After a few days off because of an oral surgery I had to undergo, I started off my training yesterday with a little trial that I aim to extend during the next few days. The target of the training routine I thought of is to build sustained power in various aspects: Strength, endurance, willpower, full body stability and grip strength.

The training routine itself is simple. Grab two Kettlebells (or dumbbells, barbels, sand bags, stones – whatever comes to your mind) that are heavy enough and do these two exercises:

• Proper warm-up
• 20 repetitions front squat
• 5 minutes rest
• 20 repetitions clean & press

Although the workout consists of only two exercises, it is tremendously challenging. If you collapse on your first try before reaching the goal of 20 repetitions, do not worry – I failed as well. The goal is to stick to it and work yourself up towards facing this challenge. It will make you stronger in every area you could think of.

As for my first try, watch this video:

The second part is solely about technique issues concerning the Clean & Press. This exercise – performed with double kettlebells – is truly the prime discipline of kettlebell lifting and lifting in general. It involves the full range of motion of getting the kettlebells from the ground up above your head – in two stages, instead of one, like in the snatch, but with mere pressing power instead of ballistic momentum. One important aspect of this exercise is the way the kettlebell is pressed overhead. If done with a strict military press movement, the overall stability and form is normally easily sustained. A push-press, however, involves a tremendous lot more explosive moment and thereby potential for instability – while the pressing power needed is diminished, the stability factor has to be increased the same way. Doing the exercise unilateral instead of bilateral is another way of attaining good form – but it is without comparison to the bilateral execution.

Just try out what is okay for you. Adjust your working weight and then start – work yourself up to 20 repetitions and reap the benefits of your hard work!

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

With a bit of delay: The coverage of our official Christmas-workout, done on the 22th of December 2009.

Unfortunately, the creator of the workout we used was not present – Dominik Feischl was absent due to work issues (curses on his boss), the same reason hindered Peter from being present. It therefore was down to Rainer, Jozy and me. The three of us had a distinct task: Not putting Dominik’s name to shame in the execution of the following workout:

Workout “24″

• 24 Snatches each arm
• 24 Swings each arm
• 24 High Pulls each arm
• 24 Clean + Press each arm
• 24 Pull-ups
• 24 Ring dips

Finisher: Farmer’s Walk.

The prescribed weights were 16 kg for men and less for women (Jozy used the 8 kg Kettlebell). We also swapped Ring Dips with elevated push-ups, as we all were not capable of doing such a lot of repetitions of dips.

The structure of the workout has been to freely choose how much sets of which exercise and in which order exercises were done. We all opted for sets of six repetitions and four rounds thereof.

While the mark has been hit with pull-ups and push-ups, the other exercises were slightly to little of a challenge. After the second round I changed gears and did the exercises with a 20 kg competition Kettlebell – which proved to be a much more of a challenge and the right weight to work with (for me). The weight probably has to be spiced up to make this workout a real ‘killer’.

Our finisher were two rounds (approx. 100 meters) of Farmer’s Walks. Jozy used 2 x 20 kg, Rainer and me opted for 2 x 36 kg – heavy enough to leave us exhausted – perfect! As it was beginning to get really cold, we ended here – short and sweet.

Kudos to Dominik for the workout – we’re off into the Christmas holidays with this. The next challenge will be the Winter training camp at Dominik’s premises on the 2nd of January, 2010.

A late merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of you – and do not forget to train on

Simon

P.S.: Please excuse our memory lapse – we forgot to take photos!

This Tuesday, Rainer, Jozy and me assembled in Linz to perform a very special workout, Dominik prepared for us – although being absent. The main challenge this time was the extreme cold climate we had to face – the temperature was well below the zero degree mark.

Due to this limitations, it was of extreme importance, that we did everything possible to keep the workout short – and intense, to warm ourselves up. As a disclaimer I have to point out that this really is an advanced workout, at least in its original constellation.

The workout consisted of two blocks, which we performed after the warm-up:

Block One

Five rounds of:

• 12 Thrusters (2 x 16 kg Kettlebell)
• 6-8 Pull-Ups
• 30 Strict Sit-Ups

with 30” to 60” rest between rounds

Block Two

Four rounds of:

• 10-12 Double Snatches (2 x 16 kg Kettlebell)
• Box Jumps, max. in 30”
• 8-10 Renegade Rows (2 x 16 kg Kettlebell) with a Push-Up inbetween repetitions

with 30” to 60” rest between rounds

So much for the original workout, as initially proposed by Steve Maxwell. We, however, made a few adjustments to create an effective workout without jeopardizing ourselves with too much load. The weight for the Thrusters was scaled down as necessary, we did only six pull-ups, Double Snatches were substituted with single ones or Clean and Press for those illiterate in the technique, we did a fixed amount of ten jumps per round and scaled down weight on the Renegade Rows as necessary.

As we all were pretty much exhausted at the end of the workout, the load was just fine for our capabilities. However, I have to say that I felt ambivalent about the outcome – I was not really challenged metabolically and had power for quite some more repetitions at the end of the fourth round of block #2 – on the other hand I felt that my power curve had become very flat. It was a matter of a few repetitions to diminish my ability to go on. This normally is where you should stop to not injure yourself. Lastly, I have to admit that I faced the workout with the advantage of having already tested it on last Sunday – where I struggled hard to cope with the intensity.

A few hints on the workout:

• Really scale down the weight you’re working with to one that you can quite easily handle. Because of the high repetition count, a ‘light’ weight can become heavy over time
• If you decide to go pretty heavy, opt to split sets. 12 Thrusters were split into either 2 x 6 or 3 x 4 repetitions to manage the weight, for instance.
• Really look at your form! This is the most important part to keep yourself healthy – work hard, but do not force yourself too far!
• Replace Double Snatches with Single Snatches if the weight is too much for you. If you lack experience in doing the Snatch, replace it with Clean & Press – an equally challenging exercise. Note that Clean & Press requires more strength than Snatches do, as they are less explosive. You could opt for Push Press to make the exercise easier
• Renegade Rows require a lot of full body tension – really look at how you perform and use the right weight! I have found it useful to use a very wide feet stance to retain stability while pulling

If you watch these points, there is little reason not to do this tremendous workout. I really recommend doing it more often – two times a week for a time of about four weeks. You will be amazed how much you will progress in terms of metabolic stress resistance and strength. Regular workouts are the key to success, I’m convinced.

Train on and stay strong,
Simon

Only a few days after our last workout, the CrassFit crew reassembled for another workout this Tuesday. This time, we were greater in numbers – Rainer, Peter, Jozy and me attended. Special kudos to Peter who attended in spite of the fact that he just arrived from his stay at Munich – this is real determination!

A bit clueless about the workout structure, we used something that seemed somehow logical: We splitted the effort into three blocks:

• Pulling Power
• Leg Work
• Pushing Power

After a bit of warm-up (I have done countless repetitions with the kettlebells prior to the arrival of every attendee), we started with the first part:

Pre-Fatigue

For the pulling power part, we used the good old rope. None of us has used the rope recently so it was quite a challenge to climb up. For those who were unable to climb up (including me, with time), we did body rows on the rope. In total, we did six rounds of climbing up the rope – until we could not go on.

We finished the pulling part with towel pull-ups. Here I experienced something rare: I was physically unable to get a grip on the towel – my grip strength was so fatigued that I barely could hold myself onto it. We really did everything we could to give our very last piece of power (with the exception of Peter who somehow seems to have too much strength ).

Metabolic Conditioning

Leg work is predestined to act as metabolic conditioning part of the workout. There are no exercises which challenge the cardiovascular system more than leg-centric ones: Squats, burpees, lunges, deadlifts and the like.

We did three rounds of:

• 10 + 10 Swings 16 kg (unilateral or bilateral, even double kettlebell if possible)
• 10 + 10 High Pulls (same here)
• 10 Squats (double kettlebell, with the exception of Jozy)
• approx. 200 Meter running (double that distance for the last round)

The waiting queue was a bit of a hindrance for this workout – if we were to do this in a consecutive manner, it would have gone beyond our capabilities to perform further – running for distance after leg work is tremendously fatiguing, if bearable at all.

Post-Fatigue

As we were starting to feel cold, we kept the third part sweet and short. We again did three rounds of:

• 5 + 5 Military Press 16 kg
• 5 Dips on the Jungle Gym (substituted with static holds or high-rep push-ups)

Done! None of us were feeling like this was too light for a workout. It was exhausting and would have even been a killer if the metabolic conditioning hadn’t had the waiting times. Next time, we’re going to optimize queues (I should be capable of doing so, as a software engineer ).

Please excuse the horrific image quality. Blame the camera, not the photographer

Train on and stay strong!
Simon

This Friday, the CrassFit crew assembled again – but in severely diminished numbers. It boiled down to only me and Jozy doing the workout at last. The workout session was dominated by instruction work – I found myself in the rather new situation of being the trainer and motivator – normally Dominik’s role (too bad he was missing out as well). I learned a lot from the experience, nonetheless

As for the workout itself, the workload was a little less intense than the last few workouts. We were both not in prime physical condition so doing some ‘easy’ work came in handy.

After a warm-up – where I stole a lot of elements from the warm-up we normally do at my Aikido courses – we did the following:

Pre-Fatigue

3 rounds of

• 5 + 5 Front Squat
• 5 Sumo Deadlift High-Pull
• 5 + 5 Sots Press

I all too soon found out that the exercises were uneven in workload. While the squats (Jozy used 8 kg, I used 24 kg) were relatively hard to do, the High-Pull was too easy (me using 24 kg, Jozy 16) – five Repetitions were quite a joke, twenty would have been better. In hindsight, doing the exercise unilateral would have been an appropiate solution to the problem. The Sots Press was too hard to manage in most cases (Jozy used 8 kg, I used 16 kg), so I supplemented them with regular Military Presses.

Metabolic Conditioning

Clean – Military Press – Squat performed in a ladder-style workout:

Round 1: 1 complex left – 1 complex right – rest
Round 2: Round 1 + 2 complexes left + 2 complexes right – rest
Round 3: Round 2 + 3 complexes left + 3 complexes right – rest
[...]

We did five rounds. The focus here lies with the grip – it is simply not allowed to let go of the Kettlebell while performing one round. Due to the rather light weight we both used (Jozy 8 kg, me 16 kg) we did not really break a sweat nor were we challenged with grip issues. This should normally be a lot harder than it actually was.

Post-Fatigue

For post-fatigue I stole the workout pattern from our great workout two weeks ago: Farmer’s walks. As I had not enough weight available, I tried to make things harder by choosing either rack walks or (partially) overhead walks as a substitute.

The finisher thereafter were three sets of towel pull-ups. I had a hard time squeezing out a lot of repetitions and so did Jozy – it simply is the most difficult variation of pull-ups, especially if you struggle doing the regular ones already.

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Conclusion: This workout simply wasn’t hard enough to be called a really ‘tough’ challenge. I have to think of other means to challenge ourselves for the next one

We were feeling a little cold and not too exhausted. Maybe we were too lazy ?

Train on and stay strong,
Simon