Thursday, May 7, 2009

Progress in My Viking Strength Practice


I'm making great strides in my cardiovascular conditioning as well as my maximal strength in the Press, Pistol and Tactical Pull Up.

I do the Viking Warrior Strength Practice 6 days a week. I do each exercise twice each week. Once, low volume with near maximum weight and another high volume with sub maximal weight. I have seen big gains in a short amount of time.

Twice a week I do the Viking Warrior Conditioning as well. With another day of Turkish Get Ups thrown on a low volume day.

I haven't had any recovery issues and each workout is planned well in advance. The next workout is based off the one prior to it.

As an example, I'm using information from Marty Gallagher to do the low volume component of the workout. Once I get to 4 reps per side per set for 4 sets I move up. So I will be working with 2 16 kg kettlebells in my 1 hand next week on the low volume day of presses.Single-hand double kettlebell presses are an amazing tool. First of all they tell you the truth. You simply can't do them and not do them right. Drive a hip out and hello bell to head. Take your forearm off perpendicular, hello bell. If you didn't know what you were doing wrong before now you know:)

In addition, the bio mechanics of the movement are a bit different than a single whole kettlebell. The center of gravity changes with two bells. Try it with the larger bell on top of the smaller bell and you will see what I mean. You really must generate explosive power to move two bells. The sticking point is different as well. Give this a shot but remember to clean the bells safely using two hands. DON"T TRY IT WITH ONE HAND!

For the high volume work, I'm currently using the 20 kg kettlebell. I'm a workout or two away from moving up to the 24 kg kettlebell for this part of the practice. This week, my high volume session was 264 reps with the 20 kg bell. So I moved 5280 kgs. Not bad at all. That is the volume. On the low volume day it was around 900 kgs of volume. Quite a bit different. And that difference allows for recovery. Good sleep and proper fueling allow we do keep going.

I hope you find this helpful and please feel free to ask me any questions at all or feel free to comment.

I'll give some info about the pistols and Pull Ups another time. I'm excited to write about pistols as I've made significant progress lately.

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