Ah man....!

I video taped the new "D30" companion workout during The Swing Quest's last 20 minutes...or at least I thought I did!  Turns out my Flip camera might have died!  Drats!  Looks like we will all have to do it again on Tuesday!  Just the new workout, NOT the 2013 swings! lol

The Swing Quest 2013! It's just the beginning!

Time flys!  I've had so much going on in the last three months that I haven't had time to promote The Swing Quest 2013's next event which is tomorrow!  Tomorrow, June 29 is The Swing Quest's 3rd event this year.  The last one was epic for my group in so many ways, more of which I will write about over the weekend!


I just barely have a minute to give a shout out about the event and link some past information, including the workouts...well, the basic workouts we will be doing in the morning.

http://tracysfoodandthought.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-swing-quest-2013-first-500_2.html

http://tracysfoodandthought.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-swing-quest-2013-rise-to-occasion.html

I'm redesigning the last 213 swing reps to be a companion "D30" (Dirty Thirty) workout. So those of you so kind to have purchased my last DVD will be ready to add this to your arsenal!  I will not be posting the workout in written form, only on video, so you will have to follow along!  I will post it on Sunday, June 30th (of course!).

Fingers crossed I can spend more time on the details so all of us will be ready and waiting...yes, waiting for the next event!  2013 isn't over yet, and neither isThe Swing Quest 2013...it's just beginning!

Back in the Old Days...Potato Salad....egg, or no egg?

Remember when potatoes weren't our enemy?  Who didn't eat potatoes?  And lots of them?  Most recently in the last two generations french fries were the "vegetable" side dish to practically every dinner meal! Well, there still must be tons of people eating potatoes because they still sell them!   For at home meals I would guess mashed or whole and baked (goodness, how long has it been since I ate or made a baked potato? You?)  But I'm guessing in the form of french fries for sure at most restaurants.  Personally I go through "spurts"!  I don't eat potatoes regularly, but when I do it usually is because I make them for Mark, or I make them for a large Holiday dinner, and then I remember how yummy and delicious they are and I keep on making some variation until we all get sick of it!  Pretty much that's how I cook everything!  Repetition, repetition, repetition, yuck...enough!

I happen to know that eating potatoes does not make a person fat.  I know this because I live with someone that "can" eat potatoes without having ever gained a pound from it.  I also know this because growing up, although I was a chubby child, eating potatoes and potato salad never made me 250lbs...I did that to myself when I grew up, and yes, with the help of a lot of potatoes, but it wasn't the potatoes.

But this post isn't about whether or not potatoes are bad, it's about the potato salad I just finished making!  Making potato salad bring back many many memories.  The first is of being a kid, and practically every family gathering someone (my mom) making the potato salad.  It was one of the very few recipes I took into adult hood, like my moms meatloaf.  Super simple, way before the popularity of gourmet foods and pretentious food and diet snobbery.

Russet potatoes (practically a sin these days)
hard boiled egg (questions afterwards)
mayonnaise/mustard (yes, French's yellow)
sweet pickle relish
celery
black olives (is this a California or Hispanic thing?)

(do I have to list salt and pepper at this point?  Salt and pepper should be a given.)

Throughout the years I've made some slight adjustments, maybe some improvements.  The first came when I got my first job in a Delicatessen. I had to make huge batches of potato salad!  The owner of the Deli would bring in the potatoes already cooked....with the peel still on!  WHAT?  Now some one tells me that you don't have to peel them first?  What a time saver!  When you cook them and let them cool the peel comes right off!

The next is when I had a very close friend, at the time my "best" friend, Linda, a foodie before the term foodie was ever thought about.  Linda grew up in her grandmothers Greek kitchen and was absolutely the best cook I had ever met in my life up until that time (she still is I'm sure of it!)  Linda made the most fabulous foods and gave me a few cooking lessons, the first in my life. A couple of her recipes I still use to this day, quiche being one of them.  The other is using white wine vinegar on my potatoes, while still warm, before I add all of my other ingredients.  Simple.  A little white wine vinegar (I lied, a lot of white wine vinegar! Maybe as much as 1/3-1/2 c.!)  Years later while watching my BFF Fawn Friday make potato salad, guess what she did?  Yep, she poured vinegar over the still warm potatoes!  So it must be good!

One more...another good friend of mine Yvonne.  Yvonne is Mexican American, so is my family, Yvonne is also my exact age, our mothers also being close in ages.  She grew up with many of the same basic recipes, from potato salad to turkey stuffing, jello molds (some of you may know the one with lime jello, cottage cheese, walnuts, pineapple...and God only knows what else!).  She uses black olives too!  But she uses a small can of chopped black olives while I used whole olives I sliced into thirds (again, a little more time consuming.)  I like both ways (the same in the turkey stuffing too by the way!), but I tend to buy the small cans of chopped olives because I kind of like how the black specks distribue themselves throughout the salad.

Now that I know more about food and the variety available, AND the confidence and experience to add other ingredients, I tend to throw things in!  Fresh herbs mostly if I have them.  Today's batch was the basic above plus chives and parsley, and one more kind of freaky ingredient...."Dill" pickle relish!  I could not believe MiPueblo didn't have any, none, nada, sweet pickle relish!  What grocery store does not have sweet pickle relish?  But they did have some dill pickle relish (on clearance! Seems like someone ordered the wrong product!)  So that's what I used!  I was afraid it would make the salad more sour, but it all worked out!  After tasting it Mark commented that he thinks he might actually prefer it this way...too bad though, because I don't!  Sweet pickle relish on the grocery list for next time!

Okay, enough about my potato salad history!  What's yours?  Is it a family recipe/tradition?  Do you still make it?  Do you still eat it?  Do you buy it ready made?  If you do which do you prefer?

Do you use Russet or small reds?
Do you cook the potatoes with the skin on, or do you peel them first?
Do you use eggs?
Do you use mustard?
Do you use black olives?
What about vinegar?

Enough Already....let's get on with it!

I am seriously lovin' my life these days.  I look forward to teaching and leading my classes, I love my new Kettlebell Sport friends (more like family), my yoga practice is practically back in full  force and better that ever.  I feel more relaxed about almost everything and I'm okay!  (minus a couple of hot flashes! lol)  I kind of know why, the details I will keep private, but the big picture is that I started being true to myself....again  And I can't say that I planned it, it just seemed to all of a sudden come back together.

A casual yoga friend of mine said something to me last week that kind of shocked me....  She asked me how I was doing, in reference to my practice and injury, and I told her I was doing much better once I got over my anger about it....and she said;

"Well, you're angry!"

OR

"Well, you're an angry person!"

I can't remember exactly, but either one, it's still the same thing!

Wow!  Really?  Gulp...wow, really?  Do I come across angry...or does my anger come across?  And after she said it I didn't defend myself, I just sat with her words.....

I knew the question I had to ask myself was NOT am I angry (?), but do I come across angry?  And, yes, I think I do.  I do think that the hurt, turned anger, from all kinds of stuff from the beginning of my life, throughout my childhood, into my teen years, continuing into my adult life, and still now, does in fact come across.

I do not want to be angry and I certainly DO NOT want to be described as "that angry woman".  I used to try and make fun of my anger and describe myself as "a tough crowd"...in other words judgmental!

Before Mark and I "officially" met, we both would run into each other at Gold's Gym in downtown San Jose (back in the 80's).  I was sooooo NOT interested in him at all, and he, although he has told me that when he saw me he thought I was beautiful, ( I was 24 years old!  What's not beautiful at 24? lol), he also described me as "the girl that hated the world"!

As I approach middle age (in less than two months time) my schedule all of a sudden is allowing me to take advantage of what Tracy wants to do.  Thank you God!  Really?  How lucky can one girl be in one lifetime?

I'm starting to remind myself to not sweat the small stuff.  So much time and energy put into self criticism these past few years.  Maybe it was the pressure of having to sell a book, or prove a legitimate place in the world of training kettlebells.  Today, this week, none of that matters to me.  I am who I am, and I do what I do. Being "selfish" can be misinterpreted. Caring about your own health, vitality, and physical condition doesn't mean that you don't care about anyone else's.  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.  The key is to lead.  Lead by example.  And that is exactly what Mark did, and has done for over 25 years....he has always been true to himself, while taking care of me and our family.

Right now I do not have to compromise, and I pray, I believe, if I stay true to myself, lighten up, appreciate, forgive, move on, and love, that only good will happen.  And if something other than good happens, then I must trust and believe that good will follow, and I do.

Enough already!  I've got a ton of fun planned for tomorrow and I can't wait!  A good night's sleep and up and at 'em in the morning!

I got it! I come across angry and I don't want to come across that way, or better yet I don't want to be that way!  I really and truly, from the bottom of my heart, have nothing to be angry about.  Not one darn thing.

Now, let's get back to having some fun!  The Swing Quest 2013, this weekend, be there or be square! More details to come tomorrow!

Picture above of Mark and me taken in August, 2008 at the UCLA Cert, almost 5 years ago!

Saturday Training. A bit of old, a bit of new.

This morning was fab-u-lous!  I've ben trying to juggle my hardstyle, high volume workouts, with my Kettlebell Sport training and it's just now starting to come together.  Still, much room for improvement, but I'm figuring it out.  I'm figuring our how to balance the two.  One big, huge decision was to change my Saturday classes to Sunday, starting in July as a trial.  This way I can train at Juno on Saturdays (in Berkeley, 40 miles away), fresh, and still keep my hardstyle HV training the day after.

Back to this morning's workout.  I have been training a heavy double swing cycle on Thursdays, but it's been a while since I've done double overhead work regularly. This morning we did double presses, push presses, jerks, snatches and half snatches (snatch/rack...or snatch, neg press).  We finished off with some heavy swings for a bit over 30 minutes.  Cooked!  Done...finito....on to the rest of my morning.  (warm up swings don't really count so I won't bore anybody with the details....but 10 min. warm up, 12kg swings)

The actual workout consisted of 2 sets, the first was a one minute work/ 30 sec rest, using a single bell to "warm up" the overhead skill. Then using overhead skill progressions, starting with the most difficult, strict press, push press, jerks, snatch, half snatch we did double "swing-skill" for five sets of 5 or 6 reps, 30 seconds work/30 sec rest.

single bell (14kg)
1 sw R, 1 press R, tr, 1 sw L, 1 press L, tr x 8 (4 each side) 1 min/30 sec x 2 sets
1 dbl sw, 1 dbl press x 5 x 5 sets, 30/30 (12kg's)

1 sw R, 1 pu press R, tr, 1 sw L, 1 pu press L, tr x 8 (4 each side w/ 14kg) 1 min/30 sec x 2 sets
1 dbl sw, 1 dbl press x 5 x 5 sets, 30/30 (14kg's)

1 sw R, 1 jerk R, tr, 1 sw L, 1 jerk L, tr x 8 (4 each side w/14kg) 1 min/30 sec x 2 sets
1 dbl sw, 1 dbl jerk x 5 x 5 sets, 30/30 (14kg's)

1 sw R, 1 snatch R, tr, 1 sw L, 1 snatch L, tr x 8 (4 each side) 1 min/30 sec x 2 sets
1 dbl sw, 1 dbl snatch x 6 x 5 sets, 30/30 (12kg's)

1 sw R, 1 half snatch R, tr, 1 sw L, 1 half snatch L, tr x 8 (4 each side w/12kg's) 1 min/30 sec x 2 sets
1 dbl sw, 1 dbl half snatch x 6 x 5 sets, 30/30 (12kg's)

repeat 5 more sets, one of each overhead skill listed above (30/30);

dbl sw/press x 5 reps
dbl sw/pu press x 5 reps
dbl sw/jerk x 5 reps
dbl sw/sn x 6 reps
dbl sw/1/2 sn x 6 reps

45 minutes, total reps

8 single sw/press, 30 dbl sw/press
8 single sw/pu press, 30 dbl sw/pu press
8 single sw/jerk, 30 dbl sw/jerk
8 single sw/sn, 38 dbl sw/sn
8 single sw/1/2 sn, 38 dbl sw/1/2 sn

....onto swings

We practiced an advanced version of one of my workouts for The Swing Quest 2013 (next event in 7 days!), "Long and Short".  "Long and Short" should probably be called "Short and Long", now that I think about it!  lol  It starts out with short sets of ten two hand swings, then a "long" set of one hand swing depending on the number of short sets done.  We shortened all of the rest intervals making this an advanced routine.

400 20kg swings
300 16kg swings

700 swings
30.5 minutes total

8:30-9:30
600 swings (12kg)
clean dbl press, see saw press, lunges

12:30pm
Juno GS sets

14kg jerk
30 R/30 L (3 minutes total)

16kg "death pie" snatch
18/18

"Death Pie" is a snatch held overhead for 10 seconds. 18 DP snatches takes 3 min.  This set totaled 6 minutes and I barely hung on.  To start with I ripped some calluses open on my right hand during the warm up....so if I was going to do this set I just had to grin and bear it...it was only 18 reps R/L afterall!  "F" it....it's jut 18 reps each side!  Done.

I'm not posting this picture of my ripped calluses because I'm proud, I'm posting it because I'm not ashamed or embarrassed.  I often use the analogy of my hands to that of a dancers feet.  That being said, I do need to learn better, by practice, the technique of saving the skin and health of my palms that is so important in training this sport....and I am slowly but surely learning...I have to!  In the mean time I will get my work done, and learn along the way.

PS I had to cut the ripped skin off before my work set.  To be honest, if it weren't only 18 reps per side I might have passed...but it was only 18 reps...only 18 reps, held for 10 seconds at the top of each one....3 minutes total for each side...16kg.

Why "Gym Lifts" don't count! And Tuesday Training

I started out my morning with a quick 10 min 12kg snatch set, 20 rpm 5 min R/L....no problem, it didn't even feel hard.  200 snatch reps in a casual 10 minute set was 3 more snatch reps than my last meet in April, less than 8 weeks ago, and much easier!  Wanting to becoming a competitive lifter is changing me in so many ways.

I say "wanting to become" because I have so much respect for the athletes that have put in the time and commitment to their sport, and sacrifice, yep sacrifice, that I'm not sure how to include myself in the group.  My wanting to be might not have caught up with my belief that I am yet.

Being a competitive lifter and coach for from 1990-2003 Mark has always emphasized the difference between what you might be able to do in gym practice not being the same, not even close, to what you do on "game day".

This morning I had no stress.  No time table.  I didn't have to travel, or change any part of my normal routine.  In fact I didn't even have to do the set if I didn't want to!  I didn't have to weigh in, I didn't have to wait, plan my food, change my clothes, worry about judges.  Nothing was riding on what I could or couldn't do. Oh, and I didn't have a 10 minute jerk set beforehand either!  That's kind of important too!

Competition doesn't wait, it demands.

Tuesday Training

5:40-6:00am
after a quick warm up
200 12kg snatch reps, 100 R/100 L one hand switch.

6:05-6:35
swings (600-700 reps)
6:35-6:45
warm up squat, press, snatch
6:45-7:00
16kg
10 goblet squats
10 clean/push press R 
and L
10 snatch R 
and L
x 3 rounds

7:00-7:45 private session

8:00-8:15
Get Ups
30 total, 15/R, 15/L
8:15-8:30
clubbells 
10 R/L arm casts 
10 R/L shield casts
Bodyblade

Bikrams Yoga 9:15am

LUNCH!

swings w/14kg

10 2 hd sw x 4
10 tr x 4
10 tr + 10 2 hd sw x 2 (30/30, 30/15)
5/5 x 4
5/5 + 10 tr + 10 2 hd sw  x 3 (45/45, 45/30, 45/15)
10 2 hd sw x 4
10 2 hd sw + 5/5 + 10 tr + 10 2 hd sw (1/1, 1/45, 1/30, 1/15)

1 min sets w/16kg w/30 sec rest x 6 (9 min)
29 min total, 690 swing reps

Listen to what you are saying to yourself. Are you? I am!

I always listen to what I tell myself, and for sure I listen to the words I speak to others about how I describe myself and what I do and how I feel!  I can not speak for anybody else, nor do I want to project what is normal, common, or expected.  Let me explain a bit more....

During one of my yoga classes it is common for a teacher to say something like this to the class "I know this is a hard posture, it's hard for me too!", or "I know some of you hate this posture".  This drives me crazy (because I let it drive me crazy!).  It drives me crazy because, sure, sometimes I feel like a posture is hard, but then I remind myself that "hard" is a feeling not a fact.  If I can't do a posture perfectly, according to the God of yoga, still I try my best, and that's all I can do.  And I really and truly feel that all I can do, on any day, IS in fact the best I can do!  Is it hard to do my best?  Um, no.  I like doing my best, it's not hard at all.  

But I recognize that sometimes, some of us, I mean I, because I can only speak for myself, have been in the habit of saying certain things through reaction, without any real thought.  So, when I lead a swing class knowing that the next progression may be more work than the last (or feel like it!), I have a habit of saying something like....

"Okay, now it's about to get hard...." or "Oh, now the hard stuff is coming!"

Then when I hear what I just said, change it to....

"I mean, about to get fun!" or "Oh, the fun part is coming!"

So many times I want to suggest to my yoga teachers to STOP telling us that the yoga postures are hard, and especially stop telling us what we hate.  Stop already!  The most important thing is that we are all here, and doing our best with what we have today!  I already pay close attention to the things I tell myself about my ability and strength, I don't need someone else to discourage me by reminding me that I can use the excuse of being a victim of my own perceived weakness.  I want my teacher to tell me that it may only feel hard at first, BUT if I just relax and appreciate my wonderful life of choosing to be there, of choosing this practice, what a wonderful opportunity to rise above my perceived suffering, and instead rejoice in the fact that I have a life that affords me this luxury.

blah, blah, blah

Okay....moving on....

My point is that I catch myself reacting to old habits of thought.  Old habits of making excuses for not trying to be my best instead of trusting that I can!  Yes!  I can be my best!

Sometimes it feels easier, out of habit, to say out loud when having conversations with others like;

I am "this way"....I am always late, I'm bad about remembering names, I can't seem to finish projects...
I "always do this"....I lose control, I get lazy, I give up....
My "problem"is this....I'm addicted to...?, I've always been this way, I can't change....
I was always taught to do "this"....I have to clean my plate, I have to take care of others before myself, I'm obligated....
My "issue" is this.....I love sweets, I love chips, I can't lose weight, I've never exercised...
It runs in my family....everybody is overweight, we all have big legs, my family loves food...
I've always been this "way"....I never was popular, my sister (brother) were the stars, or the "smart ones", or the "skinny ones", or the "athletic" ones....OR the "good"ones....
I was always the one that....(fill in the blank) got in trouble, was the chubby one, was the geek....
I can't lose weight because my metabolism is messed up, I have thyroid issues, I always gain it back and more, I can't stay on a diet....
I never win anything....I never get lucky....
Nothing ever turns out right for me....I always get the short end of the stick, I always get caught, or "found out".....if something can go wrong it will go wrong"....
I expect the worst....because only good things happen to other people.....

etc.
etc.
etc.

I'm almost 50 years old, half of my life might very well be over, but I refuse to accept some of this shit.  I refuse to give up control, give up my power of free will and choice.  I may have been in the habit of expecting less, for whatever reasons I may have needed to feel undeserving, but I refuse any longer.

If this is middle age then I welcome it!  So far I've had a wonderful life!  Even with the imperfections and magnified dramas.  I just can't and don't want to make any more room for it!

This August 5th I will turn 50 years old.  Less than two weeks later I will have a 16kg kettlebell waiting on a platform for me.  From this point on I will listen closely to what I say to myself.

I am strong.
I am deserving.
I am a hard worker.
I am competent.
I am smart.
I am capable.
I am...
I am...
I am...
I am...

No one else decides for me.  I am not like everybody else.  I listen to what I say, and I say what I believe I can and want to be....I am not afraid to say what I believe I am.