If a Tree Falls in the Forest....

.....and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If I swing 1000 reps, or snatch 500 reps and no one is around to see it....did I do it? Does it count?

It doesn't matter because I train for myself. I will do it regardless of any witness. The only witness I need is my body that reflects the dedication to the consistency of the regular physical challenges I seem to be inspired to rise up to every week.

This morning I had a plan for my class to accomplish 1000 swing reps done in this interval combination,

40 reps, 1 min work, 30 sec rest
40 reps, 1 min. work, 30 sec rest
20 reps 1 min. work, 30 sec rest
100 reps per 4 minute rotation x 10 = 40 minutes 1000 swing reps

The exact swing combinations are not important. But I did make each rotation progressively harder, by making it heavier, or to include more one hand swings, for instance....

10/10/10/10 one hand swings w/12kg
20/20 one hand swings w/12kg
20 2 hand swings w/16kg

repeat the first 2 sets w/14kg
repeat last set w/16kg (or 20kg)

By the time we got about halfway I added snatches into the rest periods...Meg's still working toward her 50,000 snatches afterall....she's my girl....well, all of them are my girls, but she's the girl that makes us snatch more, lol!

here's an example, (no change in bell size because there's no rest period)

12kg
10/10/10/10 one hand swing, 1 min.,
6/6 snatches (R & L) 30 sec
20/20 one hand swings, 1 min
6/6 snatches, 30 sec
20 2 hand swings, 30 sec....now rest for 30 sec before starting the next rotation.

Done. and exactly on time 7:00am. (I did not count the warm up swings, about 100 reps)

Now I'm off to Equinox to do what? Well to be honest, I only have one class, or should I say one student in my Inter/Adv class who happens to be the General Manager of the Club (he's been training with me consistently for over 1 year now) and he's sick today....rare, rare occasion, but....I still have to train! I'm not sick.

I could have easily gone to yoga....double yoga if I wanted to, but that would be way too easy. One of the hardest things to do is train by yourself. No one counting on you. No one waiting for you. No one relying on you. No one, but the most important person of all.....you.

I would usually do another Max based workout, which means snatches, snatches, and more snatches! But I didn't have to take into consideration anyone else but myself. And knowing what I'm capable of, and my own training needs, I could do longer sets, hell, I could do whatever I wanted. And when it's only me I love the "boring stuff" I mean, who's going to pay you to do long ass repetitive single or double movement reps, set after set after set.....in other words....you can't pay for this kind of workout!

500 snatches w/negative press

10 R, 10 L, x 5 = 100 snatch/neg press, 6 minutes work
1 minute rest
x 5 = 500 snatch/neg press, 35 minutes

I chose to do a negative press from the top position of the snatch because my "press" strength is what lacks. Having to lower the bell to my shoulder in the rack position and re-snatch takes longer and is a different skill than casting over to the next snatch. 500 neg presses is a huge workload. Mark says he'd be really amazed if I'm not sore tomorrow....we'll see.

here's a video, back in the day, lol, demonstrating a snatch, negative press. (May 18th, 2008....love the music!)




PS I use negative presses often in my classes for a number of reasons, which I may write about some day in another blogpost......

Secret Experiment

This morning I found myself in my old stomping ground....my garage gym. 6:00am. Me, a 16kg, a gymboss (of course), and my trusty clock with a second hand for back up, lol. More to come in the following weeks....














PS my garage gym has turned into a storage room, but three or so kettlebells remain....who cares about a few spider webs here and there?

The "Killer" Strikes Again....but twice!

The "Killer" struck again on Saturday, but with double bells! Next week, the first weekend in Sept., my Max-based class is going back to traditional 15/15, after taking a 10 minute Snatch test (SSST), which will be re-tested in about 12 weeks time. So, I thought this was going to be the last time, for a while, to play around with the snatch pacing intervals.....but how was I to make it harder? Double snatches.

I've never claimed to be the strongest girl in the world, not even close, so double snatching the 12kg's is challenging. I can easily get out 5 reps, and then? Well, I've never tried it to be honest. (maybe I've done 7???) But one of my favorite way to train double snatches is with light bells, and fast...and long.... What is a light bell? Two 8kg's are easy, breezy, but add on any extra weight and the difficulty seems to magnify, and quickly.

I used two 20lber's (GoFit). I could have used the 10kg's, now that we have Dragon Door bells giving us that option, but as I mentioned there's a big difference between 18lbs (8kg), and 20 lbs, and 22 lbs! This was a test run by the way, no need to go balls to the wall....oh if I only had one more week!

Two 20lb. KB's

5 dbl sn, 15 sec work/15 sec rest,

5/5 dbl sn, 30 sec work/30 sec rest (10 dbl sn)

5/5/5 dbl sn, 45 sec work/30 sec rest (15 dbl, sn)

5/5/5/5 dbl sn 1 min work/ 30 sec rest (20 dbl sn)

50 dbl sn

Two 12kg's 5 reps, 15 sec work, 30 sec rest

5 minutes 15 seconds per rotation (3 rotations)

now a bit faster....

6 dbl sn, 15 sec work/15 sec rest,
6/6 dbl sn, 30 sec work/30 sec rest (12 dbl sn)
6/6/6 dbl sn, 45 sec work/30 sec rest (18 dbl sn)
6/6/6/6 dbl sn 1 min work/ 30 sec rest (24 dbl sn)

60 dbl sn

Two 12kg's 5 reps, 15 sec work, 30 sec rest

a bit faster yet....

7 dbl sn, 15 sec work/15 sec rest,
7/7 dbl sn, 30 sec work/30 sec rest (14 dbl sn)
7/7/7 dbl sn, 45 sec work/30 sec rest (21 dbl sn)
7/7/7/7 dbl sn 1 min work/ 30 sec rest (28 dbl sn)
70 dbl sn

Two 12kg's 5 reps, 15 sec work, 30 sec rest

195 dbl snatches. 15 minutes 45 seconds....is that all? Freakin' Hell!

At this point we are done, done done with 1 minute long snatch pace sets, and double 12kg snatches. Time to slow things down....well not really but, the rest of the workout is done in 30 sec work/ 30 sec rest intervals.

5/6

5/7

6/5

7/5 all four sets have a 5 rep pace, either starting or finish

6/7

6/5

7/6

5/6 all four sets have a 6 rep pace, either to start or to finish

7/6

7/5

6/7

5/7 all four sets have a 7 rep pace, either to start or to finish

144 dbl sn. 12 minutes

Total 339 double snatches (324 w/20lber's, and 15 with two 12 kg's)

27 minutes approx.....can't be true! It seemed like forever. Barely a word was uttered in the Studio and Marks training partner Nick said, "That must have been hard! I've never heard such silence in the gym before!" Little did I know the daggers Meg was throwing at me with her eyes....I was facing the clock.

So to remind anyone that cares..... all of the rep #'s are done in 15 second intervals. For instance,

5/5/5/5 means 5 reps per 15 seconds for a total of 20 reps in 1 minute, or 7/6 means 7 reps in the first 15 seconds, 6 reps in the next 15 seconds for a total work set of 30 seconds. Since we had bells in both hands, obviously there were never any switching of hands.

The point of pacing is develop the ability to do a certain amount of work at a certain rate. Running a six minute is not running a seven minute mile, it's a different pace which requires a different amount of energy. It's also a way to change the intensity of the same movement, in this case the double snatch without changing the weight.

I'll bereferring to these long pacing snatch workouts as "Killer" workouts....so watch out for more killers in the future!

Thursday DBL's

two 12kg's

30 sec work/rest intervals

10 sets of 7 reps
dbl cl/dbl strict press (10 min.)
dbl cl/push press (10 min)

15 sec work/rest intervals

10 sets of 7 reps
dbl cleans (5 minutes)

back to 30 sec work/rest intervals

10 sets
10/10 dbl / 2 hd KB Split (10 min.)
1 sw, gblt sq x 4 (10 min)

Total workout 45 minutes

In the first 10 sets I did a dbl clean before each strict press (long cycle). I was able to get all of my last press without pushpressing the bells. (69 strict dbl pr + 1 pu pr)

The next 10 sets were done the same way, with a clean before each push press. (70 pu pr + 1 from the last set)

The next 10 sets were only 15 sec work/rest because it was only the dbl clean. We were able to dbl clean 7 reps in that amount of time.

Back to swings, and 30 sec intervals...10 sets of 20 rep Kettlebell Split. (200 swings)

I ended the workout with one bell instead of dbls for squats, so I had to implement the goblet squat. The biceps of the person I was training with were toast from all of the dbl cleans we had already done....therefore not making the dbl/cl sq possible. Although now that I think about it, I could have done them.

45 minutes is a relatively short workout for me, but it's become about standard for Thursday DBL's.....I still have 2 more 30 minute beginners classes to teach afterwards.....in addition to my pullup and Level 2 skills I practice later in the day with Mark @ Girya.

Go Ahead, Eat the Skin...I dare you!

Before I write about my adventures in quail....so, I'm in Budapest having dinner with 3 other people that have never had a "problem" with their bodyweight, (hint, hint....Mark, Pavel and Andrea). None of them were torured by having to make a decision to order the meal with the least amount of fat, the least amount of carbs, or the least amount of sugar. In fact as I looked around at everyone else's meal it was full of fat, carbs and sugar (well, that was at the end when Andrea and I ordered 4 desserts....to share, to share! I think I was a bad influence on her, lol)

My point is life is too short to pull the chicken skin off...it's yummy.

OK, so the second night, in Huingary, Mark and I ate at the Hotel resturant, and I was looking over the salads because I happen to love salads, not because I was counting calories. It's no secrect that I love fresh veggies, and I had heard horror stories about how hard it was to find fresh veggies in Eastern Europe....???? Whoever told me that must've not vacationed in the Summer (or Spring), how could there not be fresh foods in the Summer? Anyway, I ordered a endive, asparagus and beet salad with grilled quail and tiny poached quail eggs topping the individual endive leaves. Those quail eggs were cr-eamy! I knew I had to make a version of this when I got home.

Years ago I had taken a "gourmet" cooking class where they demonstrated boning a quail (yep, boning a freakin', tiny ass, quail!), so the thought of buying and preparing quail wasn't intimidateing to me. I remembered seeing quail eggs and frozen quail at the Vietnemese Market....voila!

$.99 cents for 1 dozen quail eggs...yep $.99 cents! $7.99 for 6 quail. Now this seemed kind of inexpensive (I don't like to use the word cheap, lol), so after that batch was gone I bought some more quail at Whole Foods....$14.99 for 4! That's almost 3 times as much. I admit the Whole Foods quail looked better.....but until I have a side by side taste test....hey I still buy my Thanksgiving Turkey at Safeway....I'm over the whole "organic" thing..... OK, I'm not going to lie...I'm not! But I'm getting over it more and faster.

I enjoyed a few salads with poached quail eggs. It was challenging getting those little suckers just right. TIP: your poaching water has to be boiling or near boiling. Anything less will not cook the whites fast enough and you'll end up with "spider web" whites. I decided I wasn't %100 sure of the freshness of the eggs from this particular market, but I'm going to go to a busier Asian market in hopes of feeling like the turn over is a bit more consistent.

The quail I left in the fridge to defrost and once they were no longer frozen I rinsed them off, cut out the backbone (and neck), flattened those puppies (OK, I mean birdies) by simply opening them up, breast side up and pushing down on the breast bone to flatten. I made sure they had been out of the fridge for about 20 minutes, so they weren't stone cold, and also, I dried them completely with paper towels (oh, the waste...I'll have to write a blogpost sometime about how it used to be hard for me to "waste" paper towels. So much so that I used to rinse them out and dry them to use again, lol).

Back to the quail....

I sprinkled salt, pepper, and in honor of my Hungarian friends, paprika, put them skin side down in a smokin' hot saute pan. I would have grilled them if I had a grill! I let the skin get really crisp, and then I placed another heavy pot right on top of them to get a really good sear and to help flatten them out a bit more while making sure to cook them throughout, 5 minutes. Flipped them over and cooked for another 3-5 minutes.

There's something about having your own iny little bird, skin and everything, all to yourself! Mine never did make it to top a salad!

Super Human Training Teleseminar

I'm very proud to announce that along with my new DVD coming out, this Wednesday, at 5pm PST I am going to be interviewed by Bud Jeffries and Logan Christopher for their Super Human Training Teleseminar.
Now that my dvd is coming out I can talk directly about my training methods and techniques that have allowed me to do such high volume swing training for such a long time.

heres the link to signup to hear my interview

Super Human Training Teleseminar Series

Reverse Engineering, and how to apply that to having, no, feeling, the body you want to have.

One of the concepts I love about the RKC philosophy is "reverse engineering". They use the best examples of what the strongest and most coordinated people do naturally and decipher it for the average person. Giving the average person the corrections to approximate those skills for themselves.

In other words the philosophy is to start from the "end point" and work backwards.

The end point for me? Feeling light, feeling thin, feeling capable, feeling strong, feeling good about myself and what I do. Whatever it is that you want to feel, start there, and work backwards....start there, and work backwards!

Great! I feel light. Great! I feel thin. Great! I feel strong and capable. Wow! I like how I feel, and I like how I look.....funny how that happens.

Today I wanted to weigh myself. Good God I'm 47 years old....do I want to do this the rest of my life? I wanted to weigh myself because I was feeling so good I thought that the scale would have to reflect how good I was feeling by showing me a # I associate with feeling so good! (does this make sense?) But I knew that if the # wasn't right, or good enough I would feel like crap. Why would I do that to myself? Is this one of the by-products of living in this American culture? So consumed by bodyweight.....

So, I decided NOT to weigh myself. Today I got a bit smarter than that darn scale.

Reverse engineering.....I'm already where I want to be. Light, small, strong, capable, smart, lucky, etc.

Life is great, and my precious Sophie turns 1 year old Sept. 2nd! Tomorrow I'll take her shopping for her 1st birthday dress....does it matter how much I weigh? Sophie is perfect and so am I. (so is her mother too!)