My favorite Bikram’s postures for kettlebelling

My Bikram’s practice continues to deepen. I was invited to the advanced class. The advanced series consists of 84 postures still done in a 90 minute window. I declined for several reasons. The most important one is that I don’t deserve to be in that class. I haven’t earned it yet. There are still many postures where I am going no where. They insist that the advanced class will improve those poses. I believe them but I’m balking. I’m sticking with the beginners series and keeping my beginners mindset.

I think they may have asked me because I try hard and am very persistent. Those were always my biggest assets in all sports I ever tried my hand at. I was never blessed with an abundance of natural talent but I do try hard. I just want to stay humble and keep pushing it on my mat. This is what I’m doing. The yoga is my sole focus. Any other training is purely ancillary and not significant to the practice at all.

However I still like lifting kettlebells…in the Hardstyle fashion of course. The key for me is to not let the kettlebelling interfere with the yoga. I’ve said it before. Yoga helps lifting but lifting doesn’t help yoga. If anything it hampers it if done too often or improperly. It doesn’t mean one can’t do both and still make progress. You just have to be smart about it.

Once before I jumped back into kettlebell lifting and it almost immediately set back my practice. The blessing and curse of the yoga is that it will tell what state your body is in at any given moment. So if you went and had a few the night before the yoga will remind you of this especially if you do real yoga like Bikram’s or Ashtanga. There is no escaping your vices on the mat. This is why you will hear so many amazing stories about people letting go of life long habits as a result of their practice. It may seem effortless but the pain is on the mat not in giving your shit up. I already gave up my more pressing vices years ago but as a result of my Bikram’s practice I dropped my sugar habit. I used to eat some sort of dessert every night and putting away a pint of Ben& Jerry’s was merely an appetizer. Caffeine seems inconsequential. I’ll go days with out coffee now.

But back to the kettlebell lifting. The last time I went at it, maybe 5 months ago it really cooked my spine and lower back. I tried another style that put me in a more neutral position but it had little effect. It wasn’t the style so much as the exercises. The high rep swings and snatches put a lot of wear and tear on the spine and lower back. I remember reading something about this from Clarence Bass once and shrugging it off. I can’t do that anymore because when I’m on the mat at 6:00 am I’m getting feedback on what I did to my body the day before. So I transitioned into bodyweight exercises. That worked but they get boring after a while.

So this time through with the kettlebell I’m taking a much different approach. I’m focusing in on more expansive movements like the Turkish get up, the windmill, the bent press, Cossacks and the Sots press although I’m not entire sold on its expansive nature. I’m trying to get away from strictly linear movements that have been the staple of my training for so many years. They simply don’t feel right. But these other exercises do feel right. They require a higher degree of body awareness and tension in order to perform them safely. They are also slower and work the body from odd angles. One thing people will always discover through yoga is how little they have actually been using their bodies. This is true even in sports where you wouldn’t expect it. I was in a class with a climber last week. In some poses he was amazing but in others he was junk. You see this a lot with dancers, gymnasts and climbers. Few of us every really tap into the expansive nature of our bodies even though many think they have. It’s a cool thing when you do go for it.

Speaking of going for it. A guy wrote me a week go about doing Bikram’s. He lifts kettlebells in the Hardstyle and wanted to know if there were some Bikram’s poses he could cherry pick to help him with kettlebell lifting. I would never recommend cherry picking Bikram’s poses. I have tried that and while I didn’t injure myself I made no progress. It’s a system and one pose builds for the next and so on. Still he pressed on for my top three or four poses that aid in my kettlebelling. So here they are.

Locust Pose

Floor bow pose

Camel pose

Rabbit pose

Like I said I don’t recommend taking these posture out of sequence. To get the real benefit you need to take the whole class preferably at a studio. You won’t regret it and it will make you a better kettlebell lifter or at the very least a healthier one.

The Tao of exercise.

I have told this story many times so bear with me if you have read it before. About 7 years ago I had just completed my personal best power lifting meet. I won my division and hit all my lift with nothing but white lights. I finally broke 600 in the deadlift. The guys I went up to New Hampshire with all had really strong showings as well. Afterwards we planed a little celebration back at the hotel. There was a big fight on HBO and we were planning a big feast while watching the fight.

No one eats like power lifters. Many power lifters could cross over to the highly underrated sport of competitive eating. I lifted in a meet in Columbus, Ohio once and afterward hit an all you can eat buffet. Lo and behold were the Westside boys. I could see the owner of the joint turn ashen grey at the site of those boys stepping up for fifths and sixes. That was some impressive eating.

Anyway back to the hotel in New Hampshire. We had picked up enough beer, soda, pizza, ribs, wings, steak tips and various junk foods to feed a small nation. We were ready for our post meet grub. When we got to the lobby of the hotel our concierge informed us that elevator was out of order and he wasn’t sure when it would be fixed. Now we were all 220 and up. I think I was pushing nearly 250. None of us did anything cardio. We were not hip to the Westside GPP concepts. We just lifted heavy and ate. So the prospect of climbing up 6 flights of stairs was daunting. But what the hell we were athletes…right? Well we all made the climb up and staggered to our rooms. I scanned my red faced friends with their double chins and shaved heads to make sure none were going into a cardiac episode. There was a lot of heavy breathing and but it looked like everyone one would make it.

It was time to eat. It was a moderately priced hotel so there were not many decent places to sit and dine so a couple of guys were situated on the bed. One 275 pounder was on the bed trying to eat but his gut was so big he couldn’t situate himself properly while shoveling food down his gullet. So he laid on his stomach, put the entire pizza at the end of the bed and proceeded to start shoveling it in his mouth. It was a disturbing site but the rest of us were no better. I caught a glimpse of myself sticking a rib in my mouth and pulling the bone out in one smooth movement, sauce spewing everywhere. I had become a fat pig. That night was the beginning of the end of my power lifting days.

What’s the point of being super strong if you have gotten yourself to the point of obesity? Plenty of PL guy are not fat but I wasn’t one of them. No one ever called me fat because I was not soft fat. There was plenty of bulky muscle but it was still way too much weight to carry. I didn’t feel good and the guys I was with had to have felt like crap as well. Obviously my diet was out of control. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Since that time I have lost 40 maybe 50 pounds.

I kept training hard and showed some discipline with my diet but I still felt like crap most of the time. I think my biggest problem was that my training wasn’t working for me. I was working for my training. Think about that. The paradigm got turned ass backwards. This happens to many fitness enthusiasts, especially ex-jocks. They become enslaved to the training. I need to hit this weight, this rep count, this time or even this point on the scale. None of this has anything to do with me, how I’m feeling or what my body really needs. This is essential for sport’s performance to be sure but it’s not sustainable for a life long fitness program. This is why it never comes as a surprise to me that so many people quit exercising after 3 months or so.

Some individuals are able to sustain the mind-body disconnect where they ignore the deterioration they are putting themselves through. They train with pain, pop anti-inflammatories or start seeing “anti-aging” specialists for “treatments”. Maybe they just chalk the pain up to aging and tough it out. In any event most people simply succumb to the mind-body disconnect that it so prevalent in our society.

I was watching commercial the other day for Advil. The slim and healthy looking middle aged woman was listing a litany of aches and pains she had. She used to take 18 different pills but now she just took one. She was now all Advil. I realize this was just a commercial but it says a lot about how we perceive health. You got a problem? Take a pill but whatever you do don’t think about the actions and behaviors that proceeded the pain. I work in the health care industry. That’s what we do. In this nation our lifestyles don’t work for us. We work for our lifestyles and we pay dearly. Don’t stop jogging. It’s “good” for you. We’ll simply replace that knee…twice if necessary. You see what I’m getting at?

In yoga we are often told that we need to make the yoga work for us. I don’t know how many people listen to this but it had me hooked from the first time I heard it. My life should be better as result of my practice. I should have more energy and I should feel better. No one should have to endure the after effects of my practice. I am making yoga make me a better person. If I’m exhausted, if I’m in pain or bitter through the day then I’m working for the yoga.

Now I’m trying to practice these principles with more traditional exercise but it’s trickier. My whole relationship with exercise has been enmeshed with competitive sport. I always have to measure progress with meaningless benchmarks. It’s more of a challenge for me to break this dysfunctional relationship I have with the weights and other types of exercises. To snatch a 24kg kettlebell 200 times in 10 minutes just to do it is asinine. Sure it's impressive but it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make me a better person and it certainly does not make me healthier in a holistic sense. I have pushed my body to the brink as a younger man in my chosen sports. It made sense then. It was appropriate then. My body could handle it then. Now it just sets me up failure, disappointment and injury. I have other spheres in my life where I can challenge myself in that fashion but it’s more mental and work related. Different goals at different stages of life makes sense.

Yoga is thousands of years old and so are many martial arts. You see people doing these things into advanced old age. There’s a lot of wisdom behind these arts. These practices have stood the test of time and evolved appropriately. Most exercise routines I adopt are maybe a few years old. There is really no wisdom behind them. It’s usually something that some guy tried and liked. You don’t see many guys doing these kinds of routines into their 80s. Jack LaLanne and Bill Pearl are anomalies. While I admire these men I have to be cognizant that I am no anomaly. I am quite average in every sense of the word. What works for them will not work for me.

I find that most people have no idea that their bodies are junk. They unconsciously poison their bodies and put more and more distance between the mind body connection until they are in an emergency room. Many exercisers are little better than smokers in terms of this mind-body disconnect. They don’t discover that their body is junk until they are hurt badly. Most make the mistake of assuming that a certain image equates with health. It’s not always the case. I often see this confrontation take place in the yoga room. The compulsive jogger gets in the room convinced that he’s “in shape”. He proceeds to fall out of poses, shake with fatigue and finally collapses to the mat with exhaustion. He blames it on the heat or his lack of flexibility or some other unrelated factor when the simple fact is that he’s in poor condition. He’s unbalanced but he doesn’t get it because he punished his body accordingly. No pain no gain. This is true but he has mistaken pain with injurious behavior. He has smashed his body into submission in order to perform one or two different tasks. This is not health. This is sickness.

So what I’m really trying to get at here is applying the Tao of yoga to exercise. This is what so many of you are not getting with your pot shots about me changing programs or not sticking with some meaningless kettlebell protocol. I’m thinking much more long term, much more all encompassing. I’m not the only one doing this and I’m certainly not the first. It takes a long time to unlearn dysfunctional behavior and relearn proper behavior when it comes to out bodies. I say ‘relearn’ because I think we all had this as kids. You never see a kid collapsing with exhaustion while at play. He knows when to move and when to rest. Somewhere along the line that get thoroughly corrupted through learned behavior. I’m working on changing this.

The Kettlebell Wars part 3,345

I haven’t posted in a few days because I’ve been immersed in this over at IronGarm. Once again the shit slinging has resumed among the warring factions of the kettlebell world. Who knew that an iron ball with a handle on it had the power to drum up hatred and bloodshed on par with the Crusades? Well here’s my take on the whole thing. I was going to post if over at IGx but it was too fucking long so I’ll post I here.

Time will surely vindicate the RKC…again. We can bicker all we want about definitions of terms and which kettlebell celebrity displays the most prowess. The fact is that no one cares. Most people that use kettlebells are like me. We use them as implements in our fitness regimen along with about 150 other tools. What will appeal to us is the system that has the most breadth, the system that continually evolves and comes up with fresh and interesting ideas. ETK is great but I can’t do it for more than a few months tops. It just gets too boring but that’s OK because there are other protocols to follow. I can even hodge podge one together. In RKC I can focus more on gaining size or conditioning or I can even focus in on high rep stuff if I want. It’s up to me and it all falls under the umbrella of RKC. If I get bored with kettlebell stuff I can always switch to PTTP or bodyweight stuff. I can get all this over at DD and its all good stuff. Their business model is light years ahead of the OTW crowd. Why should I dick around waiting for the OTW secret society to unveil it’s master plan when I can go to DD pick up some ideas and run with it?

Here’s another area where RKC is miles ahead of OTW. Their focus is on ordinary individuals, you know the beefy middle of the bell curve. No offense but who really gives a fuck how many reps Johnny OTW Superstar can do in ten minutes? For all I know this is a guy that performs superior in all sports of maybe he just built for GS. Either way it doesn’t do me any good trying to figure out how I’m gonna keep may fat ass from getting any fatter in between work, the kids, coaching youth sports, attending to my elderly parent, keeping the old lady happy, occasionally going out and blowing off some steam and a lifetime of bangs, bruises and breaks. With RKC I can tap into the whole package with stretching, joint mobility and shit like that.

Sure OTW has options as well. Lets’ see…there’s timed sets of snatches. And…well…there’s also timed set’s of jerks. Oh…yeah…there’s also timed sets in the one armed clean and jerk! Look that’s fine…for a little while but OTW will never build up any significant interest with this regimen. I mean how many people are really interested in competing in GS?

RKC enthusiasts like myself have no real gripe with OTW. If that’s what melts your butter that’s great but for fuck’s sake stop pissing on our parade with this condescending bullshit. If you have a gripe with someone over at DD then that’s what that is. Go take it up with him but stop slamming the programs because the fact is that they work for a hell of a lot more people than OTW can claim.

My prediction is that 2 years from now RKC will have grown 10 fold. OTW will still be threatening us with forth coming books and web forums that are no longer top secret. The same bitter mother fuckers will be taking pot shots at RKCs assuming that they can still participate in OTW and haven’t burned out from shear boredom. You’ll see.

Is Bikram’s real yoga?

This topic keeps coming up in conversations I have both in my virtual and real life. Is Bikram’s real yoga or is it some bastardized form of the ancient practice? Let me say upfront that yes it is real yoga. You will find all 26 posture and 2 breathing exercises used in Bikram’s in a variety of ancient and authoritative books on yoga. I consider Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar to be the modern bible on yoga and you will find all the postures used in Bikram’s in this book.

I have been dabbling in yoga since the early 90’s and have practiced Bikram’s, Iyengar, Kundalini, Ashtanga and Power yoga. I know of at least 20 different styles of yoga. Many of these have sort of just popped up in the last 20 years with claims to a ancient lineage. You know the routine. Lost secrets rediscovered! Sound familiar? I find it interesting that only Bikram’s in singled out as a bogus from of yoga or a McYoga. Why is this?

Well I think the main reason so many in the yoga world are put off by Bikram’s is because of Bikram himself. To say that Bikram is outspoken or controversial in the understatement of the year. I have never met the man but know many that know him and he sounds like quite the character or asshole depending how well you do with opinionated people. He has stated unequivocally that his yoga is the only true hatha yoga practiced in the West. This is what pisses off so many teachers from other styles of yoga.

I’m not going to get into all the specifics about why he came to the USA but he claims he was sent here by his guru to teach true yoga to the American people. Bikram claims that other yogis came to the West but were convinced that Westerners could never handle the rigors of true hatha yoga so they watered it down and turned it into this sitting crossed legged and burning incense sort of thing. Bikram says this is bullshit and all it showed was a lack of faith and a prejudice towards Westerners. He claims he knew the American people could handle it and teaching true hatha yoga to the American people became his mission in life.

Bikram does not discount the other branches of yogic philosophy but thinks that until the body is addressed thru hatha yoga that it’s a waste of time trying to tap into the spiritual side of things. This is where he felt that yoga got all ass backwards in the West. Fat assed hippies were more into sitting on pillows and concentrating on the third eye while on acid then getting their physical shit in order. I think time vindicated Bikram on this one. He brought his direct experience of yoga to the USA which was one of hard assed work. As a kid he would practice 4 to 6 hours a day under very strict conditions.

One thing Bikram is insistent on is that poses be held static for a prescribed period of time. Forget about this flowing stuff. You will not do sun salutations in Bikram’s. He claims if you do not hold poses static you are not doing yoga. He also wanted to recreate the conditions he trained under in India hence the addition of heat and humidity. He claims that yoga in a cold room does more harm that good.

Bikram insists on discipline. He has mellowed a bit over the years but in the early days he would throw people out of his studio for simply wiping sweat off their face. Even among his instructors the spirit of discipline is still alive. They don’t want you leaving the room or drinking water excessively or fidgeting around or even grunting and groaning. They do challenge you to work hard and confront your fears. This discipline angle really ruffles the feathers of lossey-goosey types. I like it.

The real straw that broke the camel’s back was when Bikram franchised and then copyrighted his dialogue and sequence of poses. This really pissed off yoga types that were already hostile to free markets and capitalism. I can hear those high pitched, nasally voices caterwauling about how no one owns yoga. Whatever. Say what you will but it was Bikram that put these postures together, came up with the heat gimmick and created the dialogue. He didn’t create yoga but he surely created a system and people were piggy backing off it and altering it at will. So he sued and won control over his system. Good for him..

I have also heard from teachers of other styles of yoga that Bikram’s teachers are inadequate. They think they are monkeys following a script. All my institutors are generally knowledgeable about the sequence and the poses. The more seasoned they are the more they can apply the practice to other sports or injury rehabilitation. I have generally found these criticisms unwarranted. The instructors make a pretty significant commitment to be trained. The cost is roughly $12,000 and it takes 9 weeks on location. This means you have to leave your job and family for over 2 months. The training is rigorous and many drop out. My experience is that Iyengar instructors are the best trained and most knowledgeable about anatomy and things like that. Still I find the Bikram’s instructors more than adequate and I like the script. It keeps us on task and creates a uniformity so you can practice in LA or Boston and still be doing the same exact sequence. The practice is more about the practice and less about the personality of the instructor.

The bottom line is that the Bikram’s beginner’s series is effective. It’s hard to master it. If you haven’t tried it and your talking shit about it you’re an asshole. I’ve seen many “fit” men crumple like pussies to the mat 20 minutes into it. It redefines what most of us think it means to be fit. If you lack flexibility you will gain it. If you lack strength you will gain it. It can heal old injuries and ailments and it will get you into excellent physical condition. It takes commitment. It’s 90 minute long and unless you are attending at least 3 days a week you’re just fucking around. The beginner’s series will keep you in the business for a long time but there is also the advanced series. The advanced series consists of 84 posture and the pace is much quicker . Those classes are by invite only. If you haven’t tried Bikram’s do yourself a favor and get one of those intro offers of 10 classes for $20. It worth it. It will give a snapshot of what kind of condition you body is really in not just some cosmetic indicator. You may even find that it works and I have not just been spewing bullshit these past 4 months. Quit being a pussy and try it.

Yoga and tonic lifting

I don’t even know how many straight days I’m into the yoga this time but I’m ready to mix things up. Is still contend the average adult would get all he needs simply from doing Bikram’s 3 or more times a week mixed in with some walking or other moderate activity. It has certainly benefited me.

Of course I get tired of just doing the same thing over and over. It helps to mix things up so I’m incorporating some kettlebell lifting back in the regimen. Yeah, I know what I said about kettlebell lifting earlier but as I said before I always reserve the right to do a complete 180 on virtually any opinion I have. This is the luxury of not hanging my hat on any one system or set of ideas about the best way to stay fit and healthy.

The cornerstone or bedrock of my program will still be Bikram’s 5 or more likely 6 days a week. This or something akin to it is essential for me. I guess I’ve just hit that point where that kind of conditioning is going to get me where I need to be. Remember the long haul is what I’m in for. I’m not interested in laying a patch in the gym and ending up on the surgeon’s table. I figure I’ve had my fair share of sport’s hero injuries and my glory days as the fair haired football warrior are long gone. I suppose I could always take up golf…yeah right.

The point I’m getting at here is that I want to add in something more…well…I don’t even know what to call it. Vigorous would be insinuating that Bikram’s isn’t. Maybe joint compressing is the term I’m looking for. In any event I’m adding in some kettlebell lifting…in the Hardstyle fashion. I’m doing this slightly different than most people do in that the kettbelling is going to complement my yoga not the other way around. Most people use yoga as a recovery method almost as an after thought to their regular training.

Now I have noted before that Bikram’s enhances my lifting but lifting does not enhance my yoga practice. If anything it seemed to hinder my practice which is very frustrating when you spend 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week in that hot assed room. I suppose with anything you do there a certain amount of give and take. What’s the right balance? That will be the question that I will try to address. I have the built in gauges that will tell me how I am doing. Things like pain, my energy level and my general outlook on life will tell how effective the balance is. The beauty of the yoga is that it will tell you the state of your body on any given day. This awareness alone makes the makes the price of admission worth it.

So what will my kettlebell regimen look like? To be honest I am not entirely certain. This time around I am not letting a format dictate how I am going to lift. I liked the ETK program but I became enslaved by the structure of it and developed some over use injuries. I’m only a few days into it but so far this is what I have been doing. I set a timer for 21 minutes and I start lifting. I’m just doing whatever strikes me as appealing. Last night for example, I did clean and press ladders 1,2,3,4,5 x 3 with the 24 kg. I didn’t come anywhere near exhaustion or fatigue. I broke a sweat and got the heart rate up a bit. I felt refreshed afterward. The day before that I did some bent presses and half snatches. The day before that some TGUs and swings. I’m not counting reps or timing myself except with the cutoff time of 21 minutes. I am simply approaching this as a practice. I’m trying to feel the lift and gauge how my body is activating reacting. I’m certainly not muscling through sets.

So far I have not felt any detriment to my yoga practice and in some cases I have felt some enhancement that I will attribute to the tonic lifting. For example, the yoga either created or brought up some old scar tissue or blockage in my left knee. I injured that knee several times over the course of my sport’s career. Nothing major just ligament strains or pulls. The knee felt vulnerable from the yoga, almost too loose. In a few days of tonic lifting it seemed to tighten up the loose screws that the yoga created. So maybe there is a balance created by some tonic lifting. I can’t be entirely certain but as long as I am not causing damage or really setting back my yoga practice I will simply carry on.

The kettlebell concept of intuitive tonic lifting comes right from the pages of the Russian Kettlebell Challenge by Pavel Tsatsouline. I always liked the loose structure of his original book but was never sure how to put it together until now. My tendency was to always overdo it and burnout. With the yoga as my basis I think I will be less likely to be tempted into overdoing things. As usual I will keep you posted as to my progress.

E-mail me at:moyihaninstitute@yahoo.com