Nugent Coaching Systems

Results:

How do you measure success?

• Do you use pant size?
• Change in weight
• Is it attaining a distance in a run or ride?

There are many ways to gauge your progress.  As a trainer I focus on performance and the ability to do something that wasn’t possible before.  In the picture above, Melissa is swinging a 20 kilogram (44 pound) kettlebell.  What the picture doesn’t tell you is that she is swinging this weight for the first time.

Just after finishing “The doubles” workout, Melissa recovered and we worked on more technique.  With just a few corrections she quickly moved from single arm swinging the 12kg bell, to double arm-swinging the 9kg bells, to moving to a two-handed, single bell swing with the 16kg bell, to finally making a breakthrough with the 20kg bell.

Strength is a skill.  Once you have the skill, you can begin to add intensity and work the metabolic pathways with greater success and deepen body composition changes.

What you’re seeing is the tipping point for Melissa.  While swinging a heavy bell is commendable, it more important that she has acquired the skill to swing heavy.  The metric here is simple.  Success can be measured by the capacity to do more work.  When you can do more work, you are fitter.

Way to rock it Melissa!

Today was the start of the noon kettlebell series in Campbell!

Topics covered:

• Swing
• Goblet Squat
• Clean
• Plank (with emphasis on tension)

Main workout:
15 minutes as many rounds as possible: (AMRAP)

• 10 Swings
• 5 Goblet squats
• 30 seconds of plank hold

Come out and join us!

Results:

Today’s morning WOD involved a 20kg Kettlebell and my re-entry into the ETK ROP, or “Enter the Kettlebell, Right of Passage” protocol.

Overhead pressing is one of those areas where I am decidedly weaker in and one that I want to develop. These kettlebell workouts are not necessarily part of the AdventureFitTraining.com workouts, nor are they directly related to any goal in support of adventure racing, but I do like them and whose to say that my racing performances won’t benefit from it?

Here’s the first Friday WOD:

3 Ladders:

• 1 rep right, 1 rep left
• 2 reps right, 2 reps left
• 3 reps right, 3 reps left

The notation I usually see for these kinds of rep schemes looks something like this:

3 x (1, 2, 3)

So if you see this in the future (I’ll try to remember to back link it) remember the above bulleted explanation.

More info on ETK can be found here:

Enter the Kettlebell!

I highly recommend this text if you are considering kettlebells as a training option.

San Jose RKC Weekend –

After a grueling weekend of learning, re-learning, applying, and re-applying techniques to put all of the RKC candidates onto the road of proficient, safe, and highly effective kettlebell training I almost didn’t want to look at a kettlebell.  Ever.  Again.

Pavel is a commanding dude.  Sticks to what he knows and gets it to hit home with just about anyone he trains.  I have to say, thinking back to the weekend after a week and a half, I’m ready to pick up the kettlebell again.  This is also happens to have coincided with my hands healing up.  Yep.  Ripped four callouses in the first 5 minutes of the weekend.

Format:

The format of the weekend started with a test.  One that I had mistakenly considered to be one of the hardest things I would have to do for the entire weekend (or ever).  Not true, there was much more than just a test and watching technique demos.  We were expected to learn.  Throughout the entire course of the weekend the candidates were being evaluated.  Start on one side of the kettlebell curve of proficiency (in my case, poor) to the other side (moderately better).

Here’s the snatch technique I only slightly improved on just before the RKC snatch test:

Friday:

• Snatch test: 5 minutes of 100 kettlebell snatches (for me it was a 24kg bell)
• Swings and Get-ups

Saturday:

• Cleans and Presses
• Snatches

Sunday:

• Technique Review and Testing
• Grad Workout

There was SO MUCH information that this outline is just a gloss-over.   Nothing was as simple as I thought it was going to be.  My swing took a lot of refinement and over the course of the weekend I imagine it looks better than when it started.

The biggest take-away for me was the coupling of performance excellence and safety.  There’s no reason why safety should be thrown out when you’re pushing yourself hard to achieve your goals.  Safety and performance do not have to be mutually exclusive.

The other big component for me was learning to detect and correct basic movement patterns in people through simple, effective techniques.  Learning to squat correctly is hard for a lot of people, if you can cue them successfully, you can prep them to be safe and enable them to push past performance barriers.  It’s a good feeling.

Team Whitley

The best thing about the whole experience was the people part.   There were approximately 6 teams of 10 to 12 people led by RKC Team leaders.  My team was lead by David Whitley of irontamer.com. Dry, cutting humor, to the point. There is no glossy with this dude. Either you have it… or you don’t, and here’s what you need to get there.  If you have an opportunity to train with this guy, TAKE IT!

RKC was a great weekend and if you are contemplating training anyone in kettlebells, stop here first: Dragon Door Kettlebells

Thanks to Jordan Vezina RKC II for the help on getting me to the door – I would have preferred to spend more time on my technique (my hands wouldn’t have been as destroyed from the snatch test!!)

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!