Charm City Kettlebells Week In Review

Charm City Kettlebells had a great week. Some great private sessions with clients and I continue my own quest to develop my strength and conditioning. We also had a Charm City Kettlebell Meet Up yesterday at Towson High School. Please email me at sandysommer@charmcitykettlebells.com if you'd like to join us for the next one sometime in August. We had tons of fun and I had a chance to introduce the kettlebell to a few newbies and give some insight to some veterans.

As you probably are aware, kettlebells are my preferred mode of strength and conditioning. Recently I finished the Viking Warrior Conditioning Conditioning Cycle and am deeply immersed in a new raw strength cycle that Marty Gallagher put together for me. Marty is one of the most respected minds in the world of strength training and Pavel Tsatsouline has mentioned Marty as one of his mentors.

My current training is a blissful marriage of my take on Enter The Kettlebell, Power To The People and Marty Gallagher. The union lasts until October 2, 2009 and at that point I will take a week off and then attack the Viking Warrior Program again.

Here's what my training looked like for the week.

Monday I weighed in at 194 pounds on the dot. Since I commenced my current program 6 weeks ago I have added 10.8 pounds of body weight. I'm as lean as I was when this started on June 1, 2009. Around May 15, 2009 I weighed 181.1 and was 11 % body fat. I will test again in mid August but I think I am around the same body tissue ratio.

Each day this week I started my workout with Turksih Get Ups. I find this is really one of the best compound movements to do in order to get the juices flowing and the joints properly lubed up.

Monday Wednesday and Saturday I did ETK. Lots of ladders and low reps for the clean and press. I am looking to build raw power. I should mention that with the added weight I haven't gotten much bigger. Just a lot denser and that is my goal. Density and not size. In addition, I rolled the dice and did the presribed one hand swings. My hip power is growing and growing.

Tuesday I did narrow stance conventional deadlifting. Mark Chaillet and Marty Gallagher tweaked my form slightly a few weeks ago but I was pretty solid having learned a lot from Doc Cheng in June and it is paying dividends as my pulls are improving mightily. I also did staright bar front squats and pull ups along with pistols.

Thursday I started with heavy loaded cleans with the next bigger bell above my pressing and did heavy snatches too. Then back to dead lifting.

Friday all I did my Pull ups.

I'm seeing steady improvement in all my lifts. Even the Pull ups though I've added mass. Very excited about this and will keep you posted.

Please email me any questions and be sure to leave your thougths and comments as well.

Sandy Sommer, RKC

Dead Lifting in Pennsylvania

After the Delaware Kettlebell Workshop, I added dead lifting to my work routine. Dr. Mark Cheng, RKC TL spent so much time on this primal movement at our seminar and I felt that I benefited so much from that investment that I went back and scoured Power To The People for every tidbit I could about "Hard Style" training in general and dead lifting in particular.

I felt very strongly that I needed to add these pulls to my program so I decided to consult with Marty Gallagher, author of The Purposeful Primitive, and my strength coach. Please keep in mind that the last time I did dead lifts would have been about 1986. Quite awhile ago and even though I trust what I learned with Doc Cheng I wanted to have a power lifting guy look at it too.

I talked to Marty about it and he said why don't you come up so I can take a look? I was a bit concerned when he casually mentioned that Mark Chaillet may be around to take a peek as well. I knew Chaillet's reputation as a dead lifter extraordinaire but until I went back and looked at Purposeful Primitive I had forgotten just how amazing his performance. Mark is the only person to conventionally dead lift over 800 pounds post-age 40. Uh oh I thought. (Actually I said this out loud) This is gonna suck to pull in front of these two. Marty assured me that all Chaillet would be looking at was my form. As a technician, Marty said, "Mark won't notice what's on the bar. Good I said because there won't be much to see:)

So I warm up a bit with some joint work and am feeling pretty self conscious. The analogy would be Tiger Woods helping me with golf. That's the quality of this pair. Marty puts a plate on each side and says "OK let's see." Right away there are corrections. Minor ones so I feel pretty good. A lot of it was being nervous. I made some quick adjustments and then added more poundage. Feeling better and they are liking my dead lifts. A few more adjustment. Ultimately they send me on my way with a narrower stance, slower hips, a more upright back and that was about it. These three corrections made a world of difference and will help me make Marty's secret predication come true about my ultimate dead lift max.

Sandy Sommer, RKC, Towson MD