a stream of unconsciousness + RTFM

I had an great time in Portland, Oregon, not the least of which having the strange but nice feeling of being the only RKC (at least temporarily) in this large city .. the closest one according to the DD RKC Instructor page is in Eugene .. a good 2 hours away.

The daily physical demands of the RKC cert left me with little evening energy other than to browse through the large instructor manual provided for each attendee prior to falling off into a deep sleep. What a gold mine! I was fortunate to have some long quiet time on my flight to Portland from Boston and I spent the majority of it reading this wonderful manual and taking notes. There are whole articles by almost all of the senior RKCs covering a variety of subjects only briefly touched on at the Cert. Most of these are new and are not posted on the DD Kettlebell articles. Kudos to Pavel and his gang of top notch Senior RKCs.

My good friend Karla of Gaston, Or (about 40 minutes west of Portland), was "ordered" by her personal trainer to attend monthly yoga classes to "loosen" her up a bit. I trudged along and happen to have a wonderful experience so much so that I may pursue classes back here in the Boston area.

Karla, and two other of my Classical guitar buddies expressed an interest KB training prior to arriving. Rather than schlep bells across the two coasts, we all chipped in for a 12kg and a 16kg bell at Fitness Northwest in Beaverton for some surprisingly nice CAP brand, China made, kettlebells retailing @ $2/lb. I tested the 16kg bell with a VO2 Max workout one evening out on Karla's horse farm where I was staying and it passed with flying colors. At the Fitness store I demonstrated a variety lifts with the 16kg, 24kg and 32kg bells. The manager, Paul Westphall, was impressed and remarked I was the first person to ever demonstrate any of the lifts correctly. He was well aware of the RKC system but was as of yet unsuccessful in convincing the store owner to fund his Cert. I told him he would be wise to fork it out himself as I was sure he could easily start training folks and make back the cert fee very quickly.


Over the five days I trained sparingly:

Friday June 20:
Rest

Saturuday June 21:
BW x 4 x 10 Ab wheel on the knees roll-outs, 5 sec holds and roll backs

Sunday June 22:
VO2 Max 16kg Snatch Protocol @ 15 sec work, 15 sec rest, 7reps/set
Total: 62 sets for 434 snatches in 31 mins

I did it without any taping or chalk and beat my previous PR by 2 sets. Afterwards, my hands were just a little sore with only one small blister on my left hand .. as I said above, the CAP brand bells are very well balanced with a nice smooth handle.

Monday June 23:
63 pull-ups of various sized sets and grips

Tuesday June 24:
An hour of demonstrating various KB lifts including various sets of swings, front squats, TGUs, C&MP, BUCs and BUPs. I finished off with a Gymboss demo by performing ten VO2 Max sets.

Wed June 24:
Rest

Thu June 25:
Rest

A nice taper week concluded to proceed my next training cycle. My right knee is still going to need at least a few more weeks to get back to where I can resume LCCJ training, however I can still do swings and snatches so there should be no problem staying in shape.