What motivates you?

I was so surprised to go a Google search and find absolutely nothing about motivation for personal growth, development and fitness, without typing in "gym motivation," which usually leads to a bunch of scantily clad pictures of beautiful ladies who are clearly working their fitness for a living. So once again, all roads lead to things other than what I had originally imagined.

But was there a message in that? Was there this little nugget of wisdom I had conveniently overlooked? Was that the motivation I needed to go back into my blog and inaugurate a phase of my life I once left behind for an entire year. The typepad flows as I return to that woman who had a penchant for writing and a fire to change the world. Where had she gone?

Other pathways lead me away, but now I'm through that tunnel and I am ready to bring it like the Phoenix of yore. I have rekindled what motivates me: my self love.

Now you might ask yourself how one can even look in the mirror and feel really good about herself even though the mirror sees the woman who seems to be up twenty pounds from last year, who lost her mojo for cardio, who stopped going as often, downed her own ability to train people, and yet sees this gorgeous creature who has this incredible metabolism....

and looks amazing for 43!

I found this pearl of wisdom embedded in my heart, finally...this deep place that couldn't be penetrated by any superficial physical goal, and yet knows that her inner beauty has yet to even be manifest in physical form. 

In short, I'm back, and I'm ready. I'm done with waiting for the right moment for my greatness to come onto the scene. I know it's now. May this motivate you to step into who you may truly choose to be.

Light lift, split shifts...

Here it is, the beginning of my holiday training the way I like to ride. I want to make the best use of my training time, so I am doubling up on workouts...

My boyfriend wanted to train me today and share with me the latest of what he has learned from his recent journey back into competing in a bodybuilding competition. He has been successfully acquiring gains from the intense regimen he has been on, and he wanted to share his quest. Oh lucky, lucky me.

Thing is, one training thing led to another and after about 30ish minutes, I was buttered toast. Here's what we did. I feel I should tell you that I did this in a fasted state,as I am excited about burning fat...those workouts always burn all my sugars out and get my body revving higher than I could in a well fueled state.

3 sets straight bar power cleans, about 15 reps, if I could get them all.
leg press warm-up set of 15
2 sets of slow burn presses with 4 second holds, heavy contraction at top

3 sets of slow burn hack squats, 20 reps

That afternoon I ate some whiting fish and cabbage with dried cranberries and mayo.
Little did I know the pain that was to come. I drank some coffee to prepare for the pain.

5pm workout consisted of heavy lower body work.
squat toss with ball
Lunges
Planks and ab work
Squat rotations

...and basically everything that could have hurt me more. ..thanks Michael. ...Grrrrrrrrr. :) 😈
Anyway I was going back for cardio and got intercepted by his desire to spend some quality time together. yeah after creaming me! 😁

The Face (and butt) Of My Winter Regimen.

My summer workouts consisted of lots of L exercises (L raise, L sits, quadruped exercises like TactFit, primal, kettlebell, low carbs and shorter workouts. Bulletproof coffee, grass fed beef and tuna was on the entire summer menu. Who knew??

My fall workouts turned into a lot of machine work, bar work, heavy lifts and more missed days due to studying. My food changed, returning some fruit and mostly haphazard mistakes to the table. I cut the beef and relied mostly on chicken and fish, with infrequent beef bouts. I thought something was really wrong and then thought it may have been due to extreme depletion, that my system and energy seemed out of balance. That's bound to happen with a lot of intense changes in need of solution. By summer's end I had a net loss of three pounds. Hmph.

But Winter, this is where it seems that I am once again finding balance...but mostly, just a ton of carbs. Well, it's not the amount of carbs the public eats, but it is definitely a larger amount of carbs and bears some recognition as it applies to the scale. I've returned to the cardio route, whereas in the past and up through the summer, I was convinced that carbs were the devil, MCT oil was God, and beef was an angel, just helping people heal from visions of (fat) sugar plum fairies dancing in their heads. But I think this was a needed, necessary change. Yes, I doubled up on need. More on my food and supplementation in my food blog, Chronicles of Food.

I'm on top squats, a peripheral heart action circuit, one set of about four or five kettlebell exercises, total body lift, (C T B S L...Chest, Triceps, back/biceps, shoulders and legs) and anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of cardio. Last week I got three hours of cardio in including the weekend. When you're trying to achieve bigger calorie outputs, this is what usually happens. There was a time when my pitter pattering heart would beat in funny, arrhythmic patterns, as my heart is prone to do...brachychardia created a need to reduce my cardio, and my life changed to one of lifting. However...it was never fun though, to see the scale change. I think I was in denial this whole time, as I wiled it away to muscle gain...and for the most part I think it is. But now, about five years later, I am all of about 14 pounds heavier while being on a regular workout regimen.

Okay, I'll share my weight. It's no secret anyway: I'm 5'7" and I weigh 177. I wear a size 12. I was at 174 for the longest. I was 160 from about 2006, which was a sizable jump from 149 and vegetarian, back when I stopped running marathons, and started building muscle. Then I stayed at about 164 for another five years, slowly sliding up until I hit 174 in 2010. Doctor said this is okay and normal, and to excuse my age. But I'm not okay with it, because it's so far off everything I said I would do. And I don't believe in age drastically reducing hormone function when you are this active.

The part  you truly need to understand about this is not the weight, but the fact that I WEAR THE SAME EXACT SIZE I DID AT 164. There was very little change from one weight to the next. 14 pounds on my body is the definition of extra muscle weight. So why am I excited to still lose? Because the new frontier is to get as lean as possible.

And well...now some of that weight is fat. I'm not gonna S-T-R-E-T-C-H the truth on that one. Herein lies the balance of enough movement, the damned clear credential, and the lovely bennies of butter and cream. This is to be discussed on another post...

Why am I taking so long to blog?

The answer is, I don't know why.

Really, it's ridiculous in all honesty. Here I am, this exercise maven, working out with obsessive consistency for years upon years, and I don't show any signs of stopping. But here's the thing. Sometimes I just simply stop professing to the world what block of exercise gunk I am currently chewing on. But I'm back, and I'll at least show writing consistency for the next month, as I take a few much needed weeks off for my winter break. The best part about it is that I will be having some true moments of relaxation: no homework, no student papers to grade, nothing! I'm so excited that I may decide to cook and do two workouts daily.

The real reason, or most likely, the reason that is truest to form, is that I've been both busy and befuddled by my results. When I took out my carbs, grains and fruit this summer, I just knew the pounds would drop off and disappear. When I realized that only three pounds had only truly moved, then that's when I knew I needed to do something different. When I went to my doctor and found that, according to her records, most of my vital signs and endocrine levels including my thyroid were registering as normal, I think I got a bit worn out and slowly reverted back to carbs, but also my tougher workouts. I did notice that my tough workouts were tougher with more exercise and less food, granted, especially since I wasn't used to it.

I went through an interesting workout shift where I once again had noticed my leaving out my kettles and lifting a lot of straight bar work, tons of heavy squats, multiple reps and high sets (like 100 weighted top squats, 10 a set). This truly made me a happy young woman. I also have been doing a lot more machines as well.

I guess it  really boils down to getting into a new groove that I can sink my teeth into and be proud of. That's what took me so long to blog. But now I'm back and ready to use the fine tooth comb to explore.

Change The Game: Ls and Ups workshop doldrums. Part two.

The tough thing about stopping my entire kettlebell program to work on Ls and pull-ups, was that I feared I'd lose progress on my bellwork intensity and endurance. Not only was it a tenuous new skill, it was necessary. How else could I expect to achieve the needed results when new muscle synergy had to come in to assist the work? Those muscles needed extra rest and I had no choice. Same muscle fatigue and failure repping happens when I sprint. Those crazy leg muscles give walking something to reconsider when it all boils down to it. I'm just a nub on the floor after a new muscle challenge. It's tedium, but necessary tedium...

So after the summer of drills, I settled back into a nice kettle and endurance lifting sandwich. What I hadn't expected, was that the L practice completely disappeared again, much to my dismay. At this point, they don't seem to be able to coexist together peacefully. Having said that, I realize that to some end, if I do not work on the muscles that ultimately are the weakest link to my overall strength, I may never get strong. Relying on building strength to get more strength is the ultimate test of whether you know or not why you're in the gym. Come to the gym, have a plan...but don't have the plan of lifting to build strength, with the strongest, most capable muscle groups your body knows. What good will come of it? More compensation on an already weak link?

Ultimately I think I just began to lose hope. I was cramping so much when practicing L sits that I felt I needed a muscle kinetic chain captain, like an innervation specialist, to give me a once over, hopefully fixing the muscles that enjoy cramping. That was one of those blind, uneducated hopes that it wasn't in fact the anatomical system that was disturbing my balance. At the same time, my back is much stronger and so are my legs. My L raises with both bent and straight legs have definitely improved. My hanging L raises hurt, but mostly due to the grip, though I became confused as to which was causing the greatest amount of pain after awhile. Or was the cramping due to my reduced carbs and heightened fake sweetener intake? I could never tell.

There is definitely some merit to doing what you are good at, but not at the cost of your overall fitness gains.

If there isn't a nice bit of relaxed tension and happy confusion, brought in by a little angry accomplishment, you're not at the gym. Maybe you're in the kitchen, or in bed even. After all, you may as well be, if you didn't come to the gym to get a little frustrated at how crazy hard that last exercise was.

Change My Game, part 1.

One can only do Kettlebells for so long, before one starts to notice a shift in the type of workout that is being done. What I'm saying is, while kettlebells are excellent for fat loss and incredible strength gains, each type of exercise deserves its own individual merit for what it does. We as exercise practitioners have this unbelievable work ethic in one area of fitness, and we usually let all other faculties crumble. That is so not fair to the body since we need them all.

I look at my body and I can tell that I'm strong. I can see muscle. People know I lift. But with all that functional strength, it needs somewhere to go. Am I a fast runner and sprinter? Only if I practice...and then my body comes down to meet the needs of speed. Do I look defined? Only when I go out of my way to diet down and traditionally strength train. Is my heart peppy? When I practice endurance and interval training, I feel right as rain. But can I support my own body weight? Well seeing as body weight strength is a quintessential way to understand if one is strong truly on ones own merit, it says a lot.

Well you can only imagine what I learned about myself next, and when my awareness came to it, I wondered why I would ever sell myself to anyone as a trainer. Yes I had a lapse in self belief for one moment, when I came to the sad realization that my pull ups were a failed, but mostly unpracticed notion, and that my Ls had never been practiced the way they needed to be...

I've got the "Oh No, What Have I Done" Blues.

It happened to me. I can barely walk.

Or when I do, I look like I need a cane, and fast. I didn't think I would be sore all at once, but it happened. The sprints finally snuck up. Now, I only did 11 by 50 to 100 meter dashes, with a slow kick and then I would speed up a quarter of the way in. I wasn't expecting such success, but I had it, and it was amazing.

So I warmed up with a couple laps and dove right in. I did not work the track but held my ground on the turf, straight away. 100 meters, walk back. 50 meters, walk back. The walk was my recovery time. The sprint was my workout time. The 11 times was my motivation to lean out, driven by pure hunger for change. But trust me, something in me didn't want to do any. But how sad for me, that I had not even one roadblock to my success. I guess the motivation to lean out was higher on the list. I'm feeling pretty stellar about that.

This is a 200 meter workout, but maybe you can glean some benefit.
http://www.builtlean.com/2011/09/19/interval-training-sprint-workout-for-fast-fat-loss/

So now I cannot walk, literally. Or really I'm exaggerating. It's really painful to move, and laugh. Please don't make me laugh. NOTHING could be that funny right now. I almost went to try a round of suspended TRX tucks, but the fact that I worried about getting stuck upside down from sheer agony, seemed like enough to just say no. And my solar plexus was screaming at me yesterday, as I attempted to demonstrate a Pilates rollover exercise, that some would say works the upper abs. Well the solar plexus is most definitely involved, and underdeveloped. Okay thanks body! I pretty much know now. I get the picture. Can you please stop holding my stomach hostage man? Thanks.

Here's some more info on sprinting you may be interested in. Or not. http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mohr102.htm

And here's a video clip of a dancing chicken. He's good. Okay. She. She's good. Never underestimate the power of a good chicken, or a good secondary cardio option. Please, do not call the fast food chicken restaurants.
Dancing Chicken

Code Name: BEASTIN'.

     All I could hear was the sound of my breath. As the first 5 or 6 pounds to the ground were delivered up to my throat, the sound of the children running, disintegrated into thin air. I kept my pace though, and gave up on the rubber hand swinging to and fro, exchanging it for a powerful pump in a straight, forward leaning pace that probably rocked my best time. It just didn't feel natural at first, but then I realized I could get farther with that simple adjustment.

Saturday I taught power jumps and proper squats.
Sunday I did some suspended rolling, pull ups, L hanging, L sits, and some dangerously different exercises.
There is no better way to say what happened to me, except for that my training partners and I have been BEASTIN' on our workouts. It's the only way to solicit unmitigated change. If you're working that hard, there is absolutely no way to fail. To work intensely hard, stands you out from your competition. You are a complete road warrior to your advancement, instead of a roadblock. You rule your body, not some box someone told you to jump in.

So...sprints monday...and Tuesday morning Capoeira and muay thai exercises. Worked the girls to death! They were happy to work through. It was gratifying. One thing I noticed is that you have to teach people how to beast. It's not an everyday action where you give into your fatigue. It's something where you pick up all your reserve energy and you push it through, all the way through. It's a window into tomorrow, the body you want. Simple as that, and there is nothing in this world that can change that.

     So if you think you are working hard though not seeing results, think again. Reevaluate your food and what you're doing and check to see if you are working to the level of your independent ability, or to frustration levels. Because frankly, if you aren't getting gassed and frustrated at how much harder you could have gone in that round, you didn't do all you could do. It's real simple.

New Year, New Pace.

With the holidays over, it's time to refocus your mind at least until Valentine's Day! That being said, you have about six good weeks in you to make the changes necessary to begin your new year goals. But now how many of you think you will last until March? April? Bikini season? The big wedding or birthday? It's awesome to set all of these goals, but the number one thing that can affect you for better or for worse, is the pace at which you apply yourself.

     Yes sure, it's important to hit it hard and get going in the new year, especially if you're feeling motivated to hit this stride running. So it's tough to want to discourage any forward progression when a person is saying to me "I'm going to do this 21 day exercise streak" or all this other cardio (which I have a moderately huge attitude about, but that's another conversation). I would never want to discourage anyone who wants to work out, period. But it really boils down to you finding a schedule you can stick with.

     If you begin with 21 days or a 6 day per week exercise program, it's great, sure. Or maybe you've signed up for a six week boot camp, or a ten DVD interval workout set, and you are so certain that this is the way to go. Maybe you've signed up for a marathon and this has encouraged you to get up with others and go for a run. Okay again I'm not going to say "no! Don't do that!" But if it is totally off-colored in relation to a realistic aspect of yourself that vehemently opposes to say, getting up in the morning or the act of running, you are setting yourself up for failure.

    Fitness is not weight loss. It's not health food. It's not bodybuilding. It's not boot camp.. It's not being a size two. And it's definitely not taking oogles of supplements and maybe drugs. Fitness is a mentality, an action, a promise, a discipline, a regimen, a routine, a creed, and sometimes a fanatical religion. Okay so try not to make it that, or jump into a group that offers that level of nonsense. Fitness is an entity, a beast of its own making...but even more than any of those things, it is a pace that you apply to something you hopefully enjoy performing with regularity and general vigor. It's not quite like work and yet it is via sweat and routine, but it needs to be enjoyable.

     So if you want your fitness to make the most of you, and actually use it to improve and enhance your life, you must find a pace that you can maintain for at least 8 months out of this year. Happy new year, and start really planning the pace that works for you.

Fitness is an exercise in Greatness.

     Too often, people come to me asking how they can lose 30 pounds or the last 10, and they begin to transfix their thoughts around these numbers, how many crunches they can do in a minute and what the best exercise is to tighten and lift their derrieres. What's the skinniest food with the least amount of calories that will still make me feel happy? How much weight can be lost to get me to a size two?

    It's been said, but bears repeating. You are exercising greatness whenever you put on those shoes and your resolve. Period. Every time you squat, walk faster, drink more water or lift a weight, you are placing a meditation on your best self and physically speaking an intention into existence whenever you go through the act of becoming that better you. Having said that, even though most of us fitness professionals always profess to have that goal in mind, the act of working through that goal must be challenging and fun to conquer.

     Do you like feeling stronger? Did you feel good knowing you ate a healthy meal? Did you enjoy spending time trying on a new fitness outfit? It's all about the expansion of greatness that grows inside you, everytime you stick to the plan and follow through.

      I remember after I had my baby, that moment of panic. I immediately replaced that with a welcoming solution in how I would begin my weight loss goal. After that moment I smiled during all of my workouts and felt so exceedingly proud at myself for achieving the goal which was to lift something, every day. In short, exercising your greatness, and knowing that you are better with every breath, step, squat, lift and veggie, is what makes you what you want.

Light Day Workout...And not at the gym.

     All you really need is a pair of good shoes and a kettlebell. That's it. Okay, you also need a little bit of motivation. But then that's it. I think most people think you have to go through some incredible strains to get your exercise needs met. But not really. You just need to want to do it, on some level of your being. If it takes a cup of Bulletproof coffee to get you going, so be it. Just make sure you get up and do it.

     The winter holiday season is always a long-awaited time for me. It signals the end of the year and all of its goings-on, but it also establishes a sense of comfort in knowing I can sit down with a hot cup of something, usually tea when I begin writing, and I compile a list of notes, thoughts and documentation of the work I do, from physical training to energy work. It tells of the entire body of work for the year. It also spells a moment or two in which I go into the dark night of the soul. In order to keep myself from digging too deep into the muck and mire, I usually stop myself and head out for some depression-relieving sunshine.

     I don't like to be cooped up in the gym everyday, but it is my sanctuary. I go in to get work done and I leave out. There is enough drama there to have me consider never going in, but I would not let anything stop me from attaining my fitness goals. In celebration of the fact that we have sunny skies and mostly clean, fresh air to breathe, a walk sounds good for the soul.

     And so I go, lacing up my shoes and heading out. On my path I run headlong into a park, where I grab some earth and deeply reground. At this point I consider finding a yoga class but realize I am the class. I perform my class then and there, complete with some hip openers, then I head back home. At home I grab my kettle and begin.

Here are some hip openers with Tara Stiles. This is pretty much what I do to open my hips. This should be a video of me, as soon as I shoot one. Motivation for 2014.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv_XK6xV7n0

Performed with a 25 pound kettlebell...
300 swings, 1 or 2 hand (not all at once, crazies)
3 sets of 10 cleans on each side
3 sets of 10 clean and presses
around the world (swing the kettle around your tree trunk stance of a body)
Lateral swings (10 each way, 1-2 sets)
60 swing squats (swing the bell as you squat. Powerful fun...)

...That's a long routine, but since I'm on vacation, I have a little more time on my hands (and feet).

The Three Hour Workout. Nonsensical but Awesome.

     I worked out for three hours yesterday. It started out innocently enough, with my desire to do a really bomb session. But I noticed it became longer and longer. It didn't even have to, but I ended up trying a number of new exercises that I love now and will incorporate into my next class session to keep it fresh. There's so much out there to experiment with that it's worth it to keep researching and trying new things. Your body will not regret the changes you put it through.

It began with a 20 minute run, a yoga session in the park, and a 30 walk back to the house...followed by Mike's class which I ended up teaching, because I found all these awesome Indian club exercises. I ran them through some new kettlebell progressions and offered a fancy wall hip stretch.

The Indian club exercises were effectively done with two five pound dumbbells. They reminded me of my old short flag exercises. The funny thing is that I had no idea how awesome these exercises were at strengthening my shoulders and upper back quadrant. I mean, of course I felt the pain of a long flag twirling practice, but it did not occur to me how rehabilitative these exercises prove to be as I progress through.

I'm learning a lot of the moves through this awesome survivalist/naturalist/nutrivore and trainer called Zenkahuna, and he works with Coach Tara. They both have pretty awesome channels and give a visual demonstration of a progression using a variety of tools, in this case, the Indian clubs.

This is free advertising for this guy. ...You're welcome. You're awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reWVCIcHyvU

Here's another video that continues to explain clubs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNOtpSjut3w

Anywho, after going through those changes, Zenkahuna also brings to me this very awesome set of practices that offer a flowing kettlebell sequence that definitely takes the practitioner into all planes of motion with the bells. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mfCfTXupF8&list=PLsEnBcCqmb639fNCsHbyXaQWFAqmL4Ub8

After having done all three sessions, the next day's planned workout...at least a walk, didn't happen. Had I been able to move, it may have happened.

Tonight's post-Vegas Fasting workout.

Who fasts while in Vegas??!?? ...I kind of did.

It wasn't really my intention. But I sort of just didn't eat. I don't know exactly why, but it seemed to be the thing to do. I mean after all, we weren't there to ruin our girlish and boyish figures, but instead to have fun. And right in the midst of learning to do a new thing with my fasting, was not the proper time to even come to Vegas. So I made the best of it. I also made a new decision to find a similar stride next time, as the food options at the Luxor were slim pickings.

The continuation of my food commentary is in Chronicles Of Food blog.

Apparently Vegas doesn't lift, bro. But at the same time, it does, if we wanted it that way. I just never seem to want to find the time to do a good lift while on vacation. And Michael insists that we don't travel with our kettles because of the weight and gas money on lugging it around. Besides, I don't know of many people who are willing to spend their hard-earned free time off work on weightlifting, even if it is at the core and lifeblood of our existence. But let's not get too crazy here, and allow ourselves to establish a vacation as exactly that.

Having said that, here's a 10 x 10 workout that I put together while reading an email from Pat Flynn, who speaks kettlebell-ese and biomechanical sense. He says that a basic lift program can be based on the 6 or so movements of the body that we need with some regularity. In this program we pull, grind, press, rotate, create locomotion, squat, lunge and use our abs in multifunction exercises. This about covers basic functional anatomy. From my NASM training I believe in working the entire body CTBSL style (chest, triceps, back, bicep, shoulders and legs) with multijoint exercises, throwing in some additional abdominal work for ego. Yoga works from the six ways the spine moves for greater daily health (forward, backward, sideways, transverse rotation on both sides.) And now finally kettlebells encourage greater metabolic conditioning, rehabilitation and mobility from all planes of motion, initially in the sagittal plane, and then beyond.

What I'm really trying to get to is two things. One, if you exercise in all planes of motion or six movements of the spine, whatever terminology best assists the explanation, you will find yourself doing an easily inhabitable and efficient workout routine, complete in minutes. ....Or, well, you get the idea.

10-2 hand swings
10-1 hand swings
10-push-ups
10-pull-ups
10 deadlifts
10-squats
10 lunges with rotation
10 squat thrusts for locomotion
10 kettle ups (I call it a get up sit up) Or a bar up with the body bar.

....It was a nasty, gnarly climb to the finish, but we got our 300 reps and well quite frankly, if you want to do some crazy awesome and challenging metabolic workouts for a while that get you nice cardio surge, follow this plan. It's good.

The Bestest Students Turned Workout Buddies In The World!!!

Well it just so happens that I have had the beautiful joy of training two lovely ladies who have stayed very devoted to me throughout the course of my teaching at World Gym, and it has been an amazing adventure to see them grow as much as they have. I felt like shouting out to the best gym buddies I've ever had. They have been hard working, motivated and consistent with their workouts to the point of such deep loyalty, that I can see this sisterhood continuing for a long time. Not only that, their physiques have changed so dramatically that past pictures of when they started with me, don't even compare! They had singlehandedly kept my class open all these years and what a wonderful blessing they've been.

Jessy was looking for a different kind of fitness, one that didn't keep her in the gym all night, because it wasn't her first choice for after work entertainment! She also didn't really want to be bothered with me pushing to make her do one more squat. It was just the last thing she wanted to do. And then it happened: the gym bug bit her hard, and she blossomed into this woman who ventured out onto the floor with us. Once she did that, within the space of a year, she was lifting just about as much as we were!! What a shock to our systems to see such dramatic and impressive strength gains in such a short time! But she did it, her discipline and resilience grew, and she is better than ever.

Kelly had weight to lose. When she came back into the gym, she was so energetic and ready to move! But diet and exercise had previously failed her, and she was looking for a change that would stick. With only a little convincing and a lot of self determination, Kelly turned her fitness gains around with warp speed and precision! Almost two years had passed. Kelly had lost quite a bit of weight, but the girls were able to handle their workout well now. So I dragged Kelly first onto the workout floor for heavy lifts, then Jessy. One by one, they came in for their bruising! Kelly to this day has lost over 65 pounds, an incredible accomplishment! She is one of my biggest supporters, and along with Jessy, intensely believes in the power of what we can do as a Smash Team, wrecking the floor with our hardwork, resilience and discipline. We're also kind of loud on the gym floor. It's only a further testament to how fun lifting can actually be with the right team!

I was also looking for a different angle on my fitness. During the time I started teaching there, I met Michael, and we began dating and swapping workouts. He was a big motivator behind my finding kettlebells to be my main source of workout nourishment anymore. The dynamic intensity of kettlebells sold me, and I passionately pursued the education needed to teach the girls. So in a way, we grew up together all of us, on the bells. Loving the change it brought to my body, mind and spirit, I got my first certification in kettlebell training and was super excited that I was one of the few selected for my certification! Now I lift heavier than ever, and my body is really showing the progress and determination I have towards my goal of looking somewhere between a goddess and a fitness competitor.

Teaching these two were the most valuable things that could have happened to our fitness, all three of us! When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we notice what an incredible impact we've made on each others' lives, and I couldn't be more grateful (or fitter) for this moment.

The Great Destroyer of Kelly and Connie.

Wow.

I realize I haven't written in my exercise blog in a long while, but it does not mean to say that I haven't been creating some killer workout combinations. So far my Smash wrecking team has gotten into lots of troubles with a kettle. But we've also been experimenting with some primal workouts, handstands and a little bit of yoga madness. I keep forgetting to incorporate more yoga into the workout, but for all the many other ideas I had for that same session. Sometimes I like to call myself over-ambitious.

Kelly, Jessy and I have been getting into the gym hardcore style as usual but got a little bit soft for a couple of weeks due to some crazy scheduling. I was running back to back in the weeks before and after Halloween, then my birthday. It was a lot of fun let me tell you, including the teaching of a new series of dance classes, but I keep changing my tune on what I want to continue teaching. Ultimately I like my freedom outside of the 8 hour academic gig, and that is what probably keeps me from locking up all my evenings anymore. I don't like it when too many activities get in the way of my lifting. Nothing should come between me and my lifting schedule.

I also noticed that, with the heavy schedule of the last few weeks, I did not have enough to muster a heavy lift, so I did more maintenance lifts, due to excessive dancing! Now that I have more of that into balance, I have reintroduced smaller chunks of lift sessions, as I am also reading that I could very well be overtraining (as usual). I may have pushed my metabolic pedal one too many times, and I need to watch that, now that I seem to have things relatively under control.

I did an awesome 10 x 10 x 10 workout with Kelly on Sunday, the Great Destroyer on Monday, and a 10 set, 210 rep leg press session. The workouts have been daily but shorter. I may actually take a day off of the gym today (which is wednesday), and do a 10 minute long cycle with a 25 lb. kettlebell.

Sunday's 10 x 10 x 10: Kelly and I performed 10 reps of an exercise, followed by each additional exercise with no rest until the last exercise. You end up with 300 reps.

10-2 hand swings
10-1 hand swings
10-push-ups
10-squats
10-squat thrusts
10-lunge with rotation
10-pull-ups
10-weight-loaded ab exercises (we did this cool multi-move complex I made up with a 24 lb body bar. It's a little heavy for mere mortals.)

Monday's Great Destroyer of Kelly and Connie (two kettle complex)

10-double swings
10-snatches
10-squats
10-swing/clean/press
10-push-ups
10-rows

....Now try that three times!!! You won't like it. No one does.

Tuesday's Leg Press Complex of Doom

Set 1-3: 30 presses with 180 lbs
Set 4-6: 20-30 presses with 270 lbs
Set 7-9: 15-20 presses with 430 lbs

...Nobody does it better...and no one walks better...than after the last three days. I'm almost thinking that, even if I do feel up to the challenge, I should take this day as one of rest, because Thursday's gonna hurt. I'm just saying.

Who Invented Sunday workouts?? Not this girl.

And then there were two hours of what was a normally relaxing Sunday afternoon.

Let's see if I can remember what kettle Hell I put Kelly and I through....

We warmed up with a long set of

10 swings, 5 cleans, 5 clean and press. Switch sides.
12 front racked squats (6 each side).
5 shoulder presses each side, then 7 forward leans each side.
12 front racked squats.
Around the world (slingshot) 20 times each side.
Alternate it 10 times each side. (push it back in the opposite direction, bring it tummy level. This one hurts.)
7 high pulls each side.

We threw one minute plank test in for entertainment, a total of three minutes of hardstyle planking, as my certification would call it.

...And that was the first set without any breaks.

Next set to follow two minutes later: the snatch prep.

1 swing, 1 high pull, 1 snatch (3 sets), pass it to the next side.
Then, 5 continuous snatches and pass to the next side.

Rest.

...then I decided to take us through a one minute snatch test on each side, with positive and negative snatch movement intact, no racking. We did a total of 21 snatches on each side with no rest and in 51 seconds. We started to give out right around that 45 second mark. It was grueling, but I could see us training into higher numbers with our performance. I hadn't even considered nitpicking form today. It was more about pulling in high numbers. I'll correct form in tomorrow night's session.

Next was one arm, one leg kettle planking practice, correcting form through hip placement.
We kind of wanted to kill each other by this point, but we pressed on. I had a whole second total body program to run, and run it we did. When I run the floor I follow my NASM cert guidelines, bringing the worlds of both my HKC and NASM certs together in one grueling session:

CTBSL (chest, tricep, back, bicep, shoulders, legs).

Kettle chest press with 30 and 35 (12 reps and 2 sets)
Overhead tricep press (25 pounds)
kettle rows with 30 and 35
reverse flye with 25s
Gorilla curls with 25 and 30
deadlifts with 40 and 45

Okay so then the fun really began when we decided to jerk 40 and 45 3 times each side, much to our surprising success! Afterwards we racked two kettles and took a lap around the gym, adding in 5 squats. I think this finished us for sure at that point. Yeah. I just wanted to eat a house after that. I think I did...

Post workout drink: strawberry spinach walnut smoothie with date sugar and lemon juice

Later on, I consumed:

2 slices of Ezekiel bread with avocado mayo
Vegan Celebration Field roast, two slices
lots of water

About 3 hours later, I had a piece of wild caught snapper and a big bowl of sauteed green cabbage. I forgot to have my tomato with my fish. It has been my favorite latest quirky thing to do, almost as quirky as buying a sprouted grain bread you haven't touched in months, just because you made an avocado mayo that you can't find a marriage partner for. Grains and avocado 1, Connie 0.

June 1 Retrospective: The HKC Victory.

Of 30 participants, I made it.

The day was plenty grueling. The test consists of several major elements: the swing, the get up, and the goblet squat. The two instructors, Andrew Reade and Joe Chalakee, both senior RKC instructors, were excellent and gifted instructors, showing us a very promising finish to a rather grueling day of pushing the gamut, so to speak.

We started with an eloquently executed progression that began with the proper alignment for a dead lift. We learned the difference between the pull and the grind. (Pulls are great for metabolic conditioning and endurance, grinds good for resistance training and strength gains, lower body building.) Using sticks to keep the spine completely in alignment and the tailbone lower than the head, is an important step in attaining the 45 degree angles for training that need to be maintained during the exercises. We had a great time building the dead lift and then doing successive exercises with good mornings, dragging the kettle into dead swings and full 2-hand swings.

I had a very entertaining workout partner who had this absolutely gorgeous body, but was too stiff to perform the exercises with grace and fluidity...more proof that the perfect physique is not necessarily anatomically and functionally useful. It was also proof that most people improperly train their bodies, often missing out on the professional help that makes them safe and structurally sound. This staves off injury.

Quite possibly a million reps later, we learned a proper plank, which took me back to my early days of training where we almost clench the flutes and place our heels right next to each other, right and flowing with the natural curve of our spines, drawing everything in so tight that someone could have kicked me and I would have stayed solid. It was awesome....ly hard.

And now even more surprising was that I had been doing the get up a shadow off what it really is supposed to be, but was shown a kicksafe structure that withstood the test of any heavy force coming upon me...a triangular pyramid shape that holds strong, just like a building built on a triangular base. It made a lot more sense than what I was doing before.

Lunch came and went, but I couldn't eat too much because of the examination that was coming. They basically expected perfection, and they were going to get it.

But I was SOOOO SORE!! Oh wow, I don't think I had been fatigued like that since the marathon days...luckily for me, I restate that I was one of the 6 out of 30 who actually made it through. Everyone else had to send in a video of their corrections. Thank goodness I had been practicing.

Yoga is NOT just for stillness.

I know. Before I hear it for posting about something as slooooow as yoga, let me tell you something.

It's anything but...and yet it's stillness training.
(Because after all that difficult work, all you want to do is be still.)

I think the stillest thing about yoga, is that you have to sit and listen for your breath. You also have to find the patience to take in all those deep breaths and patterns...most importantly you have to deal with the energy that builds and releases around this practice. But once you've established that, you begin the physical practice.

A strong yogic practice that I conduct begins with pranayama and meditation. The prana, or breath, is the energy we use to live. If not established, we will suffer and die. Well, eventually, not immediately. But if we aren't breathing, we are definitely running down our experience of life. We are taking in less of life than we truly need, and eventually begin to feel fatigue, illness or disease filling the body. So we need to breathe.

Next,  the physical practice warms and lifts and builds the bodily processes until there is a strong flow of energy towards the middle of the practice session. Once you get through those first few sun salutations, the body begins to feel really open and fresh. You are wringing out the tissues, building synovial fluid in the joints, and in combination with the breathing, building a sense of ease in the body. It opens the fascia and connective tissues in order to release emotional and physiological energy and information that gets stored in the tissues. You may feel a deep sense of release, pain, memory or simple relief come about as a result of practice. You may even feel sad, angry or tired, depending on your experience.

At this point, when I'm teaching, after the body is relaxed, I give you balance postures, open the heart, the hips and I turn you upside down, to gain new perspective. After which, relaxation sets in and hopefully a deep sense of peace is felt.

If you do enough sun salutations, from the western perspective and way of life, it will rock you into stillness, which is the ultimate goal of yoga. This is so much so, that when you spend time in this yogic state, you will find yourself being able to meditate more and more....

If not, keep practicing...

The moments that take your breath away.

Man, I could list a bunch of moments that have taken my breath away.

...Kai, my son, telling me that he has found his calling, and wants to draw for a living.
...My boyfriend Michael calling me on the phone. The phone!! That is magical, and unheard of.
...Seeing myself for the first time as super strong and lean, looking more and more like I lift, bro.
...Jessy lifting a 35 and 40 over her head, half pint...and Kelly doing the same, though I expect it of her.

...Sina my close friend (who doesn't have any besties) laughing her head off and smiling. What a joy.
...Valerie, one of my besties who will let me call her that, finishing my logo. I love it.
...Going to HKC and being 1 of the 6 that passed, out of 30.
...Being able to work out for 2 and 3 hours at a time without so much as passing out.

...The magic of receiving whenever I ask the Universe for something.
...Seeing how magnificently smart and handsome my son is.
...Becoming more clear about my life purpose, and getting work done around it.
....Being more productive.

...Finding more love for my animal brethren.
...Going to bed at night!!
...Establishing a regular cooking habit, and cooking for the family without complaints.
...Unconditionally loving my man and my son. Seriously. Never thought I'd get there.
...Establishing a regular schedule to work out with frequency.

...Building a business out of my passion for fitness and health.
...Finishing a health coaching program and learning a ton around it.
...Stacking up many goals and meeting them.

And how could I leave out this moment of breathlessness, where my friend Madlen (whom I would consider a bestie) daringly jumped in a car with me to Vegas, partnered up in business development crime, and just decided to share her incredible photography and do headshots that came out better than I could ever have hoped for.

But the moment that takes my breath away the most, is how many people truly appreciate me and let me know this with regularity. I can't thank them enough.

Pulling and Grinding 40s.

I cannot wait until we build our own gym.

If only for the purpose of holding the most awesome classes ever, and having a huge set of kettlebells, then so be it. I know what I have to do tonight: dream. Since I have my HKC certification, and I am planning my RKC certification, I have to be ready for this moment, and I mean completely ready. I need to put my information on my website and make building my client base a priority, one that has already been in full effect. Gotta take it to the next level.

So, I'm in the gym right? And I am suddenly inspired by one of the videos I have seen from one of my favorite guys I subscribe to, Pat Flynn. How do you pave a way in this market? You get yourself qualified and put yourself on blast. Good blast. So anyway I'm looking at all these videos. And while I don't subscribe to every move I see, some of them really make great sense. I take the ones that seem the most fun, interesting and challenging to perform.

So I'm watching this pretty cool progression, and I know there is a systematic way at which you are to attack the scenario, but I decide to do it my way.

So I get 5 bells: 25, 30, 35, 40, 45.

I begin with two swings, one clean, 2 front squats, and one thruster, all left hand, 25 pounds.
Next, I go up to 30 and with my right hand, same thing, all repeated.
And so on.

I did the same with double swings (swing clean press combo), high pulls (3 reps each side up and down the chain) and single and double snatches. Let me just say that it was a freaking tough set to pull, but we did it. Even my little one, who's become super strong with her lifts. Jessy is crazy strong! I am proud to be training her. Hopefully she remembers me after she wins her first kettlebell meet.