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Snatch is overrated.

03/10/10

No not that kind of snatch. I’m talking about the kettlebell snatch here. Maybe it isn’t exactly overrated but in my case it takes a lot more than it gives. As you know I am doing ETK and it calls for doing snatches once a week and testing yourself on kettlebell snatches every so often. I’m opting out on kettlebells snatches.

The main reason I don’t do them is that in addition to the clean and press they really smoke my shoulders. It is also much easier to loose control with the snatch and hurt myself. The drop from over head and back through the legs tends to cause a lot of shearing on the lower back. It just doesn’t feel right. The there’s the issue with the hands. Snatches really mess up my hands especially in the hot weather when I sweat. I don’t chalk ever. It’s a prop and it’s not tactical. When the shit goes down you can’t hold off a combatant while you chalk up of put on wrist bands or knee pads or whatever else people use.

Presses and swings seem to cover just about all the bases. The snatch is simply unnecessary and contradictory to my goals right now. The yoga really rounds things out and keeps me healthy. I still can’t help thinking that I need to add some kind of running into the mix. I mean how can you really claim to be fit if you don’t run? I have held off on running due to some problems with Achilles tendonitis. This usually occurs when I try to run distances. Maybe I’ll try some sprints or some basketball into the mix.

The perfect ETK hybrid in my opinion would be to follow the clean and press suggestions and to do man makers for the swing element. You could do 20 swings and sprint or run a bit and keep this going for 10-20 minutes. In my hybrid the running in between sets would not be a recovery run. It would be fairly vigorous. This would spare the lower back. It’s always tempting to compromise form for reps when all your doing are swings. For now I’ll stick with what I am doing but I’ll closely monitor how my body feels from day to day.

DoucheFit: Making weak mother fuckers feel better about themselves since 1999

03/08/10

Question: How many 95 pound thrusters can you do in one minute?
Answer: No one cares.

You can plug in just about any exercise that DoucheFit seems to covet such as pull-ups, air squats and clean and jerks with 10 pounds. It doesn’t matter because no one cares except other Douchefitters.

Susie Sweet Cheeks: Hey couch I just did 3,897,234 wall ball squat kipping thrusters in 1 minute!
Couch: Blah,blah,blah…across broad domains…blah, blah, blah…I need a drink. By the way Susie I ‘d like you to be my “guest” at the next kipping burpee cert. Don’t bother packing any panties you won’t need them. Trust me.

DoucheFit is simply a bunch of random bullshit thrown together in an effort to make weak motherfuckers feel better about themselves. There simply aren’t enough DoucheFit outliers with respectable strength to make any meaningful statement about the effectiveness of DoucheFit. It’s simply a bunch a kweers doing a bunch of different shit poorly. Try pointing this out to a DoucheFitter after he has just PRed in the deadlift at a whopping 250 pounds and he will start wetting his panties and screeching about how he can do 8,000 “pull-ups” in 30 seconds. You can do 800,000 pull-ups in 10 seconds and it still won’t mean shit because I could put the average DoucheFitter’s head through a brick wall in about 2 tenths of second and I can do this without the luxury of the official DoucheFit warm-up. No one cares about pull-ups. No one.

I knew right away something was awry with DoucheFit way before they had affiliates on every street corner. Way too much emphasis was put on how much the bench press sucked. The bench isn’t “functional”. It’s overrated. How can it translate into sport when you’re lying down and not using your legs? It’s not tactical enough. Ooops…wrong bunch of douchebags. Anyway you get the gist of it.

I used to bench quite a bit and my best bench in competition was 410 raw. Plenty of guys benched more than me but 410 is still strong. Hell most 300 pound benchers are strong. To press that much weight off your chest from a standstill takes an awful lot of brute strength. Go tangle with a 500 pound bencher and then come back and tell me how his bench press isn’t functional.

DoucheFitters don’t like the bench press because it’s a standard of measure that the average Joe can conceptualize.

DoucheFitter: Look at me without my shirt on. I’m functional. I’m elite. I can run circles around guys in the NFL.
Regular Joe: Oh yeah? How much do you bench?
DoucheFitter: Well I don’t really bench. Thrusting kipper are far more functional. Besides Couch says nature abhors the….
Regular Joe: Yeah whatever dude.

I was looking at the DoucheFit forum the other day and some pencil was querying whether 10 reps with 135 pounds was respectable in the military press. Well if you have to ask chances are it’s not that impressive. And you know that it wasn’t a military press. I have never seen a DoucheFitter do anything in strict forum. I am sure he was doing a push press with a jumping jack and some sort of pirouette or something to obscure measurability. Naturally there was no consensus or straight answer and many said it depended on how much the dork weighed. Bullhsit. How come no one ever inquires about weight when some 95 pound cunt does 20 pull-ups?

I have been around the weight lifting scene longer than many of you cunts have been alive. I have seen many trends come and go. The methods may have changed over the years but DoucheFit has really capitalized on the sacred cash cow of making the 95 pound weakling feel better about himself.

ETK and yoga update

03/03/10

My training has been going so well and uneventful that I haven’t had much to write about. I am now using the 32kg for my ETK cycle and I am progressing slowly but surely. I am on track to reach my goal of 5 ladders of 1,2,3,4,5 reps with the 32kg in under 30 minutes and 200 swings with the same weight in under 10 minutes.

I am being very conservative with my training. Last time I embarked upon ETK I was experiencing quite a bit of wrist discomfort. I think I simply went up to quickly and trained too often by throwing in 2 variety days in addition to my regular presses and swings. This time I only do presses and swings three days a week in an easy, medium and hard fashion. Instead of rolling dice for swings I focus more on reps. For example this week I did 50 swings on Monday, will do 75 swings today 125 on Friday which is my hard day. I will tweak that up every week a bit. This will assure that I keep my swing volume low on easy and medium days. I can’t always monitor that when I roll dice and swing for time. If all goes well I will be training with the 40kg in April.

My biggest breakthrough has occurred with my yoga practice. I had felt stuck for quite awhile in this aspect of my training. I went nowhere in Bikram’s for nearly 6 months and finally quit in frustration and dehydration. I did YRG for awhile but felt generally disappointed with the whole routine. I knew it pulled from other disciplines but really thought there would be more yoga. It’s really just “yoga” for white trash.

On the advice of a friend I went to Barbara Benagh’s yoga joint here in Boston. She is a well known instructor nationally with many write ups in Yoga Journal and I actually had 2 of her videos collecting dust. I was really impressed with her instruction and talked with her afterwards for at least 30 minutes. She gave me some really solid feedback. She said I had excellent body awareness and a pretty solid foundation with the basic poses but felt I was still was too tight for as much yoga as I had practiced. According to her this was common among Bikram’s, Power Yoga and Baptiste practitioners. Her twist was that these styles put more emphasis on the series than the individual body. If you were naturally flexible you progressed but if not you simply struggled and fought against yourself.

Benagh teaches vinyasa yoga in a much slower fashion. It’s not easier but slower. She also allows props. I have found this all very helpful and have experienced some pretty exquisite soreness the day after a practice from really getting into the depths of a pose. I also like the fact that she encourages people to come to class once or twice a week and spend the rest of the time practicing at home in order to make the practice personal. I always felt like I was getting fleeced at the Bikram’s studio. Right now I am following the routines from her Power Yoga for Everybody DVD. There are 20 different routines to follow and the instruction is solid. I am please with my training progress.

ETK update and some criticism of YRG.

02/16/10

This past Friday I hit my first goal on my ETK cycle. I was able to clean and press the 24kg for 5 x (1,2,3,4,5) in 23 minutes and was able to get 200 swings with the 24kg in about 9 minutes. My goals were 30 and 10 respectively before I was allowed to jump up to the 32kg. This really wasn’t that big of deal since the 24kg is pretty light for me but its part of the progression of this cycle. Prior to starting this cycle I had been away from kettlebells for nearly a year so I had to start easy.

I was pretty pleased hitting this goal as quickly as I did. It only took a few weeks. I plan on taking about 7 to 10 days off lifting. During this time I will only do yoga. Once I start back up I will start with the 32kg bell and may do the program minimum for a week. This consists of doing Turkish get ups and swings. I am in no big rush. My goal is to eventually clean and press the 40 kg for 5 x (1,2,3,4,5) in 30 minutes and to swing the 40kg for 200 reps in 10 minutes.

The mixture of yoga and kettlebells is still a winning ticket. I have been doing some YRG but am beginning to sour on the program. YRG is not yoga. To be honest I think it is overrated as an exercise program. It is nearly impossible for me to stay in the “fat burning zone” unless I hold me breath. I just don’t find it all that difficult and all the tensing of muscles and whatnot seems to go against what I am trying to accomplish with my yoga practice. I am tired of gimmicky yoga. This includes Bikram’s, Baptiste and Forrest “yoga”. Lately I have been doing straight Iyengar yoga right from the definitive source “Light on Yoga”. Many of the postures I do I the same ones I did in Bikram’s without the unnecessary and excessive heat. I also get to design my own practice without some jackass instructor yelling at me.

I guess what I am getting at is that I am getting all the elevated heart rate stuff and sweating from my kettlebell workouts. I don’t need to recreate yoga into some sort of boot camp program. I’ll keep the YRG in my arsenal but I doubt it will ever be a main stay with me unless I can not longer do more vigorous activities. Even then I think I would adopt Asthanga yoga over YRG. YRG is OK that all just OK. I am sure it is quite challenging for fat guys and people that haven’t exercised in years but for someone like me it just doesn’t really make the cut.

Why I quit Bikram’s.

02/03/10

As some of you know I was a Bikram yoga disciple for about 2 years. During this time I often practiced daily and certainly no less than 5 day a week. I was hooked and was impressed with my increased flexibility and how so many of those old nagging injuries seemed to melt away with the heat and perspiration. For awhile I was convinced that Bikram’s was all I needed in a fitness regimen.

My problem with Bikram’s was that I couldn’t get around being almost chronically dehydrated. My most difficult classes were always the ones where I was most dehydrated. I could feel it when I crossed the line and there was no recovery once I became dehydrated. Now I sweat more than most people and this is no exaggeration. I sweat working out in my garage in sub zero temperatures. So I’m really sweating in a studio that is over 105 degree and over 40% humidity. I tried everything I could think to beat the dehydration from coconut water to Emergen-C. They had some effect but more often than not I would spend my days trying to rehydrate from my morning session. Eventually I got fed up and stopped going. Now I am searching for a new yoga routine to work in conjunction with my ETK kettlebell routine.

I also had some other issues with Bikram’s that I kept silent about until I saw a thread over at IGX critiquing Bikram’s. Grandpa Spells summed up a lot of the shit that I saw in Bikram’s studios that didn’t add up. Why were so many instructors fat let alone the students that had been coming for years? I also witnessed a shit load of injuries that occurred in class due to dip shit instructors pushing people that didn’t need pushing. I had 3 instructors that were top quality. They also were qualified to teach other styles of yoga which had a lot to do with their superior status. The Bikram’s only teachers were little more than script readers.

From the beginning I always knew that the heat was the gimmick or the hook with Bikram’s. If he could sell you on the need for the excessive heat you had to come to the studio because it’s too hard for most people to replicate that at home. I found out that a Bikram’s session often becomes a contest in who can stand the excessive heat the most. I realized this during a class where the heat went out. I was holding all my poses longer than those that usually held out the longest and never sat out poses. Without the heat I could perform longer than they could. The heat broke me down and without heat Bikram’s isn’t much of a challenge. Today I did the standing series with a heart rate monitor on and held each pose for a solid minute. My heart rate got up to 119 once and averaged 96 BPMs during the whole session. This means that I was working about as hard as I would just walking at a normal gait. No wonder why bodies don’t change much and no one really looses weigh doing Bikram’s unless they have a strict diet and/or do other exercises.

This doesn’t completely discount the Bikram’s series. It’s fine for flexibility and mobility but I need something much more vigorous to keep me in shape. Simply sweating excessively won’t cut it. This all makes the likelihood of me doing Bikram’s in the future unlikely. I am waiting for the arrival of my YRG DVDs and hope this will be the answer to compliment my ETK workouts.

A few more reasons to hate Crossfit.

02/01/10

I was poking around on the Performance Menu (or whatever they call it these days) the other day and noticed that it’s all the rage these days to criticize Crossfit. Not long ago any negative comments about Crossfit made one persona non grata. I guess someone’s wagon must have gotten unhitched from the gravy train. Too fucking funny. Welcome to other side boys. Our ranks are quickly rising.

It’s good to have something or someone to hate. It makes it all that much clearer what and who you love in this life. Forget about this can’t we all just get along bullshit. Hate is good and there’s no better group of people to hate but Crossfitters and here’s a few reasons why Crossfitters continue to be the group that you love to hate.

The he/shes:

The ubiquitous douchebags:

Dumbass exercises:

The fixation on the over rated pull-up:

Padding lifts with 10 kg bumper plates:

Attention whores galore:

The PVC pipes:

Scrawny motherfucker acting like they have game:

The troops. Fuck the troops already.

And last but not least the rum dummy himself:

Hardstyle!

02/01/10

A week or so ago I was doing my AKC/OTW workout of timed sets and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror with my head band and wrist bands, leaning way back like some froot. I went back to Hardstyle right then and there and jumped back up to my 24kg bell. It felt good to be smoked after a workout again. This is not to say that GS training isn’t effective. It obviously is if you’re cut out for that sort of thing. I like the feel of Hardstyle training better.

So the last few weeks I have been working the ROP from Pavel’s Enter the Kettlebell. Right now I am using the 24kg and can see moving through this fairly swiftly. I guess if I had a long term goal it would be to C&P the 40 kg 5x (1,2,3,4,5) which is 150 reps with each hand. I’d like to accomplish this in less than 30 minutes. I would also like to be able to swing the 40 kg for 200 reps in 10:00 minutes. I’ll see how my body responds. In between ETK workouts I’ll do some heavy bag work, walking and YRG or some other kind of yoga I can do at home. I think I’m done with the Bikram’s for awhile for a number of reasons that I’ll get into another time.

At some point soon I would also like to get back to some barbell work. I am thinking about some body building routine like Body for Life or something along those lines. I have never tried my hand at body building routines and am curious how my body would respond. My guess is that a rational bodybuilding routine mixed in with some cardio is far more effective for long term health than all these douchebag routines under the guise of “functional fitness” like Crossfit .

Training update.

01/07/10

My training has actually been a bit boring lately so I have not been too inspired to write about it. But it has been productive so it’s worth relating what I am doing to stay in shape these days. Be forewarned it may seem a bit ghey but it’ working and I have never been one to argue with results.

First off I am still using kettlebells and using the American Kettlebell Club’s training template or a reasonable facsimile of it. I am only using a 12kg kettlebell right now which is very light for me but I am really focusing on correct technique. Sloppy Crossfit-like form for the sake of more reps or more weight will only lead to injury and frustration. Anyway my kettlebell work out will look like this. I might do 6 minutes of continuous jerks with one hand switch at 3 minutes. After this set I rest a minute or two then repeat the scheme with cleans and then clean and jerks. Sometimes I do half snatches or maybe I’ll do a 20 minute set of clean and jerks with multiple hand switches. I keep it simple and loose. I’ll do these workouts 2 to 4 times a week. At some point I may up it to 16kg but right now I’m in no big hurry.

Monday thru Friday I usually use the gym where I work. Here I do some sort of cardio work on either the elliptical machine or the C2 rowing machine for about 30 minutes a pop. In the past I eschewed these contraptions but I find that they get the job done these days. They are easy on the joints but give me a great workout. I feel just as good if not better than when I was doing daily Bikram’s. My flexibility is still good and my joints feel great. It’s nice to get an invigorating workout in and not feel all beat up afterwards. I’ll keep this up hopefully until spring when I can get back outdoors again.

AKC who needs em.

12/31/09

Those that have followed my site in the past know that I am not a big fan of the American Kettlebell Club for a variety of reasons. One is that the organization is filled with a bunch of malcontents, weirdoes, perverts and cast asides. These are people that couldn’t cut it in a real sport or maybe they did and never obtained the glory they felt should have been theirs. Now they grind it out doing 10 minute sets in conference room at Super 8 motels in front of crowds as large as 12 sometimes 20 people all of which are also competitors. Sure the sport of GS may be somewhat popular in Russia but whenever I meet a Russian and ask them they seem to associate the kettlebell with circus acts and side shows in traveling carnivals.

I have also had some gripes about the clandestine nature of the organization. They come across like a bunch Ivy League, secret hand shaking fucks. I have long been interested in their training techniques but never understood the shroud of secrecy. I finally found a trainer that showed me what it was all about. Sure there is a lot of refinement involved for competing but one or two sessions is more than enough to get a guy like me up and going for training purposes. I never understood all the hype about “promoting the sport” but at the same time not letting anyone in on the training or technique unless they shelled out big bucks. This is ass backwards in my opinion and will ensure that the sports does not grow appreciably.

But obscure sport’s status and secrecy aside the real gripe I have had with the AKC is business practices. I ordered a kettlebell through Mike Stefano’s AKC site a year or so ago and had to take my case the message boards at IGX to get them to deliver my bell. It took over a month for me to get a 24kg bell even though they debited my credit card immediately. This month my wife ordered me a kettlebell through Stefano’s AKC site. She wanted to surprise me for Christmas so she ordered the bell on December 6th. Come Christmas the bell never came. I asked where she ordered the bell and once I found out it was through Stefano’s AKC site I called PayPal and had them refund the money. I will never do business with any AKC affiliate ever again. They can’t deliver…literally.

You shouldn’t waste your money and time with AKC either. After I cancelled my wife’s order through AKC I went right to Perform Better and ordered a 12kg kettlebell on-line. Two days later I received a top quality competition style bell that is better than the AKC bell I bought several years ago. But it gets better. I paid $64.95 for the bell from Perform Better as opposed to the $125 that AKC charges and like I said the Perform Better bell is superior. I still can’t get all the bondo off my AKC bell. The Perform Better bells took about 20 minutes of sanding by hand to get all the paint off the handle.

Of course what you buy is up to you but why would you pay twice the price for an inferior bell that takes 3 times longer to get to you assuming your even get it? I would recommend Perform Better bells highly and as a matter of fact it is now the official kettlebell of the Moynihan Institute. AKC can kiss my ass.