Charles Staley

The gentleman above is Charles Staley, strength and conditioning coach, and the creator of the EDT or Escalating Density Training system. Essentially EDT first consists of picking two "antagonistic" lifts which when trained hard will not have too much impact on the other (e.g., double kettlebell front squats and barbell military rack presses). Then the first lift is performed for fifteen minutes with the number of successful attempts recorded. This is then repeated with the second lift. Each subsequent session, one tries to get in at least one more rep of each lift than the previous session. A more detailed article on Dragondoor can be read here.

Having learned about Charles through Dragondoor and the success of his methods applied to kettlebell training, I was surprised and pleased to learn that Charles is also 50 year master Olympic weightlifter. The link here is an hour and half interview of Charles with Senior RKC Instructor Geoff Neupert of Kettlebell Secrets where within the first twenty minutes Charles gives a deal of great insight on what it means to train as master lifter.

Below is a instructive video of Charles titled "The Illusions of Olympic Weightlifting".

My training went very well this week with the highlight on Saturday where I squat snatched three consecutive singles with 70kg. I have also been experimenting with adding relatively moderate kettlebell mini-maintenance sessions back into my training. Below is a wrap up of the week:

Wednesday, December 9 2009

Morning home kettlebell maintenance session:

Z-Health Neural Warmup Level II Dynamic Joint Mobility

25kg x 5 x 20 2-Hand Swings at the top of the minute

BW x 2 one minute push up planks

BW x 5 Evil Wheel on knees rollout, 10 sec hold, rollback

Thursday, December 10 2009

Evening Olympic Lifting Session at Excel Fitness and Sports

Z-Health Neural Warmup Level II Dynamic Joint Mobility

Snatch (kg):

40 x 2 x 3

50 x 2 x 3

55 x 1 x 2

60 x 1 x 2

Clean & Jerk (kg):

40 x 1 x 2

50 x 1 x 2

60 x 1 x 2

70 x 1 x 2

80 x 5 x 2

Front Squat (kg):

40 x 1 x 3

50 x 1 x 3

60 x 1 x 3

70 x 1 x 3

80 x 1 x 3

90 x 3 x 3

Walking Lunges (lbs):

45 x 1 x 10/10

95 x 1 x 10/10

115 x 1 x 10/10

135 x 1 x 6/6

A very solid session.

Friday, December 11 2009

Morning home kettlebell maintenance session

Z-Health Neural Warmup Level II Dynamic Joint Mobility

24kg x 1 x 4/4 -TGU

BW x 2 one minute push up planks

BW x 5 Evil Wheel on knees rollout, 10 sec hold, rollback

Saturday, December 13 2009

Noon Olympic Lifting Session at Excel Fitness and Sports

Z-Health Neural Warmup Level II Dynamic Joint Mobility

Snatch (kg):

40 x 1 x 3

45 x 1 x 2

50 x 1 x 2

55 x 1 x 2 1x

60 x 1 x 2 1x

65 x 1 x 2

65 x 1 x 2 1x

65 x 1 x 2 1x

70 x 3 x 1

Snatch Balance (kg):

40 x 1 x 3

45 x 1 x 4 1x

50 x 1 x 3 3x

45 x 1 x 3

Clean Pull (kg):

70 x 1 x 3

80 x 2 x 3

90 x 3 x 3

I was very pleased to make all three of my singles attempts with 70kg. Normally it takes three to five attempts to make this lift. By consciously pushing with my feet from the floor up and keeping my chest over the bar has helped considerably. When I forget to push with my feet I tend to use my arms and generate far less power.

Sunday, December 13 2009

Morning home kettlebell maintenance session:

Z-Health Neural Warmup Level II Dynamic Joint Mobility

25kg x 5 x 20 2-Hand Swings at the top of the minute

BW x 2 one minute push up planks

BW x 5 Evil Wheel on knees rollout, 10 sec hold, rollback