IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! Due to overwhelming response, Dragon Door has decided to offer the Bodyweight Workshop again this coming August!
Can’t tell you how elated I was to find out that Dragon Door was offering this workshop – next to kettlebell training, bodyweight training is my other favorite way to train. Since discovering Convict Conditioning and Naked Warrior a year or so ago, I have really managed to regain a lot of what I think of as “child strength” since I spent a good portion of my childhood dangling out of trees and generally climbing around. Paired with kettlebell training, the correct execution of bodyweight exercises is an incredibly efficient and easy* way to round out your training – and gain nearly acrobat-like abilities. Not to mention the random person totally making your day by asking if you work for Cirque. Which brings me to the other thing I like so much about bodyweight exercise – like kettlebell work, it brings the body into balance – all the “parts” start learning to work together – and you’ll soon find that the flexibility and abilities of your youth begin to return. Likewise the coordination required for many of the exercises is great for your mind and carries over to sports performance, dance, martial arts, etc.
Anyway, enough fanfare – you want to know what happened! Wrote a little about the meet & greet in a previous post Day one started with a discussion – and that we should focus on trying to “stay fresh” during the course of the weekend – no maximal efforts – 80-90% would be the top effort – so that we could continue to try the progressions, regressions, etc. We would be varying the focus throughout each day as to let our other “parts” rest – which was great functionally, but it has made reviewing my notes slightly nightmarish (part of that is my fault for having such hideous handwriting). Mark Reifkind started with a great explanation of “Why Bodyweight?” Mainly that it is the foundation – the center of the athlete – and that the very beginning of resistance training is our resistance to gravity. Progressive resistance can be achieved by varying our leverage, position, plane, etc. And don’t forget balance – none of it works without being able to keep your balance within all planes of movement…. all the sudden working out with minimal to no equipment doesn’t sound so simple anymore does it? As in the RKC principles, tension and movement together form the basis of bodyweight training.
So… I FINALLY got to try out a Pavelizer… after bugging friends etc on twitter for months… ouch. ow dang. ummm yeah – that’s effective… its one of those things where if you do it incorrectly its easy, if you do it correctly your midsection is on FIRE. May have to get one… because I’d love to see the faces some of my clients will no doubt make while using this thing. And well – because it WORKS! After having humbled us all with this cruel device, they mercifully led us through several abdominal stretches that we would be using extensively through the next 3 days – we then went through several plank variations all of which will be unleashed on my unsuspecting clients over the next few months.
Oh and we did handstands and handstand push ups and variations of how to make them easier/harder etc. One of the neat things about the whole workshop was again how Pavel, Max Shank, and Mark Reifkind basically “tag teamed” and cycled the exercises so that we could recover from one while learning/practicing another – utterly ingenious. No wasted time – and while some people might think I was utterly CRAZY (ok some of you think that anyway but whatever) for doing this workshop back to back with CK-FMS, it honestly was a great basis for it – as we touched into CK-FMS topics from time to time, as well as mobility drills with which I had just become familiar – so it was great to reinforce that and have time for Q&A
Oh and the hollow position and the press up to headstand and and and and and… seriously I don’t even know where to start. We even straightened out my bridge and I got HIGHER…. then we had really good food… all three days… lunch… yum. But seriously, I just counted and I have 29 pages of handwritten notes – stuffed with little pictures in the margins… it was like 3 days of Convict Conditioning, CC2, and Naked Warrior rolled into one. Speaking of Naked Warrior – I got Pavel to sign my book!!!!!! Bet you are envious!!
More later – but its errand time now – the short answer is – great workshop, would attend again, would encourage you to attend. BUT I would say that it was very good that I had been training with the above-mentioned books as I felt that it made me get the most out of the workshop – having been able to progress through the basics and on into the advanced drills. Some of which were so advanced that no everyone could even do them! Like all Dragon Door offerings, this is not a workshop to be taking lightly.
*easy…. we like that word in fitness marketing… by “easy” here I mean with minimal equipment, and can be done anywhere. You still need to do the work and put in the time – though that time can be in very small doses. For instance, when I used to lead a friend’s fitness boot camp, if I arrived very early I’d get in some pistol and handstand pushups practice – maybe some pull ups if the required equip (or tree branch) was available (used to do some qigong, but apparently I look spooky doing that?!? So it gets done on the ‘beloved rug’ at home). This really adds up over time and this type of GTG training (I do this at home with pull ups alternated with small household chores) is highly effective for useable strength. It is solely responsible for me being able to now do 13-14 strict tactical pull ups in a row, instead of just 5-8 a few years ago.
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