ETK: RKC-RoP Week 5: Light Day

Hands felt fairly destroyed after the workout below. Had a hard time getting warmed up since it was a little chilly in the house when I started. My Snatching form today wasn't as good as I would have hoped, but the numbers were a bit better than I recall from my last set of efforts, despite having to walk away from my Kettlebell a couple of times to remove a kitty from some place she shouldn't have been. May have been able to get in 50 if not for her this morning.

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Workout numbers for today

Goblet Squats 16kg x 5 — Warm up

RKC Arm Bar 16kg x 5 per arm

C&P 16kg 5x(1;2;3) — found myself counting these weirdly today: the last 2 sets were more like 1;2;3 on the right and 2;1;3 on the left... probably just because it was < 6 in the morning when I was starting.

Snatch 16kg 40 x 5 minutes at about 60% effort — noticed that I had a tendency this morning to let the bell sort of fall onto the back of my hand at the end of the Snatch. I'll probably play with my snatching tomorrow for Variety to see if I can clean up my form.

ETK: RKC-RoP: End of Week 4: Heavy Day: in which Kelly totally shows me up in the Swings deparment

Once again, Kelly is totally showing me up in the swings department... she's already at "150, bitch!" and I don't think she's stopping (10 minutes...she says she's going for 250). I'm going for my 100 Snatch challenge, starting on Monday, and we'll see how many I can do on Monday, and we'll adjust it from there.

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Workout numbers for today

Goblet Squats 16kg x 5 — ass to ankles

RKC-Arm Bar 16kg 5 x each side — I love this exercise!! Wow!

TGU 16kg x 6 min

C&P 16kg 5x(1;2;3;4) — next week, totally going to try for 5!

Swings 16kg 50 x 3 minutes

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Edit: Kelly hit 250 in ~15 minutes. She's totally rockin!...and I'm totally jealous...but we're going for different things. And then she tried climbing the stairs and her legs said, "Ow!".

Goal Setting

Wiser people than me have pointed out that it's a good idea to write down goals. Wiser still folks say that you should have attainable goals, and only a few of them within a year. I'm going to take it 1 step further for my lifting goals. I'll come back to this in a moment.

Inspired/reminded by a recent blog post by Dennis Gill that the best way to increase gains is by cycling (no, not the kind I normally do), but by a gradual increase in weight with an end result in mind.

So what's my goal? Well a good start for me would be the 100 Snatch test with my current bell. I'm going to focus on one specific thing beyond the general Enter the Kettlebell RKC-RoP workout that I'm doing: I'm going to attempt to pass the RKC-Snatch Test, with my current bell: 16kg, as a precursor to being able to do it with my target kettlebell. How to do this?

Well in my last snatch workout I documented here I hit ~ 35. I think the last time I did snatches I hit bigger numbers than that, but that's a good starting point if not. So the goal being 100 in 5 minutes, and adding 5 snatches a week, I should be able to get in 100 snatches in 5 minutes by adding 5 reps per week until January 23rd. I'll update again on Monday when I've actually got my Snatch day, and we'll see if this goal may be sooner than I think!

ETK - Medium Day, or "Failure is not an option!"

I believe it was Ed Harris in Apollo 13 who actually got to say the words "Failure is not an option!". I approve of both the sentiment as well as the training philosophy, and in this morning's workout I almost hit failure, but backed off instead. Is there any good reason to actually "train to failure"?

Going to get more of a workout tonight at Wells. Hopefully it'll go better than Monday's classes...which I feel were disastrous. Better next Monday for sure!

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Workout Madness:

Naked RKC Arm-bar 1 rep each side — I stumbled across a great video on Straight to the Bar on Monday, and I just had to try it out. Next time, I'll try it with my 16kg kettlebell and see how it feels!

C&P 16kg 4x(1;2;3;4) & 1x(1;2;x;x) — The protocol for today's workout was supposed to include 5 sets, but the rule that I've read in Pavel's books can be paraphrased as if you hit failure, you're done for the day, and I really like that idea. So after I couldn't Press that bell on that 5th set, that's it for now.

Swings 16kg 30 in 2 min. — again with the low numbers! My phone clearly doesn't want me to burn a lot of fat this week...

RKC-RoP — Week 3something: Heavy Day

Man, oh man, this one was a total burner. I'm totally smoked, but the best part of this? Kelly did her workout right after me: 200 swings with her 8kg kettlebell in 10 minutes. I can't believe she beat my numbers (she says she wasn't even trying to do so)! I'm so proud :-D

TGU 16kg x 5 minutes — Warm up.

Goblet Squat 16kg x 5 slow reps, ass to ankles — more warm up.

C&P 16kg x 5x(1;2;3)

Swings 16kg 90 in 5 minutes.

Too many donuts today, but needed the heavy workout to minimize the damage...

RKC-RoP Week 3somethingish — Medium day

After being sick for my weekend workout (and doing my heavy day's C&P anyway), I didn't have enough breath on Monday to actually do a workout. Yesterday wasn't much better, but at least I wasn't actually still sick. So this morning, I grabbed my Kettlebell for the first time in what felt like a week and got in a workout. How do you spell relief? I spell it S-N-A-K-E E-Y-E-S, aka: 2. Why 2? Part of the RoP protocol is to "Roll the Dice" for your time at Swings and Snatches (or at least such is my understanding), and I just when I needed a day to not totally kill myself (I still have to head to Wells tonight for Cardio Kickboxing and Self Defense), I got it: 2 minutes on my Swings. So Swing I did!

16kg TGU 1 x each side — Warm up/wake up

16kg Goblet Squat x 3 — more WW-Up

16kg C&P 4x(1;2;3) — Could have done 5. Next week, I'll start in on the actual RoP! Yes!!

16kg Swing 36 in 2 minutes.

Been a while, but training has been happening!

It's been a while since I posted, but there has been a-trainin-goins-on. I've gotten up to 4x(1;2;3), and if my memory serves me correctly, I'll be hitting 5 ladders come Monday's workout (which means I'm just that much closer to earning my 24kg kettlebell, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Still have to do wacky things like save enough money to be able to afford to buy it in the first place, which may or may not coincide with me ordering a whole bloody slew of them (a 12kg for Kelly, who's already finding the 8kg ones she's working with on the light side, and perhaps a "full set" — another 16kg a 24kg and a 32kg for myself — though that will depend on package deal prices, how much I have available to me, and where I'm ordering them from...and whether or not she actually wants the heavier bell.).

Where was I?