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Sheltered And Simple

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A day of feeling strong and feeling weak.
On the strong side, it felt good to do a 132 pound farmer’s carry to/from the park. It felt good to do my one handed swings in the park, 4 sets of 32 kg and 6 sets of 28kg.
On the weak side, I did 5 full get ups in my left hand for the first time in a long time since I’ve been letting my skinned knee heal. While I had been doing partial 24kg get ups in my left hand for quite some time, I dropped back down to a 35 lb bell today to get used to full get ups again. My first attempt was bad and needed a do-over. After that, things were passable. On my right side today, instead of doing my standard five full get ups at 24kg, I did 5 floor presses at 28kg and it was not a day where I got up to my palm or even my elbow on my supporting arm.
I know I have to be careful not to turn this all into a numbers game. I like being able to swing and squat and farmer’s carry with the 32kg bell, but I need to avoid getting cocky and sloppy and injure myself. And while my progress at get ups may be slow, a slow progression of strength is better than a rapid decline in strength, like is the fate of many sedentary middle-aged people.
 
Another day of strength and weakness. Did all of my two handed swings at 32kg. Did some of my left sided full get ups at 45 pounds - the first time I've used that weight on that side of the body in literally 6 months. First the gym closed and my personal collection of kettlebells was lacking. But by the time I owned appropriate kettlebells, I had skinned my right knee terribly and so full get ups in my left hand were off the menu for a long time. Today, the 45 lb get ups in my left hand had one passable rep, one meh rep, and one rep that had to be aborted. Hmmm.... 53 lb get ups in my right hand are reliable while 45 lb get ups in my left hand are iffy. Rebuilding will take time.
 
Farmer’s walks with 132 pounds of kettlebells to/from the park. One armed swings, 8 sets at 32 kg, 2 sets at 28kg, and also 6 rounds of sprints. Even though each sprint round was under 30 seconds, it’s an all out effort that feels more right for me than longish runs. 3 sets of goblet squats with the 32 kg.

Inside, for my rehab get ups in my left hand, I did all of my reps at 35 pounds. As I’m getting used to doing full get ups on this side after a several month interruption, I need to get my technique in my left hand with 35 pounds as good as my technique with 24kg in my right hand before I start building the weight up again.
 
I've transitioned all my swings to 32kg. When I swing outdoors, I like to do 2 swing sets then recover then sprint then recover then repeat 4 more times before moving on to 32 kg goblet squats. This outdoor work out with 32 kg packs a punch that adds oomph to my sprints.

Right full get ups are all at 24kg, but at least one set a day is a partial at 28kg posting to palm. Need to make sure my arm can be like a flag pole with this weight before I sweep into the lunge.

Left full get ups are all at 45 pounds. I still also try to work in partials at 24kg. My left shoulder has always been cranky and I will take a wait and see approach regarding if this side can safely catch up with the right side.
 
Cutting down the length of my rest periods between get ups has been something I’ve been doing this week. I find that I need very little recovery time these days to keep doing the full 24kg get ups in my right hand, though the full 45lb get ups in my left hand feel a lot harder when I have short recovery periods. I am comfortable enough with 32kg swings that now I do them all inside my small place, without concern that I will knock a hole in the wall.
 
I am really beginning to appreciate the value of doing unweighted get ups above and beyond the weighted get ups. During unweighted get ups, I can really focus on the ideal mechanics during the challenging time between posting to my palm and getting into the lunge position. In my left hand (the side I couldn’t do full gets up on for several months due to the skinned knee), I’m starting to build in 22kg reps, and getting these mechanics just so is critical. In my right hand, full 24kg reps are the norm, and 28kg reps are only partial posting to palm. I recognize that if/when I can safely handle 28kg for full get ups, that point between posting to palm and getting into the lunge needs to be crisp. Bad movement here means instability.

The 32kg swings continue to be doable, but I still need to respect the bell as if it were a loaded weapon.
 
It was only on Thursday that I started adding the 22kg bell onto my left handed get ups, the side I am rehabbing. And today, three of my reps were upgraded to 22kg. This is not because I am trying to up the weight as quickly as possible, but because this weight is a sweet spot wherein it becomes important to have my supporting arm and my legs placed just so as I transition from posting to palm into the lunge. At 35 pounds, I can definitely fake it, and at 45 pounds I can somewhat fake it. But 22kg is instructive.
My right side is strong enough that I can get away with a bit of faking at 24kg and I need to clean up my technique now, knowing that if I do any faking at 28kg, I could either hurt myself badly or damage my hardwood floors badly or both.
 
There is one very simple principle that I've been working on lately in my get ups: don't try to support weight on my knee until my knee is ready to support weight. That sounds so obvious at first as to hardly be worth mentioning. Yet the ability to get this right is critical. With a strong base of support, my whole body is helping to keep the bell up in the air; without a strong base of support, the arm/shoulder holding up the bell have to use lots of extra effort to keep the bell up in the air. And this is unnecessary extra effort is not the type of hard work one should be proud of.

Greasing the groove to do clean/squat/press throughout the day is good medicine. My shoulder strength has been subaverage for much of my life. Getting a few presses here and a few preses there adds up. The milestones I am achieving are not the sort of numbers that one brags about, but I can experience slowly getting stronger.
 
The thing that is really cool about GTG is that it’s turned the dreaded shoulder press into a low-pressure situation that is over pretty quickly and that I have even learned to enjoy. Clean/squat/press is a nice flow. And some of the long-term deep crankiness of my left shoulder seems to be subsiding. This doesn’t mean that my left shoulder has become as strong as my right, but it does mean that my left shoulder is developing its own competence.

S&S now has all of my left full get ups at 22kg and all of my right full get ups at 24kg and continuing to work at that transition into the lunge. My 32kg swings continue to build the size of my... calluses.
 
During the pandemic, my get ups have been on the hardwood floors of my place, and I’m beginning to recognize how this has impacted my technique. I’ve been using two extra thick yoga mats side by side to protect my floor when the bell descends. And when I post to my palm, one of the most important considerations has been that the palm does not slip, such as might happen if the mat slides a bit along the floor. So the palm is always directly on the hardwood floor rather than in the mat. Ignoring issues of floor and mat, my palm is now in the habit of posting to a location that is not ideal for the get up itself. I’m now consciously working on finding the best Goldilocks Zone for my hand given my circumstances. The exact palm placement makes *so* much difference on how smoothly my leg can sweep smoothly into the correct position,
 
The tortoise makes progress on the hare. Today, for the first time, I did a full 24kg in my left hand (a weight that is routine for get ups in my right hand.) Meanwhile, in my right hand, the partial 28kg got most of the way through the sweep. I don’t think I injured myself, but pushing through the boundaries was a bit stressful on my system, so I had a slightly shortened practice so that I could listen to my body and spend more time with stretching, etc.

I know I have to be prudent with myself. Asking myself “How much can you get up, bro?” is not the right question to ask. “How much will you focus on effective and safe get ups no matter what the bell weight is?” is a better question. I am stronger now than I’ve ever been in my life but that doesn’t mean I can go rushing forward towards strength milestones I am not ready for. At this point in training, getting really smooth with 24kg get ups is better than subjecting myself to non-smooth 28kg get ups.
 
It took planning to wedge a deep tissue massage into my schedule today, but I’m glad that I did. The massage therapist I use knows how to hone in one what needs to be worked on. The pain/stiffness I’ve been feeling since Sunday’s kettlebell session has gone down by, oh, 75%, just from the massage work. I’ve already taken two days off in a row from any kettlebell training and will think about how to ease back into it. Luckily, this appears to have been a case of muscle tightness/knottiness and not, say, spinal injury.
The TGU teaches me a lot about myself, and sometimes, this is about teaching me my limits.
 
Today was the first day I lifted a kettlebell since I stressed the muscle in my lower back on Sunday. When I got out of bed this morning with no stiffness, I figured it was time to start kettlebells. My goal was to have a kettlebell session without problem or pain, so I used a lighter weight than I would normally use for get ups, 2 handed swings, and goblet squats. These were all done with just a 45 lb bell, but I wanted today to be smooth. It was smooth.
 
After yesterday’s ease-back-into it session was pain-free, I decided to rebuild today. And I now recognize that while get ups with the bell in my right hand have the advantage of my right shoulder being stronger, get ups in my left hand have the advantage of better hip mobility. This hip mobility meant that today I was able to upgrade most of the get ups in my left hand from 22kg to 24kg successfully, but I purposefully avoided trying to upgrade any of the get ups in my right hand from 24kg to 28kg. I did not want a repeat of last week’s muscle strain where my lower back tries to make up for hip movement deficiencies.

Swings are back to 32kg and I’m back to doing a variety of squats with a variety of weights. I also did do a couple of clean/front squat press in my right hand with 45 pounders, but stopped before I was tempted to arch my back to get more presses in. (Meanwhile weights suitable for presses on my left side are back at my desk at work, so left side presses will not happen until Monday.)

Over the several days when I skipped kettlebells to let me muscle heal, I did a lot of appropriate yoga asanas. Now that the muscle has healed in such a timely fashion, I need to continue to allow time for these asanas in my days.
 
I need to stay humble after yesterday's progress. The fact that each of my arms can now do 24kg get ups does not mean the 2 sides are equal. In my right hand, I can comfortably add pauses to my get up and increase time under tension, whereas in my left hand, pauses are bad because there's a firm limit to how long I can keep the bell up in the air.
 
Doing most of my left-handed get ups at 24kg requires leisurely recovery time between sets whereas left-handed get ups at 22kg allows me to keep a steady session pace. I have decided to build the number of left handed sets I do at 24kg gradually so that I can keep a decent pace to my sessions.
 
My building installed an improved air filtration system in the gym and set up capacity limits and sign-ups and various rules. So today was the first time since St Pat’s Day I could use gym equipment other than the kettlebells I keep in my place. I was pleased to see that even though I haven’t done a pull up since March, I could still do them but with no elbow tendonitis flare ups. I was pleased to see no deterioration in my barbell squats even though I’ve been limited to kettlebell squats for a long time. My bench press saw an improvement in what I can bench despite my not benching in a long time. My only bad moment came when trying to do an all-out time trial on a rowing machine while wearing a mask. Ugh.
 
I had been going to the gym every day since Wednesday, but I think I may switch gears. Go back to an emphasis on get ups and swings and goblet squats in my place. And this morning. I hauled a 45 lb bell to work for my GTG. Right arm now does 45 lbs for clean and squat and press, while left arm does 35 lbs. I respect the rules that the building’s gym has established, but it’s hard to make the make the rules mesh with the style of work out I want. For now, I may regularly keep going into the gym just long enough to crank out some pull ups, but then rely on kettlebells in my place and in my office for my main workouts.
 
Today was the first time ever I did a successful 28kg (62 lb) get up. Other people may be able to do heavier get ups, but this is still a milestone for me,
Based on how incredibly low my max bench press is, I was wondering for awhile if a 62 lb get up was beyond my grasp. But the problem with the bench press and I is that my left side is so much weaker than the right side that the bench press does very little for me. I either need to use a weight so light that my right side is getting no strength training or else I use a weight heavy enough that my left side can’t do its share of the work.
 
Yesterday was not a fluke. Today, my right arm again handled a 62 pound bell during a full get up. Small differences in the placement of the supporting arm impacts success or failure significantly. With optimal supporting arm placement, my knee will land in a great position on the first attempt. Otherwise, follow-up adjustments are needed to compensate for bad knee position, and these follow-up adjustments can be dicey if the bell is sufficiently heavy.
With the way I learn so much about myself from the TGU, I say in earnest: the one yoga routine I do almost daily is the Turkish Get Up.
 
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