Rough Week

It has been an interesting week. I have been making changes in personnel with Amazing Athletes and trying to correct some issues that seemed to have developed. They are hopefully not to major, just normal courses of growing pains.We are continuing to expand and add more schools and children to our programs. It is really fun to work with the kids as they love to move. They also move a lot better then some of us old farts.

We had a really good Shen Chuan class this week. The majority of the group was there, some of them even on time. We were working takedowns and I caught an elbow with the back of my hand. It is still swollen and painful to the touch. The guys told me to stop whining after the first hour... I have some grip still, so I will just let it sit and see if it improves. I was able to do swings, pullups and clean and press last night, so hopefully it is not too bad.

I  met with BJ Bliffert at his awesome place in Frisco this week for an FMS Screening. I had planned on going to both CK-FMS and RKCII this year. After spending an hour and a half with him, I found seveal areas that I have to work on. The FMS is amazing in that it shows you were the work needs to be done. It is awesome how 7 simple screens can pretty much fix what ails you. I know that between my hamstrings and my shoulders, I am in a world of hurt. Thankfully, I have been working lots of RKC armbars! I would have had real issues if I hadn't been.

20 minutes after leaving, I was signed up for CK-FMS and the DVD Home Study were on the way. They arrived today and are sitting next to me now. I have a long weekend to watch them.

We have our group class in the morning and I will be introducing some new drills.

Some Garage Beatings

We were working on some head control last night out in the garage. I often equate marial arts patterns to those of kettlebell movement patterns. The movement is similar to the clean. There is so much crossover between the two that I still need to work on.

This is a raw clip and we are not at combat speed. We are working patterning. We are also in the words of my friend Tony Blauer, "Not practicing to miss."




Here is the same move with the real philosophy behind it.




The footage is rough, but we are working on it!

Program Minimum

Well, I have made it through 5 weeks of Program Minimum. I spent 5 weeks on it as I missed one week of quality training and took a step back. I was able to really improve my swing technique. I follow several good trainer's blogs and found a great piece of advice on mc's about locking up the glutes. Her take on it, simplified for me, is to think of your turning your hips out. You are consciously thinking of rotating them outward. I found that this helped me quite a bit in effectively locking the glutes down. It allowed me to also brace my abdomen much tighter. After 12 minutes of swings, that technique allowed me to finish as strongly as I started.

I really feel that the swing has reset my form and fixed the sloppiness that I had developed over the last year. The focus that I was able to place on the swing also increased my explosive power. There was a very noticeable increase in my relaxed power applications in a recent martial arts class. The relaxed tension that the swing teaches you has increased punching power tremendously . I know that the people I have been training with have noticed it as well. That does not even start on the "Kung Fu Grip" you develop from that much swinging.

I really enjoyed my Get Up portion. Being a dofus I often had to remember to slow down my movements. The Kalos Thenos version is by far one of the best exercises that you can do. By moving slowly and not rushing through the series, it is possible to build proper patterning for real world movement. It took the entire 5 weeks to even make a dent in proper form and technique. I realized that I was wobbly and out of sorts pretty quickly. This was compounded by attempting to make a set number of reps in my 5 minutes. By slowing down to a rep a minute I ws able to lock down the benchmarks that were needed. The high hip bridge being a large one. I figured out that I need to focus through the straight leg heel. Before figuring that point out, I was compensating and the straight leg was coming off the ground. I began to roll to my elbow instead of punching straight up. It allowed a cleaner get up with better mobility. I also learned that I was not tightening my glutes and began to pinch a quarter at the top of the hip bridge. Once I started that, my arm and shoulder locked in correctly. As I wrote, this was only a small dent in a great exercise and I will be going back to it in a month or so.

I have also been playing with my Captains of Crush Grippers a lot. I am not making them a main focus, but Greasing the Groove with ladders. I am in my car a lot these days with wasted training time. I start my travels out by warming up with a Sports COC before I leave the driveway. I then hit reps as I am stopped by red lights. I utilize a ladder to train. I start with 1 rep at the first light, 2 at the next until I am at 5 reps. I hit the next rung after that. I have noticed a difference in grip strength. To prevent imbalances, I use a broccoli band to work the extensors after every rung. I use broccoli bands as I am buying the broccoli anyway. That and I am to cheap to order the "proper" bands. Steve Maxwell taught me that at my first RKC! He had a bunch in his pocket. I am all about saving money!

I am going to put some info on my blog about opening for training. I will also be offering some online training. email me if you are interested.

New Year, New Goals

It is two days before the New Year. The New Year is always a time for retrospect on what has been accomplished. I have hit some of my goals, but not all of them. I missed some due to a lack of focus, I missed some due to lack of planning. It happens. I lost focus by not writing my goals down and reviewing them regularly as I should have done throughout the year.

I have two major goals with Kettlebells this year. I will be attending RKCII and CK-FMS. While I do not teach kettlebells as my main form of income, I am teaching some now and will do more in the coming year. I began this journey by attending the RKC for my own personal knowledge and learned that I love to teach. As I have written before, Pavel and the RKC put me on a new path in my professional and personal life. I love kettlebells and I love sharing the knowledge that I have earned through hard work. I am contemplating a stand alone martial arts and kettlebell gym starting in 2011. I have to hit my next goals to start that project.

I have some major goals with Amazing Athletes that I plan on achieving. I will be in at least 70 schools by this time next year with a student base of 1000 children. I will continue to grow the business in a moral and ethical manner. I want the kids to have the best instruction possible and will continuously work on improving my skills and abilities.

I have some other goals that fall under stuff that is personal for me and the family. It seems that everybody puts every aspect of their lives out there for the world to see. Not me!

I will be putting some video up starting next week. It will be a mix of kettlebells and martial arts. I am also opening some training slots after the first of the year. I am working on a schedule now. I will also be doing some online kettlebell training after next week.

Goals

The group class has grown a little with a few new additions. It is nice to have a good group to train with on a consistant basis.

The last two classes have been focused on the Snatch. We have worked on it quite a bit in the past and it was past time to review it. It started out pretty well. Since it has been a while, I expected to find some minor issues to clean up. For the most part they were only minor problems.

There are some issues that are there only because they differ from the Hardstyle training that I use. There are so many videos on the net, that you can learn almost any style with out leaving the house. The problem is that without one on one instruction, you do not get the subtleties that are required for proper execution. Bad habits develop quickly with improper training. I know this from personal experience, see my RKC trip in 2008. I developed some bad habits that almost kept me from making it through my cert.

The whole point of this is that you need to decide what you want to accomplish and why. Do you want Hardstyle or GS? Press the Beast or SSST of 300? You work from that point to reach your goal. You are at A, you want to get to C, you must do B. A+B=C. Is that simplistic? Heck yes! I am not talking about the depths of knowledge that Pavel, et al. I am talking about setting your goals and getting on the way.

It is that time of year when people set their goals for the next year. Do some people follow through? A few might, the majority do not. I believe that a major reason for failing to reach their goals is the failure to put them down and make them concrete.

Decide what your goals are and write them down. Lots of people write their goals down, so what happens? The goals are written down once and then put those goals away never to see the light of day again. You have to put specific goals down and rewrite them constantly. I have failed to follow that path over the last 6 months and have seen a difference. I have not accomplished what I really wanted to do. I did not have it in my short term memory as well as my long term. It was not written down, so not thought about.

I like to write down my goals on almost a daily basis and at least once a week. I write what I want to achieve as if I have already achieved it. "I pressed the Beast." I do not stop with just writing the goal, I also write the steps that I took to get there. I not only have the "C" of the equation, I also have the "A + B" written down to get there.

It seems really simple and it is. It is just not easy, but hard is good. If it was easy, why do it? You learn more and accomplish more when there is a struggle to reach the end.

Hardstyle is good!

Basics

This is Tracy Reifkind showing how swings are supposed to be done. They are rock solid. I hope that my swings are this nice one day. I was an assistant at the RKC with her last year and she is really knowledgeable. Tracy is what the RKC is about. She has the Hard Style Swing down.

It is pretty nice that a lot of RKC's are posting about the Program Minimum. Swings and Get Ups are the meat of the RKC. While the snatch has been called the Tsar of Lifts, they really are not what makes the kettlebell work magic.

Swings are a base exercise that set the stage for everything that follows. They teach the proper hip position, power generation and movement for every other movement. The snatch begins with the hip dip and drive that the swing does. Guess what the clean and squat need to work correctly? Hmmm, maybe the swing? It follows that everything we do stems from the swing.

I have gone back to the program minimum for the time being. I have a 12 week plan that is set out already, making it easy to follow. I am doing this to really set the foundation for a better training regimen. I have been banged up with lots of nagging injuries. I have been working swings and TGU's for about 3 weeks now. I have had a lot of improvement in range of motion and some relief of nagging pain. My lower back was stiff and I have added a greater range of motion.

I have also worked through each point of the TGU. I have learned that I have lots of leakage from a loss of focus and inability to tense certain areas. I have really been tensing the glutes on the hip bridge with great results. I am a lot more solid in all positions. I was somewhat wobbly before using more tension in the TGU. There is a lot of work still to do.

We had a camera breakdown last week. I hope to have a new one this week or next. We will be posting kettlebell and martial arts clips as soon as we can.

Not me, But I promised some video!

At least she is doing a decent workout!

We are actually hoping to do some filming tonight. If we do, we will get it up later.