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Those of you following me on social media already know I’ve been having a lot of fun coming up with outdoor workouts recently–and that I’ve found a bunch of smooth stones to play with too.  After finding a good selection of them in various weights (though I am not sure how heavy the largest one is yet, but am fairly sure it weighs a little more than I do) 100+?, 100, 60, 40, etc. I decided to make up a game-like workout that included the challenge of lifting, carrying, then stacking the stones.

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This past Thursday the class focused on strikes. Now, it may come as a surprise to some of you, but I am not in the habit of going around and hitting people. It was an interesting psychological block to work though, which I am now thinking is very important. If I need to hit someone, I have a lot less qualms now.  Granted, I have made it 40 years without having to hit anyone, and here’s hoping that continues. All the straight-wrist kettlebell training definitely kept in handy, but making the mental connection (intellectually of course it was already there) was a fun challenge.  Needless to say I decided to do more bottom-up get-ups the next day.

Since I wanted to take my time with the reps, I chose a modest weight, the 10kg kettlebell. The handle is thicker than the 8kg, so there’s more to grasp, but the lighter weight allowed me to go super slow. I also wanted to get my heart rate up, so I added in some swings.  Here’s the simple workout I did, which could be easily scaled up or down, or done for a longer time as well.

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Once again I’m working with a fairly tight schedule with hard deadlines, self-imposed deadlines, productivity goals, catching up from the move (seriously the glass doors on the cabinets need to go up TONIGHT aggh!), and I’m now taking a 1.5hr Systema class twice a week.  Needless to say I am working on reconfiguring my training.  On the plus side (BIG plus) not sharing a floor with someone’s ceiling means training inside at home is now "guilt free".  Woohoo!

It was Monday night and after taking Sunday off from training (other than some slacklining) I really felt the need to do SOMETHING. This is kind of a bare minimum kettlebell workout, and if you have the time and/or inclination you could absolutely run through it more than once, adding a different mobility exercise between the sets of swings. Note that I punctuated the sets of kettlebell swings with a long time favorite mobility move the "pump stretch" so popular with RKCs – its similar to an up-dog, down-dog, and I also like the "prying cobra" variation especially if it’s been a day at the desk. Scroll down a little, I made a video for you too 🙂

So here’s what I did:

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In case you’re thinking of boiling eggs this weekend, I wanted to put these posts together for you.  Eggs are awesome anyway, so any excuse to highlight these nutritional powerhouses is a good one!  Hardboiled eggs are a favorite grab and go snack (even at the airport–look for them at the more "gourmet" snack stands and shops).  Just a little salt and pepper and they’re fabulous, but if you have a few minutes, a few ingredients, and a ziplock bag, you can make some fairly fancy deviled eggs without too much effort (or cleanup). I love deviled eggs so much I even have a special plate for them now…

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Must admit, I’m really enjoying the lower humidity and slightly cooler weather here at my new place… and even though I was very active before, being able to just go outside and work out with very little fanfare (or audience) has inspired me to do even more. I felt like going pretty heavy with things last night, and ended up surprising myself a little.

Given that I kept seeing references to the get-up in Systema class on Tuesday–and then of course after reading Dan John’s very cool article about the get-up, of course I had to feature get-ups as well. In fact I was feeling pretty energetic and decided to go a little heavy (remember, I’m only about 130lbs, so it’s relative) with those too.

First off, I did my favorite basic joint mobility sequence (this is an unlisted video, and I need to make it more fancy, but you know how it goes)  and a few get-ups on both sides without any weight.

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Suddenly having access to a great outdoor training area has inspired me to step up my daily training and general activity level. Thankfully, by this age I’ve figured out that I can’t go "all in" all the time. Recently, there’s been a great series of articles by Dan John on DragonDoor.com and the first one (go read all five though) addresses the idea of consistency and continuity in training—and that most of our workouts should be on the medium-low level. This makes a lot of sense to me, especially now as I’m looking to add two days a week (hopefully schedule permits) of an 1.5 hour Systema class. When I took the trial class months ago (when I was considering moving to this area) I was impressed with the wonderful bodyweight and mobility warm-up, and the fact that the training did get significantly strenuous (I judged this by my extreme need for dinner afterwards). Given that class is tonight, I didn’t want to show up recovering from a crazy all out bashfest and not be able to keep up with my cool new friends.

I decided to use my RKC kettlebell Snatch Test weight for my weight class (women’s open class 121-135lbs = 14kg) (they update this from time to time, so be sure to check here if you’re preparing for an RKC Certification!)

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After seeing Ryan Pitts wield that crazy Leviathan Mace yesterday I knew that I’d have to get in at least a little mace work today. I also needed to work on my shoulders some too after a 10 round wicked pairing of heavy kettlebell swings and pullups (among other things… I need to share that workout with you this week…) the other day.  The weather was so nice that I decided to try out this particular tree branch that seemed perfect for ring training–and it was!  So I headed to the backyard with my Stronger Grip short mace, a very inexpensive set of gymnastic rings, a standard wood dowel, and a 24kg kettlebell…

So, the mobility sequence was as follows (or just watch the video below which I scraped from Facebook Live–it’s live, it’s real, and of course in the middle of it the neighbor decides its time to get wacky with what sounds like a circular saw).

I did three rounds of the following:

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If you’ve been reading my site for any amount of time you know I’m into mace training and that I’m a huge fan of Ryan Pitts of StrongerGrip’s awesome creativity and craftsmanship.  FYI he is also like me, a bit bonkers–but in a good way.  This new waterfilled mace–Leviathan Mace Limited Edition–he just introduced is just too epic for me not to share here. If I didn’t think I’d scrape it on the ground when trying to do "10 and 2s" with it I’d order up one the next time I had the $ laying around… It’s huge, it’s crazy, it’ beautiful.

 

A post shared by Ryan J Pitts (@ryanjpitts1) on Apr 7, 2017 at 9:34am PDT

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And those three things together pretty much make something irrestable. I’m in the middle of a bunch of projects (and owe you TWO workouts PLUS at least 2 videos) with hard deadlines and self-imposed dealines but had to take a second to share this extremely over the top new masterpiece from Ryan. Warning, he’s making this look easy, I assure you it’s not.  (There was that whole incident where I put too many bbs in my 6" globe core club mace and very shamefully had to pour half of them out…)

If you’re up to the challenge, and/or want to know more about this over the top mace, click here to check it out.

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Roast Brussels sprouts with a spicy sauce (that’s also good for other things).

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Almost four years ago to the day, we had the photo shoot for Jon Bruney’s awesome book, Neuro-Mass. It was and still is probably the most challenging photoshoot I’ve ever experienced–with two days of some of the most difficult and creative strength moves I’d seen at the time. The incomparable RKC Team Leader, PCC Instructor, and shredded ab-monster Matt Maher was on that shoot and frankly defied gravity a few times too.

More talk about that book later, but that shoot was the first time I’d ever seen those infamous Neuro-Grip pushup handles. Four years ago we only had the prototypes which if you look super close in the book you can see that they are handmade and a little rough hewn.  The first generation of them that was offered by Dragon Door was cast from solid aluminum and had this crazy tuning-fork like CLANG if you happened to smack ’em together or strike them on the ground even slightly.  Thankfully the next version (and the ones that are currently being sold on Dragon Door) were further improved, they’re made from steel, the larger tubing "handle" part being heavy gauge but hollow so you can still put them in a backpack without THAT being the workout. Since they aren’t cast, they don’t have a mold mark either, which after high reps you’ll appreciate…

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