Me time = Training time...

Prep work - ASLR, Brettzel
16 kg Hip and Shoulder openers
1# Club swinging
16 kg Get-up x 5+5
16 kg Goblet Squat + Swing ladder
10 GS + 10 Left arm swings
9 GS + 10 Right arm swings
8 GS + 10 Left arm swings
7 GS + 10 Right arm swings
6 GS + 10 Left arm swings
5 GS + 10 Right arm swings
4 GS + 10 Left arm swings
3 GS + 10 Right arm swings
2 GS + 10 Left arm swings
1 GS + 10 Right arm swings
1# Club swinging
24 kg Get-up x 3 singles each arm
24 kg SLDL x 5+5, 5+5
24 kg Windmill x 5+5
24 kg Bent Press x 5+5
1# Club Swinging
Fast and Loose drills and a little stretching

The ASLR isn't really corrective at this point just a prepratory move since my Shoulder and Hip mobility has improved post surgery and with some of the Get-up progressions.
SLDL kicked my butt (literally and figuratively) I am able to get into my right hip much better now.
Clubs are feeling great. Some of the postures and progressions are really assisting in opening my hips and shoulders.

BTW - I am headed to Alexandria, VA this weekend to teach an HKC (largest since the first one in MSP) and then a 4 hour Get-up workshop the following day. Then it is off to San Jose, CA for RKC Level 2!

Quick Training Today:

Prep work - ASLR, Brettzel

24 kg Get-up 1 +1 (arm bar to leg raise to full Get-up)

24 kg MVO2 x 20 sets @ 7 reps per set

ASLR and some Z to finish

Feeling good and 7 reps per set was just right - nice pace with good lockouts.

If you haven't checked out Kenneth Jay's book Viking Warrior Conditioning -I highly recommend it.

Much better today...

The foot/big toe is MUCH better today and I am well on my way to restarting the Neupert program this Sunday or Monday.

Even did a bit of training today...

Prep work - Extended ASLR and T-spine rotation work

24 kg Get-up (arm bar into leg raises then to the elbow to post position) x 3 singles each side

24kg Tall Kneeling presses x 3+3

24 kg 1/2 Kneeling presses x 3+3

24 kg Alternating swings x 20 reps x 5 sets

Felt very good and Better is Better...

Couple days of training...

Tuesday 6/30
Prep - Z, ASLR, Brettzel
32 kg Get-up x 5 singles Left and Right
24 kg Get-up x 5 singles Left and Right
24kg x 20 Alternating swings
32kg x 20 Alternating swings
24kg x 20 Alternating swings
32kg x 20 Alternating swings
24kg x 20 Alternating swings

A little Z to finish

Today 7/1
Prep - ASLR, Brettzel, Z foot drills
Neupert Program Week 2 - Day 2

Neupert's program is bringing quick results!
Feeling good

Great Blog post by Mark of SG Human Performance
http://sghumanperformance.blogspot.com/
talking about the importance of Prep work for your training - check it out.

Two words...

Hill Sprints!

Friday was day 3 of the Neupert Program:

Prep - ASLR, Brettzel

Neupert Program

This morning I decided to try out the alley behind my house for some hill spints in my VFFs

and made it through 3 "sprints" up the hill.  My rest between runs was to walk back to the start of the alley way.  This is a paved alley, probably over a 1/10th of a mile long with a decent grade.  

I will work on adding a sprint every week or so and build up slowly.  Prepared for the hills with a little ALSR and finished with a few minutes of Indian Club work.

Now I have to admit that Jeff O'Connor yelled at me for being on a treadmill and then I read Alwyn Cosgrove's advice in this article:

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/mythbusters_vol_6

Myth: Sweating on a treadmill is just as good as sweating outside.

Mythbuster: Alwyn Cosgrove

In the past people moved more and their exercise programs were well rounded, but recently more people have switched to doing treadmill-only workouts for their cardio. Whether they think it's better for their joints or because they're closet vampires who can't...stand...the light! and never want to venture outside, I'm not sure.

What I am sure of is that steady-state cardio on the treadmill is just fucking stupid. And, no, I'm not going to rehash the old argument about how intervals burn more calories. You already know that.

Instead I'm going to do some math.

Walking a mile is about two thousand reps in the sagittal plane at about one and a half to two times your bodyweight. Jogging would be around fifteen hundred total reps at about two to three times your bodyweight.

And since the treadmill switches your hamstring and glutes off — your foot hits the belt and the belt pulls you through — it's mainly a quad exercise.

So let's say a client does three miles three times per week for one year (and I'm being conservative).

That's 6000 reps x 3 days per week x 52 weeks, which equals 936,000 reps of knee extension work. Or 468,000 reps per leg.

Let's say the load going through with the knee was a measly 100 pounds. That's 4.6 millionpounds of work for the quad with absolutely no hamstring work.

Think of it this way: if you did 400,000 reps of triceps extensions with 100 pounds you'd get four million pounds of volume. If you didn't balance that out with biceps curls you'd expect the elbow joint to hurt, right? You're damn straight it would!

So long term walking or running on the treadmill is almost guaranteeing knee pain. And that's not even the worst part. Since the hamstring is switched off you're actually burning even less calories than you would if you were to walk on the ground!

This study showed that hip flexion angle increases on the treadmill as opposed to the ground and that stance time was reduced. Basically, the whole hip extensor mechanism is affected; hip and knee flexion angles have to increase to bring the hip through on the stride. So hip flexor fatigue plus substitution patterns equals severe knee pain.

Ten or twenty years ago we'd get away with this because our clients ran outside and did other activities. The contribution of treadmill time to total exercise time was much lower. It's hardly the case today.

One of the problems with low intensity steady-state aerobics for fat loss in the deconditioned population is the sheer amount of reps needed. I can do a bodyweight circuit and spread the "reps" over the whole body and get a similar metabolic effect.

At my gym we've always done interval training as we felt the results were superior, but over time we've moved to a "metabolic resistance training" model.

For example, one mile on the treadmill would be 1500 reps and burn around 100 calories. If you did a circuit of kettlebell swings, undulating ropes, inverted rows, sled pushes, and burpees for four rounds with 10 to 15 reps each, you'd burn 100 calories in less time with less load, and the reps would be spread over the entire body instead of on the ankles, knees, and hips. It's just a superior model.

Alwyn Cosgrove is owner of Results Fitness in California, and coauthor of "The New Rules of Lifting and The New Rules of Lifting for Women."

And I was reminded of my own dislike of the treadmill for a variety of reasons - 1) proprioceptively disturbing - our brain expects us to cover ground and have stuff pass by - being stuck in one place eliminates that and can confuse the body. 2) Inside will never trump outside!  Fresh air (depending on where you live) and being outdoors wins every time. 3) Because Alwyn and Jeff said so!

So from now on I will be hitting the hill/alley in the back of house.

KBs, Inversion and Pistols - good, bad or ugly??

Training today:

Prep - Quick Z warm-up

Get-up 32 kg x 3+3

VO2 Max 20 kg - 8 reps per 15 sec. x 20 sets

Inversion table to finish

Tore a couple of decks of cards and quartered one half

Feeling good.

An Applied Strength blog reader posted a link to another blog/article on the Pistol - aka Single Leg Squat and it is worth responding to...so here we go:  (I will try to add a picture soon)

First let me say that not every exercise is for every person - I acknowledge that and respect an individuals injury and training history.  

Second let me say that most exercises get bashed or demeaned because the individual that had a bad experience either- 

A) brought faulty movement patters, asymmetries, and restrictions to the exercise.

B) Used bad form.

C) Did not follow a proper and systematic progression towards achieving the goal movement.

Or they brought some combination of all three and wound up getting hurt or having a negative experience and therefore feel justified in bashing the exercise.

Personally I have performed pistols on and off for years now - since prepping for the 2002 Tactical Strength Challenge Article here...

and in March of 2003 I hit 10 pistols on the left leg and 9 pistols on the right leg holding the 32 kg KB at the second TSC in Vista, CA.  I have performed pistols holding onto the Beast (106# kb) and with 2/24 kg KBs in the rack position.  Bodyweight pistols, however, have been a bit of different story - only recently have these begun to feel good - previously I had to use a counter balance (kb, or hold on to the toes of the extended leg).  And I help to teach pistols at the Level 2 RKC and to clients so my point is...I know a little bit about the pistol.

And I have injured both of my knees in the past - knee surgery on the left and a significant injury on the right - and I can still perform the pistol.

Criticisms of the pistol can take the form of:

It's not functional.

It's not safe.

An individual's body proportions will make it impossible.

Well functional is in the eye of the beholder to a certain extent because barbell squatting is not functional (IMO and I love back squatting) but it seems to get a lot of "air time" for athletic development etc... 

Ask the question - Functional for what?  How does the exercise stack up?

Safe is more often than not determined by the issues I listed above which I will go into greater detail in a minute.

An individual's body proportions - as I said at the beginning - not every exercise is for everybody but to use this an excuse for why an exercise is just plain unsafe is not good reasoning.

Consider that the depth of the squat can and should be monitored by many factors one of those being the compression of the calf against the hamstring - by maintaining tension in the bottom position and stopping when these two areas touch and not "bottoming out" by relaxing or forcing the depth beyond the point of touching you will not "force open" the knee but most people because they lack control at the bottom of a pistol and have rushed to the full movement fall into this position and then blame the pistol and their body proportions - not so fast...

So lets look at the issues I raised in the beginning:

#1 - An individual brings faulty movement patterns, asymmetries or restrictions to the exercise and in that case ANY exercise can break you and often does in the gym (bench press and squats for example).  

This is the idea behind the FMS - remove the asymmetries and restrictions before getting into a "conditioning" routine.  Fail to do this and an ankle restriction etc.. can make any squat a potential date with injury.

#2 - Used bad form.  Dan John has a great saying - "Squats don't hurt your knees - The way YOU squat hurts your knees."  And this is VERY true in the single leg squat.  If you knee caves in or doesn't track or any number of other faults appear - STOP and go back to #1 and read carefully through #3...

#3 - 

Did not follow a systematic progression leading to the goal movement.  There might be 5 or 10 or 20 steps in the process to get someone to a full single leg squat.  Skip just one (but many people skip several) and you might have a negative experience - is it the squats fault that you were in too big of a hurry to progress appropriately???

VERY few people will be ready to tackle an exercise like the single leg squat without a fair amount of prep time which can include corrective strategies to remove roadblocks, and a multiple step systematic progression to achieving the goal.  

Can you even perform a deep bodyweight squat with good form?  If not - why are you even thinking of the single leg variety?

Ignore them at your own risk and don't blame the exercise when you have a negative experience.

Also - there are many single leg squat variations - the Airborn Lunge for example... (pic soon)

KB and Card Tearing...

Card Tearing x 7 decks

(2 decks were VERY hard, 4 decks torn and then tore 4 of those halves into quarters, and 1 duct tape tear)

Prep work - Rolling patterns, ASLR, Brettzel, Z

24 kg Arm Bar x 1+1

24 kg Get-up to Half Kneeling + 3 half kneeling presses x 1+1

24 kg MP ladders - 1 thru 5 reps x 2 ladders

continuous reps during ladders - rest between ladders - using a clean to get in position for each ladder

24 kg SLDL  5+5

24 kg  Swings x 50 (10 L + 10 R, 10 L + 10 R, 10 two arm)

Z to finish

Two of the decks were rubbery and very hard which is always a nice surprise ;-)

MPs felt good and training is feeling very good.  My prep work is efficient and targeted on my areas of concern which is a great way to start a training session.

Contradictions???
And
Situational Correctness...
Oh yeah - and some training...

Couple of items from the dragondoor.com forum that have caught my attention and felt I would comment on a bit here -

Contradictions

People get very confused and confounded when seemingly contradictory information gets put out there. Situational correctness has been lost on most people.
One of the classics for the forum is the difference between the low rep strength focus of Pavel's Power to the People and the higher rep conditioning focus of Kettlebell training. Different goals mean different techniques and applications. You don't go to a tax lawyer for a murder defense but you still need to have access to both the tax and defense professionals.
People seem to forget this when they are looking for an answer or a philosophy to follow.
They want one answer for everything and it just doesn't exist.

There is no contradiction between the High Tension Techniques and Hardstyle kettlbell training and the Relaxation techniques and drills of Pavel's Fast and Loose. They are both skills to be learned and practiced and applied.
So get busy learning them and applying them!

Situational Correctness...

Since Pavel's Power to the People book and DVD the idea of performing a limited numer of exercises on a consistent basis without changing exercises every 4 weeks to avoid the dreaded "adaptation" people continue to have questions as to whether it will work on not.
Well - it does work but this is another one of those "contradiction" areas where the fervor over having ONE answer leads to confusion.

In Marty Gallagher's new book The Purposeful Primitive he details the training of several Iron Giants and instead of getting mired in the differences between them he draws correlations between the similarities and USES the differences to target certain goals or even a restricted number of training days a week. Imagine that!! Finding similarities and using the differences - revolutionary!!
There are powerlifters who train on the Big 3 lifts exclusively and there are those that train almost everything but the Big 3 and rotate lifts constantly - who is right and who is wrong???

Neither is wrong and both are wrong - or - Both are correct and both are wrong!

It depends on the individual situation - goals, recovery ability, number of available training days per week, training experience, Injury and medical history, nutrition, individual likes and dislikes, etc.... Apply the correct tool/technique to fit the situation! Again - Situational Correctness

For me - simplicity works and I find I can adjust that simplicity to fit most of my clients needs and goals. If you haven't tried it. Try it. Just press and deadlift for the next 6 months or so...

Speaking of Training:
Snatch grip DL 235 x 5, 225 x 5
Suitcase DL 145 x 5 + 5
Side press 70 x 5+5, 65 x 5+5
32kg KB swings (20 reps per set) 6 sets of various swing styles
(20L, 20R, 10L+10R, 20 alternating, 20 sidestepping, 20 2 arm)

Lats, mid back and grip certainly feel yesterdays training - I am focusing on my lats/armpit connection during the DL and swing - big difference. I think that is why I could "sprint" to 8 reps a set yesterday and not have issues. Still progressing and learing everytime I pick up a KB.
How about you?

Why...

Why is a starting point. A question that children intuitively ask to gain information and that we adults use to gain information (or just to frustrate someone). But it is a valuable thing to keep in mind and ask yourself.

The question has been raised as to why I am taking a three month break from the barbell and powerlifting and I would like to delve into that Why.

My goal for the past 2 years has been to achieve a raw elite total in powerlifting and I have pursued that goal with a singular focus. This has brought me to a weight of 196 (up from around 180), a squat of 518 , a bench of 310, and a deadlift of 573 (all competition raw lifts). My absolute strength is the highest it has been in the barbell lifts and I truly love the feeling of being under the bar and my knowledge of tension and strength has grown as a result.

So why take a three month break? Won't I lose too much? What about my goal?

My goal will still be there when I return to it - simple as that.

Won't I lose too much - Russian powerlifters routinely take the summer off from the "power" lifts and I am not concerned about my lifts decreasing. They will go back up - simple as that.

One of the mistakes that I have made in pursuing my goal has been a fevered rush to achieve it without putting the time in. This has been good and has been negative as well. The rush to achieve has left me of a singular focus and a narrow "range" of strength etc... When I return to my goal it will be with a different focus - a long range incremental focus. "The wider the base - the higher the peak."

I am a CSCS, FMS, MRKC, Z-R phase person. So I could be teaching a 5 hour Kettlebell seminar tomorrow, a flexibility workshop the next day, a Tension/relaxation workshop the next - or - it could be a two day FMS workshop. Everyday I have to demonstrate a wide variety of mobility drills, corrective exercises, flexibility drills, kettlebell drills, weight lifting drills, bodyweight drills and on and on... all of this during 12 hour days that I have to have the energy and resiliency to get up and do it again. And add in the travel and having the time and energy to devote to my life (yes I have a life outside the internet and work) - I need a well rounded base of skill and conditioning.
Powerlifting does not provide this. Kettlebell training + Z does - simple as that.

Already - despite the knee "injury"- I feel healthier and have more energy from the Kettlebell training.

My livelihood depends on being able to do all the above - debilitating "injury" is not an option and since I have experienced standing on the edge of debilitating and have come back from it - my health and work capacity is primary - not a powerlifting goal.

So there is my Why.
What is yours?

Training today:
Prep-work - cook hip lifts, ASLR
28kg Armbar x 3 r+L
28kg Windmill x 3 r+L
28kg MP x 5, 5 r+L
28kg SLDL x 5, 5 r+L
28kg Snatches 3+3 x 5 sets and 4+4 x 5 sets in 9:22
16kg Snatch 20+20+15+15+10+10+5+5
16kg Windmill x 5 r+L
Rollouts x 5, 5