First off — MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! Hopefully you’re having fun with your favorite people today. Also, for “Festivus” celebrators… hopefully you are not trying to heal up any “feats of strength” related injuries. Mom and Dad sent me a hilarious video this morning of their occasionally rambunctious dog tearing the stuffing out of his favorite new toys.
So… after reviewing the fantastic info-filled notes at the beginning of the Convict Conditioning Log Book, I’ve decided to embark on the “Lockdown” plan – slightly modifed to fit some specific workshop-based goals of course (some of which will be easily programmed in the place of “sports”). Several days in now and I am very happy with this decision. If you’re a fan of Convict Conditioning or the whole Progressive Calisthenics thing, then consider checking it out. It’s also great for people who don’t necessarily like specifically prescribed rigid programming (though if you wanted you could use it for that too) I’ve created a sort of “personal challenge” for the next 2 months — and since a lot of my goals are skill based and/or abstract these days (and NO, many times, my goals are not S.M.A.R.T. aka specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound, it doesn’t mean they’re “unsmart” either). Which brings me to a favorite subject… breaking the rules!!!!!
While not always advised, and not appropriate for everyone, sometimes we need to break some rules. Or at the very least apply some critical thinking here and there. So many conversations I’ve had with people, even fellow fitness professionals have started with them saying something like this: “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do and it isn’t working!” or “I’m doing this thing and it’s working for me but <insert name of online-guru-they-respect> says that it doesn’t work so I don’t know wwhat to do!” First off. If something is working for you, KEEP DOING IT. There should be no confusion. Many times online personalities will promote things that have worked for them and for a majority of people—but those same things MIGHT not work as well if at all for YOU and YOUR SITUATION. So grain of salt, and critical thinking skills development time. If you’ve really and truly given something a good honest try (and always be honest with yourself at the very least), and had someone near you who you trust keep you accountable and it still hasn’t worked? Well then it’s time to find something new, or to call in a second pro opinion to help. Here’s the thing. Most programs will work, at least at first for a few weeks. BUT there’s really no one-size-fits-all solution for every fitness goal or situation.
Right now I’m helping a friend troubleshoot her fitness program and it’s been very interesting to see that the focus has (at least from what I’ve seen) not been on HER actual goals. And while I think being strong is important, it’s also very important for whoever developed her previous program to understand that while she totally understands that and is lifting heavy she’s not happy with the progress on HER goals. As much it isn’t currently (publicly) fashionable or even “PC” to have aesthetic goals, let’s be honest—we all want to look good, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s important that we make programs for clients which target their goals specifically, not the idealistic goals we think our clients SHOULD have. Let me know if that needs further explanation, because I can babble about that for hours.
Someone once asked what my fitness priorities are—and up until now I’ve not really typed this out: Skill, Strength, Vanity. Here’s the fun part, that’s their current order, and depending on what I feel needs more attention, their order may get shifted around. YES looking good is important to me (which may surprise some of you given the comments I’ve received on my hair HAHA!), and I’m not afraid to admit it. I also like working on my skills, because it helps me be a better instructor. At a workshop, being able to do a very clean demonstration of a move or to have enough control to break a move down into small parts and demonstrate each part cleanly can really help people grasp movement concepts. ALSO going through the struggle to acquire new skills helps me relate to my own clients’ struggles as well. YES, many of those very advanced calisthenics moves can start out feeling “impossible”* just like how the concept of a first pull up can sometimes seem “impossible”* to a beginning client. Here’s the interesting part, in my current situation, both “Strength” and “Vanity” seem to be happening as side-effects of my intensive skill training. Has this always been the case for me? Nope. Is this the same for everyone? Nope. I like to figure out my priorities, even (or especially) as abstract concepts and work backwards from there, making them more real and more quantifiable with every step.
The Convict Conditioning Ultimate Bodyweight Log Book is really helping me out. Admittedly I have the printed and bound version, which while the ebook is nice to have—especially for free—the printed one is a LOT more fun, and is a handy smaller size. Its about the size as one of those paper planners we all used to carry around in the 90s next to a copy of “7 Habits“. At the beginnning of the week, I like to write in the exercises that I want to work on over the next few days on their appropriate pages, using my current program as a guide (right now I am working with Paul Wade’s “Lockdown”). Since there’s an Ultimate Sandbag (DVRT) cert in my near future (March) I am adding in some relevant skills training. Yesterday for instance had me working on pistols and “explosive legwork,” so I did 5 varying sets of pistol work (bodyweight, kettlebell held in front, kettlebell held in rack, bodyweight for endurance, and some shrimp squat work too… because the Kavadlo brothers RULE at demonstrating those and I am very much lacking in that department—for now). For explosive legwork I did a combination of heavy kettlebell swings, kettlebell clean and jerks, and skill practice of a few lower body exercises from the DVRT system with a light Ultimate Sandbag.
I made some interesting discoveries about my workouts with the use of a fun new gadget (full review coming soon as I aquire more data! MUST HAVE MORE DATA)—the Under Armour “Armour39” Heart Rate Monitor. So far really impressed with it, not only from an accuracy and ease of use level, but on a, “Hey this strap doesnt’ drive me bonkers!” way—which for a heart rate monitor is incredibly important. More on that later. BUT here’s a short-ish boring-ish video about what limited exploration has happened already:
A non-fitness related goal for me this year is to make better multimedia items for YOU. To that end I may even employ a coach to improve my on-camera presence and to throw a water balloon at me everytime I say “ummmm” or “uhhhh” or “and…uhhhhhhh” which are all too prevalent in my speech. That and not knowing where to look at the iPad when it is recording video, and well how to get some decent lighting in here too. If you can forgive all those things, then please enjoy this next video about making a very easy cabbage side dish recipe:
Hopefully you didn’t laugh at me TOO hard, and hopefully you try and enjoy that simple cabbage recipe too! I think it tastes fantastic with spicy ground lamb patties, but you can serve it with anything, even as a side-salad of sorts.
*”impossible” is a word which should always be used in quotes.
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