TravisDirks
Level 3 Valued Member
Lew, Sounds like great progress since you opened this thread, Congrats! I touched a kettlebell for the first time in Sept of last year, so I'd say I'm still a newb, but it's all relative. A couple of things that might help from my experience:
In pursuing your ultimate goal, I would suggest mentally switching the primary and secondary goal. I would keep moving forward with S&S because it will help bigtime, but there are a lot of other things that will help as well. By mentally switching those goals you'll see them. It probably has more to do with stress, sleep and regular movement throughout the day than you'd imagine. Here is everything I learned loosing 50lbs in 2013. The main thing is keep your eye on permanent life changes. Pavel says knock out your swings and getups like brushing your teeth. Try to take that attitude of permanent life upgrade everywhere you look. This is the attitude that made losing this weight different than the other times over the past decade I lost a ton of weight. Now 1.5 years later its still gone (and I've put on ~18lbs of muscle thanks to Pavel)!
On the mobility Issues: I thought when I lost all that weight I'd be able to move easily again. Well it was a lot easier, but not like it was in highschool. I was stiff, immobile and weak. For the mobility part I found Kelly Starretts work very helpful. I'd strongly recommend looking at his Mobility wod which is amazing because there are hundreds of videos on specific issues, so you can really find and treat your own problems. I've heard great things about Original Strength, which I think you've been pointed to. OS doesn't require as much mental effort, so I would stick with it if it's working.
On all the stuff you have to remember to get technique right.
I'm not sure what the original source is, but it's true that you can't think your way through ballistic movements. So here is what you do.
A couple other things that have been really really helpful for me:
- Think of your workout as a practice and a recharge yes. But go a step further and think of it as a meditation. How to meditate: put your attention on your breath. Notice when your attention has strayed. Put your attention back on your breath. Substitute swing or getup in that sentence. You will progress MUCH MUCH faster. For a while I tried to do double duty and listen to podcasts while working out. The results suffered bigtime. It's a meditation. Bring your mind back to the task at hand.
-When you look forward to where you are headed be wildly optimistic. Set goals that stretch you. When you look backwards and evaluate how far you've come compare yourself to where you were, to average people, and to the historical average. Whether looking forward or backward stretch your timescale to months at least. It gets rid of the noise of occasional bad sleep, travel, etc...
-People always overestimate what they can do in a month and underestimate what they can do in a year. Even people who know this to be true.
Hope this helps you and others and thanks for starting the thread!
.
Primary goal: strength.
Secondary goal: weight loss.
Ultimate goal: be the last one to wipe my a#@.
(I read that on the forum. Thank you to whomever posted it first.)
In pursuing your ultimate goal, I would suggest mentally switching the primary and secondary goal. I would keep moving forward with S&S because it will help bigtime, but there are a lot of other things that will help as well. By mentally switching those goals you'll see them. It probably has more to do with stress, sleep and regular movement throughout the day than you'd imagine. Here is everything I learned loosing 50lbs in 2013. The main thing is keep your eye on permanent life changes. Pavel says knock out your swings and getups like brushing your teeth. Try to take that attitude of permanent life upgrade everywhere you look. This is the attitude that made losing this weight different than the other times over the past decade I lost a ton of weight. Now 1.5 years later its still gone (and I've put on ~18lbs of muscle thanks to Pavel)!
Agreed! Glad you saw this!Because I am ~30kg overweight, (or undertall; I should be 6'7" for my weight) and I carry most of my weight in my abdomen, I've made peace with my TGU.
Since I'm already doing ~32kg extra weight, fat plus the KB, I figure I'm already 'simple' on my TGU.
Now all I have to do is increase the KB weight in inverse proportion to the scale loss!
On the mobility Issues: I thought when I lost all that weight I'd be able to move easily again. Well it was a lot easier, but not like it was in highschool. I was stiff, immobile and weak. For the mobility part I found Kelly Starretts work very helpful. I'd strongly recommend looking at his Mobility wod which is amazing because there are hundreds of videos on specific issues, so you can really find and treat your own problems. I've heard great things about Original Strength, which I think you've been pointed to. OS doesn't require as much mental effort, so I would stick with it if it's working.
On all the stuff you have to remember to get technique right.
I'm not sure what the original source is, but it's true that you can't think your way through ballistic movements. So here is what you do.
- Make your setup perfect. The setup is slow, so you can handle a lot more things to remember and get better faster. Check the boxes everytime. Hands crease the hips, butt goes backwards, hips 1/2 way between knees and shoulders, back straight, head up, paw the ground with your feet, pre-engage the glutes by pulling the knees apart as you sit back. tighten the armpit and pull!
- Choose a measure of "goodness" of the swing. To start with that should probably be height of the bell, or "float". When you get good enough that you know what it feels like the indicator should be the crisp feeling of "snap" in the hips at lockout. At first you won't have snap, and you can't tune zero, so start with how high the bell floats.
- Read through which ever book you are following and pick the one or two que's that seem most important. Just focus on that while you are swinging until it is nearly automatic. Pay attention to how you are implementing that que and tune it to make the bell float higher. Cycle back and forth with a couple and ques, notice when you manage to do both. Did the bell seem lighter, did it go higher?
- Once you've got those ques down and they are pretty automatic ( I now breath in anytime my butt goes backwards, whether i'm swinging, jumping, or sitting in a chair ) reread the book. two things will happen. 1) You will have a new and different understanding of the entire description and 2) new things will stand out to your as most important. Pick one or two of them and cycle back to step 3.
A couple other things that have been really really helpful for me:
- Think of your workout as a practice and a recharge yes. But go a step further and think of it as a meditation. How to meditate: put your attention on your breath. Notice when your attention has strayed. Put your attention back on your breath. Substitute swing or getup in that sentence. You will progress MUCH MUCH faster. For a while I tried to do double duty and listen to podcasts while working out. The results suffered bigtime. It's a meditation. Bring your mind back to the task at hand.
-When you look forward to where you are headed be wildly optimistic. Set goals that stretch you. When you look backwards and evaluate how far you've come compare yourself to where you were, to average people, and to the historical average. Whether looking forward or backward stretch your timescale to months at least. It gets rid of the noise of occasional bad sleep, travel, etc...
-People always overestimate what they can do in a month and underestimate what they can do in a year. Even people who know this to be true.
Hope this helps you and others and thanks for starting the thread!
.