I haven't lost interest in training.  I'm just not interested in writing about it anymore.  Thanks for everything!

All the best!


Scott

My wife was doing some spring cleaning during which she ran across something interesting.  A few pieces of "yellow cake" that the weapons inspectors must have missed.  It seems like a long time ago when I made all those heavy bells.  In reality it was only last year.  These days I don't have that kind of time.  It was fun while it lasted though.  This is a sample of what was inside. 



I've been slacking on the blog quite a bit too.  I completely missed the RFP third anniversary which is April 9.  Maybe next year I'll do something fun in observance.  Who knows.

Not to worry, I am not offering my services as an online trainer.  I barely have time to train myself anymore let alone train anyone else.  This is precisely why I became on online training client.  About a month ago I realized that training was going to take a back seat to starting a new job and i really didn't want to have to think about it too much.  This way I would get my marching orders and like a good little robot, I would simply carry out the task.  It is nice to not have to think about this stuff for a while.  The other bonus is the motivation that comes from knowing that you invested money in the process so if you want a return on the investment, you MUST do the work.  Finally I wanted some additional insight into kettlebell sport program design from the guys who invented it. 

Once I decided to move forward with this I contacted Valentin Egorov.  I chose Valentin because I had heard good things about him.  He is a girevoy sport competitor in the 60 kg weight class in Russia.  He has posted excellent numbers with the 32kg bells so if he can do that at such a light bodyweight it is likely that he knows a thing or two about program design and technique.  In addition his prices are quite reasonable compared to others. 

I finished my month yesterday and I have to say I really enjoyed it.  I definitely made some progress and the workouts were challenging but for the most part doable.  It was a nice mix of long cycle and traditional with some interesting assistance work thrown in.  I realize that I was previously neglecting certain things like hyperextensions and regular squats.  I enjoyed the variety.  Also in contrast to the AKC approach of long "money sets" there was a lot more use of shorter faster paced sets.  I was pleased to see that these did carry over well to longer sets so I guess I did learn a bit about rational program design in the process.  Valentin had me film some sets too.  His analysis of these sets though wasn't what I was hoping for.  Basically he told me they all looked good.  I'm not so sure.  If they looked good why aren't my snatch numbers better for instance.  My last snatch session for example was 3 min per side with 28kg.  I got 47 left 52 right.  I should be hitting about 60/60 in my opinion.  I guess I'll keep working at it.  I suspect there are certain nuances that one cannot readily pick up just from a poor quality youtube video. 

At the end of the day I was very happy with this training experience and I would not hesitate to recommend Valentin to anyone looking to be trained online.  You can click here for a link to his website.   You can reach him from there.  Setting up the training was simple and he is very responsive.  It appears that his English is fluent so communication was no problem. 

It appears that the Obama health care plan might pass today.  Keep your fingers crossed.  In light of this I felt this might be a good day to switch gears and talk about a healthy way to save money which you might not know about.  This tip pertains to the largest organ of the body which is the skin.  At RFP we are no strangers to offering metrosexual skin care advice.  Longtime readers may recall several posts on hand care.  Even still, it is a regular occurrence for people to stop me during the day to admire my hands and ask about my hand care regimen.  That said, I have no plans to return to my former life as a hand model and calls from the agency continue to go unanswered. 

Today I want to talk about shaving.  Shaving the male face in particular.  If you want to shave anywhere else be my guest but that is your business.  I have always had sensitive skin and I have had my share of razor burn.  I have most recently been using the Aveeno shave gel with fairly good results but there was something wrong with the last can I purchased.  It wasn't gellin, it was more like a gel foam mix which smelled like something I might use to clean a gun.  You could say it was rather industrial smelling.  I figured it was time for something new.  Remember how much I like new things!  I asked my wife to pick some new shaving cream up the next time she was at the grocery store.  I couldn't be bothered because I am so busy lifting kettlebells and testing new wrist wraps.  Anyway, she came home with some new brand of shaving gel called "Every Man Jack"  or something like that.  If it isn't a new brand its new to me anyway.  In a word, it sucked (wait that's two words).  It smelled like those ubiquitous aquatic colognes everyone is wearing and really was not conducive to a comfortable shave.  What to do, what to do?  Time to take it to the streets or at least the internets.  Whilst searching for the latest and greatest I ran across a radical idea.  An idea that was just crazy enough to work!  A mysterious compound that seemingly has a thousand uses.  Furthermore said mystery compound has been discussed on this very blog a while back as a supplement to combat cellular fatigue.  You guessed it, baking soda. 

Here is how it is done.  Wash your face with some nice warm water and hopefully soap.  Then keeping the face wet moisten the hands and sprinkle some baking soda on them.  You don't need a ton just about a silver dollar sized pile.  Make a paste and rub it on your face.  You will notice the gritty feeling immediately.  (Yes Ken, that is correct, it acts just like a Loofah to exfoliate the skin.)  Now using warm water rinse it all off.  It is important that you get it all off.  You will notice that your face feels slick.  Now shave.  After you are done, rinse the face with cold water and moithturize as needed.  That's it, you are done.  Spray on half a bottle of Tom Ford and put some gel in your hair, put on a shirt with skulls on it (don't forget to pop the collar if it has one) and hit the clubs dawg.

Why does this work (the baking soda I mean)?  Sodium bicarb is a softener.  It will soften the hair as it will soften water.  Women can use the same principle for shaving their legs and can even add the baking soda to bath water. 
The upside of this is that the stuff is dirt cheap and it also makes the blade last longer.  That is a big bonus because these things are pricey.  I currently use the Gillette Fusion which has five blades.  I will keep using it until they come out with one with six blades.  I fully expect that during my lifetime (if all goes well and Obama is limited to one term) they will come out with a razor with ten blades called the Gillette Full Metal Jacket.  If Obama is a two termer this won't happen because China will have a lock on all the commodities in the world including steel. 

The only potential downside I can think of stems from the absence of the visual marker that cream or gel provides so theoretically it is easier to miss a spot.  Of course the solution is to wait till the hair is a bit longer and thus shave less frequently.  Of course, less frequent shaving has a salutory effect on the life of the blade so I tend to look at it as another upside to the technique.

I received a nice surprise at the Arnold.  I ran into Steven from the Ice Chamber and he handed me a set of wrist wraps and told me to try them out during the competition.  I am always up for trying out new products.  My zeal for all things new is so bad that my wife makes fun of me about it on a regular basis.  For example if there is a new flavor of toothpaste that I haven't tried before, in the cart it goes.  So it was a no brainer, Steve had something for me to try out so that's what I did.  He also gave me a nice Ice Chamber T-shirt.  Thanks man!  Here I am wearing both. 




Let's talk about the wraps.  Wrist wraps have become synonymous with kettlebell sport thanks to Valery Fedorenko's ritualistic wrapping of the forearms.  This ritual is only rivaled by the sacred chalking of the kettlebell handles.  I am willing to wager that someone has put up a bell chalking tutorial on youtube.  Let's check.  Sho' Nuff there are at least 3.  In case you are bored here they are www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kettlebell+chalk&search_type=&aq=f  Cut and paste that bad boy into your browser address box or whatever that thing you put URLs into is called and you'll be all set.  Of course there is also a Youtube tutorial on how to properly wrap the wrists for kettlebell training.  It is quite riveting and can be viewed at this address:

Last weekend the Ice Chamber added two more Masters of Sport to the list.  Congratulations to Sara and Surya who both achieved this ranking with the WKC in women's long cycle.  This is a remarkable achievement both for these talented athletes and for the Ice Chamber team.  You will be hard pressed to find a more decorated team anywhere, particularly in the USA where this sport is in its infancy.  There are four ladies on the team.  Jess was the first female to achieve Master of Sport in long cycle and Maya has achieved CMS (Candidate for Master of Sport) ranking in both traditional and long cycle.  Sharing in the success of these athletes is their coach Steven Khuong. 

I first met Steven and his team about two years ago at Ken Blackburn's meet in Flint Michigan.  I was immediately struck by the excellent technique his athletes displayed.  All the reps looked the same and they were sharp and quick.  At the time they had only been training kettlebells for a few months!  I was shocked.  Even more impressive is the fact that they are continually improving.  In addition to all of that, the Ice Chamber has done a lot to promote kettlebell sport.  I suppose it doesn't hurt that the team is comprised of attractive young ladies.  The general public, I believe, wants the fitness look  and that is what drives the majority to train.  Thus the look goes a long way.  It is really much more than that though.  Because of their ability to relate to people,create excitement, and ultimately deliver the goods,
the Ice Chamber has really put the sport on the map.  They have been featured on ABC's View From the Bay  and in the Wall Street Journal for example.  Not too shabby. 

Like I said, lots to talk about.   I want to bring up the latest endeavor from the American Kettlebell Club.  They recently introduced a new spin on kettlebell lifting which they refer to as " Strongman ".  The rules of this game are pretty simple.  It is one arm jerks and one arm cleans.  Only one hand switch is permitted.  The lifter gets 4 minutes for each drill and jerks are done first followed by a rest period of at least 30 min and then cleans.  There is a ranking system.  For men it starts at 32kg and goes up in 4kg increments all the way to 48kg, for women it starts at 20kg and goes up to 36kg.  To make rank you need to do 24 reps per side per event. That means for example for a female competitor would achieve the highest rank if she could do 24/24 jerks and 24/24 cleans with the 36kg bell within the 4 minutes allotted for each event.  There are no weight classes so its pretty simple. Score is based on combined totals of lowest arm total for each event, for example if I did 15 jerks with my right and 2 with my left and then 10 cleans with my left and 20 with my right my total score would be 12.  Even though you can move up in rank it doesn't mean you'll win a contest.  At the end of the day its all about reps.  These events make for some interesting contests.  Even at the debut there was a nice contest going.  The 48kg Battle of the Andrews may indeed become the stuff of legend:  Andrew Durniat vs Andy Fitting.  After all the smoke cleared Andy Fitting won with 36/36 jerks and 37/37 cleans for a total of 73.  Andrew Durniat had a score of 70.  I am willing to bet this friendly rivalry isn't over.  These guys are going to continue to train and compete.  In addition the event was well received by both the kettlebell and strongman communities so I fully expect some other big strong guys are gonna roll up on this.  Attention John Buckley, Ken Blackburn, Mike Mahler and anyone who has one of my monster bells.  I think those may be very useful in training for this stuff. I suspect soon there may be a need to increase the weights in this game as the Andrews are already making the 48kg bell look too easy!

I see several advantages to this type of event.  First it is one bell so folks aren't as limited by flexibility.  Second heavy weights are used and everybody likes displays of strength. Third the sets are shorter so it is more fun for spectators.  Watching someone suffer for ten minutes as in traditional kettlebell sport seems a little less appealing to some for whatever reason.  I also think this is a great way to get more folks into kettlebells.  I haven't seen any youtube footage of the battle yet but I suspect it will be forthcoming soon.  Not to worry.  For your viewing pleasure here is Andy Fitting setting a world record with the heaviest official kettlebell in the world.  I wonder where that came from? ; ).  72kg 19Jerks!  This is insane.  This bell has to be experienced in person before you can get your head around how heavy it feels.  It wants to crush you.  If you are in the neighborhood stop by and you can see the crown bell I have in my basement.  I won't even go near that gravity hog.  It is practically glued to the ground. 

Way to go Andy.  Funny thing is the heaviest bell Andy has is the 52kg Buffalo bell I made for him.  It must be something in the water there.

Yes indeed, I made it to the Arnold for the second year in a row.  The "haunted house of fitness" as Ken Blackburn called it last year, was bigger and badder than ever.  I should have set up a booth selling breast augmentation revisions and/or  BiPAP/CPAP machines.  I would have had lots of customers.  As usual I felt like I just didn't fit in, I am just too small and I wasn't wearing a shirt with skulls on it.  No matter, I was there for the kettlebells. 

The IKFF hosted a meet at this years convention and it was very well done.  I have to thank Ken Blackburn and his team for doing an outstanding job of organizing this.  Rebecca Cate did a superb  job of organizing the judges and making sure the flights were all on time.  A lot of folks competed and it couldn't have been any better.  Thanks to all the judges, lifters and everyone who brought bells for the competition.  Usually organizing this sort of an event is like trying to herd cats; it is exponentially worse in the chaotic environment that is the Arnold.  These guys made it look easy.  There were some outstanding performances.  Particularly noteworthy was Sara Lieber who did 133 reps in one arm long cycle with 20kg.  This is a Master of Sport World Class level of performance!  Strong work!

Overall it was a great time and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do a set.  I did a set of long cycle with the 24kg bells.  I just wanted to go the full ten minutes so i was happy.  Although I was pleased, every time I do this I can't help but wonder "what the hell am I doing this for?".  I rationalize it like this:  Since we really have no natural predators (i.e. large animals are not chasing us down and eating us), we need to have some way to challenge ourselves.  Since it isn't coming from the external environment it must come from within.  That has to be it.  I think I also answered another question I posed recently to a colleague of mine.  He had just returned from riding motorcycles through Central America.  Sounds ok at first glance.  However the rest of the story is that he and the other guys he was with had no real itinerary and nothing but a gps.  I guess not all the towns were gringo friendly.  Different strokes for different folks I suppose.  Fortunately lifting kettlebells seems unlikely to lead to a scene reminiscent of "Deliverance" in Spanish.  Maybe it is time they shot a new version of that, motorbikes instead of rafts, Central America instead of Georgia, marimbas instead of banjos...  It could happen.

Back to the Arnold.  Here are a few pics:

First we have John Wild Buckley.  Johnny Depp on steroids, I think that is what Ken called him.  Here he is picking up a surprised young lady.  Security was not amused when their tasers only served to make John angry.


Next up we have Eric, Ken, and Boris still celebrating the Canadian Hockey golds at Vancouver.  No wait, that was just after Ken finished an impressive set of long cycle. 


I was surprised at the amount of emotion shown by some of the competitors.  Here Phil breaks down sobbing after Ken led off the meet with a soul-stirring rendition of "Wind beneath my wings".  Just funny how this picture turned out, particularly if you look directly above them.  Sometimes you don't need photoshop.


In any case there is lots more to talk about so this place may be a little busy for the next few days.  Stay tuned....

As requested I will go into a little bit more detail about my battle with plantar fasciitis.  The usual caveat applies here.  If you are having a problem it is always best to check with your physician.  Although I am a physician and occasionally play one on TV, I do not dispense medical advice via this blog.  I am just relaying my personal experience and what worked for me. 

My problem started a little less than a year ago.  If we want to play the blame game, credit goes to my buddy Barry.  I visited him in California and had a session with this ART guy that he recommended.  This fellow picked up on my tight IT band really quick and went to town on it.  He also said my feet were flat and I tended to pronate.  After I told him I was running in Nike Frees he told me I needed more support.  I immediately picked up a pair of Brooks and hit the streets.  I remember thinking, "man these things really put me on the balls of my feet".  My calves were feeling it.  A few weeks later, it was a Sunday, I thought I had stepped on a stone.  I kept looking for a bruise on my heel.  This continued to worsen until I asked my podiatrist friend about it.  Within 5 seconds I had my diagnosis.  Plantar fasciitis.  He gave me a script for some custom orthotics.  I never got them.  I talked to another buddy who actually makes orthotics and he told me it was a waste of time as far as plantar fasciitis was concerned.  He told me all I needed to know that day.  For whatever reason it didn't sink in.  His advice:  "stretch your damn calves".  That was all I needed to do but I wasn't doing it right.  So for the next several months I took a shotgun approach to my fasciitis.  I saw my massage therapist.  He got medieval on my feet and it hurt like hell and it pretty much cured it for about a week or two. Then it was back.  Classic PF, pain was worse in the morning with the first step or just after sitting for a while.  Not good.  I spend most of the day on my feet and the kettlebell sport training and attempts at running weren't helping. GS was out and so was running.  I spent a lot of time doing more strength training and I got more focused on my concept II rower.  One nice thing was I beat my 7 min goal on the 2000m row.  That's one goal knocked down for the year.  I also picked up a Strassburg sock for night time.  This helped quite a bit.  You can check that out here.  It took a little getting used to but I think it helped.
I also got some inserts for my shoes that I liked.  They were $20 per pair, way cheaper than custom orthotics.  Here is the link to the inserts.  I still keep them in my work shoes because they don't bother me and I am used to them.  Did they help?  Probably.  They certainly didn't make things worse. 

What really did the trick for me though was getting serious about the stretching.  I was using a weak approach where I would stretch them for 30 seconds or so and think that was enough.  WRONG!  You have to be serious about this.  Make it a religion.  First you have to do it for a longer period.  3-5 minutes at a time sounds about right.  Plus you have to do it often after gradually working up to the longer stretch.  I like three or more times a day.  I try to space them out, maybe a morning stretch, and early evening stretch or before I train and then again after I train or before bed.  You have to hold the stretch for a long time.  I also got serious about stretching the hamstrings as well.  Very important.  For a while it didn't seem to work but after a couple weeks I was able to get back to running and GS training with no setbacks.  If you want to know why this works look at the picture at the top of the page.  You can see the connection to the achilles tendon and the calf.  This entire myo-fascial system is in continuity and tightness one place will lead to downstream events.  The bottleneck happens to be at the plantar fascia where it attaches to the heel.  That's where the tension is.  If you don't fix this it keeps happening.  You rest the foot at night it starts to heal, you put weight on it in the morning, it tears again.  The cycle of inflammation and repair never ends.  The solution is to "stretch your damn calves".  I probably should also have done a month or so of NSAIDs when this started but I don't like taking medication, go figure. 

So what finally convinced me to get serious about fixing this problem.  I ordered the a video from this website.  It was an instant download and was the best $15 I ever spent.  All you need to know is right there. In addition to that I went back to my nike frees.  A few folks have recommended the vibram five fingers shoes.  I can't bring myself to wear them for they are hideous to look upon.  I am not saying never but definitely not right now.  There has been a lot of talk about barefoot running and recently a book was released entitled Born to Run (not to be confused with the Springsteen song).  It is about a tribe of indians who run and run and run and don't have the type of foot problems we have.  I haven't read it but I plan to.  You can get it here.  There is much speculation that our currently favored running shoes and other shoes for that matter basically act as casts preventing the intrinsic muscles of the feet from doing much of anything.  This in theory can lead to problems and lets face it, foot problems are terribly common.  I have at least 10 friends who are battling PF at present.  I hopefully have put them on the right path though.  We could go on and on discussing shoes, theory, and the like.  Rather than overindulge in such cerebral masturbation keep it simple and "stretch your damn calves".