Training Goals

(This was a whale that I saw this summer. My friend Frank caught it on camera while we were fishing off the coast of Mexico close to San Diego and turned into Black and White. It was was the biggest whale I had ever seen. Truly amazing!)

After about a year of doing mainly KB Presses, Squats, Snatches, Lunges and weighted pull ups and chin ups, I have decided to focus on the similar movements but with a barbell. Below are the following lifts I am going to focus on for the next 6 to 8 weeks depending on how my body handles it. I haven't done Zercher squats in years but having watched videos of many RKC's Kenneth Jay and Guardner doing them, it peaked my interest! So the two lifts I want to improve on right now are Military Press and Zercher's. I am going to follow a lifting protocol from Arthur Drexler's book "The Encyclopedia of Weightlifting" that my twin brother Keats Snideman turned me onto. The rest of the movements will be supplemental lifts

1) Barbell Zercher Squats

2) Barbell Military Press (and one day of incline Press)
3) Double KB Front Squat (same but different principle- I might also use Bulgarian Split Squats)
4)Weighted Chins and Pull ups (I love these and never take these out of my program)
5) KB Snatches and KB Swings ( I will keep these in my training program for now- but on more of a maintenance mode)
6) Off season sprinting (with my event being the 100 meters- season picks up in January 2008)

That's it! 6 simple yet effective movements to increase my full body strength, power and conditioning. I will also add in plenty of stretching and joint mobility work focusing on my hips, feet, ankles and upper back.

Last week's training

Sunday
sprinting at the track

Tempo runs 10 x 100 yards at 70% intensity
Dips (they had a dip station at UCSD which is great) 36 reps
Stadium sprints up the stairs @ 100% intensity - 6
Friday
Zercher Squats
135 x 5 x 2 sets
185 x 2 x 1 set
225 x 1 (PR)
235 x 1 (PR)

Military Press
115 x 3 reps x 5 sets

Too many Fires!

Southern California (mainly San Diego) as most of you know has been battling many wild fires that have allready destroyed more than 1500 homes. On monday morning we were ordered to evacuate from our home in Carmel Valley. It was all to sureal knowing that as we were leaving our house there was a possibility that it would be the last time we would ever see our home. It is now Wednesday and we have been allowed to return to our home. I thank God for his mercy and grace and for protecting our neighborhood. We know that the fire could have easily come our way if the winds had shifted in our direction. Sadly, may San Diegans are without a home tonight and must start their lives over again (from a material point of view).

Overall it has been amazing to see how awesome San Diegans came together to help each other. The supplies and aid that are available for more than a million people displaced and ordered to evacuate has been incredible. The good news is that more moisture is coming into the air causing the humidity to climb higher. Also, this weekend is supposed to bring fog which will further help in calming down the fires.

Please pray for San Diegans without homes and for the brave men and women who are fighting the fires, including law enforcement and medical practitioners.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." Isaiah 43:2

extreme break dancing

I have posted this on DD so many times it's a joke. I never get bored of seeing this guy breakdance, he is the best I've ever seen,period! Talk about joint mobility, yikes! enjoy!

Arnold Bodybuilding - Pumping Iron Tribute

Punch the Clock Workouts

" Not all workouts have to look like a scene from "Pumping Iron." In fact, I often argue that these moderate workouts...the punch the clock workouts...are the ones that make champions. Hell, everyone is willing to work hard the week of the State Championship: I think what separates champions is the willingness to just get "them"...the workouts...in."-Dan John

I have to agree with Dan John. For so many of us we think that we have to leave our guts on the floor every workout. Nothing could be further from the truth. As much as I love the old ROCKY movies, I think in a way they have prolonged the myth that a champion athlete always pushing the envelope so hard that he pukes every workout and is not satisfied unless he is excruciating pain from his training. Unfortunately I think all of us (women to) our guilty of this type of mentality. When you are younger and can get away with longer training sessions and to be honest, can get away (at least short term wise) with BONE HEAD TRAINING principles.

What really matters as Dan John says is consistently "SHOWING UP" and just getting in the training. Now that doesn't mean that you are not focused and motivated, it just means that you realize that the ebb and flow of life dictates that their will be periods of time when you are on the mountain top, full of energy, ready to conquer the world. It also means that there will be times when you are not on the mountain top and rather are in the valley and have less energy and strength. These are the times when (to quote Senior RKC Brett Jones) you develop DEEP INNER STRENGTH. When things are not going as well as you had planned is when you are vulnerable to losing heart and giving up. But just as the farmer must prune and cut back the branches of the trees, bushes and vines in order to allow a more plentiful harvest the following season, we must allow the "valley experience" to prune us of the dead branches in our own lives that our hindering us and holding us back.

So where am I going with all of this? If we can learn to change our perspective on training for longetivity and health, rather than ego and short term results, I know the ride and journey can be that much more fruitful. By applying the following principles we can sustain progress for a lifetime rather than a season.

#1 Think Long Term

If I had only applied this earlier in my career I would have saved myself alot of suffering in the terms of disc herniations, elbow probelms, wrist problems and sickness. It is so easy to think short term and not climb up the tallest tree in the forest to see where we are headed. By taking the long term view we can stop doing things that are destructive and harmful to our bodies and souls and set course in a healthier direction. Unfortunately when you are young you think you know it all. When you get older you realize that the more you learn how LITTLE you really do know. I may regret saying this in many years, but I am so glad to be out of my younger years. There is no substitute for WISDOM gained from life experience. I think if we knew then what we know now we would do many things differently. On the contrary that is how we learn.

#2 Just Show Up

Like Dan John says, just show up and get the work in. It doesn't alwalys have to be a PR session, and usually, especially the stronger you get, those PR sessions will be less, although more enjoyable. Consistently focusing on a motor quality like speed, strength, or flexibility requires years of focused effort and dilliegent consistency. If you are consistently focusing on whatever you goal is, the day will come when you are going to be amazed and how far you have come.

#3 Quality over Quantity

I am speaking to the choir here. Recently Geoff Neupert talked about the immense difference between training for QUALITATIVELY VS. QUANTITATIVELY. Long term all that really matters in the quality of your training session, or can we call them PRACTICE sessions. I for one have learned this one the hard way. Much better to focus on doing less things better and than more things mediocre. And this applies to all aspects of life.

#4 Be GROWTH oriented over GOAL oriented

This may be the most important principle for me. Have you ever reached a goal you had been trying to achieve for a long time, and then when you achieved you felt empty? Well you were empty because after you acheived the goal, it was over, done, finished. I know that has happened to me. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was from Leadership expert John Maxwell who said be a GROWTH DRIVEN PERSON, not a goal oriented person. A growth dirven person will always be striving to grow, learn, apply and mature for his whole life. There is no finish line in life. Often the goal oriented person has a finish line and once they achieve their goals, their motivation and drive to succeed is over because they met their goals. This leads to emptiness. If your goal is growth, their is never a finish line because your goal is always to grow.

Anyway, just some thoughts I wanted to get down on paper.

Training on Saturday - RKC Snatch Test w/24kg - 30L/31R

Training...slowly but surely!

Now that my health seems to be getting better..........although slowly....I have started doing some light training. I remember when Jeff Martone wrote an article a couple of years ago highlighting a very busy and difficult time in his career when he literally only had 10 minutes to train a couple of time per week. Well that is essentially what I have been doing. Three 10 minute workouts a week has been plenty and I can feel it even with that amount of training. It is forcing me to cut out the fat per say and just focus on the meat, or the BASICS.

When it boils down to it, focusing a couple of movements is the key to getting and maintaining your strength. Being a practical person, with a baby on the way, a very busy training business to run and manage, marriage, etc.....never has time been more important to me. The concept of focusing on doing LESS things BETTER sounds so much more appealing than doing MORE things worse.

Perhaps many of you can relate to my situation as many of you have incredibly busy lives, children, marriages and of course many fun training goals that constitute this thing called life. It's taken me many years to figure out that sometimes the best thing in your life you can do is to say "NO" to the things that are not important and to the things that interfere with the moral fabric of you life. As much fun as it is to be super young, I do enjoy the painstaking wisdom that comes with getting older. There are some things that only life experience can teach you! Amen to that!

The movements that seem to give me the biggest systemic effect for strength and power are:

1) Double Clean and Press
2)Weighted Pull Ups and Chins
3) KB Single leg Work (SL DL's, Lunges)
4) KB Squats
5)Snatches
6) Sprinting on the Track!

Keep it simple stupid, right? Because I don't see life getting less busy, for now these movements/exercises are a life saver. I am not gaining any muscle, that's for sure, probably because I am not doing enough volume. But the catch 22 is that because I am on my feet so much every day training clients, I have to be very careful not to overtrain as I am already doing a lot of movements with my clients whether in the form of catching MB's, stretching them on the table, or doing bodywork.Either way, I am learning what works for me; and HIGH VOLUME workouts fry my nervous system and my recuperative abilities.

Okay, that's it for now!

212 degrees - The Extra Degree

I found this video on Alwyn Cosgrove's blog. A great video about simple truths we all know but need to apply to achieve the great things we want to achieve in life!