Nugent Coaching Systems

Putting the kids to sleep had me reading a little “Naked Warrior” tonight. No not to them, they had their stories.  I read them “Power to the People” and a little “Viking Warrior Conditioning”

Tonight the section I spent time in covered tension in three areas:

• Hands
• Abs
• Glutes

With those three dialed in, strength goes up.  A lot.

15 minutes later, with the kids asleep, I venture out to the living room.  First I do a few warm-up push-up reps.

Then I layout my stack of books to help with a reduced OAP(one-arm push-up) attempt.  (I’ll explain the technique later).

I do two scaled OAP’s on each side.

Next is the 5 sets of max handstand reps for time.  I decide on 1:10-1:15 for the rest interval.

My reps looked like this:

• 6
• 4
• 2
• 2
• 2

Or you can see  BTW entry.  It’s been a while since I’ve practiced these!

The key to getting these movements down, if you’re low in the upper-body strength category / endurance athlete such as myself, is mastering tension.  The Naked Warrior is a great book to do that.

At first it comes across simple, almost too simple.  But, as you know, the simple things usually have the most depth.  You just have to try applying it.

DROM – Dynamic Range of Motion

If you’ve been in any training session with me you have been through DROM during the warm-up.  Part ritual, part preventative maintenance, there’s more to meets the eye than a bunch of arm-waving and hip gyrations.

Here’s the DROM I usually do:

10 – 2o reps of each

• Head up-downs
• Ear to shoulders (keeping shoulders down)
• Head turns – right to left
• Shoulder circles forward
• Shoulder circles backward
• Back taps
• Hula-hoops (10 -20 hip circles each direction)
• Knee circles (feet together, knees together, hands above the knees)
• Ankle circles
• Wrist circles
• Shoulder dislocates
• Bayonets

Equipment needed:

• PVC or long closet dowel

Why do this?

One reason is to prime the nervous system for movement.  Kind of like turning on all the switches to a complicated piece of machinery.

The second reason is that you’re doing a pre-flight check of your body.  There are times where you are sore or tight, and you may not know it.  Marching through DROM will allow you to find it (usually) and prepare for the WOD (workout of the day).  If you find yourself tight in an area, you can spend a few more minutes doing mobility work on that section.

Some may think it’s about getting blood flow to the muscles, well maybe.  I don’t look at it that way, but I suppose it could be true.  The other oft-quoted reason is to get fluid in the joints and warm them up.  Sure.  Why not?

The primary reason I do DROM, is that it sets my body in motion for a good workout.  It’s largely ritual, but it’s an important part of the mental prep.  If done regularly, it becomes a familiar friend and chief information source for your muscular/nervous system well-being.

Try using DROM in your next warmup and let me know how it goes!

Happy Training!

-Brandon

Recommended Reading:   “Super Joints” By Pavel Tsatsouline

Let’s just say I am for it.

While it’s true that the standard for the CrossFit kettlebell swing is the overhead, often referred to as the “American Swing”, there is room for application of the neck level, “Russian Swing”.

What’s even more important is not that the RKC endorses the neck level swing, it’s the approach to strength training.  The RKC is a school of strength and it’s not necessarily about the kettlebell.  It just happens to be the tool of choice.  Several RKC’s have backgrounds and expertise in areas such as Olympic Lifting (Geoff Neupert), Track and Field (Dan John), strongman events (Jedd Johnson, David Whitley), among others.

The idea that it’s only swings and getup is mistaken.

How can CrossFit benefit from the RKC?

How can the RKC benefit from CrossFit?

What’s missing from CrossFit that the RKC has?  Well I am sure there are people that will fill me in on that.  I’ll say that the concept  of teaching tension hasn’t been discussed in enough detail in the Level One Seminars (I’ve been through two now).

What’s missing from the RKC that CrossFit has?  This is much harder to answer.  I’m not going to say I wish the RKC would use medicine ball cleans…  (that was a little joke).  The RKC has the concept of intensity.  It has strength covered.  Even endurance and VO2 max conditioning are there.  Body weight training and mobility work is there too.

From a program perspective both groups seek to do the simple things well.  Virtuosity right?  Do the common, uncommonly well.  Movement.

The biggest difference is in the execution of the training.  There are RKC’s that are less inclined to focus on movement and more about entertaining (fortunately I haven’t personally met one yet).  There are CrossFit trainers that are more about doing Clean and Jerks than executing constantly varied, high intensity, functional movement.  It happens.

With CrossFit, there is a trust that the system will right itself.   The thought is that bad trainers will simply cease to train, and if they injure someone, the customer (or the legal  system) will take the trainer out of circulation.

The RKC takes it more personally.  If you pass the RKC, you are representing the entire organization.  If you injure someone, it’s reflected not just on you, but on your methods, your approach to training and the RKC system.

Passing the RKC is much more difficult than passing the CrossFit Level One Trainer course.  Although I have to admit the exam that the Level one trainers have to pass is NOT easy.  I didn’t pass it the first time and decided that taking the Level One Course again after two years couldn’t hurt.  It was a good experience and I encourage more CF trainers to do the same.  It’s always a good jolt to the system!  I passed the exam on the second try

Here’s where I think a more combined approach of using RKC and CrossFit methods would be most beneficial:

• Train your body for success – don’t teach it to go to failure (unless you’re competing, and then all bets are off )
• Learn to use your hips – the kettlebell swing, once mastered will teach you that and you can apply it to other movements
• Learn tension – strength lifts will go up, bodyweight training (pistols, handstand pushups) will get easier…

The RKC is not a system that will likely integrate CrossFit methodology into its training core, rather, it’s a school of thought that can easily be absorbed by CrossFit as an approach to reach a wider athlete base.

Perhaps that’s the beauty of CrossFit is that it’s structured to learn and absorb from a wide variety of sources.  It may not become an RKC kind of organization, but it will learn from it.

This Thursday (June 23rd) will be my last Thursday as a group trainer at CrossFit San Jose.  I will still be available for private sessions and kettlebell skill clinics, but for now, my early mornings as a group trainer will be put on the backburner.

It’s time. The early morning hours (4am wake-up) were impacting other areas of my life (mostly due to lack of sleep).  After 2 1/2 years of being a group trainer at CrossFit San Jose, I am taking a break.  More time to get in trouble with other things

CFSJ is a great place to train. Kick-ass workouts, awesome people. Just know that I will be sleeping in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (YESS!!)

I feel fortunate for having the opportunity to work there, and I appreciate Danny and Lisa (the owners of CFSJ when I hired on) for taking a risk in hiring me as one of their trainers.

Seeing people transform never gets old.  CFSJ is a good place to see that.

Highlights:

• The one mile tire drag relay
• Rope climb, deadlift, sprint workouts
• The Art and Steve early morning show
• Working with all the other trainers and seeing different ways approaching the WOD problem.

I will post more to this as I think of it, but for now, this is it.

Cheers CFSJ!

Sometimes going heavier isn’t always the answer. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It depends on your goals and your capacity. In my case, I can shoulder a 122 lb stone, and a 94 lb stone with relative ease. However, I can get more accomplished with the lighter stone as I can move it faster in the same amount of time.

The graph above shows the power output of two identical workouts, one using heavier stone than the other. If my goal is always to produce high power output, I would use only the 94lb stone. That’s not always my goal though. I want to get stronger, and I don’t want my system getting used to using just one weight. So I used the 122 lb stone this time. There are a lot of ways to vary workouts (volume, intensity, weight…) This one has the same time constraints (5 minutes), and it’s traveling the same distance (10 feet – ground to shoulder, back to ground).

Both workouts have been recorded in beyondthewhiteboard (one of the best workout tracking sites I’ve ever used).

I’m guessing that now that I’ve pushed myself a bit with the heavier stone, I can go back to the 94 and try this again, possibly moving even faster and producing a better power number. At some point, there will be a wall where I can only move so fast (no matter what the weight) and there will be diminishing returns. So far, that hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s the workout as I captured it earlier this week:

The workout: 5 minutes. As many reps as possible. Ground to shoulder.

Simple.

So what stone should you be using? The answer is both, and others. Cycling between light, medium and heavy days has been a proven method for building strength and overall athletic capacity. In this case, I would get one more stone, a heavier one, and use that as a strength lift, (i.e. 5 sets of 5) and rest between sets. The lighter ones for more high-rep work.

Atlas stones are challenging and fun, and while I am nowhere near what a strongman competitor does (nor do I intend to be a strongman competitor), the strength building aspect of stone lifting cannot be denied. My deadlifts are going up, I am running faster and in general, my core strength is more solid than ever.

Which stone to use? The one in front of you!