Kettlebell Cleans - loading up!

2nd round of 3 from todays training.  10 minutes total, 40 seconds on 20 seconds off  kettlebell cleans.  Starting with a small weight and working up to the biggest I can do reps with which is my 40 lb bell.  My clean tecnhique is still that of a beginner but I think it is still a solid video to train along with.  The key to the clean is to keep the upper arm tight to the body and to keep the bell as close to you as possible.

5 swings 5 squats - follow along kettlebell video

I've been recording my training - here's a 10 minute round of 5 swings followed by 5 squats.  Be careful on the transition not to throw your kettlebell!  Start with a very small weight, practice the transition, and then load it up! 

I dont always go vegetarian but when I do....

....I always buy Vega products to make sure I get the the large amount of protein I prefer to consume.

I advise vegetarian athletes regularly and the one major difficulty for them is getting enough high-quality complete protein without overloading on the carbohydrates that are a necessary part of food combining.   It gets even more difficult for vegans because they abstain from dairy and eggs.

I was turned on to Vega products after reading Brendan Fraziers book "Thrive".  It is a fanastic book that discusses nutrition from a high level triathletes point of view who also happens to be a vegan.   This book is one of my all-time favorite nutrition books.  Brendan coined the term "net-gain nutrition".  Google it!

Click the Vega links in my blog for more info on this line of vegan products.

Vegetarian nutrition for the strength athlete.

Here's an email I sent to a student interested in a vegetarian approach to losing bodyfat.   In this case the student wants to lose bodyfat and maintain/gain muscle.  Vegetarians have it pretty easy so long as they eat eggs and dairy.  Eggs are simply king of the protein universe and allowing whey protein drinks makes it so easy to get the days supply of protein.  Vegans can pull this off too but they will be challenged!  Vegans will strive to get proteins nearly every meal but will have to be careful not to overload on the carbs.  Here's the email:
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I strive to eat small meals and have some sort of protein in almost every meal.  I try to eat protein only early in the day because it helps curb the appetite and has a myriad of other benefits that I have experienced, ranging from cognitive to physical. . I try to get all of my carbs from fruits and veges. When it comes to weight loss foods like crackers, rice cakes, fake meatfoods,  low-fat chips and pretzels are the absolute worse things to eat.  I respect vegetarianism and as a yogi am also concerned with ethical treatment of life. I almost completely avoid factory farmed animals and spend the extra money to get ethically raised beasts. Here's that outline!

Meal #1 Protein + Veges
2-3 eggs any style + large portion of veges - I typically add bell peppers, onions and some sort of green such as baby spinach

Meal #2 Protein shake - some sort of whey protein is good + any kind of fruit you like. I prefer frozen strawberries/blueberries because of the convenience, taste and low calorie content.

Meal #3 Any low-sugar cereal you like + almond milk. No fruit! the cereal itself is already a carb so we'll save the fruit for later

Meal #4 A meal that combines 2 or more foods to create a perfect protein. Do you know the difference between complete and incomplete proteins? If not google it and we can talk about it later. Impotant stuff for vegetarian athletes. A good meal at this time would be rice and beans. I eat wild rice and not white/brown rice. IMO Brown rice is a scam and not that much different from white.

Meal 5 - Big Salad! All raw, as many ingredients as you can get together.  Go for different colors and at least 5 different veges.  Add as little dressing as you can tolerate!  You can use beans but be moderate with them because they are healthy but starchy. I always add nuts as they will help with the digestion of the greens.  Raw nuts are best but if it helps go 50% raw 50% roasted until you get used to raw :)

Meal 6 - This is the end of the day snack meal and will provide your muscles with enough sugar/glycogen for the next 12-24 hours depending on your activity level.   It can be all carbs if you want so long as you keep your portion moderate. I typically eat fruit (fresh or dried), sweet potatoes/yams, sometimes protein bars. Grace has apples and almond butter almost every night.  At least until they pulled almond butter from the shelves! 

 Meals 3, 4 and 5 can be eaten in a different order but meals 1,2 and 6 should be eaten at their proper times

Let me know if you have any questions. Please get information from different sources and find out what works for you:

P.S.  I also tend to plan cheat meals. Motivation has proven to be limited so we eat whatever we want 2-3 meals a week. 

Kettlebell Cleans

The original purpose of the kettlebell clean was to provide a safe way to get 1 or 2 kettlebells in position for overhead pressing.  A it turns out the kettlebell clean is a great stand alone exercise as well.  It may look like an arm exercise but similiar to the swing the arm acts only as a link to the posterior chain, basically the back of the body.  The clean is in fact a swing with a smaller arc.  When done properly the bell should not smash heavily the forearm but instead land lighlty on the back of the arm. It is important to keep a loose grip on the bell!  If you take a death-grip on it the bell will smash your arm every time.  Try to think of moving your hand around the bell as it moves though the arc you sent it on when you had it in the backswing.  You need to be experienced with the swing if you want to learn the clean, this is why all of my students start with the kettlebell swing before learning the clean.  Practice with a light weight first.  Clean technique and form with smaller bells will help you tremendously when you start pushing the bigger weights.

This 40 lb bell is the bell I hurt myself with recently lol.   It was my fault I got injured because I was overhead pressing this bell and doing turkish getups with it too.  It's too heavy of a weight for those exercises for me but I feel that I am ready to do some cleans with it.  I did 3 sets using the 26, 35 an 40 lb bell, 7-12 reps each arm with each bell for a total of 9 sets and probably about 150 cleans.  I also did about 50 double bell (26 lb bells) clean and presses which are quickly becoming one of my favorite exercises.

Snatches and why I dont eat oatmeal for breakfast

The upper back felt very good today!  You know I love putting a percentage on it so I would say I am about 88% at the moment.  I wanted to start to get some volume done today in my training and was happy to bang out 410 snatches with the 12 kg bell.  I did a set of 50, 60, 70, 80 , 100 and a final set of 50 with about  2 minutes rest in between rounds.   I believe I am a workout or 2 away from picking up my 16 kg bell on the regular :)

My diet is fucking ridiculous at the moment.  I have been weighing myself every other day and for a few weigh-ins in a row I was 157/158 which I believe is a little too light for me!  I have been eating whatever I want for the past few days and it has been fun :)   I had ham and egg on a bagel from Bagel Broker for breakfast.  I just finished off a killer burrito and a boatload of chips at Sharkeys on Cahuenga for lunch/dinner.  It looks like I'm gonna have cannabis cookies and yogurtland for dinner holy cow.

Obviously I do not recommend eating this way.  The biggest problem with it is how hard it can be to get back on the program when the time comes.  My trick to getting through the first day back eating clean is to have only coffee/almond milk early in the day and wait as long as I can to eat real food.  After a few days of loading up on carbs my appetite gets severely fucked up.  By fucked up I mean I can only muster up an appetite for carbs and find my typical proteins totally unappetizing.  To counteract this I basically fast until my body and mind are so hungry that they crave proteins.  Once I get that meal of eggs, bacon and veggies into my blood my cravings for sugars go away almost instantly!  I'm telling ya, that oatmeal you are eating for breakfast every day is setting you up for nutritional failure later in the day.  Instant oatmeal in particular is a terrible breakfast food.  Did you know that instant oatmeals glycemic index is 83?  Your body treats instant oatmeal the same way it does all white foods, almost exactly like sugar!   Seriously, you would be better off having a piece of pizza for breakfast.

 Protein for breakfast for lifetime of  easily being ripped!

Training day

Had a great day today training myself and a few students.   I am slowly breaking new students into my home studio and am pretty sure a few people will wake up sore tomorrow!  I enjoyed myself so much training with these motivated students. Contact me if you want to join one of my classes, they are only $12.50 per class and the results you get will knock your socks off! 

 I want to get back to blogging my workouts since it feels like I have been a little willy-nilly lately.
Today I did all 30 second on/30second off sets.

2 hand kettlebell swings - 16 kg bell 10 rounds
Snatches - 12 kg bell - 10 rounds
Clean and Press, 12 kg bell - 10 rounds

After finishing 30 minutes with the kettlebells I hiked the Stairs at Runyon, the easier path.  Planning on setting a personal record on the Ridge tomorrow!

First time I picked up the 16 kg bell since I injured my upper back about 6 weeks ago.  Let me tell you this was a horrible injury.  I heard a snap in my upper back that felt and sounded like a thick rubberband snapping.  6 weeks later I still have a little tightness in my upper back but feel at about 85, maybe even 90%.  I believe that the combination of  kettlebell rehab exercises and some great bodywork from my girlfriend Grace in getting me close to 100%.

I know I shouldnt of done this but I banged out some snatches with the 16 kg bell.  Hard to believe that not too long ago I snatched this bell 100x in 5 minutes.  I will do it again soon :)

My back is back! (almost)

 It has been almost 6 weeks since I tore a muscle in my upper back and I am happy to say I feel good today!  I seriously miss doing the clean and press but until today I felt like it was too dangerous to mess around with.  Looking forward to getting back to my bigger bells but very happy to throw around the 12 kg weights for  few sets :)