans all the time, but this would get boring and for many people the monotony manifests in less progress on the lift over time. Variety helps keep the mind and the body from getting stale.

Crossfit workouts have a lot of variety from workout to workout. Depending on the "box" you belong to, you may over time, see that the workouts favor some exercises more frequently than others. It would be reasonable to predict that the movements you do most often are the ones you will likely get better at. It is also reasonable to predict that the Crossfit athlete will not get as proficient at any of the movements as an athlete that specializes in a particular movements.

You could also reasonably predict that that an athlete that specializes in one sport will not be able to perform a Crossfit workout as ably as a proficient Crossfit athlete. We observed evidence for this hypothesis repeatedly during the USAW/Crossfit Combo competition this weekend. Weightlifters lifted more than the Crossfitters (as would be expected) and Crossfitters smoked the weightlifters in the Triplet competition (also as expected). It's not that there wasn't some very good weightlifting from the Crossfit contingent, there was. Chris Spealer, a Crossfit legend, dominated the 62kg class in both events and his weightlifting effort qualified him for the American Open.

But, could he have lifted more if he did Crossfit less and practiced weightlifting more?

Doubtless the weightlifters would have performed the triplet better if they practiced Crossfit a few days a week, but would practicng their sport less and Crossfit more have cut into their weightlifting totals? I think the answer is yes on all accounts.

Fitness stills refers to specific performance ability. "Fit for what? is the question For most athletes, athletic performance is still be a balancing act between GPP and SPP. For the general population, general fitness, health and well-being is easier to package and practice.

GPP vs SPP
GPP stands for General Physical Preparedness and SPP stands for Specific Physical Preparedness. These are terms strength coaches and exercise physiologists use to describe variety/work capacity training (GPP) vs. sport specific practice (SPP). Generally speaking most sports off season and pre-season have periods of GPP, which are designed to get the body in shape for focused sports work (SPP).

But what if your sport is a sport that is made up of the movements other athletes do for GPP? In other words what if your sport is Crossfit? After all, Crossfit considers itself to be a sport and its practitioners as athletes. So now these two terms get fuzzy. The more variety you have the more general your work capacity becomes which is what Crossfit is after in terms of its sport's specificity. For Crossfit, when your sport is "working out", GPP is actually SPP and SPP (like skills practice for weightlifting) becomes GPP (supporting SPP).

But then, where does Crossfit work for other athletes who have a preferred sport? As GPP, certainly. Most athletes in season need to spend 80-90% of their time focusing on their sport. The other 10-20% of the time can be spent on strength and conditioning and recuperation. So, I don't think Crossfit is an appropriate choice for an athlete in season who has never done Crossfit. On the other hand, an athlete who has done post-season and off-season Crossfit conditioning may do very well on one or two Crossfit workouts a week during the season. Crossfit provides very nearly to the letter what exercise scientists like Tudor Bompa have recommended as pre-season preparation for athletes. Bompa called his circuit training "Anatomical Adaptation" which is part and parcel of what Crossfit accomplishes.

Crossfit is fitness bricolage. It derives its results from a hodge-podge of exercise options or, as it likes to say, "modal domains". There is certainly nothing wrong with this approach. General athleticism and overall fitness are qualities sorely lacking in the American exercise scene, for kids and adults alike. And in this age of exercise ADD, Shake Weights, P-90X , Zumba and Cardio Kick Boxing, choosing the path of a Crossfit bricoleur is probably the best option the average trainee seeking to get fitter and stronger and a better quality of life.

Join the new Flatirons Weighltifting Team

2010-10-05T09:25:00.000-06:00

Flatirons Crossift now has an official USA Weightlifting club called, what else? Flatirons Weightlifting Team. If you want to be on the team go to USAW, click on Membership tab and follow the directions from there. You will need to enter the Colorado LWC (Local Weightlifting Committee) number 32 and the name of the Club (Flatirons WL Team) and the club number 3221. You can also specify a primary and secondary coach, so indicate in these spaces who you work with the most, Tim Retzik, Keith Mitchell or myself. When you are finished you can print out your membership card right away.

We recommend you join as an athlete or masters athlete (if you are over 35) Membership entitles you to some nice discounts on companies that sponsor USAW, discounts in the online store and additional liability and accident insurance when you are training with the Flatirons coaches. And even if you only compete in our informal club developmental meets your scores will go in the USAW records where you can check your ranking compared to other lifters in your weight class and age bracket.

Flatirons Crossfit members still get to participate and receive coaching at no additional charge during the weightlifting club practice hours which are Monday -Thursday 6:30PM to 8PM and Friday 1-5:30PM. We have midday hours too, from 1-3:30PM Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and 1-5PM on Wednesday. Saturday and Sundays 1-3:30.

Coach Randy's Weightlifting Club members who do not belong to Flatirons Crossfit, Flatirons Weightlifting Team needs you too. So if you haven't joinded USAW, please do so and follow the instructions above to affiliate with the team.

American Dietetic Association and the Obesity Epidemic

2010-09-29T11:53:00.001-06:00

My friend Jason C. Brown brought this article to my attention today: America: A Big Fat Stupid Nation. The author, Justin Stoneman, levels some very interesting (and if true, appalling) accusations at the ADA.

Some things I did not know before I read this article:

The American Dietetic Association is the only organization in the United States legally able to dispense dietary advice.
In most states, if you are not registered ADA dietician, you can be prosecuted for hanidng out nutritional advice.
The ADA is sponsored and assisted by "Coca Cola (revenue $31.4 billion), GlaxoSmithKline (revenue $42.5 billion), Hershey's (revenue $5.3 billion), Unilever (revenue $55.8 billion), Aramark (revenue: $12.3 billion). There are even some 'premier sponsors': Mars (revenue: $30 billion), PepsiCo (revenue $44.3 billion), Truvia sweetener (revenue of parent company Cargill: $116.6 billion), Kellogg's ($12.7 billion).
ADA 'sponsors' have combined revenues of over $400 billion."

The ADA is of course is happy with this arrangement. $400 billion dollars in corporate sponsorship? Who wouldn't be happy with that? And what do these sponsors get in return? For one thing, they get to sit at the table and help write policy. But another very real benefit of such a cozy arrangement with the organization that has a legal monopoly on what are and are not healthy diet recommendations, these companies can also rest assured that the monumental policy shift that occurred in 1977 regarding healthy diet stays buried deep, at least officially, in the black hole of forgotten history.

So the questions for you are when your dietician recommends a diet based on the current food pyramid is she recommending a diet fit for a human being or is she implementing the money making strategy of Industrial Food, Big Pharma and Big Agriculture? Is she giving you the best advice there is, or is she merely a pawn?

The ADA is dispensing advice that will make you fatter and sicker because of these blatant conflict of interest sponsorships. Not good news for you, but good news for businesses that make money of the misfortune of the malnourished. The Health Club Industry will happily sell you memberships and personal training. Diet book authors will sell you their books. Weight Loss companies will sell you processed food and semi-starvation diets delivered to your door. Big Pharma will sell you statin drugs and your health care provider is more than happy to take your ever more expensive health insurance payments.

Why is America obese? Getting people fatter is making wallets fatter too.

Bon Appetit.

Weightlifting Club is Alive and Well

2010-08-18T11:00:00.002-06:00

It has been a hectic few weeks but I am still here in Boulder and the weightlifting club is resuscitating. Rest assured there will be Olympic Weightlifting at Flatirons Crossfit one way or the other.

Please note the revised pricing. $50 a month payable on the first of every month for up to two training sessions per week during regular hours. $80 a month for up to 3 sessions per week and $125 a month for unlimited sessions per week. Day passes are $10 a session. You can pay cash or sign up via PayPal.

If you have no kettlebell or weightlifting experience, you will need to sign up for 5 Private lessons before you can join the club.
I also provide customized training programs. A 12 week program is $300, based on your goals and current abilities.

Hours are 1:00 to 4:00 Monday through Friday and evenings from 6:30 to 8:00. Also available by appointment on weekends.

Fat is Where It's At

2010-07-21T16:41:00.002-06:00

A follow up to my post below, How Low Can You Go? regarding carb restriction.

Friend and PhD Mike Deskevich posted this picture over on Facebook with his status update: "Mmm, 1700 calories, 200g of fat, and only 6g of carbs. Best tasting source of fuel all day."

What is it?

A latte made with heavy whipping cream. Essentially heavy whipping cream is pre-churned, liquid butter. Pure fat. Mike's post made me brave enough to up my fat intake instead of upping the protein or carbs to shake my ketogenic fatigue. Even after all the reading and conversations, it's tough to shake the twenty plus years of "low fat" indoctrination.

Although I still haven't gone whole hog to the 1700Kc latte, I have switched over from half and half (half and half, I have come to believe, is for pussies) to adding a few Tbsp of heavy cream to each of my cups of coffee. Even more in my ice coffee. I can say the cream has done the trick. I find myself wanting to eat at lunchtime, but it's more out of habit than hunger. And my carbs are still near 0 a day. Whatever I get out of green veggies.

Mike's wife Amy Santamaria, also a scientist and PhD did a controlled study of the Paleo diet at their Crossfit Affiliate. It's really fascinating how simple and effective this way of eating is.

Olympic Weightlifting, Kettlebells and Sports Performance

2010-07-20T07:02:00.001-06:00

It's summer and everyone is outside climbing, running, cycling and triathaloning. As it should be. Everyone should be outside enjoying their sports, but you should also be engaging in some sort of strength training to address the imbalances in strength, flexibility and mobility that focused sports practice can create.

Cyclists lose lean muscle mass and even bone mass over the course of a season for example because cycling is a non-weight bearing sport. Runners notoriously have tight backs and hamstrings.

But did you know that with as little as 20 minutes twice a week of concentrated kettlebell training you can improve your sports performance, make your body more durable and resilient and address those sports specific imbalances?

Make the commitment to up the quality of your sports participation. Strength training won't bulk you up or make you slower. In fact, it will make you faster and more efficient. A stronger runner, or climber or cyclist moves the body with greater ease than weaker athletes. Every top athlete weight trains, even in season.

For the next few months, I will be offering a discount on our monthly membership. $50 buck a month. That's 20 classes a month to choose from from. If you are new to kettlebells and olympic barbell training you will need to take two private lessons to get up to speed, but I'm offering deep discounts on this also.

Monday thru Friday 2 - 4 PM.

Introduction to Olympic Weightlifting Clinic

2010-06-17T10:41:00.002-06:00

If you are an athlete in any sport and aren't doing the Olympic lifts, you are cheating yourself out of higher performance.

If you are a coach and you don't have your athletes performing the Olympic lifts your program isn't all it could be; plus you are cheating your athletes out of the speed, strength, explosiveness and durability these exercises provide.

We can fix these things.

Attend this hands on, practical workshop lead by USA Weightlifting International Coach David Miller and Senior Coach Randy Hauer to find out what you and your athletes have been missing and how olympic style weightlifting can improve performance.

Workshop is Saturday July 24th from 12 noon to 3 PM.
Location: Flatirons Crossfit
4847 Pearl St.
Boulder, Colorado 80301

Register below via PayPal. $50

email Randy at rchauer@yahoo.com or David at info@eastcoastgold.org for more information or if you have questions.

Don't wait, register now. We limit these workshops to 20 participants and they fill up fast!

Kettlebell Freemiums

2010-05-30T10:11:00.001-06:00

What is a "Freemium"? A freemium is a free service I provide you, a service that I normally charge for, as a way to thank you for your patronage.

I've been thinking hard about ways I can use my blog to create more personal contact to have more personal impact on your training. Since I am an affiliate for both Dragon Door and Perform Better it occurred to me I could link freemiums to purchase made using my affiliate links.

My Free RKC Prep course was the first freemium idea I had.

Here are some more:

Video Consult via E-mail:
If you buy $300 worth of products, I will give you a free analysis of your kettlebell technique. Send me a link to your video and I'll drop you an e-mail on what you need to do to clean up your technique.

Video Consult via Phone:
If you buy $500 worth of products, send me a link to your video and your phone number and a good time to call you and we'll look at your video together and see what can be improved.

Personal Written Program
If you buy $1,000 worth of products, I'll include the phone/video consultation and an 8 week written program tailored to your goals.

Your Call
If you buy $5,000 worth of products, e-mail me and tell me what you want help with. The video consult by phone and personal written program are yours also but you get to name a third item. 5 personal training sessions for example (but you have to get to me or cove my expenses to get to you...the sessions are the freemium.)

How it Works:
Click on the links/banners at the bottom of this page, shop and place your order. When you purchase, the affiliate managers for the companies only let me know that something has been purchased and for how much, but they do not disclose who purchased it. So to receive your freemium you will need to supply me with the date and the amount of your purchase so I can match up and verify. e-mail me at freetheKB@freekettlebellcert.com

Who to buy from? Well if you want great competition style kettlebells, I endorse and sell Perform Better First Place Elite steel kettlebells. I own them, I use them, they are great. Specify when you order that you want their new bells with the official colors and sanded handles.

For kettlebell strength and conditioning DVDs, certifications and the best solid cast iron kettlebells out there, Dragon Door has the best products on the market.

If you have any suggestions for more Freemiums, let me know. I'm happy to consider all ideas!

Carbs: How Low Can You Go?

2010-05-26T11:35:00.000-06:00

Pretty darn low. A fascinating study of a ketogenic diet and the implications of a fat-centric, low protein, near 0 carb diet for non-athletes and athletes. For most people, most of the time even those engaged in low level endurance athletics, a ketogenic diet, properly phased in and properly proportioned, is not a bad way to eat.

However the study concludes that more carbs and muscle glycogen is required for explosive, strength athletes to perform well. How much is enough? My take is that enough is whatever keeps the athlete out of ketosis and not so much that unwanted adipose tissue is gained.

"Therapeutic use of ketogenic diets should not require constraint of most forms of physical labor or recreational activity, with the one caveat that anaerobic (ie, weight lifting or sprint) performance is limited by the low muscle glycogen levels induced by a ketogenic diet, and this would strongly discourage its use under most conditions of competitive athletics."

Why We Get Fat: Adiposity 101and the Alternative Theory of Obesity

2010-05-25T22:59:00.000-06:00

Best presentation yet by science writer Gary Taubes recorded just last month. It's about an hour and forty-five minutes but well worth it. It's a very classy presentation by the host site also. Innovative even.
Why We Get Fat: Adiposity 101

Free RKC, HKC and RKC II Prep Classes

2010-05-25T12:56:00.003-06:00

Planning on taking the RKC, RKC II or HKC? Sweating your snatch test? I'm offering private RKC and HKC preparatory classes absolutely free of charge.

All you have to do to get a free one day 8 hour prep class is use my affiliate ID Dragon Door Kettlebells, Strength Training, Conditioning, Diet and Health Resources. or click on one of the banners advertised at the bottom of the page. Buy and read Pavel's Enter the Kettlebell too, it's required reading for the prep class. When you have bought and read the book and registered for your certification course, e-mail me and we will schedule you. Here's how I look at it: you are going to pay Dragon Door for the RKC Cert anyway, Dragon Door pays me commission on the cert and materials to help you pass.

You can either visit me here in beautiful Boulder, Colorado at your own expense. Or you can cover my expenses to get to you. Either way, you pay no tuition for 8 hours of instruction. I'm a former RKC Team Leader with nearly a decade of Hard Style kettlebell experience and I will show you what you need to know to pass your RKC.

Why pay more?

Eat More, Move Less, Lose Weight

2010-05-25T11:24:00.002-06:00

The more I know, the more I realize the less I know. I'm having a personal crisis over what impact I, as a coach and trainer, can have on a trainee who wants to lose fat. The reason for this crisis is the lack of evidence that exercise has any significant impact on fat loss whatsoever.

The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association published joint guidelines for exercise in August of 2007. In that study was this gem, It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling. (emphasis mine)

There are lots of other good reasons to exercise regularly, but fat loss does not seem to be one of the scientifically supported reasons for exercising. It is also interesting that burning more calories than you take in to lose weight is not a FACT but a hypothesis. And worse, it's a hypothesis that we are beaten over the head with by nutritionists as FACT even though the data doesn't support it.

Science writer Gary Taubes writes, Until the sixties, clinicians who treated obese and overweight patients dismissed the notion as naïve. When Russell Wilder, an obesity and diabetes specialist at the Mayo Clinic, lectured on obesity in 1932, he said his fat patients tended to lose more weight with bed rest, “while unusually strenuous physical exercise slows the rate of loss.”

So what are we doing? I've seen The Biggest Loser a couple of times, and it strikes me that we can probably do better than starving people and taking them on death marches. In my opinion forcing a completely deconditioned obese man or woman to run on a treadmill is tantamount to abuse. And malpractice.

But what is better?

The usual prescription is Move More, Eat Less. We all know fatness is caused by being sedentary and eating too much, right? But what if being sedentary and eating too much are not the cause of fatness, but rather are the effects of fatness; the symptoms?

I can speak to this personally. Until I was 5 years old I was an active kid at a healthy weight. As a result of circumstances beyond my control as a little kid, I was overfed sweets and desserts and so on and got fat. The fatter I got the less active I got. By the time I was 10 years old and 40 lbs overweight when our family doctor put us all on a diet, I wasn't physically active at all. I liked to hang out in my room and read comic books or watch cartoons. I was very self conscious about my body. Afternoon recess, and then later gym class, became torture.

Good news is, the diet worked and I lost a significant amount of weight. About the time I hit my Doc's weight loss goal, my school had all of us participate in the President's Physical Fitness test. There was a run, I don't recall how long it was. But it was an epiphany to me. Before that run I hated moving around, after I beat almost all the kids in the class I had discovered the joy of moving my body. Interestingly, I hadn't been exercising regularly, or at least no more than I had been required to all along in gym. All that changed was I wasn't eating as much crap food.

My working hypothesis now is I wasn't fat because I was lethargic and immobile and eating too much, I was lethargic and immobile and eating too much because I was fat. I can also see this pattern repeat over the years as I've struggled to maintain my weight. When I stopped doing endurance sports and moved back to weightlifting I was about 50lbs too light for my height. The old school instructions for weight gain were lots of ice cream and protein milkshakes and between workouts, "don't run when you can walk, don't stand if you can sit, and if you are sitting you might as well lie down and take a nap." Perfect. I went from a 150lb lean, mean machine who could run a 10k in under 40 minutes to a 200lb slob in 9 months who got really good at napping the heavier I got.

So what am I going to tell the trainee who want to lose weight? First, get a physical. Then read Primal Blueprint or Paleo Diet or even better Good Calories Bad Calories. While you are reading one or all of these books, begin to get into the habit of buying food only at the "outside edges" of the store where the eggs, meat,poultry, fish, fruit and vegetables are displayed. Eat no processed food, cut out sugar and products with High Fructose Corn Syrup. No bread, pasta, beer,or grains.

Then be patient. Put your feet up. Read the books. Follow them. Lose weight. When you start hitting your weight loss goals and if you begin to feel like you really want to exercise, then come see me. Until then, eat more and move less.

FreeStyle© Kettlebell Free Kettlebell Cert

2010-05-24T13:12:00.002-06:00

I call shotgun!

Liberate the Kettlebell learning experience with FreeStyle Kettlebell Training©.
You've got your Hardstyle. You've got your One True Way style. In my opinion neither style provides the complete picture of the kettlebell's versatility. Why spend over $4000 on two certifications when you can get the complete picture in one free cert?

FreeStyle Kettlebell Training© is a logical teaching progression based on my nearly 10 years of kettlebell experience and 16 years of Olympic lifting experience. I bring to bear both an athlete's and a coach's persepective. FreeStyle is also a pedagogocal philosophy that regards the kettlebell as a tool that ought be used in the manner appropriate to your needs, goals and abilities and not as a means to fulfill some ideological agenda or marketing buzz word.

Again, please e-mail if you are interested at randy@freekettlebellcert.com

I've already filled my first FREE certification in July.

Coaching 101

2010-05-22T07:54:00.000-06:00

"If we take Man as he is, we make him worse. But if we overestimate him, we promote him to what he really can be." - Victor Frankl paraphrasing Goethe.

Free the Kettlebell

2010-05-20T18:15:00.006-06:00

Kettlebell Certifications are expensive.
$2,696 for the RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge) 2-1/2 days. Plus $100 a day for hotel, plus airfare, plus meals, plus missed work and income.

$599 for the HKC (Hardstyle Kettlebell Certification) is one day. It's sort of the RKC-lite. It teaches you to do only one real kettlebell exercise and two more movements that are done just as well with dumbbells.

$1,000 for the AKC (American Kettlebell Club) Coach cert, if it is still "on sale". But, you have to take the $646 World Kettlebell Club Fitness Instructor certification as a prerequisite. That will eat up another day or more of your life. Yes, you get some "free" kettlebells with this cert, but you have to cover the significant shipping costs.

Kettlebell Concepts will get you CEU's with ACE and NASM and several other fitness trainer organizations. Their marketing says they are the only cert that will get you CEUs. Maybe that makes it a value since it's only $399, but on the other hand I have friends who are KB trainers who make good livings fixing the flaws of KBC certified trainers who work for Equinox and other gyms.

So look, I'm not saying you won't get your money's worth from the above certs. They are, for the most part, well run operations taught by well meaning individuals who, again, for the most part, know what they are doing and do want you to learn kettlebells "their way". But here's the thing: I will teach you the different methods of the two major certs because they don't do that and you need to know both ways. They want you to believe their respective methods are the "one true way" to use kettlebells, when in fact they are complimentary methods. If you only learn one "way" your education is incomplete. I'll address that and it won't cost you two certs worth.

My free, one day certification will teach you a great Russian KB juggling inspired warmup routine, plus the Swing and it's variations, plus the clean and it's variations and the press and it's variations. Enough to get your clients doing what they should be doing with a kettlebell: a simple,effective warmup, a simple, powerful ballistic pulling movement for training speed and explosiveness, while strengthening the core and posterior chain. The clean and the press will take care of the rest of the body: the shoulders and arms. We'll also discuss programming and how to incorporate kettebells with other training modalities. You really don't need any more for the basics.

And it's free. (If you want me to train you to pass any of the above certs I can do that too, but for a fee. A hefty, hefty fee.) e-mail me at: randy@freekettlebellcert.com if you are interested. Write me a short note about why you want to join my revolution to Free the Kettlebell and what your experience is. If I think you are up to it, I'll invite you to a cert. We'll set it up. Simple as that.

FreeKettlebellCert.com

2010-05-19T17:04:00.002-06:00

Why a Free Kettlebell Certification?
Why not?
I believe everyone should know how to properly do the basic barbell exercises: squat, deadlift, press, bench press and so on. When was the last time you were in a commercial health club and were told the free weights were locked up and you couldn't use them without the supervision of a trainer? Yet, this situation is common at many gyms that do have kettlebells. And I believe that's just wrong.

Free the Kettlebell
I believe that basic "iron literacy" these days should include "kettlebell literacy". I believe everyone should be at least as familiar with the basic kettlebell exercises as they are with barbells and dumbbells. Early on in this decade the kettlebell was marketed as the weight training implement of the common man and woman, but it has since morphed into the cash cow of certifying organizations and personal trainers who cynically (and profitably) give the impression that kettlebells are just really too hard to use and require very special and expensive instruction. That's just not the case.

This is why I started FreeKettlebellCert.com I want everyone who exercises with weights to know how to use a kettlebell. To that end, I'm offering free kettlebell coaching and instructor certification to anyone who is seriously interested in learning how to use and teach them. Think of these certs as small group, one day, intensive coaching on a few basic exercises; how to do them and how to teach them safely and effectively.

What's the Catch?
The basic certification is absolutely free. No catch. You get yourself to and from Boulder,CO and to the course. We'll cover a few basic exercises and their variations along with programming ideas over about a 6-8 hour day. That's all there is to it. If you want me to come to you and teach a small group, all I ask is that you cover my transportation,housing and meals and we are all set.

There will be more "advanced certs" that will have a fee. These will also be one day and they will require the basic cert. But these won't cost more than $150 for the day, I'm thinking. Again they will be small group sessions, with coaching and programming discussion focusing on the trickier ballistic movements. Then there is personal coaching and so on. But those are different topics.

The Truth About Kettlebell Certifications
If you want to be a kettlebell instructor you do need to know what you are doing. Just like if you were going to teach someone to barbell squat, you should really know what a squat is and how to teach it. At present, however, not many gyms will hire you based simply on a kettlebell certification. If you are already a personal trainer, adding kettlebell training to your tool box is a great idea, but are the added initials after your name really worth the thousands of dollars come certifications cost.

Commercial gyms want to see NASM, NSCA, ACE or some other trainer certification on your resume. Kettlebell certs are not sufficient on their own. Additionally, there is no oversight organization that recognizes or lends credibility to any of the kettlebell certifications out there. So, why spend the money on a certification that doesn't really mean anything to anyone except maybe to the organization that you earned it from? (cha-ching)

About Me
I started using kettlebells about 9 years ago. I have had great teachers: Pavel Tsatsouline, Steve Cotter, Jason C. Brown, Pamela MacElree and Valery Fedorenko to name the heavy hitters. I became a certified kettlebell instructor with the Russian Kettlebell Challenge(RKC)in 2005. For the last two years I taught and certified RKC instructor candidates as a Team Leader level instructor at RKC certifications. I was an American Kettlebell Club Coach (AKC) for two years. As a member of the North American Kettlebell Association I coached the Women's 2005 Kettlebell Sport National Champion. As a competitor myself in 2005 and 2006 I set three national masters records in kettlebell sport, each in a different body weight class.

Recently I resigned my positions with the above certifying organizations. Partly because I wanted to strike out on my own but mostly because the organizations have departed from what originally attracted me to them. What I believe about kettlebells and what they now offer just don't align anymore. I simply had to leave. What's more, they are antagonistic to each other, suspicious of each other and each offer skewed and somewhat incomplete information. I suspect they do this out of concerns for "branding recognition" and market share strategy, but the casualty is a free and open exchange of information about the various ways to use the kettlebell.

Another reason I resigned is that many of the certified kettlebell instructors coming out of these organizations are not, in my estimation, what they should be. I've had, on occasion, students who were certified kettlebell instructors who were lacking in proper concepts, skills and teaching ability. I've also "fixed" the students of certified instructors, students who were badly taught, demonstrated poor, unsafe form and worse, thought they were doing things correctly.

I'm dedicated to the idea that everyone who wants to should have the opportunity to learn how to use a kettlebell, properly, safely and without overly complicating the process. I'm dedicated to giving away whatI know to anyone who shares that vision.

More to come:
If you are interested in more information, have questions or want to become certified, the website is under construction,so stay tuned.

Why?

2010-05-18T12:14:00.000-06:00

Have you ever thought about why you do what you do? From the gut level, I mean. I've been reading and watching a lot of the new crop of marketing gurus to see if I can suss out what people are doing to make their businesses grow.
Two guys have had the most impact thus far: Simon Sinek and Seth Godin. I encourage you to google their names and check them out.

Here's what I've learned from them:

The limbic system is all about survival. It is senior to all the higher level brain functions.
The limbic system is also the source for our emotions, feelings, intuition. It is non verbal.
You "know" a right decision because it both feels right and is is rational. A decision based only on rational thought is at best a "you think" it is a right decision. For many people "it feels right" is enough.
People don't buy what you make, they buy why you make it.
Every product competes on service, value, features and price. For every product you can think of, there are dozens more that have comparable service, value, features and price. So what drives brand loyalty? What the product says about the customer. They don't buy for you, they are buying for them.
The goal is not to do buisness with people who want what you have, the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.

If you don't know why you are doing what you do, how do you expect other people to know why or even care? We are all very good at the talking about what we do and how we do it, but how good are we at communicating why we do it? Martin Luther King didn't give the "I Have a Plan" speech.

So I've been playing with this "why do I get up in the morning and why should anyone care?" idea. What if I'm not just selling training packages. What if I'm really building a movement and what it takes is selling training packages? Why would you buy one? My first cut at "why" is on the left in the description of my Olympic Weightlifting Training Center. See if it is what you believe in.

If it is, why aren't you hiring me? (Market research question)

How Dedicated Are You?

2010-05-17T16:42:00.002-06:00

Last week was an R&R week for Veronica after qualifying for the USAW National Championships the weekend before. She and her significant other, Phil, took a road trip to Moab for fun, hiking and sightseeing.

V, as usual, packed her weightlifting shoes, Eleiko bar and some bumper plates so when the opportunity presented itself she could work out the kinks and keep the rust off technique.

I love this picture. It resonates on so many levels.

What do you do, if anything, to keep in reasonable form on vacations?

UFC and VFF

2010-05-15T19:50:00.002-06:00

Was watching UFC Primetime Wednesday night before The Ultimate Fighter...check out the footwear both Rashad Evans and his strength coach Jonathan Chaimberg are wearing. Vibram Five Fingers! I wonder if it was product placement by Vibram or a "real" choice based on performance.

Either way, you are a better man than I am if you have the cajones to tell either Chaimberg or Evans they look goofy wearing them. The link for the episode is http://www.spike.com/full-episode/ufc-primetime/38110 . The VFFs star turn is at about minute 11 with sled driving and parachute running etc.

I'm wearing my VFF KSOs as much as possible. Today at the grocery store I was stopped a couple of times by people who were really curious about trying them and wanted my opinion. The hip seems to improve a little bit more every day, although I still can't get good extension in a running gait without sharp pain in the flexor and adductor. I'll take any improvement though.

Move More/Eat Less = Faith Based Weight Loss Program?

2010-05-12T08:34:00.000-06:00

The American Heart Association and one of the largest personal trainer certification organizations, the American College of Sports Medicine released this joint statement in 2007, It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.

Let's say you have 10lbs you want to lose. Using the current diet and exercise formula, you would need to burn 35,000 calories beyond what you required to maintain your current weight (3,500 calories per pound of fat). Over 10 weeks you religiously ride the exercise bike and walk the treadmill 5 days a week burning 700 calories each session. 700 calories a day x 5 days a week equals 3,500 calories a week x 10 weeks = 35,000 calories. If nothing else changed, you should have lost those 10 lbs at the rate of 1lb a week. Right?

Probably not.

There are no definitive scientific studies that show that exercise will cause weight loss. There are many other good reasons to exercise, but weight control is not one of them. The end of personal training? Fascinating article from Gary Taubes in the New York Magazine from 2007. http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Social Networks and Obesity (Among Other Things)

2010-05-10T10:58:00.002-06:00

Are your friends gaining weight, losing weight, happier, sadder, better off, worse off because of you? Are you doing better or worse as a result of where you reside in your social network? Are there aspects of social networks that are genetic and thus heritable?

Did you know that if have friends who are obese the odds that you will become obese go up by 75%? If your friend's friends (people you don't know) are obese, your chances go up 25%. If your friends'friends'friends are obese there is still a 10% chance you will become obese.

Nicholas Christakis. M.D. explores these ideas and more in a fascinating talk.

Great food for thought about how to best use all the tools at our disposal to create and reinforce the social network that best serves our interests and the interests of everyone we are connected with.

Colorado State and Open Weightlifting Championships

2010-05-09T09:41:00.003-06:00

We had two lifters, Veronica Aguila and Jesse Malcomb lift at this fun, well run and well attended meet, hosted by Rocky Mountain Weightlifting Club Saturday in Aurora. Outstanding lifting in all sessions with some "star power" talent showing up to compete: veteran Team USA member Jackie Berube, Olympian Natalie Burgener and Team USA member Casey Burgener (who has slimmed down from +105kg to 105kg class) all put on a great show.
Our own weightlifting club member Veronica Aguila, "V" qualified for the National Championships with a 137kg total. Here is her "must make" 80kg clean and jerk which also earned her the silver medal in the 63 kg class. Thanks to club member Jesse Malcomb, who, by the way, took Silver in the men's 94kg class for the video.

Here's Jesse's 135kg C/J

Hell Froze Over

2010-05-03T11:02:00.007-06:00

It finally happened. It occurred to me that I could no longer diss the VFFs without trying them. Like commenting on a book or a movie one hasn't experienced directly, I have been guilty of prejudice and small mindedness. Not that I didn't realize it at the time, I did. The damn things are such an easy target, I just couldn't help myself.

When I received my R.E.I. dividend in April, it coincided with a 20% off sale they were having. So I decided I would try the VFFs. The combination made the purchase less risky and R.E.I. has a no problemo return policy, so I could always return them if it turned out I really hated them.

Don't get me wrong. I still think the VFFs are the ugliest damn things ever. However now that I've had them a month, I've noticed that I don't think they look so bad on my feet, but they sure look goofy on everyone else's feet. I'm convinced this psychosis or justification or whatever you want to call it is a key to the success of the product. The photograph shows the model and color I went with: KSO (Keep Stuff Out)...they're great. The come in a camo green and black camo too....but I went for the less tactical look.

Bottom line: I was completely wrong about about these things. After the self consciousness of the first few outings around the Twin Lakes near my home here in Boulder I was hooked. They are fun to wear. I know I am wearing an ear to ear goofy grin when I'm walking in them too. My Sambas and Nike Frees are not nearly as much fun, which has been part of this "a-ha, I get it now" experience. How often do you find footwear that is actually fun to wear?

And therapeutic.

They have helped open up my funky, arthritic hip and the pain has been markedly reduced. With conventional shoes I wasn't able to do any significant walking/jogging due to the hip, but wearing the KSOs I can put in 3-4 miles of pain free walking on the gravel path around the lakes. I'm not saying I'm healed, but they do seem to be helping. Just a month ago I was dropping two Alleve a day...now I take a couple of Advil every few days. If the foot gloves fit, you must acquit.

I've done a little kettlebelling in them and they are OK for swings and get ups and the like, but I still prefer WL shoes for jerks and snatches. This weekend I did some barbell power snatching in them and some power cleans and the KSOs were surprisingly comfortable. I don't think I was moving my feet quite as fast as in WL shoes, but I was doing OK. Oddly, the minor shoulder ache I had been having (of course the contralateral shoulder to the funky hip...as it should be) was missing.

One more finding, unexpected and kind of odd: when I'm walking, shuffle/jogging in them my footing feels way more secure than in any other shoe or hiking boot I've ever worn. Maybe the word for that sensation is "grounded". The effect is I find myself wanting (and often as not I actually do) to scramble up and down rocky ledges I wouldn't have even noticed, much less try wearing my regular shoes. They seem to bring out a bit of the adventurer in one.

I apologize to all the VFF owners whose feelings I may have hurt in my posts here and on other Forums. I was wrong. Terribly. To those who still hate on these odd foot gloves and haven't considered trying them, I encourage you to give them a go, your understandable repulsion notwithstanding. You can still hate while you evaluate. In the end, you have nothing to lose but some false pride and maybe a lot to gain in the way of enlivening your exercise experience and maybe fixing things you maybe didn't know could be fixed simply by walking (nearly) barefoot.

Interestingly, the only person to have commented to me out loud was a very attractive young woman walking her two mutts. She said, "Wow, those are cool shoes. They look like they are fun to wear."

Chicks dig VFFs. Seriously.

Masters Weightlifting Update

2010-04-30T07:52:00.000-06:00

The National Masters Weightlifting Championships were held recently at the venerable old Lost Battalion Hall in Rego Park, New York.

Two lifters who train at our weightlifting club here in Boulder, Colorado competed: Coach David Miller and Russ Leabch.

Russ took the Gold Medal in the 60-64 age group, 85kg class. David took Silver in the 40-44 age group, 77kg class.

Below David goes for the 115kg clean and jerk that would have given him the gold medal, but just couldn't quite save the jerk.

Here is Russ's final clean and jerk of 93kg to cap off a perfect 6 for 6 day and secure the GOld Medal.

Weightlifting is a sport that can be enjoyed at any age. The oldest male lifter at the Nationals this year was Jack Lano at 88 years of age. The oldest female competing was Elsa Dahl at 75 years of age.

So You Think You are Fit?

2010-04-18T17:21:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Chiggers over on the Dragon Door Forum for posting this. German Masters athlete Johann Martin getting it done with kettlebell juggling and feats of strength, gymnastics, hand balancing, shot juggling, Olympic Weightlifting and more. This is what being "cross fit" looks like in my opinion.

We Are the Pros From Dover

2010-04-10T11:36:00.008-06:00

I was going into ninth grade in 1971 when I first saw the movie MASH. It was summer. My Dad dropped my girlfriend and me off at the Orpheum Theater in Galesburg, Illinois, telling the lady behind the box office glass that "both these kids" had his permission to watch the movie. MASH was R rated and we were both just turning 15. I remember being totally entertained, shocked, amazed and inspired. MASH was a revelation. This was the early 70s after all. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been gunned down only 3 years earlier. The Beatles had broken up the year before. Nixon was in the White House and every guy my age was sure he would eventually die in Viet Nam. Misbehaving in the face of authority seemed like a perfectly rational response. MASH was a budding young contrarian's call to arms.

The reason I am writing about this is I woke up this morning very early from a brief dream that had to do with MASH. It was odd because I had not thought about the movie for years. The dream wasn't about the movie so much as it was its own short feature, the premise of which (as nearly as I can suss it out) was that I had turned out, in a way, like my favorite character from the movie, Hawk Eye. At least from the stand point of how I tend to behave in organizations I have lost faith in or are too tightly wound. You know, bucking the by the book, red tape bound, overly serious Mickey Mouse behavior.

I can certainly think of many Frank Burnses and Hot Lips Houlihans I've tormented over my lifetime from high school through college and graduate school and over all these long years to the present. Even now. Maybe especially now. As I reflect on why I've recently cut a couple of business associations, it may be that I am just allergic to the Mickey Mousiness that goes along with bureaucracies of any size.

Right as I woke up, I was struck with the notion that at the moment I didn't have and really needed a Trapper John side kick to help me make my goals a reality. I'm not sure what this meant, exactly. Except perhaps, in a somewhat serious profession like strength coaching where fun is NOT the operant word and one stands (as I do) for both having fun and producing results, it's important to have a few like minded individuals working and playing along side you. Monty Python alum turned business consultant John Cleese once said, "Being serious about something is not the same as being somber." Hear, Hear! I've met some strong candidates over the last few months for this Trapper John role, although they may not know it. Somehow I think they probably do. I will be calling on them.

Now, in reality I don't think I am all that much like Donald Sutherland's Hawkeye. That level of audaciousness and irreverence can only be pulled off in the movies. Or in one's dreams. But misbehaving is not the sole point, I don't think. I think maybe my subconscious was just telling me to go ahead with the project I have in mind. Make it fun. Make it excellent. To let go and be my unconventional, irreverent self, be a Pro From Dover and get it done.

On The Rhythm Road

2010-04-08T09:44:00.002-06:00

This entry I am going to hook you up with the adventures of an old musician buddy of mine, David Berntson. Bernesto is traveling and performing overseas on a cultural exchange program sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center called The Rhythm Road

Bernie is an outstanding blues harmonica player and an enormously engaging human being who uses his music to make a difference in the lives of children. I had the good fortune to play blues with him many years ago in a couple of bands back when we both lived in in the mid-west.

Here is Bernie's blog about his adventures over seas in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. And here also are a couple of videos made in Bahrain. The first features Bernie teaching a bunch of kids to play a song on the harmonica. The second is a performance in Bahrain. Both feature the band he is traveling with, The Little Joe McClaren Quartet.

Paleo Follow Up

2010-04-06T09:16:00.000-06:00

The bottom line is I have dropped about 7kg of body weight since starting the Paleo/Zone diet in January. I started at 92kg and 17%BF. My weight at the moment is hovering between 84.5 and 86.5 kg depending on the day. My goal was 85kg at 10% bodyfat (on my Tanita scale) I've been as low as 8.5% of late, but that was at 86kg bodyweight and the day after a "cheat" meal. 11% has been an average read lately.

The Paleo food choices are very agreeable. Dropping the grains has been no problem. I gave myself the luxury of one beer a night with my evening meal and that seems to not have screwed up things too much. Asparagus has become my "go to" vegetable and I eat a few salads here and there. I get 2-3 pieces of fruit a day. Some nuts occasionally.

The Zone portions became a little too much for me to juggle so after a few weeks of seeing what the portions looked like, I started winging it. I stayed very strict for two months to see what would happen. Since the two months expired I have stayed on the diet but have allowed myself a cheat pizza meal recently. And a very nice beef and green chile burrito with beans and rice a couple of weeks ago. It was the burrito meal that led up to my best BF% yet, as mentioned above. Must have been the salt and extra water and glycogen that registered as "lean mass". Or perhaps the burrito is, as I have long suspected, one of the best diet foods going!

So, Paleo works. Give it a shot. Giving up grains and processed food will get more fruits and vegetables into your diet: not a bad thing.

Best Kettlebell Lifter in the U.S. ?

2010-03-30T12:59:00.003-06:00

Lorna Kleidman burst on the scene in 2007 at the IGSF Worlds where she became the first American (female or male) to be internationally recognized with the International Master of Sport ranking in kettlebell sport. Since then, she has competed with great success overseas, becoming World Champion in both her age group and open category. In the States the last few months she has achieved Master of Sport rankings in the U.S. based WKC federation in the two American kettlebell sport disciplines: One Arm Snatch/Jerk Biathlon and the One Arm Long Cycle Clean and Jerk.

Here is video from the WKC Long Cycle championships in NYC this past weekend:

And some more video from her Biathlon effort a few weeks ago.

Lorna also has a book out Body Sculpting With Kettlebells for Women

Congrats Lorna! Keep up the great work!

Weight Lifting and Sports Performance

2010-03-29T09:52:00.000-06:00

Is it a coincidence that George St. Pierre so explosively changes levels on his take downs and that he practices the Oly lifts, both dumbbell and barbell versions?

Taking the easy way out today read my post from Flatirons Crossfit Oly Lifting page.

Been out of the groove posting and training due to this late winter cold...which I seem to have finally shaken. My last few days of training have consisted of box squats, pulls and the usual 10 minutes of continuous kettlebell something.

Yesterday: Did some barbell power cleans from below the knee, then double 12kg KB jerks, 100 reps practiced alternating rack. Saturday 10 minutes of one arm jerks with the 24kg, 60 total, switching hands on the minute. I had done 5 x 5 32 kg jerks before the timed set.
Friday, 160 16kg snatches, one hand switch in 10 minutes.
Thursday, 4 rounds x 5 rung ladders of one arm clean and press with the 20kg.
Wednesday, 20 minutes of 8kg juggling.

Movement Screens: Is Chasing Symmetry a Good Idea?

2010-03-23T14:31:00.003-06:00

So called functional movement screens are getting to be all the rage among trainers now. The premise behind them, simply put, is that there are basic human movement patterns which need to be within a certain range of symmetry and if they are not you can actually be predisposed to injury. Of course, post screen there are a constellation of corrective, remedial exercises to bring your "dsyfunctional" movement patterns back into the functional domain.

The jury is out on just how effective these screens are. Some studies show that screening and correcting detected imbalances or "dysfunction" can lower the incidence of injury in a tested population. Some studies show the opposite. Some studies are just inconclusive.

So what's the deal? I'm not going to pick on any one screen in particular, but personally I haven't been impressed with any of the screens on the market nor have I been persuaded by advocates for them. Indeed, after talking to several people who have been screened and heard from them that they still can't get good scores as much as two years later, I'm not convinced that the screens or the corrective movements are worth much. These people have been avoiding exercising like they want to exercise because the screen hadn't "cleared" them. That's just nonsense.

I had one guy send me a video doing the exercise he was not cleared to do and he looked awesome. Either the screen is hooey, the guy conducting the screen doesn't know what he is doing or this guy has screen performance anxiety and tests poorly. (That's a joke...sort of.) The guy might get injured doing this exercise. But the truth is, the screen doesn't promise he won't get injured doing this exercise even with a perfect score. So what's the point?

The truth is, nobody is symmetrical and nobody gets 100% perfectly symmetrical addressing asymmetries. There is no evidence it improves performance and there is no evidence that getting symmetrical will fix existing problems. According to Dr. Mel Siff, "The body and its muscles, tendons and bones are characteristically asymmetric and any attempts to produce greater anthropomorphic and kinesiological symmetry could exacerbate the existing problem or cause new injuries." (Supertraining, pg 239)

Will you really be any better off after having been screened than if you had simply done general joint mobility, some specific stretching and actually exercised within your current skills and ranges of motion?

Nope.

Siff notes, "...discrepencies as large as 10% do not statistically correlate with a major increase in muscular injuries." 10% is pretty big. Movement screens profess to get your dysfunctions and imbalances relatively even. Is it worth it?

I'm skeptical. Bottom line, a screen is an additional certification a personal trainer can use to sell you more services. Just as fat people don't need a $100 pinch fold test to tell them they are fat and unfit people don't need a $50 fitness test to tell them they aren't fit, if you can't touch your toes or get up out of a chair comfortably you don't need a $150 movement screen to tell you aren't moving well. What you do need is to start moving. With or without a supervised program. Most of what ails you will clear up in just the act of getting more exercise.

Everybody is different and there is no one "correct" exercise technique that fits everyone equally. Movement screens may not be a total waste of time, but to me they fall into the same category of a too restrictive, cookie cutter approach to how people are "supposed" to move. One only has to look at elite athletes in any sport at any time and watch how they walk, run or jump to see that there are many "correct" ways to move.

Optimal is individual.

tonight's training: box squats up to 166kg for a double, 100kg x 10 to finish then pulls from below knee to 150kg. 10 minutes of double long cycle 16kg: 5 cleans + 1 jerk = 80 cleans and 16 jerks for the 10 minutes.

Back in the Saddle

2010-03-23T10:09:00.000-06:00

Still recovering from the cold/flu but almost symptom free. Enough to venture out into the world and get a couple of workouts in.

Sunday I did some box squats with narrow, medium and wide stances. Worked up to100kg x 2 x 10 sets varying the stance each set. Box height was right about parallel, a little above. I'm trying to get the hips and glutes stronger without aggravating the "bad hip" so I'm experimenting with less squat depth.

After squatting I did some clean pulls from below the knees up to 120kg x 5 reps. Finished with a 10 minute set of kettlebell push presses with the 16kg, switching hands every 10 reps...got around 120 reps total.

Last night bottoms up presses, long cycle style with the 12kg bell. 10 RPMS switching hands on the minute. Ended up with 101 reps.

Sorry...Under the Weather

2010-03-19T11:10:00.002-06:00

I don't know how some people do it. When I get a serious cold or flu I cannot function...all I can do is crawl into bed and sleep. Work out? Hey, if you can do it God bless you. For me job one becomes getting over whatever it is that has me.

Which is what I have been doing the last two days. I couldn't read a book I was so bleary and fuzzy. Blogging was out of the question.

Tuesday night after getting home from the gym I noticed I was getting a sore throat. Wednesday it was a little worse but I was still functional. By Wednesday evening though it was full blown croop and cough and off to bed I went.

Thursday slept all day.

Peeking around today to find more snow on the ground. Wednesday it was 65 and sunny. Go figure, it's Colorado after all. Will take it easy today too.

Hammer Strength Clinic

2010-03-16T08:12:00.003-06:00

This past weekend I represented Werk San at the Hammer Strength coaching clinic in Miami. Werk San is a sponsor of these clinics. This one was held at Florida International University;a beautiful campus, a beautiful training facility. I really enjoyed all the presenters, especially the presentations by FIU coach Roderick Moore, Big House Power owner and coach Joe Kenn and the strnegth coach for the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee Bryan Van Vleet.

I'm adopting an idea I learned from Joe Kenn's talk. Resetting an athlete's training age. From now on when someone comes to work with me for the first time, their training age becomes zero. I don't care what you know or how much experience you have or how many years you have trained, you haven't worked with me yet so you don't work the way I will have you work. We start over. Roll the odometer back to zero.

Training: missed all weekend due to travel. Last night barbell snatches up to 60kg x 3, power cleans up to 70kg x 3, box squats up to 140kg x 5 (an experiment) then 10 minutes of 24kg clean and press, 5 RPMs switching on the minute. 50 reps total.
Tonight's session; pulls from above knee to 190kg x 1. Then swings for 10 minutes, 50/40/30/20/10 each arm, 16kg.

My New Favorite Kettlebells

2010-03-11T11:07:00.001-07:00

The kettlebells I personally use and recommend to everyone these days are the Perform Better First Place Elite Kettlebells. These are professional grade, competition style kettlebells. They are now offered with presanded handles and in the official competition colors. Competition bells are uniform size regardless of the weight. This means that the technique you learn with light bells is transferable to heavier bells...you don't have to adjust your technique to the shape of the bell.

These are the best bells on the market for the price bar none. Plus, you get the awesome service and dependable product supply line Perform Better is known for.

If you are in the market for kettlebells to use in your home gym, I highly, highly recommend these bells.

poor training night...no pop left. 10 minutes of 24kg snatches 5 reps each arm, switched at 26/26 then 10s after that. Lots of rest in the hang.

Moving On Up

2010-03-11T10:29:00.001-07:00

Resignations - Reorientations
I have recently officially resigned my teaching position with the RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge/Certification) and my coach's position with the AKC (American Kettlebell Club)

The reason I resigned was simple. It has become clear to me that how I have come to think about, use and teach kettlebells is inconsistent with the missions of these two organizations. I didn't feel as though my ideas were useful or wanted by either organization. I didn't see that I had anything to contribute.

Over the last few years, both the RKC and the AKC have distinguished themselves in the marketplace in part by publicly distancing themselves from one another. They certainly do stand for different approaches to using the kettlebell. Both organizations have a good deal to offer the interested kettlebell user and indeed many kettlebell enthusiasts have taken courses with both. But this has been a tricky path to negotiate. Both organizations want loyalty to their respective methods and philosophies. I've straddled this fence for a couple of years now and I just can't do it anymore. For example, in order to remain an RKC Team Leader I was required to make the commitment to not teach other methods, to not endorse other kettlebell related products, to only represent the RKC brand. I couldn't make that commitment and maintain my integrity as a teacher.

Reclaiming the Art
What I have to offer as a kettlebell instructor is the best of several worlds. My teaching is based on what the individual needs, not a canned system. I've been taught and coached by some of the best kettlebell teachers in the world and I've made that information my own. You won't get a one dimensional approach from me. Teaching is what I do, it's my art form. Kettlebell classes and workshops and private training are the platforms I practice my art from. If there isn't anybody taking instruction from me, no art gets made. So I'm going to try a different approach. I believe everyone who trains with weights should know how to use a kettlebell. With that in mind, I'm in the process of designing a free kettlebell workshop/certification that will prepare you to not only use kettlebells safely, but will prepare you to show someone else how to use them if the opportunity arises. Totally free. No strings attached.

Stay tuned.

Go Light(er) or Go Home

2010-03-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body, Go Heavy or Go Home, No Pain No Gain and all the other gym poster, workout T shirt, macho, testosterone driven cliche sayings will when taken literally on a daily basis leave you broken, injured and weaker.Train hard but train smart, is the better way to go. Go light(er) or go home (injured) is my admittedly less than sexy bid for a cliche gym poster.

Sometimes you go heavy. Most times you don't. Strength training is a balance of stimulus-response: adaption to a training load, attaining a tougher equilibrium. As you get older, masters age, you have to go lighter way more than you used to. Tendons, ligaments and cartilage not to mention the central nervous system don't recover like when you were a kid. Masters need less frequent heavy days and more rest days between heavy sessions. We have to make do with less.Injury and overtraining set in much quicker the older you get. The good news is, you get a lot more out of those 70-80% weights than you think. So lift faster and with impeccable technique and only load up the bar a few weeks out from a meet. Save the PRs for the platform, don't leave them in the gym. Or at the physical therapist's.

Tonight's training: some light barbell cleans up to 70kg. Pulls from mid thigh up to 140kg for 3 sets of 3. Kettlebell workout, 20 minutes of 12kg snatches. 1 hand switch 16 RPMS. 160 reps per arm, 320 total.

The Tao (and the Coach) is Silent

2010-03-08T12:31:00.003-07:00

A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? Eagerly I would speak with with him. - Chuang-Tzu

The Yin and the Yang of the snatch and clean. Can you see it?

First the bar slowly accelerates from the floor, picks up speed and then the lifter explodes with it. With no pause, seamlessly the lifter accelerates even faster around and down to receive the bar. Once either lift commences, something is always accelerating until the lift is completed. Either the bar is accelerating upwards or the lifter's body is accelerating downwards. It is continuous motion. It is balance.

The finish of the pull and the beginning of the drop under the bar happen at the same time.There is no hard line of demarcation or pause between the two. They are like the front of the hand and the back of the hand. They cannot be truly separated, only distinguished. Like the yin and the yang. The end of the pull is the beginning of the drop under the bar and vice versa. If you stay too long with the pull, the lift suffers. If you neglect finishing the pull and rush going under the bar the lift suffers. Finish tall and shrug explosively and you will drop under the bar explosively. Action-reaction. The Physics of Tao.

Coaching cues are to convey ideas about movement. When an athlete has mastered the movement, the coaching cue can be forgotten. Where can I find an athlete who has forgotten cues? Eagerly I would coach him.

A few barbell snatches. Played hang onto the 32kg for 10 minutes. A few swings, slingshots. Need to get used to it again.

BPPV and Me

2010-03-07T19:50:00.004-07:00

Annoying few days for me. Came down with a case of BENIGN PAROXYSMAL POSITIONAL VERTIGO. I've had this condition before. It's a kind of short term, episodic dizziness. I experience it mostly when rolling over in bed. The sensation is that I am still rolling even though my body has stopped. Unfortunately, the symptoms persist somewhat after arising. Sometimes I experience it when looking high overhead, but this is a less common occurance. I first experienced this condition 18 years ago when I lived in New York. Lasted about a week then went away. For the next several years I would get it annually in the fall. It would set in for a few days and then leave. Not sure why that was. There is nothing in the medical literature about seasonal BPPV. This week is the first time in about 9 years I've had a recurrence.

The cause of this condition is that some of the tiny calcium deposits in your inner ear called canaliths, also called otoconia (it turns out everyone has rocks in their heads) have detached and are floating around in one of the sensitive semicircular canals. Normally the canaliths are attached to the tiny hairs in the inner ear and assist with balance but when some break free and float around in the inner ear it causes vertigo, involuntary eye movements called nystagmus (imagine the vertical hold on the TV has slipped: the vision "rolls")and sometime nausea.

There are several home remedies that involve systematic positioning of the head to allow the canalith to reposition itself in a less sensitive area of the inner ear. One of these is called the Epley maneuver which I have been using with some success. I've also discovered my own remedy that I don't necessarily recommend.

A few years ago I woke up with the room swirling. I crawled to the bathroom, dressed myself, staggered out to the car and drove to the gym. Every turn made me dizzy. I staggered into the gym holding on to exercise equipment for balance as I made my way to the power rack. I loaded up the bar and then did squats. The Valsalva manuever must have generated enough pressure in my head to move the rocks cuz that wuz that for that year.

So...despite some occasional dizziness during the day, I was able to do some work yesterday and today.

Yesterday I did 10 minutes of 16kg alternating swings, switching hands every minute, for 310 reps.

Today I did some barbell clean pulls up to 110 kg for 3 sets of 3. KB snatches with 32kg, a few sets of 5 reos each arm then 1 set of 10 each arm. Finished with 24kg clean ladders, five rungs. Got in 5 full rungs each arm for 75 reps each arm.

Live Weightlifting from the Arnold

2010-03-05T07:50:00.004-07:00

All Weekend Long. Enjoy.

arnoldweightlifting on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Last night's KB workout was with Ted...10 minutes of cleans and press 5 rung ladders. I went with 20kg and completed 4 full ladders which adds up to 60 cleans and presses each arm.
Tonight: Front squats, 60x5, 80x4, 90x2, 60x5. 20kg OALC, 10 RPMS, switch on minute, 100 reps.

Creativity and Practice

2010-03-03T17:33:00.008-07:00

Great talk about the nature of creativity from the author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert. A big part of creativity, as in Woody Allen's observation about life, is "showing up". Doing the work.

Training for athletic performance is also creating. It is about working to bring something new into existence. A new level of fitness perhaps. Or a new level of performance. A personal record. It's about visualizing a result in the future and then taking steps to make it real.

Often we call the results we want "goals." How about calling your goals "projects" instead? As in, what you want is "projected" into the future. Or maybe what you are really doing is simply making art. Writers write. Painters paint. Weightlifters lift. The medium doesn't make it any more or less art. All these endeavors involve casting a desire into the future and then reeling that desired future into the present.

As in art, some days the inspiration to train is there, some days not so much. The key is to keep showing up and doing the work. How do you get to the Olympics? How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Every cab drive in NYC knows the answer to both questions: "Practice."

So, "Olé" for your next PR. And "Olé" for your next PR attempt even if you don't actually get it. (You will have to watch the video to get this reference.) Keep showing up. Keep practicing. Keep doing the work. Your performance is your art.

tonight: squatted for the first time in 5 weeks...worked up to 100kg for a triple. 2x16kg long cycle for 10 minutes, 64 reps. Didn't push.

Travel

2010-03-02T09:30:00.001-07:00

Well, keeping up with my kettlebell workouts during my three days traveling to and from Atlanta this weekend was an epic fail. Last Thursday I did a 20 minute set to cover one missed day, but I didn't manage to get any work in on either Friday before I left or Sunday when I got back. Just didn't make it happen.

So Monday night I did another 20 minute set of one arm long cycle clean and jerks, this time with the 20kg switching hands on the minute. Managed 8 RPMS for the entire time with no rest, just a continuous comfortably paced set. Again with the belt. It really seems to help get a good upper body cradle in the rack and it also seems to protect the wonky hip.

The 20kg combined with the belt gave me some insight and practice on just how abbreviated the dip can be when you get the rebound out of spinal flexion into extension happening. The 16 is just a little too light to feel it.

Tonight I did some snatches off the high block up to 50kg and then some pulls working up to 240kg for a few singles. Finished up with 200 x 16kg KB snatches one hand switch in 10 minutes.

All About Position

2010-02-25T10:44:00.002-07:00

I'm now juggling two blogs...so in the interest of economy, here is a link to today's post at Flatirons Crossfit Olympic Weightlifting blog.
http://www.flatironscrossfit.com/olympicweightlifting/2010/02/all-about-position.html

Tonight's workout: some light barbell snatching up to 60kg then a 20 minute 1 arm long cycle set with one hand switch. 10 RPMS, 16kg. 100 reps each arm. Wore a belt tonight for the first time in awhile...helped with the hip flexor issue, oddly enough.

Can't workout Saturday due to business travel, so I did "double time" tonight to makeup.

More Grrrl Power

2010-02-24T07:38:00.004-07:00

Svetlana Krechyk, a champion kettlebell athlete from eastern Europe now living in the United States, contests the one arm long cycle clean and jerk at a meet in Toledo. She is using the 24kg kettlebell. She gets a 116 reps in 10 minutes with just one hand switch; a feat most American guys who work out seriously with kettlebells couldn't duplicate.

Including this guy: Last night's workout: 24kg one arm long cycle clean and jerk, 90 reps in 10 minutes, but I switched hands at 3 minutes, 6 minutes and 8 minutes.

Tonight I did 20kg clean and presses for 14 minutes...20/20, 10/10, 5/5, 10/10, 15/15 5/5, 5/5 so 70 reps each arm

Why Are You Bored?

2010-02-23T08:45:00.004-07:00

Are you bored? I came to the realization many years ago that the world wasn't here to entertain me. If I was bored it wasn't because the world was boring or my circumstances were boring it was because I was boring. I came to this realization one evening while I was living in Manhattan.

I was going to bed at 10 PM one Friday night when it hit me. For some reason I had come to believe that it was far better to live in some place like Manhattan where the choices for entertainment were near infinite and yet choose to do nothing than it was to live in some podunk little town where there were no such choices but having a desire to do something not readily available. Going to sleep early on a Friday night in the City That Never Sleeps was a kind of metaphysical potlatch, a form of Existential conspicuous consumption. Funny stuff.

So what is it to not be bored in this modern world? It seems that if we aren't constantly bombarded with a variety of sounds, images, text messages, voice mails we don't know what to do with ourselves.

Over the past few years, I've seen this penchant for constant variety expressed as a kind of visual cacophony in the movies. In action films like the Bourne series, the edits are so fast that one can't really pick out exactly what is happening. At least I can't. It's as if the directors and editors are using a TV remote to surf as many possible viewing angles in as brief a time span as possible. And not because it is good visual story telling either (or a metaphor of some kind) but simply because they can. Technology and technique in the service of technology and technique. My friends complain that movies like Lost in Translation or Unforgiven or the recent gem Julie and Julia are boring and unwatchable. Maybe. But I think there is another reason. Frankly I suspect that these movies, which unfold quietly and deliberately, require the viewer to participate, to attend, to engage. One has to pay attention, not merely sit back and watch the colors whiz by surrounded by surround sound explosions and overwrought soundtacks.

My friend Boris Bachman at Squat Rx wrote a nice blog on this topic yesterday...he talks more about boredom in the context of what it means to be paying attention on the path of mastery.

Last night's kettlebell: 12.5 minutes of free style H2H/juggling with the 8kg. Sore and worn out and needed a light one and juggling fits the bill nicely.

Sunday

2010-02-21T15:27:00.001-07:00

Keith picked me up and we headed to Ozo's for a java fix before hitting Flatirons for a workout. Large coffee with a double shot of espresso for me. By the time we arrived at Flatirons, Sid and Tim were deep into the Air Force WOD. Brutal.

Played around with a new start position for cleans...a bunch at 80kg. Nothing too promising. Then worked up to some heavy pulls off the high blocks. Pictured above 210kg for a single with no straps, then strapped up and did a set of five. A good deadlift for a high school girl or a good snatch for a 105kg elite weight lifter, but we do what we can.

Finished with some long cycle: double 16kg 10 minutes @ 16 reps, 20 reps, 24 reps, and 10 reps...rest in the hang not putting bells down.

Yesterday was a down day...felt very blah. Basically just held onto a 16kg for 10 minutes, a few slingshots and 1 arm RDLs, figure 8s etc. to say I did 10 minutes.

Friday

2010-02-19T22:00:00.003-07:00

I am a cherry picker when it comes to crossfit workouts...so I do not consider myself a "real crossfitter". I pick workouts that have something to do with either weightlifting or kettlebells. Grace, for example, is a workout I've done. It is 30 barbell clean and jerks performed as quickly as possible. The kettlebell Secret Service Snatch Test, as many snatches as possible in 10 minutes, is another.

Tim at Flatirons Crossfit designed a nice barbell snatch workout which I did tonight...in retrospect I went a little lighter than I could have...I might have squeezed out 10kg more. But better safe than sorry.

Later Phil and I did kettlebell swings 50/50, 40/40, 30/30, 20/20, 10/10 with a 2 minute kettlebell carry (rack, overhead, farmer walk etc) after each set. Took about 19 minutes to pull it off. Again, I went light with the 16kg.

Boulder's Best Olympic Weightlifting Club

2010-02-18T10:39:00.002-07:00

To be accurate, we are probably the only USAW Olyympic Weightlifting club in Boulder...but of the one or two other places in the area that have bars and bumper plates, we certainly offer the best in the way of instruction and equipment.No one else compares.
If you google Olympic Weightlifting Boulder(or Denver) you will discover that our club at Flatirons Crossfit in Boulder is the top hit. We are one of the very few Olympic lifting clubs in Colorado. We of course have bars and bumpers and platforms and chalk. Most importantly we have great instruction available (myself and International Coach David Miller)and just as importantly we have a great mix of folks and a great atmosphere where we all work hard, have fun and make progress. You don't have to be a Crossfit member to join the club either.

Check us out if you are in the area.

Wednesday workout: 20kg KB jerks, 6 reps, rest in hang until top of minute, 60 reps total
Today's workout: 16kg swings, 50/50, 40/40, 30/30, 20/20, 15/15 for 310 reps in 10 minutes

Tuesday 2/16

2010-02-17T07:10:00.001-07:00

Worked with a new client Tuesday; a former professional bike racer who has been battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for the past two years. He's back on the bike recently and training for some big races in the late summer. We will be working together on the Olympic lifts and kettlebells to help rebuild some strength and power. Learned the basics of the barbell power snatch Tuesday. Wednesday we will learn the power clean. Thursday we will start kettlebells.

He's very excited as am I. I used to ride seriously. While I didn't have the right stuff to be a high level competitor, looking back on it if I knew then what I know now about weight training I could have been an even stronger rider. Ever since arriving in Boulder I've been anxious to work with cyclists and I'm glad to finally be getting the chance.

Earlier this winter I had the privilege of working briefly with a young pro rider on the Garmin-Transitions team. They just completed their first race of the year, the Tour Mediterraneen in southern France over the weekend.

My workout: Power snatched up to 65kg off the blocks from below knee for several sets of doubles. Then kettlebell snatched 16kg for 250 reps (125/125) in 10 minutes, one hand switch...a personal best for me with the 16. Took 5:22 to get the 125 reps with the left hand, so I had to hurry up to keep on track with the right.

8 Steps to Success

2010-02-15T16:58:00.004-07:00

This is one of the best little talks/slide shows I've seen on the subject of success. As I watched I tried to get a handle on which steps I have down and which steps I'm not doing or I'm not so good at.

Some examples that resonated: Do It for Love Not for Money.

Work...if your work is your love, you may not be workaholic, you may "workafrolic"

You have to Persist through failure and C.R.A.P.. Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.

It's only about three minutes long.

Tonight's practice: OALCCJ, 24kg, switch on the minute, 10 minutes 8RPMs.

Sundays

2010-02-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Spent yesterday morning at the gym. Every Sunday at 9 a.m. we have a fairly regular small group that gets together for Olympic Weightlifting. Coffee, reggae on the sound system, slow warm ups and a leisurely pace. We get work done, but it's definitely lower key.

After some power cleans up to 80kg for a few sets of triples, did a 10 minute set of double 16kg long cycle: 3 cleans + 1 jerk. Made it 5 minutes before rest in the hang. About 12 reps per minute so maybe 96 reps total factoring in the rest breaks.

Jamie Oliver: Food is Fundamental

2010-02-13T11:18:00.006-07:00

The biggest cause of death in the US is obesity related disease. Every 18 minutes four Americans die as a result of what they have shoveled into their pie holes. Children born today have a life expectancy 10 years less than their parents. Ten percent of the health care costs in the US are a result of obesity and that will double to 20% in the not too distant future.

Jamie Oliver, a Brit, a Chef and a man with his hair on fire wants to change this with education. He has based his efforts from America's obesity epicenter; the fattest and unhealthiest state in the union: West Virginia. For the past seven years he has made it his work to save lives by implementing broad systemic changes to home, school and work so that eventually every man, woman and child is educated about food, what to eat and how to cook it.

Here's a video of Jamie speaking at a recent TED event.

Friday's kettlebell session: 10 min 2 x 20kg long cycle drill: 2 cleans + 1 jerk. 50 cleans 20 jerks total.
Today: BB snatch up to 70kg x 2 singles, pulls to 130kg x 3, and 230 12 kg snatches 10 minutes, 1 hand switch (115/115)

No Man's Land

2010-02-11T14:41:00.004-07:00

No-Man's Land: the area between the service line and the baseline, where a player is most vulnerable

Tennis is a great game. It teaches players a lot about temperament and psychological tendencies. Tennis is one of those games where you must play the ball, not the opponent. If you take care of the ball, take care of your shot, you force your opponent to take care of his business also. "Give your opponent one more opportunity to take gas," advised the legendary tennis coach Vic Braden. Unfortunately, keeping your attention on the ball and not on your emotions is one of the biggest obstacles to a complete game. The biggest opponent most players have is their own heads.

Tennis is also a game of strategy. Much to the diminishment of the game, the new rackets and the power they provide have all but killed the old serve and volley game. But back before oversized graphite/carbon fiber composite cannons, a less speedy but well placed serve would force a weak return which would then be volleyed into the open court by the server who had charged the net. These days, if the ball is returned and stays in play for more than one or two more shots, it is rare to see a singles player take the net. A good net game requires the ability to hit a strong approach shot, which is a shot, Pat McEnroe recently described during Australian Open coverage, that needs to be almost as good as an outright winner. Coming to net behind anything less is risking getting passed. Especially these days, when net skills are not what they used to be.

Court position is a vital part of a player's strategy and ability to execute effective shots. The title of this post "No Man's Land" refers to the area of the tennis court where a player doesn't want to be trading shots: refer to the above illustration. This area is where half volleys land at your feet, shots go into your body and too much open court is exposed for angled passing shots. Good players spend almost no time here. They may return a short ball from NML but will return to the baseline or take the net. NML is where mediocre players go to die.

NML is not just a tennis issue. Similar to being stuck between a rock and a hard place No Man's Land can be a metaphor for nearly every aspect of a life. NML is any place where you are uncertain, waffling, not clear about where you stand. And guaranteed, you will get chewed up. NML is where mediocre lives go to die.

Lately, I have been having my own NML crisis. It may seem silly to some, but it has to do with how I think about and teach kettlebells. I am certified with two organizations: the RKC, which is a strength and conditioning certification and the AKC which is about the Kettlebell Sport but also has a fitness program. The more I post on their respective message boards about what I am up to, the more I encounter resistance from their respective "fundamentalists". It has become abundantly clear to me that I am neither "RKC enough" nor "AKC enough" to be happy in either camp. Nor are they likely to become any happier with me. Standing in NML,. I am getting ripped from both sides.

My deep approach shot is this: It's time to do my own thing. I don't need either certification to teach and they don't need me teaching what they don't endorse. I'll continue to seek out and learn from the best, teach what I believe in on my own terms and be accountable to no one but my students and my conscience.

I don't think there will be a return on that shot, but I'm at net just in case.

BB power snatch to 60 x 2. 16kg bottoms up presses x 5 rpm, 10 minutes, switch on the minute.

Some Thoughts on Thoughts

2010-02-10T10:08:00.002-07:00

One of the curious things about being a human being is we think our thoughts are real. Real in the sense that physical things are real. But do thoughts have mass? Are they measurable? Do they exist over time? In most respects, thoughts aren't real in the same way a bus is real. Yet while thoughts may have no physical substance they can still run you over.

A coach of mine years ago suggested that most of us most of the time aren't thinking thoughts worth thinking about. He called this kind of thinking, "thinking off". There are several names for it: monkey mind, the chatter in your head, the self talk, the inner critic. We generally think of the thinking as ourselves talking to ourselves on inner speaker. This coach also said something else interesting. He said that maybe we aren't doing the thinking. Maybe that isn't me talking to myself on inner speaker. Maybe it's automatic, like breathing and a heartbeat.

The test for whether or not it is you doing the thinking is this: can you stop doing it? Try it. When you try to stop thinking can you? If you try to think about something other than pink elephants, can you? If you try only to think about pink elephants, how long can you sustain it before other thoughts creep in? It's an interesting exercise. Maybe we really aren't thinking. Maybe thinking is just an automatic process. Maybe all that is going on is thinking thinks about things and one of the things thinking thinks about is us. Think about it.

So how do you get a handle on thinking if you aren't fully in charge of it? Well, you are able to guide your thinking. You do it by getting clear about what you want.

There is a connection between thought,word and deed. But I think for practical purposes we have the order backwards. If thought precedes word and deed, then you are only able to say and do things that you think you can say or do. This is what sabotages goal setting. People want something, but their thinking says it isn't possible so they never say what they want or act on the want. The never get out of the gate.

The better order is word, deed, thought. Say what you want. Take action to produce it. Make thinking subservient to word and deed. Remember: maybe you can't always choose when and how you think, but you can always choose what you say and what you do.

We work this way all the time programming athletes. We "say" the goal by writing it down. We organize actions to achieve that goal. Thinking is pretty much out of the equation. You either follow the program or you don't. As a coach, I don't much care about what you think. My job is to help you get your goal.

The key is, you have to want the goal. There isn't much you can do about negative thoughts that crop up except to not entertain them. When you set a goal, there are thoughts and actions that are conducive to producing that result and thoughts and actions that are not conducive to producing that result. Neither set of thoughts is more true or less true than the other, but one set will be useful for getting what you want, the other set will be useful for producing something other than what you want. Create empowering thoughts that support what you are up to. Or to remind yourself, write your goals on post it notes and hang them everywhere.

Context is everything when directing your thoughts. If you have a big want or goal, consider prioritizing other wants and goals to nest inside the big one. If your big want is "to lose 30lbs of fat this year, then the want called "pizza" presents itself differently. If you make the want called pizza more important than the want of losing 30lbs, enjoy the pizza but good luck on shedding the 30lbs. Context is key.

So if your results aren't what you want, stop for a second. What are you paying attention to? Are you "thinking off" or are you attending to acting on your goals? The process of producing your goals is important, but that process may not always be enjoyable. The only register you have for gauging effectiveness are the results you are producing. If the results aren't happening, re-evaluate your process. Tweak it.

So here is an exercise. Write down something you really want. Make it something that your automatic thinking says "No way." Think big. (Not ridiculous, though. "I want to flap my arms and fly", doesn't work for example) Now. What actions do you have to take to produce your goal? How long do you want it to take? How long are you willing for it to take?

This is where the rubber meets the road. You have a choice now. Do what it takes, for as long as it takes or go to the beach. What will it be?

Last night's training: BB power snatched up to 70kg (whew, "thought" I wouldn't see that again hah!) Did 5 sets of 5 reps 32kg long cycle each arm. Then 10 minutes of OALC with 24kg switching arms every 10 reps, 100 reps total.

Tonights training: Clean pulls from below knee to 150kg x 1 x 2 sets. 2 x 16kg jerks, 15 minutes, 100 reps. Rest in hang as needed.

Olympic Lifting Workshop Video

2010-02-08T06:21:00.003-07:00

When the team from the Boulder newspaper The Daily Camera came to visit last October, besides the print and web article they also shot some video of our clinic. Very short but here it is.

Monday night kettlebell: 10 minutes, one hand switch, 20kg. 2 swings + 1 snatch compound exercise = 50 swings + 25 snatches each arm. Grip murder.

Saturday/Sunday

2010-02-07T06:14:00.001-07:00

Did some pulls off the blocks from knee height up to 140kg for a few doubles. One arm cleans, 20kg, 10 minutes one hand switch...somewhere in the neighborhood of 150.

Super Bowl Sunday...really can't care less about pro football anymore. When I lived in Chicago in the 80's was the last time I cared about the outcome of a Super Bowl. Da Bears.

This morning a quick workout at Crossfit with Keith and then I dunno what.

Edit: Workout today..some very sluggish barbell PS...worked with 50kg. No snap, crackle or pop.
Kettlebell was for 20 continuous minutes today. 16kg clean and press. First 10 minutes done at 10 RPM with 1 hand switch = 100 reps. Second 10 minutes was done at 14RPM switching hands on the minute = 140 reps. So 120 reps each arm and 240 reps total of clean and press.

Game On or Game Over?

2010-02-05T11:01:00.004-07:00

In order to have a game there has to be something that is more important than something else. The nature of a game is that the "what isn't" is more important than the "what is" with which you begin.

If life is a game then, it follows that what isn't is more important than what is.

Most of us play games because they make us happy. They offer us a challenge, a chance to compete, an opportunity to have fun.

But is living your life where what isn't is more important than what is a recipe for happiness? A strategy for satisfaction? A pathway to enjoyment?

Incidentally, the game is over when what is has become more important than what isn't.

How would your life look if you declared game over?

Tonight's kettlebell set after power cleans from the blocks and power jerks: 10 minutes 2 x 16 long cycle 70 reps.

Feed Me Seymour

2010-02-04T10:25:00.009-07:00

Fat is forever
I speak from experience here. Once those fat cells form, they want to be filled. Unless you have them surgically removed they are constantly demanding to be fed. Even if you have devised a successful eating plan that allows you to maintain a good body weight/compostion, those extra fat cells are always waiting to fill back up. For my whole life there has been and always will be a fat guy on the inside constantly screaming to be let out. Feed Me Seymour!

Fat Man in the Bathtub (with the Blues)
It is far easier to maintain a healthy body weight by just not getting fat in the first place. Believe me eternal vigilance over one's weight is not a fun way to live. However a lack of vigilance doesn't work either. We are nation of fatties and it is largely because we either don't pay attention ( although it's hard to believe a diet consisting of fruit, vegetables, nuts, lean meat, fish and poultry while limiting sweets is revolutionary news. Or that eating less food and moving around more is a headline) or we just don't freaking care. Kids who are given as much of anything they want to eat grow to be adults who believe they can eat as much of anything they want and get or stay thin. Then they repeat the cycle with their kids. It's loony. Or worse.

34% of American adults over 20 years old are clinically obese. Since 1978 the obesity rate among little kids 2-5 years old has more than doubled, for kids 6-11 and young adults aged 12-19 the rate has tripled. Almost 1 in 5 kids aged 6 -19 is clinically obese. Statistically, those fat kids are 80% more likely to be fat at the age of 25 than their leaner peers. Fat kids grow up to be fat adults. Fat adults are more likely to raise fat kids. Who is responsible for the escalating cycle? Look in the mirror.

Killing With Kindness
My brother and I were overfed as little kids. We were comforted with food by well meaning and loving relatives who looked after us during our parent's stormy divorce.Within a year of the onset of that familial upheaval we were both by any measure, clinically obese. Severely fat. I won't speak for my brother here, but I know that I began to associate food and eating with my emotional states; food cured insecurity, food cured unhappiness, food was the same thing as love. Was this result the intention of my relatives? Of course not.

They just saw two miserable kids and did the only thing they knew to do that seemed to work to cheer us up. Feed us food that made us feel better. Was it malicious? No. Was their intent to damage us? No.Was it abusive? I absolutely think it was. One year I'm a healthy 5 year old running around with my friends and the next year I'm crying in my grade school teacher's arms because my best friend called me "fatso"in front of the class. And I've been a fatso, more or less, ever since. To this day I would rather eat than talk about a problem. I don't blame my relatives in 1962 for not knowing any better and doing the best they knew how in really crummy circumstances. It was a different time. Family therapy wasn't even invented yet. I'm not so charitable these days with all the resources we have at the click of a remote or mouse.

Ice Cream is Not Food
It's one thing to be an adult and not care about ones own appearance or health. If an adult wants to pretend that a Twinkie and a Coke is a healthy breakfast for themselves, fine. Can't cure stupid. However, to put a twist on a favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote, "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school classmates are now parents."

In this day and age, a parent that feeds their kids Twinkies and Coke for breakfast is in my opinion no less of an abuser than a parent who engages in other forms of physical abuse. I'm not saying that overfeeding or malnourishing a kid is the same as breaking bones, beatings and burning. I am saying that negligence and/or willful ignorance when it comes to feeding one's kids is tantamount to physical and even emotional abuse.

Parents, not their kids, are responsible for the health and well being of their children. Parents who consistently resort to food as baby sitter or as a strategy to quiet down and occupy their kids or feed them junk because they are too busy or too tired to prepare healthy meals are not parenting, they are at best neglecting and at worst abusing. A fat kid is, in most cases I suspect, an abused and neglected kid. Don't like that? Tough shit. If you and your kids are fat, whose fault is it?

Childhood Obesity and The First Lady
This is what sparked this little tirade of a blog post.

Michelle Obama is taking flak from several quarters (the Eating Disorders Cult for one) because she actually dares to publicly take responsibility for her daughters' well being. The First Kids' pediatrician warned her that they were gaining weight and so she is monitoring their nutrition even more closely than before. Good for her. Good for her pediatrician. The Eating Disorders Cult worry that putting the First Kids on a diet is wrong; that it will cause the First Kids to become bulemic or overly body conscious or anorexic. Hey, idiots! How about the kids are learning good eating habits? How about the parents are doing what they are supposed to be doing. How about the kids won't be as likely to be waddling into a Blimpies for a Five Dolar Footlong Fatwich in ten years because they didn't learn any better? Christ almighty. Veterinarians prescribe low calorie dog food for overweight pets all the time. Should we now worry that Fido might get a body image problem as a result? I'm really looking forward to the First Lady's initiative on combating childhood obesity. There needs to be national leadership and a wake up call and a lot of follow through.

If it weren't for the concerns expressed by my pediatrician to my parents when I was 10 years old I would be in far worse shape today than had he not spoken up. My whole family by this time was overweight. The good doctor had the sense to not just put my brother and me on a diet. He put the whole family on a diet. Or, to make it more palatable for the Eating Disorders Cult, we were prescribed a revised eating and nutrition plan. It worked. We all lost weight. Was it easy? Hell no. Learning how to eat and what to eat all over again is a chore. And it has been a life long effort to keep the excess weight off for all of us. We have all gained and lost weight since then, but 40 years ago we all acquired tools for how to manage ourselves and our eating. For the most part we have maintained healthy weights. We have all found modes of exercise we enjoy. As I said above, fat is forever.

It's far easier not to get fat in the first place.

Kettlebell work: after some light power cleans, 12 minutes of one arm 12kg long cycle bottoms up clean and press. 5 RPMs, one hand switch. 30 reps per side...good grip work!

Secret Service Snatch Test

2010-02-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Today's WOD at Flatirons Crossfit was the SSST. I haven't worked much with the 24kg of late but gave it a ride. The test is for as many snatches you can perform in 10 minutes. You are allowed to switch hands and set the bell down as often as you like.

I hit what felt like a very conservative pace, switching hands every 10 reps. Managed a 210 score which I am very happy with. I didn't put the bell down for the set. Even achieved the high score for the day, which was a pleasant bonus. Not a PR all time for me (223 reps is) but maybe next time I will feel more confident and push the pace a bit.

Paleo Update

2010-02-02T23:29:00.004-07:00

Paleo eating is turning out to be not all that hard. I can't say I miss the grains all that much. I'm still standing by my nightly beer but that doesn't seem to be an issue. I really enjoy my Omega 3 eggs and link sausage (or bacon) and banana (or apple) for breakfast. I'm down almost 4kg in bodyweight and a good 5% less bodyfat. According to my chart, I've gained a kilo of lean mass and lost 4kg of fat. And I feel generally good. Not bad results at all.

I find I'm eating generally less now. Smaller portions. More protein and less carb actually. I have some fruit during the day, but not a lot. An apple and a banana or two. I've also not stuck strictly to the Zone portions. By that I mean I'm not weighing things. But I'm mindful of getting protein and a carb/vegetable and some fat in each meal. The meals may not be exactly Zone balanced, but I err on the side of protein and less carb, which probably works on keeping the insulin levels generally lower. I'll keep at it for sure until the end of the month as strictly as I have been, and then maybe relax a hair in March. Depends on if I hit my goal: heee-yoooj, strong and ripped at 85kg bodyweight.

Barbell snatches and some pulls tonight. Kettlebells: 100 double snatches 2 x 16kg in 10 minutes, "health snatch" style.Not setting the bells down for the entire set, of course.

February 1 Kettlebell 10 minute set

2010-02-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

Same drill as last night only used 16kg and switched hands after five minutes. A slightly different order: long cycle clean and jerk, swings, jerks, snatches, long cycle clean and press.

An Appeal

2010-02-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

Shana Martin is a world champion lumberjill, fitness competitor and personal trainer. She is also a tireless campaigner and advocate for Huntington's Disease research. Her mother suffers from this cruel and horrific disease.

She has traveled to Africa this week to climb Mt Kilimanjaro to raise funds and awareness for Huntington's research. Please take a moment to send a donation of any size to Shana's Climb and help her achieve her goal of $2,000 raised.

As of this post she is only $215 shy of her goal. Help put her over the top!

End of the month

2010-01-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

Trained this morning with Keith and Tim and Brian and Flatirons. Hip continues to improve. I have to wonder if the addition of Omega 3 eggs and the Paleo diet with its elimination of grains has played a role in reducing inflammation. Snatched up to 70kg for a single and then did some pulls standing on a 2" block.

Tomorrow I will review the month's kettlebell work and see how random random actually was.

Took it easy with the 10 minute kettlebell session. 20kg, 1 minute each hand of jerk, snatch, clean and jerk, swing, clean and press.

Weightlifting Workshop

2010-01-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Smaller turnout than we would have liked. But we had a really productive and fun clinic with the 5 people who did participate. The topic was program design and lifts appropriate to the different phases of a 12 week program..

My kettlebell session was 12 minutes of one hand farmer walks around the building with a 24kg kettlebell.

Unhappy?

2010-01-30T08:50:00.003-07:00

Maybe naming him Rimbaud wasn't such a good idea.

Example above of my new favorite website for dark chuckles.

Yesterday's training: power snatch up to 60kg for a few singles (finally moving better) and light (8kg) kettlebell juggling for 12 minutes.

Two PRs Thursday

2010-01-29T00:10:00.002-07:00

Was doing power cleans from the high blocks this afternoon and stalled out at 80kg. So I switched over to clean pulls/power shrugs for triples. Worked up to 200kg for a couple of sets of doubles. That's more weight than I've had on the bar since I can remember. So I'm calling it a PR. Then I sat down and visited with one of our masters lifters who had dropped by to touch base.

About a half hour later I still wasn't sure what I was going to do for my kettlebell 10 minutes. I threw around a set or two of snatches with the 20kg and it felt alright so I thought I would go for 200 reps in 10 minutes with one hand switch.

I didn't monitor the clock closely for pace so when I looked up at 100 reps and saw that I was at 4:30 I was thrilled...I could back off the pace on the switch. But I hit 200 at a 9:30 so I didn't really slow that much. Now I had 30 seconds I had to kill before I put the bell down. My grip was cooked though, so no more snatches, so I finished the 30 seconds with some low amplitude 2 hand swings.

This was a real, I've never done it before PR. Not an age group PR or bodyweight PR. What I like about it most is, it means I can pass the RKC snatch test for Masters (100 reps in 5 minutes with a 20kg bell) without even switching hands.

Oh yeah. I might be getting bad. Even at 52.

Two Fried Omega 3 Eggs

2010-01-28T09:32:00.003-07:00

I go through phases with food. Lately I've been on an egg kick. Specifically Omega 3 eggs. Omega 3 fats are essential fatty acids, but the human body doesn't manufacture them. Extensive research indicates that omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation and help lower risk factors associated with chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and arthritis. Omega 3 consumption has also been associated with improving body composition and brain function, bone strength, eye health and blood pressure. In short, your body needs it to be healthy, so eat it.

Ordinary eggs are very nutritious and some sources tout it as a near a near perfect food. Cholesterol concerns aside for a moment (the studies linking dietary cholesterol to heart disease are conflicting and inconclusive) a real knock on eggs is the high arachidonic acid content. AA is also an essential fatty acid , an Omega 6, and when there is too much O6 in the diet all kinds of inflammatory conditions and disease are a result. How much is too much? The ratio of O6 to O3 should be about 2 to1 O6 to O3. The average American consumes about a 15 to 1 ratio of O6 to 03. The ratio is out of whack because we don't eat enough foods rich in 03 (like fish) and too many foods rich in O6 like corn, grains, the oils made from corn and grains, and beef and pork raised on corn and grains.

As it turns out, eggs are the primary source of AA in the American diet and the high content is due to the high soy and grain content of the conventionally raised hens' diet. Pasture raised eggs have a much lower AA profile. O3 eggs are not pasture raised generally (the chickens are fed flax seed and sometimes seaweed and fish meal) but do have up to 39% less AA than conventional eggs. The brand I buy locally claims to have 360mg of O3 fatty acids per egg. A couple of eggs in the morning will get you a good start on your daily Omega 3 requirements.

So, if you are going to eat eggs, buy pasture raised eggs or Omega 3 eggs. They cost a little more, but are better for you. After all, you can't scramble, fry, over easy, sunny side up fish oil caps.

More info on Omega 3s here: American Family Physician

Last night's kettlebell fun: 10 minutes of swings and cleans with a 24kg bell. 5 cleans left, 10 two hand swings 5 swings right, 10 two hand swings, 5 cleans left and so on back and forth. Don't have a rep count. But it felt longer than 10 minutes.

Snatches

2010-01-27T08:15:00.003-07:00

It's still work, but I own 200 reps in the 16kg snatch with one hand switch in 10 minutes. Did it again last night. I may have to start pushing the envelope soon by increasing reps and increasing endurance before the switch. Maybe drop back down to he 12s and work up to10 minutes each arm before switch. Might not be a bad idea to have 6-7 minutes per arm capacity for competition when you only need 5.

I think the variety of weights and exercises and working well within my capacity with the occasional uncomfortable push is paying dividends. Given a rep count of 160 reps in the snatch, a light day is with the 12s, a medium day is with the 16s and a heavy day (for me for now) is with the 20s. Kind of like managing intensity with weightlifting. Kettlebells can be tricky because due to the fixed weight, volume is one way Russian coaches measure training intensity. The number of reps per set as a percentage of the maximum number of reps you can do is the intensity. If you can do 100 reps, a 50% set would be 50 reps.

I'm not managing intensity that closely, but I am working (albeit by feel) to make light and medium days the majority of my work load. Since I'm putting in 10 minutes a day as the basic training scheme, I have a choice each day of exercise, weight and rep range depending on what I feel I can do for the entire 10 minutes. Kind of random, but I'll crunch it all at the end of the month and see what I end up with.

Simple. 10 minutes a day of kettlebell something without putting the bell down. P90X look out.

Day 25 of 10 Minute Sets in the Books

2010-01-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

A little breakthrough Monday in the saga of the bad hip. I was able to get through 10 minutes of double kettlebell long cycle clean and jerk with 20kg competition bells without pain. I went slow (4 reps per minute) and rested in the hang for approximately 30 seconds of each minute (which was a good grip workout) but got it done. A few weeks ago I still couldn't swing double 12 kg bells without severe hip adductor pain so the situation seems to be turning around.

Last week I stormed through 100 rep set of 12kg long cycle without stopping. This week if I feel up to it I will try for a similar technical result with the 16kg although numbers will likely be in the 70 rep range.

I wonder, are the 10 minute sets having a training effect?

How I Got Started With Kettlebells And Why I’m Still Using Them Three Years Later

2010-01-25T11:16:00.002-07:00

By Josh Hanagarne World’s Strongest Librarian

I was working at the library when a strange-looking book came across the desk. The Naked Warrior. I picked it up and took it to the break room to read it. I’d never heard of the author, Pavel Tsatsouline, but the title promised a combination of two of my great loves: nudity and warfare!

I read the book quickly, which wasn’t hard since it is written in 50 point font. A lot of it made me laugh: Pavel is pretty funny. I’d never really thought much about bodyweight training, so all the business about the one armed pushups and one-legged squats were interesting to me, but not enough to really rev me up yet.

Near the end of the book, however, Pavel mentions kettlebells. I’d never heard of these things, but there was a line that really stuck with me:

Try it if you’re so tough. You’ll wish you were dead.

And now you know how to manipulate me. Just challenge me to something.

My training background

I have an extreme case of Tourette’s Syndrome. I won’t get into details here, but to sum it up: I don’t have control of my body very often. It makes me move involuntarily and I made noises involuntarily. Weight training has always been a way for me to feel in control of my body for a brief time each day.

I moved through a predictable bodybuilding phase in my teens and early twenties. That didn’t really go anywhere. I wanted big muscles, but I didn’t really want to work for them. So for years, I’d work in spurts, never really making big gains and starting from scratch every few months.

Kettlebells

I bought my first kettlebell at a Shopko. It was a pastel blue 20 pounder that said Reebok on the side. Pavel had made them sound so scary that I was sure 20 lbs would be enough for me. It wasn’t.

About a month later I found a used 24kg Apollo. It was hideous and rusty and exquisite. I took it home and started trying to do snatches in preparation for the upcoming Tactical Strength Challenge that was four months away.

It was hard. It was harder than I can explain, and not just because my form was terrible. Not just because I went straight into snatching when I should have done a couple of months of swings and get ups. Those things made it harder, but the fact is…it’s just really hard to play with kettlebells.

But! I haven’t found anything more rewarding and I haven’t found a method of training I enjoy more. Before kettlebells, I had never stuck with a training method or program for longer than three months. That was nearly three years ago, and there hasn’t been one week in those 150+ weeks that I haven’t used kettlebells.

Why does it work for me?

A friend watched me do a long set of snatches recently and said, “You’re no different than these moping kids that cut themselves.”

I laughed, but I thought a lot about what he said. When I train, I’m trying to dominate my body. I’m trying to prove that I’m in control. Pushing through a kettlebell workout is fun, rewarding, but very, very difficult. And when I am done, I feel like I’m in control. I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

The pain is not the goal, but the effort is undeniable and focus required are undeniable.

If I had to sum up what I believe the benefits of kettlebell training are, this is what the list would look like:

• Endless variety
• I can focus on power, endurance, or both
• Endless results
• Fun
• Not complicated
• Movements, not muscles

Kettlebells are a wonderful tool, but they’re just a tool. I combine them with barbells, bodyweight, and grip work. I’ve gained 30 lbs of muscle in the last four months on a heavy doubles kettlebell program.

This is all hard for someone to understand who hasn’t experienced kettlebells, but my training has changed me. It has made me better. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. I have learned to keep promises to myself and to look forward to hard work.

Try it! “You’ll wish you were dead.” (But you won’t die).

Josh

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

Persistence Hunting vs Persistence Shopping

2010-01-24T17:53:00.022-07:00

When I lived in Chicago many years ago, I got into the habit of daily marketing. I would walk to the grocery store and buy only the amount of food that I could carry home. This habit carried on during my years in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I thought about buying one of those collapsible shopping carts so I could wheel my groceries home, but I never did. What I found over the years was I couldn't buy more than a few days of produce without it going bad before I ate it, so the cart would have ended up wasting food and wasting money.

A couple of interludes in the suburbs where grocery stores are miles away from home put a crimp in this style of shopping. I recall at first I actually resented having to own a car to get around. And I resented even more the lack of suburban planning that made a car a necessity. Self propelled suburban shopping carts essentially. But I still stuck to my habit of shopping with a basket, not a cart. The basket provided a kind of portion control that I found, and still find, useful. As I think about it now, I don't believe I've ever filled a shopping cart in my life. Nor have I spent more than $35 on a basket of groceries. To this day I look on in a mix of fascination and horror when the person in front of me forks over well more than a hundred dollars for an overflowing cart of groceries. I realize, folks have families...but the amount of food you can fit in an SUV is staggering. Do they really eat that much in a week?

I'm glad I am able to walk to my local grocery store in Boulder. Although I confess I hitch a ride with friends fairly often too. Yesterday morning, bright and early I ventured out into the crisp, clear, clean 34 degree mountain air for the 15 minute walk to the King Soopers. As I plodded along, I thought to myself (once again) that walking to the store was actually an honorable way to procure my daily calories. Certainly healthier to walk than to hop in the car. Something akin, although of course very, very far removed, from what our nomadic ancestors endured to survive. Obviously, they didn't end up in Aisle 4 trying to decide on which of 42 kinds of salsa to buy. OK, so nothing like what our nomadic kin endured to survive. Except for the walking part, which I'm sure they did much more of.

I don't hunt. I'm not opposed to it. But it just never took. My Dad hunted some; quail mostly. He never took my brother or I hunting. I suspect his desire to hunt had faded about the time we were actually old enough to lug around the old shotguns he had. Or maybe he looked at us and realized we would be miserable in the cold and wet. And like our stabs at bass fishing together, no good nor fun (nor game) would likely come of it. So since I don't hunt, I suppose I fulfill the gatherer role in the Hunter-Gatherer paradigm.

As I lugged home two plastic shopping bags filled with vegetables, fruit, chicken and the few condiments I "gathered",I considered that for most of us, roaming the not-so-wild aisles of the supermarket will be as close many of us will ever get to the source of our food. My walk to and from the store over the years has become something of a hair shirt ritual but also in part an acknowledgment of and meditation on how good we all have it. How good I have it. The choices. The abundance.

Perhaps next time, I will pretend to be a Bushman and run down my quartered chicken breasts, cornering them in the meat department refrigerator. Then I will cunningly entrap them with my red plastic basket, scan them, bag them, carry them home, humbly honor their little chicken spirits and in triumph, George Foreman Grill them. And then of course, eat them...bloody red BBQ sauce dripping down my chin.

Today's kettlebell fun after barbell snatching and front squatting: 10 minutes of continuous 1 hand 20kg swings at 30 RPM, switching hands on the minute. 300 swings total.

New World Porter/Spinach and Bison Salad

2010-01-23T19:15:00.007-07:00

This week delivered two new favorites. The first was Avery Brewery's New World Porter. I've been gradually working my way through the offerings of local Colorado breweries and to date, Avery Brewing Company in Boulder has two of my favorites: their India Pale Ale and this really nice porter. It also has a very clever name.

Last night after coaching went to Walnut Brewery with friends David, Phil and Veronica ... had a salad very similar to the one pictured above. Very Paleo, I think...buffalo and spinach, almonds and a balsamic vinegar. Okay, the gorgonzola crumbles not so much on the program, but not a significant departure. I'm not a fundamentalist anyway. The beers were unimpressive...but you can't have everything I guess.

By the way, I'm down about 2kg bodyweight in two weeks. Not bad.

Last night's and today's kettlebells sets:

12kg x 2 bells long cycle clean and jerk. 10 RPMs. 100 reps in 10 minutes. No rest, or putting the bells down of course, just continuous paced set set. A landmark effortfor me...when I get the 16s up to 100 this way I will be in good shape to move up to 20s.

Today I did 10 minutes of one arm farmer's walks around the Xfit facility with a 24kg kettlebell...about 200 yards a lap and 3 minutes a lap. I switched hands halfway around each lap. Did 3 laps and a little more in the 10 minutes. Traps? I know I have them now.

Hardstyle Ladder + 10 Minute Timed Set

2010-01-22T14:56:00.002-07:00

+ not putting the bell down for the whole 10 minutes = a reasonable amount of kettlebell misery. Last night's workout was one arm long cycle clean and press. As many 5 rung ladders as I could squeeze into the 10 minutes with the 24kg kettlebell.

So the set started one clean and press left hand, one clean and press right hand, two clean and press left hand, two clean and press right hand and so on up to 5 reps each hand. Then drop back down to one and "climb the ladder" again.

I was able to eke out three complete ladders and used all the clock to do it. It works out to be 45 reps each arm or 90 reps total.

Paleo Coffee

2010-01-21T08:36:00.004-07:00

I love coffee. I drink more than I probably should. But, I don't sugar it or cream it or adulterate it in any way. Black please. Hot, cold, espresso shot: all good with me.

So imagine my dismay when I was informed that because coffee is made from a bean it isn't Paleo. Legumes (beans and such) are not part of the Paleo regimen. Screw it, says I. I'm not giving up the coffee.

I finally got around to researching what the coffee bean actually is. Is it really a bean? Confusion can arise over what something actually is and is not due to common names. It gets dicey in the nut, seed, bean and grain areas. While seeds and nuts are allowed on Paleo, legumes are not. For example a peanut is not actually a nut because it comes from the family Fabaceae a subfamily of the legumes Leguminosae. A peanut is legume, so it is not a Paleo approved food.

Coffee, on the other hand is from the genus Coffea and the family Rubiaceae . It turns out that "bean" is a colloquial misnomer for the Coffea "seed" from the coffee plant flower. Rubiaceae is not the same as Leguminosa.

So coffee is not made from a bean/legume after all but from a seed. Paleo worthy, IMO at least. Huzzah!

Drink up shriners.

Last night's 10 minutes of kettlebell fun: 10 minutes of 20kg 1 arm cleans at 3 RPMs, 1 hand switch. Working on that rack position. Beforehand, a few clean pulls at 110kg, a few 3 position power cleans up to 80kg.

Paleo Progress

2010-01-20T08:01:00.002-07:00

Energy levels are back up...but no significant weight loss to report...I mean it's only day 9 or so...but some guys at the gym who started Paleo the same time I did are down 10lbs already. That's amazing...and frankly too fast I think.

Maybe it is my nightly glass of beer that is killing my progress?

A little barbell power snatching last night. Then 10 minutes of 16kg one arm jerks at 15 RPMs switching on the minute.

Deviation

2010-01-19T06:04:00.003-07:00

Sometimes you just have to go with moment.

My friend Phil started training with kettlebells a few weeks ago and last night he did a breakthrough workout: 24 minutes of one arm long cycle clean and press at about 15RPMs with the 12kg kettlebell switching hands on the minute .

Inspired by his willingness to push himself (but also needing a light day) I snatched the 12kg for 20 minutes instead of the planned 10 minutes, still switching hands every 5 minutes. Total rep count: 445 reps. I used the long light set to play with pace and a variety of dropping arcs.

East Coast Gold Rocky Mtn Satellite Results

2010-01-17T16:42:00.007-07:00

We took two lifters to the Air Force Academy yesterday. Keith had a great day going 5 for 6 attempts with PRs of 100kg snatch, 117kg clean and jerk and 217kg total. This was enough to take second place in the 105kg class. Jesse took the gold medal in 94kg weight class with a 105 snatch and 132 clean and jerk.

Buck and the Air Force Academy put on a really nice meet. Congrats to all the lifters.

I did do 330 16kg swings in 10 minutes yesterday, switching hands on the minute.
Today after barbell snatching: double 16kg long cycle clean and jerk, 10 minutes, 73 reps.

Off to Falcon Open

2010-01-16T10:11:00.002-07:00

Coaching Keith at the Falcon Open WL meet at the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs today. PRs in the future. Keith has worked hard on the program I wrote for him...time to see it bear fruit.

Last night did some clean pulls working up from 70kg to 130kg from below knee for a couple of sets of 3. Then a 10 minute set of KB snatches with the 20kg, 1 hand switch. 80L and 80R, 160 total.

Will do a light 10 minute set of swings this morning...16kg switch on the minute.

More About Paleo Eating

2010-01-15T09:12:00.006-07:00

Right up front, beginning Day 4 on the Paleo/Zone plan: I feel like crap. Last night at the gym I was tired, run down and just wanted to sit and I don't feel any better this morning.

Did a few half-hearted/half-assed barbell snatches, but I did get in 10 minutes of 1 Arm Bottoms Up Long Cycle Clean and Press with the 12 kg bell @ 9 RPMs, so 90 reps.

Didn't sleep well. Actually, I'm not sure I slept at all.

This discomfort was foretold, though. So I'll ride it out.

On getting carbs from fruit: Wild fruit contains hexose dominated sugar+high fiber, cultivated fruits are sucrose dominated with less fiber. Ironic since low fiber & sucrose is one of the problems with the "modern" diet. As far as sugar/fiber goes:are... grocery store oranges,apples and bananas any better than candy? Need more complex carb sources. I think the fruit is just making my blood sugar spike and then the insulin kicks in and I crash even though I am eating with/as part of meals and not alone.

I'll follow up on the Silver Back question in a day or two when my head clears...right now I just want to take a nap.

Is the Paleo Diet Really Paleo?

2010-01-14T07:02:00.003-07:00

Is the Paleo Diet Really Paleo? The short answer is " it depends".

Homo sapiens sapiens, us modern folks, have been around as a species for only about 200,000 years. As we migrated out of Africa displacing and forcing into extinction our proto-human kin, we ate what was available regionally. We only need look at the surviving vestiges of early human populations around the globe to see that we can eat and thrive on pretty much anything; from the raw meat and fat marine mammal diet of the Arctic Eskimo to the sparse largely vegetarian menu of the Australian Aborigine and everything in between, human beings can do pretty well on whatever is available.

This is not to say that we can eat whatever we want. We are as a species stuck with what our teeth, our guts and our body size will allow us to eat, those traits we inherited from pre-human ancestors over the 30 million years of our development. But is there really much evidence to suggest that our digestive inheritance was shaped by some ancient diet?

The main premise of the Paleo diet is that our bodies adapted to a particular way of eating millions of years ago. But this premise fails on several fronts. For one, there is no evidence that there was one monolithic set of food resources that our ancient ancestors adapted to. Nor does the premise explain the diversity of the surviving, albeit rapidly dwindling and nearly extinct "stone age" diets observed around the globe. Which diet from what time and from which neighborhood natural food store are we talking about?

And here is where Paleo Diet has it backwards, I think. Contrary to the Paleo stance, we didn't inherit guts that were shaped by or adapted to some monolithic Hunter Gatherer diet. On the contrary our species global conquest and occupation of different food "niches" suggests that we have constantly adapted the available food sources to our guts. Evolutionary pressure would have come not merely from what was available to eat but from the ability to figure out what was edible, how to prepare it and to be able to survive on it. Or not. Natural Selection in our case favored brainy consumers...cave kids who had cave parents who were smart eaters got to live long enough to pass along their genes to the next generation.

However, we do have a digestive system that is a product of evolution. But this digestive system has been in place, with a few mutations here and there, long before there were Hunter Gatherers. In fact our digestive abilities are very similar to those of our nearest relatives the Great Apes. Like us, the Hunter Gatherers shared 98-99% of their DNA with the great apes. Interestingly, Chimps, Gorillas and Orangutans don't widely suffer from Type II diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, coronary artery disease or any of our species' modern "Diseases of Affluence." In the long history of human development, Hunter Gatherer societies are just another phase. I think the assumption that our collective Hunter Gatherer phase was the crowning moment of human gustatory and digestive development is a mistake. Hunter Gatherers already had a digestive system, a product of evolution established long in the pre-human past and one very similar to our modern Great Ape cousins. Hunter Gatherers did what all humans have done: they adapted the available food sources to their needs.

So how does Silverback Gorilla pack 400lbs of meat and bone on his five foot five inch frame on a vegetarian diet of fruit, shoots, leaves and flowers? And more to the point, if we are truly looking to satisfy evolutionary digestive design and if their guts are so similar to our guts and they are healthy and we are not, shouldn't we be eating more like them?

More about that next time.

Last night's Kookyball madness: 10 minutes 1 arm cleans, 24kg switch on the minute. 13RPMS = 130 reps.

Paleo/Zone Diet

2010-01-13T11:16:00.004-07:00

I am giving the Paleo/Zone eating plan a go. This is a hybrid of the Zone Diet and The Paleo Diet: Paleo foods in Zone 40/30/30 percentages. With the exception of pizza and beer and Barilla pasta plus I've been pretty close to eating this way for sometime. I've had good luck maintaining my weight with making sure each meal contains protein, fat and carb although in levels somewhat different than Zone. The Paleo food choices basically eliminate grains and dairy so I will definitely be getting more fruit and vegetables. Pizza can be an occasional treat as it should be, however, I'm still going to enjoy my nightly beer. Besides, my favorite brewer these days is Boulder Brewery: how much more Paleo can a name get?

What is and is not Paleo food can be confusing depending on who you read and who you talk to. Meat, vegetables and fruit are clear enough. What is not altogether clear is the grain, legumes, seeds and nuts. Most roots are allowed but not 'taters. Some folks alllow seet 'taters. There is a rule of thumb on the grains, legumes and such that if it has to be cooked to be edible then it isn't paleo. Many grains and legumes can be sprouted and are then perfectly edible...so that kills that rationale, but then again nuts are a kind of seed, grains are a kind of seed. I've been told that sesame seeds aren't paleo but then other lists say they are. I'm going with they are: I love tahini.

Here are a couple of links discussing Paleo foods: Food List and counter points.

Last night's kettlebell fun: 10 minutes of double 16kg long cycle, 65 reps total, rest in the hang as needed. Earlier, barbell power snatched up to 65kg for a double.

When in doubt

2010-01-11T22:56:00.002-07:00

One arm long cycle. Tonight 10 minutes, 20kg, 10RPM one hand switch 50/50 for 100 reps total. Felt harder than it should.

10 days and 100 minutes in

2010-01-10T14:51:00.002-07:00

Snatched light today up to 65kg and squatted light, up to 100kg x 2. Snatch grip bent over rows below knee 3 sets x 9 reps 60kg. Back was definitely fatigued from the sumos yesterday.

Today's kettlebell set: 10 minutes double 16kg cleans...10 RPMS rested in the hang as needed. 100 reps total. Focused on minimum required stance and not aggravating adductors. Felt OK...a few more sessions of these, maybe working up to 150-170 reps will help the rehab further.

How to Popularize Kettlebells

2010-01-09T18:22:00.005-07:00

Group demonstration...as near as I can tell we have a woman snatching, a five man relay team, a two-man team and Denisov by himself, all working simultaneously.

"Ivan Denisov and his students are demonstration kettlebel lifting in Chelyabinsk. Chelyabinsk athletes do show competition in weightlifting sport in May 2009. Men with weights 24 kg, a girl with weights 18 kg. During 10 minutes."

Today's fun: 5 x 15 reps 65kg sumo(hip conditioning) then 10 minutes 20kg 1 arm cleans at 4RPM, 2 minutes each arm then switch on minute for 10 minutes.

Jerks Three Ways

2010-01-09T09:32:00.002-07:00

The barbell jerk is not done by pressing the barbell up with the arms. It is performed by explosively driving the bar with the legs then immediately lowering the body beneath the bar by explosively rearranging the feet and bending the legs. The arms are used to accelerate the body under the bar as the feet and legs are repositioned and then to fix it (lock it out) overhead.

In order of popularity, here are video examples of the three methods currently used to accomplish lowering the body in the barbell jerk.
Split Jerk, Power Jerk and Squat Jerk.

My training day Friday 1/8, clean pulls from below knee to 140kg and Front Squat to 100kg + kettlebell 10 minute set; a free form H2H workout with 12kg.100 reps each arm 24kg swing to finish.

Ksenija Dedyukhina Doms

2010-01-07T21:05:00.002-07:00

More women's snatching from Russia featuring 58kg World Champion Ksenija Dedyukhina snatching the 24kg bell 120 times.

Tonight's 10 minute kettlebell set: 20kg 5 rung press ladders (1/1, 2/2, 3/3, 4/4, 5/5) without putting the bell down...did 3 full ladders for 45/45 = 90 reps total.

Snatches Tonight

2010-01-06T23:11:00.002-07:00

High Block up to 60kg x 3 x 2 sets
Sn Pulls up to 120kg x 3 x 2 sets

Kettlebell Snatch 16kg 100/100 10 minutes, 1 hand switch.

Jerk Squats

2010-01-05T12:14:00.003-07:00

A new video of a kettlebell sport assistance exercise from my friend Tom Corrigan. Misha Marshak, Master of Sport, demonstrates.

This is an assistance exercise for the 2 KB Jerk in which the trainee rack a pair of heavy KBs and does squats with them in the same range of motion as the first dip of the Traditional Jerk. You do these at a slow and steady tempo, with a rep range usually of 40 to 70 reps. This would be done at the end of your workout, maybe 2 or 3 times a week. You would start with your competition KB size, start with 40 reps and work up to 70 reps, then move up 4 kg and go back to 40 reps, then build up you rep count again and then repeat. You would stop doing them two weeks before your competition.

One Arm Long Cycle Clean and Jerk

2010-01-05T10:25:00.008-07:00

This may be my favorite kettlebell exercise. Here is a clip of Bonnie Mullaney who is one of the USA's best kettlebell sport lifters demonstrating how it's done. She's using a 24kg (53lb) kettlebell, working at 10 reps per minute for 10 minutes and performs her 100 reps switching arms just once.

When this video first went up on youtube, there were a lot of guys hanging their heads and wondering "WTF?". I was one of them. I eventually duplicated Bonnie's effort a few weeks later but without the grace and with more obvious suffering.

The 24kg bell is the weight women use for MSWC ranking (Master of Sport World Class) in the World Kettlbell Club. However, I am skeptical that we will see a 110lb woman perform 106 reps in this discipline or a 166lb woman doing 130 reps. But we will see.

Tonight after barbell clean and jerk and some clean pulls did my 10 minutes of continuous kettlebell work. 50/50 one arm long cycle 20kg. One hand switch. Harder than it should have been...or maybe not. 5 down 360 to go.