IMPACT your Fitness.com

OK I didn’t ralize that has been two weeks since the last entry.

Anyway.  Training has been going well.  Just a good focus on general fitness and getting some strength back.  It seems to be going well.

The combo of kettlebell exercises, barbell stuff and bodyweight circuits seem to be agreeing with me.

While I’m improving in all areas above, it’s not as fast as if I were to pick one and concentrate solely on mode of exercise

I’m fine with that, even with us hosting the Tactical Strength Challenge at our kettlebell gym in Frisco, if I can match or come close to my last performance I’ll be OK with it.

I plan to deadlift just around 400lbs, which for not training the lift very often, I think, is pretty good.

In fact I haven’t concentrated on any of the contested lifts since my focus has been on Kettlebell Jerks and jerk technique for about the last 9 months.

After the TSC I plan on concentrating solely on body composition change.

Admittedly diet has been off lately, not so much bad choices, just not enough food is getting into my pie hole.

There are  ton of excuses I could use, but the fact is, it comes down to bad planning.  Thankfully we have plenty of Prograde Lean, the shakes come in handy when I’m short on time or have to get to the gym for a 5:30AM boot camp.  So that’s it.

I’ll make time to post more, and again get some video.

So, back to the subject of making tough seem easier.

As I said in my last post my goal is to perform Kettlebell Jerks w/ two 24kg kettlebells for ten minutes. At I thought I didn’t care about the reps, but at 6 RPM it should total 60 reps. This is what I’ll shoot for. This is the long term goal.

Let’s start with the end in mind, working backwards from the goal above.

I need to able to ten minutes with two 16kg kettlebells. Buy spending time with the lighters bells, I’m told i will build technique, and mental toughness. Believe me the “light” bells get awfully heavy awfully fast.

Before you can go 10 minutes with two 16kg Kettlebells, you should be able to go 10 minutes with one bell and one hand switch.

Before this you should be able to go 10-20 minutes with one 16kg bell, switching hands on the minute.

Seems like an easy enough progression.

So this is where I started, one 16kg bell, switching hands on the minute.

This was last week Thursday (7/17/08). I made it to 10 minutes without breathing heavy, so I went to 20 minutes. I stopped there because I couldn’t see the point of going further.

Friday was the day of one hand switch, five minutes on each hand at 6-8 RPM.

This again wasn’t too bad. Pretty easy actually.

So Saturday started the double bell work.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to call or e-mail Doug Sides when ever I have a question or need an opinion. Doug’s consensus was start at 6RPM and build time for one set. Follow that with one heavy set, one bell heavier, or a speed set to build cadence and maintain technique.

And that’s what I did.

I set my GymBoss Timer for 10 seconds, every time it beeps you do a Jerk.

I ended with 31 jerks which translates to 5:10. This was a good set and I’m happy to start here and have a good baseline.

Oddly enough, one would think the shoulders would fatigue first because it looks like an over head “lift” involving the sane muscles as the press. In reality, if done correctly, the bells are propelled upward with a sharp powerful drive from the hips and the athlete actually drops under the bells to lockout, then stands to locked knees to complete the movement. So yeah the shoulders will fatigue from supporting the weights overhead, but they really aren’t lifting much if any of the weight on the way up.

For some reason my pecs are what fatigues. Maybe fatigue is the wrong term, but they get tight and almost make lockout hard to complete.

I followed this up with a fast set of 20 reps, did a quick snatch set and called it a day.

Sunday I did the same thing, got 35 reps on the timed set and 25 on th speed.

So much of this sport is mental. It’s so easy to set the bells down, you have to keep telling yourself 2 more or 5 more. At 6RPM 5 reps=30seconds…that’s a pretty big jump in time.

I repeated this same format through Wednesday, adding the snatch set every 3rd day. So five days in row. After the initial increase the numbers were consistent.

I feel I’m of to a good start and now it’s just a matter being consistent pushing past the little voice that tells you to put the bells down.