Trying to get back in the habit of regular posts. We'll see how long this keeps up.
When I bought my new 16kg kettlebell, I also bought a 10lb kettlebell. I figured that would be light enough to not aggravate my wife's back, while still letting her do squats and halos and such. She hasn't really touched it, though. On the other hand, my sons have gone nuts over it.
Some mornings, my 7 year old and I will do some goblet squats and deadlifts together with the bells. I'll usually do a couple clean and presses too, then tell him not to try them because he's not ready. Well, last Wednesday morning, I decided to show him some snatches, even though my form with snatches is not good. Sure enough, I wasn't concentrating and I flubbed one, which caused me some pain. It felt like pulling a muscle somewhere under my right scapula. Nothing serious, but it was really uncomfortable. Later, that night, I found that it really hurt when I laid down. The only comfortable position to sleep in was on my left side.
Finally, this morning the alarm clock woke me up and I noticed I was sleeping on my right side. The pain is almost completely gone. I skipped working out for 4 days last week, and have been kind of taking it easy this week since Sunday. I'm tempted to credit the recovery with daily Intuflow and foam rolling (well, lacrosse ball rolling in my case), but it's probably just the rest.
2012-03-21
2012-03-20
Status Report
So, the end of Q1 is upon us, and I haven't been updating at all. In case anybody is reading this that I don't communicate with regularly via IM, here's what's been happening...
I started doing TacFit Kettlebell Spetznaz. Only I was doing something wrong, which ended with me hurting my lower back a bit. So I took a week off, then went back to it, more carefully. Two workouts later, hurt back again. I decided to take a couple weeks off kettlebells entirely, and do a bodyweight routine, focusing on mobility. That went awesome for two whole workouts, when I got bored silly of the whole thing.
I found a different kettlebell workout online to follow, and managed to do that for two weeks before, you guessed it, hurting my lower back. Same deal, took a week off, worked on mobility and recovery, then went back to it. And re-hurt my back. At this point, I think I was in danger of going from "hurt" to "injured". I was pretty bummed.
You see, although I've liked bodyweight stuff in the past, I was really getting into kettlebells. They bring a lot of fun to a workout. And much like the fact that the best knife is the one you have on you, the best possible workout is the one you'll stick with. Even with tweaking my back several times in less than two months, I was itching to get back to the bells, so I was reluctant to throw my hands up in the air and walk away.
Sooooo, I was perusing YouTube, looking at kettlebell videos (don't do this, there's too much noise and it drowns out the quality stuff), and Pavel Tsatsouline's name kept coming up. I'd heard it before, of course, but this time I decided to take a look. I pirated a copy of Enter the Kettlebell, watched the video once all the way through, then immediately went to Dragon Door's website and ordered a starter kit, which is the ETK book, dvd, and a 16kg kettlebell. Why the kettlebell? I figured I'd keep it at work, so I could work out at my desk when I work nights. And seriously, yes, I did buy a copy of the book and dvd. Pictures of me with the evidence are available upon request.
The thing I needed most was the Break-In program in ETK. It's a series of foundation moves that builds the strength and mobility and skill in the basic movement patterns. Just doing the Break-In for two weeks while keeping up with daily IntuFlow has wiped out my back pain entirely. I don't remember the last time my lower back felt this good.
After the Break-In, you can start Program Minimum. Much has been said all over the internet about PM, so I won't go into details. I'll just say this: it's simple and fun. It's not fancy, but my body is not ready for fancy yet. I still plan on going back to TacFit kettlebell later this year, once I've gotten proficient at the basic skills of kettlebell swinging. I am also very confident that I'll hit my goals for swings.
I started doing TacFit Kettlebell Spetznaz. Only I was doing something wrong, which ended with me hurting my lower back a bit. So I took a week off, then went back to it, more carefully. Two workouts later, hurt back again. I decided to take a couple weeks off kettlebells entirely, and do a bodyweight routine, focusing on mobility. That went awesome for two whole workouts, when I got bored silly of the whole thing.
I found a different kettlebell workout online to follow, and managed to do that for two weeks before, you guessed it, hurting my lower back. Same deal, took a week off, worked on mobility and recovery, then went back to it. And re-hurt my back. At this point, I think I was in danger of going from "hurt" to "injured". I was pretty bummed.
You see, although I've liked bodyweight stuff in the past, I was really getting into kettlebells. They bring a lot of fun to a workout. And much like the fact that the best knife is the one you have on you, the best possible workout is the one you'll stick with. Even with tweaking my back several times in less than two months, I was itching to get back to the bells, so I was reluctant to throw my hands up in the air and walk away.
Sooooo, I was perusing YouTube, looking at kettlebell videos (don't do this, there's too much noise and it drowns out the quality stuff), and Pavel Tsatsouline's name kept coming up. I'd heard it before, of course, but this time I decided to take a look. I pirated a copy of Enter the Kettlebell, watched the video once all the way through, then immediately went to Dragon Door's website and ordered a starter kit, which is the ETK book, dvd, and a 16kg kettlebell. Why the kettlebell? I figured I'd keep it at work, so I could work out at my desk when I work nights. And seriously, yes, I did buy a copy of the book and dvd. Pictures of me with the evidence are available upon request.
The thing I needed most was the Break-In program in ETK. It's a series of foundation moves that builds the strength and mobility and skill in the basic movement patterns. Just doing the Break-In for two weeks while keeping up with daily IntuFlow has wiped out my back pain entirely. I don't remember the last time my lower back felt this good.
After the Break-In, you can start Program Minimum. Much has been said all over the internet about PM, so I won't go into details. I'll just say this: it's simple and fun. It's not fancy, but my body is not ready for fancy yet. I still plan on going back to TacFit kettlebell later this year, once I've gotten proficient at the basic skills of kettlebell swinging. I am also very confident that I'll hit my goals for swings.
2012-01-10
Resolutions, revisited
Time to score last years resolutions. As a refresher, here they are, as posted in December of 2009.
Learn another language
* Brazilian Portuguese - Probably buy some app for my phone so that I can listen in my car on the way to work.
-- I did do this, sort of. I'm not anywhere near proficient, but I know some greetings and some common words. I recently did some reading exercises, so I'm getting better about sounding out words when I see them. Thanks to me studying French for a few years in high school, I can slowly figure out the meaning of some stuff I read online in ptbr.
Learn more Kanji
* Learn 500 new kanji this year, improve my reading/writing abilities with the kanji I already know
-- Nope, not even close. I learned a couple new kanji, but I'm probably off by two orders of magnitude.
Knife throwing
* I think I should put some number of reps here, so maybe this will be my 10k for this year?
-- My reps for the year? 0.
Get legit with the Atienzas
* Make the training group official
-- Came very close to this, actually. Then my personal life fell apart and I had to put all training on the back burner for several months. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to get back to this anytime in the next 12 months.
* Find more training partners
-- Nope, nobody wants to come play with me.
Exercise
* Tacfit warrior - Start at Lite, work my way up to at least recruit.
-- Didn't do this at all.
* Intuflow - everyday
-- Nope. I had a couple runs of trying to keep up with this, but nothing consistent.
* run more - after getting to recruit level on Tacfit Warrior, start running again.
-- Nope, no running.
* parkour - make it to the open beginner classes up in The City
-- Nope.
* Lose 20lbs - if I can stick with the above, this should be cake.
-- DONE. Despite not sticking with any of the above, I did this part. In fact, I lost closer to 30. Which means I still have a ton to go, but this alone has been huge.
Ouch. Not nearly as well as I'd hoped. I think I need to put quarterly resolution reviews on my calendar to remind me to get back into some of these. I'm going to carry both of my language goals forward to this year. I've got a couple new exercise goals...Oh, this will be easier to just list.
Learn another language
* Brazilian Portuguese - Probably buy some app for my phone so that I can listen in my car on the way to work.
Learn more Kanji
* Learn 500 new kanji this year, improve my reading/writing abilities with the kanji I already know.
Martial Arts
* Continue training at least 5 times a month (yeah, it doesn't sound like much, but it's been difficult to hit in the past). Hopefully, a minimum of twice a week.
Exercise:
* Two handed kettlebell swing 50lbs for 100 reps.
* Two handed kettlebell swing 70lbs for 100 reps.
* Tacfit Kettlebell Spetznaz PreRecruit and Recruit
* RUN. Seriously this time. Complete a Couch to 5k routine.
* Lose another 20lbs.
Yeah, not particularly inspired, but I feel like I need to finish some of this stuff before I can move on to something new. I do need to figure out something I can count for my 10k reps, though. I'm open to suggestions there.
Learn another language
* Brazilian Portuguese - Probably buy some app for my phone so that I can listen in my car on the way to work.
-- I did do this, sort of. I'm not anywhere near proficient, but I know some greetings and some common words. I recently did some reading exercises, so I'm getting better about sounding out words when I see them. Thanks to me studying French for a few years in high school, I can slowly figure out the meaning of some stuff I read online in ptbr.
Learn more Kanji
* Learn 500 new kanji this year, improve my reading/writing abilities with the kanji I already know
-- Nope, not even close. I learned a couple new kanji, but I'm probably off by two orders of magnitude.
Knife throwing
* I think I should put some number of reps here, so maybe this will be my 10k for this year?
-- My reps for the year? 0.
Get legit with the Atienzas
* Make the training group official
-- Came very close to this, actually. Then my personal life fell apart and I had to put all training on the back burner for several months. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to get back to this anytime in the next 12 months.
* Find more training partners
-- Nope, nobody wants to come play with me.
Exercise
* Tacfit warrior - Start at Lite, work my way up to at least recruit.
-- Didn't do this at all.
* Intuflow - everyday
-- Nope. I had a couple runs of trying to keep up with this, but nothing consistent.
* run more - after getting to recruit level on Tacfit Warrior, start running again.
-- Nope, no running.
* parkour - make it to the open beginner classes up in The City
-- Nope.
* Lose 20lbs - if I can stick with the above, this should be cake.
-- DONE. Despite not sticking with any of the above, I did this part. In fact, I lost closer to 30. Which means I still have a ton to go, but this alone has been huge.
Ouch. Not nearly as well as I'd hoped. I think I need to put quarterly resolution reviews on my calendar to remind me to get back into some of these. I'm going to carry both of my language goals forward to this year. I've got a couple new exercise goals...Oh, this will be easier to just list.
Learn another language
* Brazilian Portuguese - Probably buy some app for my phone so that I can listen in my car on the way to work.
Learn more Kanji
* Learn 500 new kanji this year, improve my reading/writing abilities with the kanji I already know.
Martial Arts
* Continue training at least 5 times a month (yeah, it doesn't sound like much, but it's been difficult to hit in the past). Hopefully, a minimum of twice a week.
Exercise:
* Two handed kettlebell swing 50lbs for 100 reps.
* Two handed kettlebell swing 70lbs for 100 reps.
* Tacfit Kettlebell Spetznaz PreRecruit and Recruit
* RUN. Seriously this time. Complete a Couch to 5k routine.
* Lose another 20lbs.
Yeah, not particularly inspired, but I feel like I need to finish some of this stuff before I can move on to something new. I do need to figure out something I can count for my 10k reps, though. I'm open to suggestions there.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Quick update this morning because I'm very busy and important:
Crunch (Legs Elevated): 25
Reverse Crunch: 20
Knee Raise: 12
Crunch (Arms Extended): 20
Seated Bar Twist: 20
Total Reps: 97
Remaining: 9801
Read an interesting article on mental feedback loops while on the elliptical machine this morning. More about that later.
2012-01-09
New Year, New Goal
In the spirit of the original concept behind 10k reps, I made one of my New Year’s resolutions to try to come up with something measurable that I could try to hit the 10k mark with this year. I’ve been hot on my fitness goals for the last few months. I have made exercise a part of my daily life and have made permanent adjustments to the way I eat and the way that I think about food. With that in mind I started looking at my progress. My weights have steadily increased with my strength training and my cardio routines are progressing as well. I am seeing greater muscle definition in key areas and I am really happy with that. The one place, however, that I am not thrilled with is my gut. It’s getting smaller, but the dreaded love handles there still give me an odd shape. I know they are difficult (and in some cases genuinely impossible) to get rid of, but this gave me the idea that I want to do whatever I can to improve this area. That being said, I’ve decided to dedicate my 10k reps attempt in 2012 to ab exercises. Here’s today’s breakdown:
Standard Crunch: 25 reps
Standing Bar Twist: 20 reps
Decline Reverse Crunch: 12 reps
Side Oblique Crunch (legs elevated): 20 reps
Crunch on stability ball: 25
Total Ab Reps: 102
Reps to go: 9898
I’ve got some more observations about the gym this morning, but that will have to wait until later. Thanks for playing along.
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