I've gotten through all the prescribed ETK Program Minimum workouts with my 16 kg ...

but I'm not happy with where I am strength-wise. Probably this is because of my possibly ill-considered decision to cut calories in the interest of losing a bit of body fat. I'm down about 3 pounds since going "on plan" two weeks ago, which is good because it means my body is still responding to basically the same strategies that have always worked for me when I want to lose fat. On the other hand ... losing a pound and a half a week is fairly aggressive for someone my size, so it's not surprising I'm not performing as well during my workouts. I need to do some more strategic thinking while I am on the road, to make sure I am in as good condition as possible for the HKC in September.

In a way it kinda sucks that this is the very first one since it means I really have no idea what to expect. It's billed as an entry level workshop, with no previous kettlebell experience necessary, and to earn the HKC designation I will need to demonstrate competence but not necessarily perfection in three basic movement patterns: the swing, the goblet squat and the get-up. None of that sounds too terribly intimidating ... but I'd be a fool to take any of that at face value :) Not that I'm not a fool, but you know what I mean. I fully expect that it will be incredibly intense and I will probably find out I suck in all kinds of ways I know about, and some I don't.

I just hope they don't laugh at the tiny old lady in their midst, and tell me to go take a Pilates class instead.

(Note: I don't actually expect that to happen. I'm sure they will be very respectful when they tell me never to darken their door again.)

On the bright side my pointe work is looking really strong. I've finally found what are the perfect shoes for my feet, and it's making all the difference in the world. That, and all the kettlebell swings. I think I might be able to do an easy solo en pointe in December--say, the ballerina doll bit from Act 1 of the Nutcracker--and I haven't been that strong in, oh, 35 years or so :) It seems my body knows how to dance even when I'm in a calorie deficit. Well, duh. That's how most dancers do it.

Fitness role model du jour: Alicia Alonso

Alicia Alonso, the Cuban prima ballerina assoluta, was one of the great ballerinas of the 20th century, though she's not so well known in the US because after the revolution in Cuba she wasn't seen much in this country. Her most famous role was Giselle. Here are some clips of her dancing the same entrechat sequence from the second act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdLnWVvdD3k&feature=related

In the first of the clips, filmed in the early 60s, she was 43. In the last she was in her 70s. Still en pointe, still able to keep up with the music, still exquisite. Whenever I think about hanging up my pointe shoes, I remember Alicia Alonso and her incredible career of 50-plus years.

From a fitness standpoint, I think one of the keys to her amazing longevity as a dancer is that for a ballerina she had a very muscular build and feet that were more notable for their strength than their flexibility. This was actually pretty standard in the dance world pre-Balanchine ... and guess what? Those ballerinas had longer careers. These days if a female dancer is still with a company at age 40 it's pretty unusual, but that didn't use to be the case and I'm convinced it's largely because of the current craze for ballerinas with long, thin limbs and hyperextended joints. That kind of body just can't take the repetitive stress of dancing the way a stronger, better aligned body can.

Oh, and did I mention that Alicia Alonso was very nearly blind? That part boggles my mind even more than her age because I am so dependent on my eyesight when I dance. Try balancing on one leg with your eyes closed, and you'll see what I mean. Most people can't do it for more than a few seconds. You can? Great! Now try it on releve, with your working leg in back coupe. And if that's a piece of cake, get out your pointes and knock yourself out. Seriously, I can't even imagine how she did it.

This Week's Challenge

On Tuesday I will be leaving town, and won't be back until the following Tuesday. I expect my time to be pretty filled with family obligations, and I won't be able to bring any fitness equipment with me other than a resistance band. I don't think even TRX workouts will be feasible because we will be staying in some older houses that may not have sturdy enough doors to work as attachment points. Maintaining my conditioning will be difficult, and my hands won't thank me for spending so long away from my kettlebell, but I have no choice. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands toughened up again before the HKC at the end of the month, and hopefully I won't gain back too much of the weight I've lost.

My plan is to try to get in as many bodyweight circuit workouts as I can. Here's an example using Craig Ballantyne's Depletion Workout as a template:

Jump squats, 30 sec
Pushups, 30 sec.
Prisoner lunges, 30 sec.
1-leg deadlifts, 30 sec.
Prone runners, 30 sec.

Repeat as many times as possible in 20 minutes.

For strength, I figure this will be a great time to work on pistols, 1-arm pushups, plyo pushups, pike holds, and the like.

I may have an opportunity to visit a Wellness Center or some such thing, but I will be there mostly to assist my MIL, who is recovering from foot surgery and wants some exercises she can do to maintain her strength and cardiovascular conditioning until she is well enough to get back to her usual routine. That should be interesting.

Blogs of note

You may have noticed that I've got links posted to about 25 blogs. Please check them out when you have a minute or 5,000. Not to blow my own horn or anything, but I have really good taste when it comes to blogs, and if I think someone's posts are worth reading it's likely you will agree. Not all my blogger peeps are health and/or fitness professionals, but all share a passion for fitness and a dedication to getting results, and they're all pretty cool and interesting individuals with great things to say on a variety of topics.

Just as an example, if you've got an interest in grain-free living you'll definitely want to check out Bob Garon's latest post at the Synergy Kettlebell Training site. He lists a whole slew of grain free, Primal-friendly alternatives to bread, muffins, pasta, mashed potatoes, and so forth. These are not necessarily low calorie foods, and they certainly aren't low fat, but enjoyed in moderation it's hard to see how they wouldn't be a worthy addition to just about any eating plan. Most of us get way more starch than we need, and especially as we get older it's not doing us or our waistlines any favors. So why not try replacing your whole wheat toast with a wedge of wheat-free, gluten-free, EFA-rich flax bread?

Here's a wonderful-looking recipe for Golden Flax Bread from The Medicine Woman's Roots (http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=394):

Ingredients:

2/3 C flax meal
1/3 C almond meal (optional, but nice, other nut meals such as acorn can be substituted)
1 - 1.5 tsp Baking Powder
Salt to taste (I like more salt in my flax bread than I would in regular wheat bread)
appr 3 tsp olive oil or butter or unrefined coconut oil (depending on what kind of flavor you want)
2 eggs (1 egg will suffice, but 2 eggs holds together just a bit better)
water to texture desired (it makes a big difference, and the wetter it is, the harder it is to get it to cook all the way through, I go for minimal water needed to get things fluid enough to pour the batter)

Mix dry ingredients together well. Gently beat eggs together before adding (optional, but it blends better that way.

The recipe will work for a regular sized pie tin or small loaf pan. Double the recipe for a more normal sized bread loaf pan.Don’t forget to oil the pan well before pouring the batter in.

Get your oven nice and hot, about the temperature at which you would cook cornbread. Bake for appr. 20-25 minutes or until golden brown on top. Toothpick or butter knife should could out clean if you insert it into the center of the bread. Enjoy fresh out of the oven or at room temperature for a nice sandwich.

Variations:

For an herbed bread: add small chunks of sharp chedder cheese, a TB of crushed thyme, a Tsp of crushed sage, a tsp of oregano or beebalm, small handful of fresh chopped Rosemary, fresh ground black pepper to taste and maybe some coarse salt on top. You can even add some green onion, broccoli or nettles for extra panache if you like.

Sweet Bread: add cinnamon, honey, cardamom, vanilla and even some fresh fruit like sliced strawberries.

Pancakes: just make the batter thin enough to spread on a hot cast iron pan or griddle. Unsweetened applesauce is nice in the pancakes instead of water.

This is only one of the great recipes linked at Bob's site. So check it out if you like to cook, or eat, or you know someone who does.

Weight is moving, weights are not.

Not so much anyway.

For hormonal reasons I decided to make this week kind of a back-off week, as much as I can given that I'm on week 4 of the ETK program minimum. I've been doing my 5 minutes of get-ups and 12 minutes of swings, but nothing extra other than the stuff I always do (cycling, ballet). I think I'm about to where I can safely kick things back up a notch or two, though. Today I'd like to add some high pulls and snatches to my get-up workout, and I think tomorrow some cleans and presses might be a good addition to my swings.

My first 50-rep swing workout with the 16 kg kettlebell was brutal. I really had to concentrate to keep my low back from rounding as I fatigued. It was extremely helpful that I was working out in front of a mirror, because my proprioception was a little off for reasons that will be obvious to my female readers.

I had an interesting insight while I was doing my warm-up, again in front of the mirror. When I come down into a rock-bottom squat my pelvis wants to tuck under and my lumbar spine wants to round. If I stop a couple inches higher my form stays perfect, so that's what I need to be doing until I get more flexibility in the hamstrings. I think it's my hammies that are the issue, anyway. Mine are actually a good bit more flexible than most people's, but they're not as flexible as they could be.

Even though I haven't been exercising as much, the scale has been moving in the right direction thanks to the changes in my diet. My house is cleaner also. Actually, at this point it's clean enough that it doesn't take too long to maintain it at its current level of not-quite-squalor. (Let's face it, people: when I say I am by nature messier than the average bear, I mean it quite literally.) So I've been doing lots of needlepoint and cross-stitch. My favorite cross-stitch designs are from www.subversivecrossstitch.com (warning: do not click on the link if strong language offends you) but I also do the normal kind. I've even been known to create my own designs.

I should come up with one that has a kettlebell on it.

Why Reading Time Magazine Won't Make You Well-Informed

The idea that exercise doesn't facilitate weight loss is not new. Remember Bob Greene, Oprah's "trainer" way back when? He discouraged Oprah from performing resistance training as part of her weight loss routine on the theory that people who lift weights tend to eat more and gain weight instead of losing it. Plainly he was right: just look at Oprah's success in losing weight and keeping it off. Um, yeah.

I'm not even going to say mean things about John Cloud and his article, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin." I'm just going to quote from it.

As I write this, tomorrow is Tuesday, which is a cardio day. I'll spend five minutes warming up on the VersaClimber, a towering machine that requires you to move your arms and legs simultaneously. Then I'll do 30 minutes on a stair mill. On Wednesday a personal trainer will work me like a farm animal for an hour, sometimes to the point that I am dizzy — an abuse for which I pay as much as I spend on groceries in a week. Thursday is "body wedge" class, which involves another exercise contraption, this one a large foam wedge from which I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour. Friday will bring a 5.5-mile run, the extra half-mile my grueling expiation of any gastronomical indulgences during the week.

I have exercised like this — obsessively, a bit grimly — for years, but recently I began to wonder: Why am I doing this? .... One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and ... I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn't all the exercise wiping it out?

Right. If you read this blog regularly, you know that for fat loss resistance training is critical. Assuming that what Mr. Cloud does with his trainer on Wednesdays constitutes some form of resistance training, and assuming the same thing about his "body wedge class" on Thursdays, he evidently performs strength training twice a week. That's not terrible in itself, but Mr. Cloud is screwing up bigtime by doing his resistance training on consecutive days instead of putting a day in between so that his muscles have a chance to recover and get stronger. No wonder he's not seeing changes. If I were Mr Cloud's trainer I'd tell him to drop the Thursday class, do his run on that day instead, and give him a total body strength workout to perform on his own on Fridays if he didn't want to spring for a second weekly PT session.

I'd also point out to him that adding an extra half mile to his weekly run isn't going to expiate much in the way of gastronomical indulgence.

And, finally, I would ask him how long he's been on the same schedule, doing that same 30 minutes on the stairmill and that same 5.5 mile run. I would ask him when he last increased the resistance on the stairmill, or increased the speed and incline settings on the treadmill. Even a great fat loss routine, which Mr. Cloud's is not, is going to stop working after a while.

The problem is not that exercise won't make you thin. The problem is that the way Mr. Cloud exercises won't make him thin, particularly since by his own admission he's in the habit of rewarding himself with a blueberry bar after exercise. Not a great choice of post workout snack unless the blueberry bar happens to be low in fat, and have about a 4:1 ratio of good carbs to protein ... and somehow I don't think that's the kind of bar he's talking about. If it's the kind you buy at Starbucks it probably has at least as many calories as were burned during the workout, Not only that, but they're pretty much all empty calories with none of the nutrients needed for post workout recovery.

To support his argument that exercise is useless or even counterproductive for weight loss Mr. Cloud cites a study showing that women who exercised but did not diet lost no more weight over time than women who did not exercise. The reason the exercisers in the study did not lose more weight is that they were "compensators" who increased their calorie intake on days they exercised, either because they felt hungrier or believed they were entitled to a reward for their efforts.

Fine. But here's the thing: it's perfectly possible to exercise without eating more. Really, it is. People do it all the time. It may not always be easy, but if we're sufficiently motivated to lose weight we can manage to tolerate the mild hunger pangs we may sometimes feel when we're in a calorie deficit. If the goal of losing his gut fat were important to Mr. Cloud I have no doubt but that he could manage to suck it up and do his cardio without having a blueberry bar afterward.

If I can do it, so can he.

Hanging in there with the workouts ...

although I'm starting to notice I have a little less energy than usual. This could be due to where I am in my monthly cycle, or it could be because I'm eating less, or it could be a combination of the two.


I'm up to doing sets of 40 swings with the 16 kg kettlebell, with a minute of active recovery between sets. I can complete 6 sets in 12 minutes, so that's 240 swings total on the days I do swings. Terrifyingly, I think I am supposed to increase to 50 swings next time.


I usually combine my prescribed ETK workouts with a bit of something else. On Wednesday, for instance, I tried doing some clean & press ladders with the 16 kg. I actually made it through 2 3-rung ladders before I hit the wall on the press. That's significant, because a couple of weeks ago I couldn't press the 16 kg more than once on each side. After I hit my limit on the presses I switched to loaded cleans, sets of 5 on each side, 3 sets total. "Loading" a clean means creating as much tension and compression through your body as possible. Think of a tightly coiled spring--that's the feeling you want. Uncoil the spring and unbelievable energy is released, making the press possible. That's the theory, anyway.


On Thursday I just did my 5 minutes of Turkish get-ups. I also had 90 minutes of ballet to get through as well as a 45 minute cycling class.

On Friday I was feeling pretty wiped out, so took a complete rest day from exercise.


I didn't have a whole lot more energy today but wanted to get on with my kettlebell training anyway. As well as doing my 6 sets of 40 swings I did 5 sets of high pulls, 5 right and 5 left, and three sets of snatches, again 5 right and 5 left. The idea of doing sets of 10 per side boggles my mind, but if I do ladders I think I can work up to it pretty quickly.

My parents are visiting, and my dad wanted to know what Turkish get-ups and snatches are. So I demo'd. My dad immediately saw the usefulness of the get-up and wanted to give it a try, so I coached him through the stages with one of my flip-flops balanced on his knuckles. He did great on his right side but failed almost immediately on his left, which puzzled me until I remembered he has a massive scar on that side from when he had a cancerous kidney removed. The surgery was over 15 years ago but when your core musculature has sustained that kind of trauma you never recover from it fully. So actually it was pretty cool to figure that out, and I will give my dad some core exercises so he can get to work correcting the imbalance as much as possible.

This is why I am so excited that I will be attending the Dragon Door HKC certification workshop next month. I will come away with a much greater understanding of swings, TGUs and goblet squats, and a set of tools for teaching these powerful movements to my clients so they can get rid of their low back pain, their shoulder issues, and their achy knees once and for all. I just hope my own proficiency is adequate to earn me the certification! Oh well ... if it's not at least I will have had a tremendous learning experience and will know what I need to fix so I can do better the next time. And there will be a next time, and a next. My ultimate goal is the CK-FMS certification, which combines kettlebell training with Gray Cook's Functional Movement Screen, so that means becoming an RKC which I hope to do in 2010, ideally before I turn 48 :) Macho-man badass feats of strength and endurance are great fun, but they really are not what I am about. I mean, really, who cares that I can snatch a 12 kg kettlebell 200 times in 10 minutes? It's an accomplishment, but it's a sterile accomplishment. It doesn't do anything for anyone. It's not even particularly entertaining to watch. Nope, what motivates me is the prospect of being better able to help folks in their 60s and 70s get down on the floor so they can play with their grandkids.