Long ago in a somewhat miserable galaxy far far away, I was shown the original Whitley "Furnace" workout in a questionable corner of a questionable playground in a questionable condo complex. Questionable because well...not everyone was as careful with their dog droppings as we would have hoped. Fortunately this didn't become an issue. What WAS an issue was my feelings about the get up. The Furnace workout fixed those issues promptly - just by breaking it down into bitesize pieces.   These days, when I teach the get up - we break it down, waaaay down - sometimes learning parts of it one lesson and then the next parts the next time.   When I first "learned" the get up from books and DVDs (granted even GOOD books and DVDs... and I'm reasonably smart) I was all mixed up - sure I was able to "get up" with the kettlebell, but for whatever reason I'd end up facing the other direction, or somehow scooting around to odd angles, I remember the first time Tim saw me do one of these weird "get ups" I was doing and he was fairly perplexed.   Recently I've tried to even figure out what I was doing - because the directional change thing might be fun as part of a complex, but I've simply not been able to figure out what I was doing.  Who knows!  Anyway - the day Tim showed me the Furnace workout something clicked and from then on, the get up was a lot easier... I even started to (gasp) LIKE doing get ups... which had not been the case before.

But, inspired by some unusual programming patterns lately I decided to try and one-up the Furnace by creating the Combustion Chamber.   We don't use furnaces here in Florida much, but we do know rockets and jets... hot burning fast things with engines containing those magical spaces known as combustion chambers.   With that in mind, I started scribbling out the particulars, and Sunday tried the workout with one of my most advanced kettlebell small group members:

There's so much cool stuff going on right now that I feel compelled to list out a whole lot of it here.

First off - checking email this morning yielded some GREAT news as Beth Andrews has been promoted to Senior RKC!   Beth is not only an incredible leader, but she's really cool, a lot of fun and a great example of what we can do in terms of strength and skill when we put our minds to it.  Beth has demonstrated some amazing strength ever since I've known her, and my mind still reels from watching how easily she did a pull up with an extra 24kg... and that happened a while ago.  Beth is seriously into pull ups - and I'm pretty sure that she'll be knocking out 1 arm chin ups very soon, if she isn't already! 

Those of you following along on Instagram had a few sneak previews of some of the big fun this past weekend in Western MA and Boston - the adventure began with helping Amber of GiryaScope (Boston) lead a 4 hour intro/fine tuning kettlebell workshop at CrossFit Swarm in Westfield.  The workshop sold out - and despite the freezing weather, showed up ready to learn and work.   I was really impressed with their overall athleticism, spirit, and enthusiasm.  Having not really worked with too many CrossFit people, I'd gotten an admittedly not so great impression from some of the goofiness which flies around online.   The real folks involved with this stuff, led by a good team of coaches are actually incredibly cool and strong people.   We did a lot, got in some laughs, and the level of what was obviously sinking in in just 4 hours was staggering.   I'm proud to have been a part of a few little game-changers.  

Normally, the kettlebell small group doesn't meet on Saturday, but a client had rescheduled for that afternoon, and since the weather outside was so nice, I sent out a quick message to see if anyone wanted to have a group workout the previous hour.  Figured I'd go out there anyway - and do my own thing if not.   Amusingly, several messages came in immediately and so - a group workout it was!

We started with our Primal Move warm up then.....