I’m always scouting around for cool locations for videos etc. to keep things interesting. This past weekend I hit a small jackpot! I found a new extremely bright mural near what used to be Forbidden City (and according to someone working on the property, it’s soon to be another location of the beloved local fusion restaurant, Tako Cheena. So, pretty much good news for everyone. Mills50 is becoming even more of a great food destination.
During Dragon Door’s Black Friday Sale I bought two oddly sized kettlebells, a 26kg for me (I am once again working towards the Iron Maiden Challenge… which requires a pull-up, pistol, and press with a 24kg kettlebell…so you see what I’m doing there) and a 10kg kettlebell for bottom-up presses, etc. and to challenge a specific client with it… 10kg is also just a great interim size for various mobility drills as well. But more on that later.
So, if you picked up some kettlebells this past weekend, and want to know what to do with them, may I now suggest that you go and pick up… the very up to date book from Max Shank, Master the Kettlebell. His approach to programming as outlined in that book is worth it alone, and the exercises described are the ones you need! Good stuff!!! In the photos, Max is joined by Senior RKC, Beth Andrews so you can see what the exercises look like when performed by both men and women. Very useful stuff!
Incredibly useful books for gifts would of course be the classic Convict Conditioning, and the new (soon to be classic) Strong Medicine. These big books make for impressive gifts, especially once someone starts reading them and applying the knowledge! 🙂
I was just about to write up all the other books that I thought deserved a mention, then realized how long that would take — YIPES!!!!! In other words, there’s so many awesome recent books over on Dragon Door that I’m kind of at a loss for words. So you’d probably just better go over and check it out for yourself (if you click that link, you’ll see I’ve sorted them from newest to oldest for you).
In Other news… I’ve got a simple thing I’ve been doing for a couple weeks now and it’s just a kind of personal challenge on “off days” where I don’t have an hour specifically set aside for a structured workout. Essentially I’ve been making sure to do timed bar hangs, and then after a near max one, I’ve been gently doing extensor stretches before a timed crow or other hand balance. During another part of that same day I just simply make sure to practice a couple of skills, and to get in between 150-300 kettlebell swings of any type. If nothing else, it’s been a fun way to keep up with the variety of strength and skill items that I need to talk about with others, and to keep making gentle progress, even on an off day or busy times with odd sleep.
In addition to some EXTREMELY informal meditative practices, I’ve also been using the challenge of slacklining lately as active recovery. Partially, this is because the weather has been better and because in some weird way it helps me to brainstorm! Starting to do these small tricks which are really almost too much fun:
I use the simple setup that comes with a Gibbon Classic slackline along with the Treewear to protect my slackline AND the trees too. One of these days I want to get the longer 85 foot version of the slackline since I found just the PERFECT place to use it! I acutally have two sets of Treewear (4 pieces total) because what’s often the case is one side is a palm tree (uses 1 piece of Treewear) and the other side might be a stately old oak (using 3 pieces of Treewear!!!)
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