Suddenly having access to a great outdoor training area has inspired me to step up my daily training and general activity level. Thankfully, by this age I’ve figured out that I can’t go “all in” all the time. Recently, there’s been a great series of articles by Dan John on DragonDoor.com and the first one (go read all five though) addresses the idea of consistency and continuity in training—and that most of our workouts should be on the medium-low level. This makes a lot of sense to me, especially now as I’m looking to add two days a week (hopefully schedule permits) of an 1.5 hour Systema class. When I took the trial class months ago (when I was considering moving to this area) I was impressed with the wonderful bodyweight and mobility warm-up, and the fact that the training did get significantly strenuous (I judged this by my extreme need for dinner afterwards). Given that class is tonight, I didn’t want to show up recovering from a crazy all out bashfest and not be able to keep up with my cool new friends.
I decided to use my RKC kettlebell Snatch Test weight for my weight class (women’s open class 121-135lbs = 14kg) (they update this from time to time, so be sure to check here if you’re preparing for an RKC Certification!)
With that in mind, I headed out back with my 14kg kettlebell, the 82′ slackline, and a fistfull of throwing knives. Throwing knives!? Yes, there’s part of a really cool knife throwing target out back that my buddy made… then threw a hatchet at and half of it went flying (the target and the hatchet). We’re in the midst of fixing it up, but I figured I’d go ahead and see if I could even get anything to stick before much time was invested. The answer is YES! And even though I only did a few throws, I could already see some improvement. Looking forward to fixing up the target even more! I love focus-based drills like this and slacklining… for whatever reason I especially like to challenge myself by getting my heart rate up with a kettlebell challenge then go and try to do these things with that extra level of difficulty. (I also like to do this with very simple chess problems, but more about that another time.)
I set my phone’s interval timer app to chime on the minute every minute for 12 minutes and did this little kettlebell jog… towards the middle-end it was approaching a nice middle of the road cardio challenge. I am sure if I had used even a slightly heavier kettlebell this would have gotten extremely challenging much more quickly. Choose your weight wisely. Each minute I would switch arms… so each round would be on one side only.
Every Minute On the Minute (EMOM) For 12 Minutes
- 4x Clean and Press (right side for the first round, on the next round, switch to left)
- 4x Clean and Squat
- 5x One arm swing
- 5x Snatches
- rest until minute is up, and switch hands.
I then did some more mobility exercises and played with the slackline for a bit. Before now I had been using a 50′ Slackline, so working with the extra length of the 82′ presents what seems like more axes of instability… frankly it’s a whole lot of fun. Definitely glad I started with a shorter line with less play. When you get to the middle it gets wild as you have to stabilize in nearly every possible direction!! Videos soon, I promise! 🙂 Let me know if you try this workout next time you’re short on time… it’s a fun one!
A very good sign indeed! I lost this throwing knife in the woodsy area of the backyard yesterday, and thought that it would be hard to find today even with the magnet. Not only did I find it almost instantly, I found this little meditating guy too (the backyard has tons of cool little things like this that surface from time to time, but this one was just sitting there as it from its own volition. Pretty sure this means it’s going to be a good day!
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