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S&S+, Judo, Kendo, Historical & Modern Fencing, Walking.

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Hello @Kozushi

As a disclaimer, what will follow depends on two things:
- Other physical demand you have (judo or fencing if there is no lockdown in Canada, etc...)
- Recovery from high volume training.

During the first lockdown in France, kb training was my only physical activity for a few months. During that time, on alternate days, I did S&S (Timeless Simple) and RZ (24 for presses, 32 for swings). It went extremely well. Sunday was some sort of variety. I gained a lot of strength and it maintained my conditioning. As it was all I did, I could very easily recover.

If you do not have other activity, you could do snatches instead of swings during the "S&S days". That way, you would be able to keep the TGU, as I know you like this move very much for your judo ;)

In all cases, I hope you'll find the sweet spot to get your SFG !

Hope this helps

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
pet' said:
Hello @Kozushi

As a disclaimer, what will follow depends on two things:
- Other physical demand you have (judo or fencing if there is no lockdown in Canada, etc...)
- Recovery from high volume training.

During the first lockdown in France, kb training was my only physical activity for a few months. During that time, on alternate days, I did S&S (Timeless Simple) and RZ (24 for presses, 32 for swings). It went extremely well. Sunday was some sort of variety. I gained a lot of strength and it maintained my conditioning. As it was all I did, I could very easily recover.

If you do not have other activity, you could do snatches instead of swings during the "S&S days". That way, you would be able to keep the TGU, as I know you like this move very much for your judo ;)

In all cases, I hope you'll find the sweet spot to get your SFG !

Hope this helps

Kind regards,

Pet'
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Yes, and thank you for the advice, which I will take. The lockdown has opened up new opportunities for changing my body for the better, but having this much physical and mental energy to expend on kettlebelling is also a kind of uncharted territory for me, like for Cartier exploring the St. Lawrence 500 years ago. The three workouts most prominent in my mind thes days are Red Zone, S&S (of course) and the snatch test.
I'm hoping to train high volume during the lockdown so when judo and fencing resume I'll be stronger and more apt to maintain my kettlebell workouts. If somehow I end up doing the Red Zone presses with the 32kg, I'll be very satisfied with that! I think that being able to do a lot of presses with the 32 means you can do one press with the 48, which is half my bodyweight, thus achieving one of Pavel's goals in ETK.
 
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pet' said:
Hello @Kozushi

As a disclaimer, what will follow depends on two things:
- Other physical demand you have (judo or fencing if there is no lockdown in Canada, etc...)
- Recovery from high volume training.

During the first lockdown in France, kb training was my only physical activity for a few months. During that time, on alternate days, I did S&S (Timeless Simple) and RZ (24 for presses, 32 for swings). It went extremely well. Sunday was some sort of variety. I gained a lot of strength and it maintained my conditioning. As it was all I did, I could very easily recover.

If you do not have other activity, you could do snatches instead of swings during the "S&S days". That way, you would be able to keep the TGU, as I know you like this move very much for your judo ;)

In all cases, I hope you'll find the sweet spot to get your SFG !

Hope this helps

Kind regards,

Pet'
Click to expand...
Today I did the 50 28kg presses in sets of 5. This is an improvement over sets of 3. I did the swings with the 28kg - first two sets with the 32kg though, but something felt a wee but off in my back, so I lowered it to 28kg. I don't play games with safety.
Tomorrow I'm planning to do regular S&S, alternating like you suggest.
I did some snatches today with the 24kg. The bell is feeling lighter and lighter due to all the heavier presses I have been doing, but I still need to really dial in the technique. I may have to hire someone to help me after the pandemic is over. It's probably a miracle I've been able to achieve what I have so far with no one on one help. The snatches though might be a step too far - we'll see. I'm still working on building myself up for them.
 
masa said:
Columbus was a funny case. He took credits for many things that he didn't do. He started 500 years later than vikings and went to wrong places multiple times. LOL!

Reading bit by bit is enjoyable. I've read many books like that. Most of them many times.
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The Finns are defeinitely there in the Heimskringla. Interestingly, the Vikings seem quite terrified of them. Every time a Finn pops into the narrative he's an expert archer or sorcerer, and the one time so far (I'm about 1/3 through the whole book) a Norwegian king invades Finland, he gets lost in the woods and shot at, and he retreats with great losses. The Heimskringla is told from a Norwegian perspective and the author is Icelandic. This means that the emphasis is not on Sweden, Denmark, England nor Finland, but all these places play a role in the story. Russia, Poland and Germany too. Canada (Vinland "The Good") is mentioned once, hahaha!

The author is so thorough and so clear that he makes the other Medieval history books I have read from that time period look like children's books in comparison.

I really do feel that reading this book is giving me a very good overall picture of the time period.

The Christian kings so far have spread the religion only by killing, threatening, maiming and torturing. I am not understanding quite the role of Christianity in the story - why did the kings want to force it on people? My guess/hypothesis is that it was somehow linked with the administrative value of the educated priesthood in exacting taxes correctly, and maybe just a general respect for literacy - I don't really know. Quite a number of Christian rulers were killed by their subjects unhappy with their rule including their religious intolerance. - I don't quite "get it" yet as to what they thought the religion would do for them. The Kings could not have believed that their Christian faith guaranteed them victory after the first few who lost their lives in battle. Weird. So, my hypothesis so far is respect for literacy and the administrative value of the clergy.
 
Hello,

@Kozushi
Glad to hear !

I like the way you adapt in function of how heavy you feel the weight. This is very self-regulated and healthy IMHO.

In the end, one has to consider the long haul, as you are doing. Do not be afraid to scale back, whether it is S&S or RZ. When I was a little bit tired, I tended to have slightly longer breaks. This was my first 'solution'.

Keep going ! Sure you'll soon press the beast !

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
I can’t understand the reason behind the forcing Christianity for people either. If my memory serves, the first Norse king was killed by regular folks, because they got frustrated of that never ending Jesus talk.
 
masa said:
I can’t understand the reason behind the forcing Christianity for people either. If my memory serves, the first Norse king was killed by regular folks, because they got frustrated of that never ending Jesus talk.
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Given that it was "Christians" who wrote down all the sagas and myths later on, it would seem that the Norse people took whatever benefits there were from the new stuff, like book learning and such, and pretty much just kept on being who they were... and they're still there even now of course, haha! Snorri who wrote the Heimskringla praises Odin for the first 10 pages or so of his book. I think Snorri was actually the "bishop" of Iceland ... and the Lawspeaker (like the president of the country)... and the buddy of the Norwegian king, and... I know they carved Norse myths all over the churches they built. I'm sure the popes would not have approved, hahaha! (Or maybe they would have? They liked their pagan Roman and Greek stuff.)

But yeah, haha, they killed kings who got on their nerves, especially the preachy kind of kings. I guess that was a kind of election in reverse! :)

This Heimskringla is pretty much the book of the decade for me! I'm sure I'll be likewise impressed with the Kalavela!
 
The popes approved many things. Christmas didn't have anything to do with the Jesus in the first place. Church just moved it to a different spot in the calendar and changed the celebration target to a different dude. That way church wiped out one pagan holiday too.
 
masa said:
The popes approved many things. Christmas didn't have anything to do with the Jesus in the first place. Church just moved it to a different spot in the calendar and changed the celebration target to a different dude. That way church wiped out one pagan holiday too.
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I think the last king in the Heimskringla is Sigurth the Jerusalemfarer. He was a crusader. Maybe by the end of the book I'll understand what was going through all those people's heads. Even for the Christian kings the official skalds include Odin etc...
 
Ended up switching things up a bit today to avoid the lower back discomfort. I did the swings first, then the presses. This completely eliminated the back discomfort, which I now attribute to having done the presses first, which was an error.
 
Argh! I really don't care much for snatches. They are much better than swings, I fully concur, but they come at a cost. And also, swings can be done with heavier weight, which makes your body adapt to more weight-bearing stress. The arc of the bell is outwards instead of upwards with swings making them better training for reaching out be that for fighting or sports playing or whatever.
Passing the snatch test will really prove my mettle. It takes programming, strategizing and a lot of prior physical development from kettlebell training. I want to be an SFG.
 
marvinthemartian said:
Understood. :) You sounded a bit hurried and because you followed S&S for years I thought it is because you had your cert right around the corner.
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No, no hurry or anything. It just slightly bothers me that I have to give up for a while a way of working out that I think is "better" for one that is "worse" just in order to pass a test to say I'm "better", hahaha! :) And, I'm not criticizing the test nor the snatch move. I think the challenge is the correct one! But the more I do my prep work for the snatch test, the more I can understand why Pavel paired swings with TGUs and not with presses. TGUs are just way more holistic "real-world".

Ah, I'll figure out some happy compromise. I still haven't followed my original advice to myself of limiting my snatch reps to focus on technique. Whenever I start doing them I can't stop until I've done 100, just to prove that I can do them all even if not within 5 minutes quite yet!
 
Kozushi said:
Someone should play this song for their entry into an MMA match. I think the opponent's team would decide to walk away from the match.

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Too bad there isn't a love button instead of just a like button
 
I got my hands on Snorri Sturluson's The Prose Edda (Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur 1916) and started to read it... or more likely study it along with the other books, that I'm in the middle of. So it's going to take a while to finish it first time, but I'm going to read it multiple times. Then possibly read Old Norse version too, if I find it.
 
masa said:
I got my hands on Snorri Sturluson's The Prose Edda (Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur 1916) and started to read it... or more likely study it along with the other books, that I'm in the middle of. So it's going to take a while to finish it first time, but I'm going to read it multiple times. Then possibly read Old Norse version too, if I find it.
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The beginning of the Heimskringla, by the same author, fills in even more details on the Norse gods.
The three key texts for the gods and heroes are:
1. The Prose Edda
2. The Poetic Edda
3. Volsunga Saga

Something a bit curious for me is how while the gods are located up North, the heroes are located in Central Europe (although depicted as culturally Norse of course.)
 
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