The Moynihan Institute Archives
Why I quit Bikram’s.
02/03/10As 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.
02/01/10I 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!
02/01/10A 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.
01/07/10My 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.
12/31/09Those 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.
We are back in business.
12/30/09Well it’s been a long time since I have blogged. I was out of the loop for a while with some personal issues and health problems that I am turning the corner on. As you may remember I was really into Bikram’s yoga for about 2 years. For about a year and a half it was all I did. I liked it and it helped me to heal up a lot of old injuries. I still like it like but needed a break from it. I’ll still practice at home from time to time and am amazed that the flexibility has stayed with me.
Lately my workouts have revolved around some kettlebell lifting OTW style, some callisthenic circuit workouts and come C2 rowing. I keep these workouts brief, usually under 30 minutes but more frequent than other routines I have used in the past. I like to train daily or close to it since my work life is so sedentary. It’s important for me to get that daily movement.
I am no longer concerned about numbers and times and those sorts of things. Nor am I concerned about how I stack up against others or nebulous terms such as progression. One thing I learned doing Bikram’s daily for nearly two years is that the body is different every day. You may have had a bad night’s rest, too much or not enough to eat or something along these lines. This means you can’t do what you maybe did yesterday or what you may be capable of tomorrow. That’s OK. You do the best you can with what you have today.
So if I am doing a kettlebell workout I may frame it with timed sets but I don’t really give a damm about reps. I’ll even fudge around with the time intervals based on how I feel. The whole “what are your goals comrade” thing never really made much sense with me or maybe I’m just way beyond that mind set. Sure if I’m competing it’s different but I’m not competing. I’m trying to stay in great condition. This means above all no injuries due to trying to achieve some douchebag’s guidelines for how many reps per minute that I should be obtaining. This is meaningless to me if I can’t train due to a tweaked shoulder.
One thing I took away from Bikram’s is that you can work the body everyday if you do it properly. This means doing a lot less than you would do following conventional fitness guidelines. It’s like the story of the young bull and the old bull perched on top of a hill looking down on a field of cows. The young bull looks to the old bull and says, “ Let’s run down the hill and fuck one of those cows”. The old bull says, “No let’s walk down the hill and fuck all of those cows”. See what I’m getting at? I could easily hoist around a 32kg bell for my workouts but then I would have to train less frequently and do all kinds of rehab and prehab bullshit just to stay on top of all the trauma. Instead I choose to use a 12kg or 16kg and train more frequently without any trauma.