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Sheltered And Simple

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The farmer’s walk to the park with a 24kg bell in one hand and a 28kg bell in the other hand was nothing in comparison to the walk home from the park after my kettlebell session. It was a session of squats and sprints and swings, but the trip to/from the park becomes a practice in its own right as well. Luckily, I acquired liquid chalk this weekend so that the 28kg bell this morning was not threatening again to slip from a sweaty hand.
 
TGU morning. In my right hand, for the first time, all 5 of my reps were 22kg. Left hand still had partial reps at 45 lbs because the skin on my right knee is at that itchy late phase of healing. My training log will be thoroughly unimpressive when I am ready to start rebuilding full reps in my left hand. However, my goal is not to be impressive. My goal is to slowly build up my strength in a way that is safe and appropriate for me.
 
My farmers carry to/from the park with a 24kg bell in one hand and a 28kg bell in the other is at least 100 meters in each direction. 3 sets of 24kg goblet squats, 2 sets of 28kg swings, 8 sets of 24kg swings. Multiple 100 meter sprints. I'm thinking of having that distance be one I do regularly. I don't expect to ever be in a track competition, but I still want to explore my own goals and training for that distance.
 
TGU morning. The five 22kg (48+ lbs) reps in my right hand are easy compared to the five 45 lbs partial reps in my left hand. The one thing I miss most about being able to do get ups in the gym is being able to do noisy break falls and technical stand ups between sets. But I avoid doing these noisy things when I am working out in my place, because a family member is sleeping in the next room. Hmmm. Once the skin on my knee is completely healed, I should look for other times of the day to sneak in these activities.
 
An outside session much like Wednesday morning. I appreciate the alliteration of squats and sprints and swings. Once I got back to my place, I looked into sending a 100meter workout to my running watch, so that everything is automatic once I hit start. Proper sprint arm movement really demands that you ignore the watch completely while you are running and trying to manually stop the watch at exactly 100meters is very disruptive to the actual sprinting. I’ll find out soon enough if I got it set up right.
 
Before starting my get ups, I stuck a shin guard snugly on my right leg to protect the bit of discolored skin from where my scab had been. And with this in place, I did full get ups in my left hand for the first time in a long time. it was only a 25 pound bell, but for rehab purposes , I needed to start easy. Due to the facts that I had muscle memory loss and that a shin guard impacts how you move on your knee, the light 25 pound bell in my right hand required more effort than the heavier 22kg bell in my right hand.

My knee doesn’t seem irritated from the efforts though, so I may be ready to start a rebuild program on my left side.
 
A sunny, sweaty session of squats and sprints and swings. My best sprint time this morning would allow an 18 year old man to meet the Boston Qualifying Standard..... *IF* he could maintain that pace for 26.2 miles and not just 100 meters.

Since I use a good foot pod and not GPS,I can rely on the times my watch gives, even when I don’t have a track nearby and am thus just sprinting in the park. I hate having numbers look better than they should be due to GPS thrown off by tall buildings, etc.

I upgraded so that I did four of my one handed swing sets with 28kg and only six sets with 24kg. Though I like the 52kg farmer’s carry to the park, I want to progress to the point where I can just haul the 28kg outside and do all of my swings with that. I spent many months of the pandemic doing all of my swings with 24kg simply because it was difficult to acquire new kettlebells during the Great Kettlebell Shortage of 2020. But I still don’t want to up all swings sets to 28kg over night. Fast,yes, over night, no.
 
TGU morning. Unfortunately, I did a minor scrape of my right knee yesterday by bumping into something yesterday. This morning, even with the shin guard over things, it was obvious that a full TGU was irritating the rebroken skin. So it’s back once again to partial TGU in my left hand. Ugh. I need to flow with the options that are available to me— a theme that turns up again and again in this so-called “2020”.
The full 22 kg TGU in my right hand was good.
Going on a digital minimalism reset, so this will be the last log entry I will post for awhile.
 
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A few days of digital minimalism has also been a time of solid progressions in my training. In my right hand, I have done my first full 24kg TGU’s where I was in control and had no near mishaps. With my swings, I find that I can do them all at 28kg. With my 100 meter sprints, it has been exhilarating to sprint at speeds a few seconds faster than I thought I was capable of. Outside of my work obligations, I need to re-embrace the digital minimalism as I had before the pandemic began. When a news site has 500+ updates every 30 seconds to cause information overload instead of understanding, when the YouTube home page algorithms seem designed to scatter my focus rather than hone my focus, and when the Internet offers lots of tiny ego strokes that can suppress my urge to work towards real accomplishments, I need to carefully cultivate and control and cap my online experience. My digital minimalism reset was designed to help my life in general, but it’s nifty to see how the quality of my workouts is improving.
 
TGU morning.
Right arm full reps: 2 reps at 24kg, 3 reps at 22kg.
Left arm partial reps posting to palm: 5 reps at 45lbs.
I am pleased with progress on my right side, but I will need patience on my left side. (Getting a new scab last weekend on a knee that was finally almost healed from the previous scab was bad timing.)
 
Squats and swings and sprints. 28kg bell.
I’m really starting to prefer doing squats and swings outdoors, but since I live in the Midwest, outdoor kettlebell work is not a year-round activity.
 
TGU morning.
Right arm full reps: 2 reps at 24kg, 3 reps at 22kg.
Left arm partial reps posting to palm: 5 reps at 45lbs.
The fact that my big toe nails have finally mostly healed from my marathon days is a contributing factor to why I can now do full get ups at 24kg. I used to do my get ups where I didn’t curl my toes down on my rear foot in order to save big toe pain. This meant I was lifting off of my instep instead of my toes when rising from lunging to standing. I could get away with this up to a certain kettlebell weight, but beyond that, it was a good way to get a painful foot cramp/leg cramp when rising from lunging to standing. This can be a dangerous situation when trying to maintain control of one’s TGU.
 
At the beginning of the work week, I hauled a light kettlebell to work, and about once an hour, I do a set on each arm. It seems a good substitute for the push ups I had been doing about once an hour throughout the workday.
 
Full TGU in right hand: 5 sets @ 24kg. (I needed a do-over only on the last rep.)
Partial TGU in left hand posting to palm: 5 sets @ 22kg (I am being patient with the final healing of the skin on my right knee.)
1 handed swings: 10 sets @ 28kg (This is where my liquid chalk is essential.)
3 sprints on the park lawn: No running watch or other tracking device to distract me. I just ran like I was running for my life.
 
The most challenging part of my kettlebell work right now is when I do 5 full TGU’s in my right hand with 24kg. I do my best at these first thing in the morning, when I am fresh from a night of sleep and I haven’t eaten yet. But sometimes, I make myself do these get ups other times of the day. Doing them at the end of the workday is not easy, but I sometimes make myself do it, on the grounds that my strength may be called upon at times of day that I don’t consider my peak time of day.

The skin on my right knee is still not fully healed, so my left TGU’s are still partial,posting on my palm. The partials are mostly 24kg.

My swings seem easier than my get ups, and I need to make sure I don’t get lulled into complacency with my swings, and slip into unmindfulness and thus bad form and risk injury. My swings are at 28kg, and 32kg bells are not easy to acquire right now. But I have to do the best work I can with the kettlebells that are available to me.
 
In my right hand, I am still doing all of my get ups with 24kg. Rather than increase weight in my get ups, I am working at improving form and increasing control with 24kg. (Meanwhile, at work, about once an hour, I am currently doing 5 clean and presses per arm with 25lbs. I really need to work on my pressing strength before I increase my TGU weight. My condo’s gym is still closed and I do not want a too-heavy-for-me-to-control kettlebell damage my hardwood floor while working on a too-heavy -for-me kettlebell.)

In my left hand, I am doing 24kg partial get ups. The skin on my right knee looks better and better each day but the last time I tried to add full get ups on my left side too soon, I caused major blistering at the site of the skinned knee.

Swings are 28kg. I am deliberately putting off buying any heavier kettlebells at the moment, because I want to work with what I have. (Working with what I have was what led me to making the clean and press a regular thing. I own bells that are too light for get ups and swings, but that can challenge me in other ways.)
 
The most important prep for my TGU’s today was a nap.
On my right side, all 5 of my full 24kg TGU’s actually had a hip bridge in them. Prior to this weekend, I haven’t had successful hip bridges in my full get ups since the 45lb bell. At 22kg, I switched to a low sweep, and when I got to 24kg, this low sweep become a shuffling, scraping, multiple step adjustment process. While a low sweep done properly is a good alternative to the hip bridge, being able to do the hip bridge is a step forward for me. As I’ve gotten stronger, supporting the 24kg bell during the hip bridge seems a lot more possible than it once did. The position once felt quite unstable when I was holding up a 24kg bell with a hip bridge.

This is why my nap was so important. Had I been tired, it would have been difficult to give my get ups the full attention needed to reintroduce the hip bridge. And my 24kg TGU is much smoother with the hip bridge added back in.
 
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The 24kg get ups on my right side continue to offer me challenging sessions as I work on improving my form and consistency, reducing my rest periods, etc. I am not ready to swap in a higher weight for one of the reps yet, since with the 28Kg bell, it's hard for me to get through the initial floor press and moving up to support myself on my elbow is not happening yet. But the 24Kg bell still has a lot to teach me.
 
The advantage of sometimes doing a partial get up up posting to my palm with a 28kg bell in my right hand is that it makes the 24kg bell that I do full gets ups in my right hand seem lighter in comparison.

It’s been nearly 4 and a half months since I skinned my right knee and it’s still somewhat discolored in a small area that I don’t want to blister or irritate with a full get up with the bell in my left hand. It seems ironic that my body is good at resisting illnesses such as flu, colds, etc. but that healing from injuries such as this can be so slow. I am going to have to be more proactive about trying to be injury free, which of course means I will never be any MMA fighter,

I can do 35 pound clean and presses in my right hand but not in my left hand. My left hand can do that drill so long as I am pressing my next lightest bell: 25 pounds. I know my strength is not symmetrical on the two sides of my body, which means I need to be cautious when I can finally resume full get ups with the bell in my left hand. Being able to have the strength to maintain control of the bell is important for safety.
 
My 32 kg kettlebell arrived yesterday. My routine this morning added in a couple of sets of two handed swings with the 32kg bell. I want to get the feel of this bell before I do one-handed swings with it. When doing farmer’s carry with this, I felt a lot of respect towards this bell, recognizing the amount of destruction it could cause if dropped on my foot.

My full Turkish Get Ups remains at 24kg. At 28kg, I can only reliably get through the floor press portion and can only sometimes post to my palm. I need to be able to be in control of the arm holding the bell before i progress further. I can be patient.
 
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