Long Two Hours

Had my two hours at the gym last eve. I was feeling pretty draggy from the week, being sick and Thursdays workout. I got in a few minutes of jumping rope, did some snatches (60K), some power cleans (60K & 80K). I did some rack pulls, I am amazed that I can rack pull LESS than I deadlift. I’ve tested it a number of times and consistently I rack pull 50lbs less than I deadlift. I guess I need to do more rack pulls and work the range of rack pulls. I did some pullups and got a couple sets of two in there, probably did 10 total. I did some curls and some kettlebell snatches and I was pretty much done. Pretty weak overall.

Took today off for the most part. We have been working on getting our dog to walk better on a leash. We finally worked her up to a two miler today. Tomorrow I’m headed to the promter of the local strongman event’s house for some training. Should be good but rough.

Finallly, I do something

Still getting back toward 100% but I decided the weather was too perfect and I had been sedentary too long.

The Tire (+45lbs) 100yrd (roughly) walk X2
go get a couple kettlebells out of the car
tire
16K kb 20 reps
tire
32K kb X 5
tire
16K X 15
tire
32K X 5
tire
16K X 10
tire
32K X 5
tire
16K X 5
tire
32K X 5
nontire walk 100yrds X 2
32K X 5

I’m still recovering from the nasty cold plus it was my first run back at one of these workouts, all in all, Itook it easy but it didn’t feel easy while I did it.

Aaaanndddd the winner is…..

….but first a recap…..

Handpainted flames
The whole collection
Pink and Orange

Take a look, who was your favorite, they all have their merits. I was impressed that out of suck a small selection of entries we got such a great variety and by great I mean many and super. 🙂 Thanks to all who participated, if I had t-shirts or something, you each would get one.

So for our winner announcement you’ll all have to wait for our judges to debate and possibly battle to the death. Watch here or at the Art of Strength for an announcement really soon. In the mean time, buy their stuff and train hard. 🙂

Still Sick

I was out of work for two days this week. I just laid at home and whined. I’m feeling better and am at least back among the living today so that is start. Due to a loss of appetite I have hit below 250, not really the way I meant to get there but whatever.

The kettlebell contest has come to a close. I sent off a final e-mail to the folks at AoS to get thei opinion on things. Personally, I was totally impressed. You all did a fantastic job and I’ll look forward to thieving your ideas for my own bells 🙂 . I was shocked there weren’t more entries in general but I guess I shouldn’t be. I couple people got held up by bad timing or no time, that’s unavoidable. I think it would be fun to do this again in a year or so.  Perhaps some people will paint their bells in the meantime and we could have a few more entries.
I’ll post back when I hear back from AoS

Third entry, by hand

We have recieved our third entry for the kettlebell painting contest. This one went a different route and painted by hand. I am impressed.

 
   

That’s a lotta….paint

We recieved the second official entry into the kettlebell painting contest, Charley Allen. An A for effort is certain and the bells look darn good. Outstanding entry.

 

         

Of the four horsemen, he’s my least favorite

Pestulence

Dang it if I’m not sick. Some stupid rhinovirus/upper respritory thing going around here. So my order of the day is to rest, rest, drink water, rest. Not interesting reading.

ladder

Had my two hour shift at the gym yesterday.

Trap bar deadlift – bar weight not being counted
200lbs X 4 20 second hold
400lbs X 4 15 second hold
450 X 2 10 second hold
500 X 2 10 second hold
550 X 2 5 second hold
600 FAIL

I really need to be doing 600lb holds here for the May contest but I’ll get there

This bit is really weird
squat 135 lbs X 1
rest
squat X 2
rest
squat X 3
16K kettbell snatch 10/arm
squat X 4
16K KB snatch 10/arm
squat X 5
32K KB snatch 5/arm
squat X 6
32K KB snatch 5/arm
squat X 7
32K KB snatch left X 3
32K KB clean and jerk left X 2
32K KB snatch righ X 5
squat X 8
32K KB clean and jerk 5/arm
squat X 9
32K KB clean and jerk 5/arm
squat X 10
32K KB clean and jerk 5/arm
-decided I was resting too much so I timed this next one
squat X 9
32K KB clean and jerk 5/arm
-took 2 minutes and some seconds with no rest so I set the timer for 2:30 for all the remaining sets
squat X 8
32K KB clean and jerk 5/arm
squat X 7
32K KB clean and jerk left X 5, barely
squat X 6
32K KB clean and jerk right X 5
squat X 5
16K kb snatch 5/arm
squat X 4
16Kkb snatch 5/arm
squat X 3
16K Kb snatch 10/arm
squat X 2
16K kb snatch 10/arm
squat X 1
16K kb snatch 10/arm
die

What was I doing here? I’m not sure I can say. It started out with me just working on squat form. Nothing special, just getting some dep olympic type squats in. I have found that part of the reason I tend to lean forward when I squat is that I tend to hunch my shoulders when I have the bar on my shoulders. So that’s how it started. Then I started doing some snatches, just because I did. Then I decided I had a good opportunity to challenge myself here with the bigger bell I brought along. Somehow it turned into a workout that took the better part of an hour.

Catching up

I having been posting near as much, it’s just been one of those weeks, so here is a big ol’ round up. Some of it’s about me and some of it is just from the net.

1. The kettlebell contest is wrapping up. We have one entry, a second was just asked about. I’ve got my bell which has not been entered and Scott Bird is wrapping his up so we should just make the minimum requirement set by Art of Strenght. That’s a big hooray. I would have hated to see the people who did the work not get their shot.
2. Kettlebells at Target – I’m not saying it’s gonna happen but, Iron Core Gym is in a deal with Go Fit products. From their website you can learn that their products are sold in most American sporting goods stores. When I read this I would have sworn I remembered the name from Target (On of the bigger deparment store chains in the US). Sure enough, they sell there too. You can’t find the bells until Summer ’07 and with any pending business deal, it could bust. How sweet would that be though? With all the hoopla about 300 training which used kettlebells too, this could be their best chance at hitting the popular culture. Up next, Billy Blanks does Tai Boe Bells, I hope not.
3. One of the greatest weightlifting quotes of all time.
4. I’m finally recovering from whatever has beseiged me. I think it was that my new dog was waking me up evey single night, she’s finally sleeping all night and so am I. I never realized what a huge difference 15 minutes at 3 in the morning made. Although now I’m feeling the congestion everyone else has been complaining about. I have been lucky so far, so we’ll see how this goes.
5. Got some new bells. Annoyed the wife by doing windmills with the 40K. Oh, and those bells will all eventually get painted.
6. Big announcment coming down the pipe, if I can ever work out this whole RSS issue, dang it.

That’s about gonna do it. I have the gym tonight, havne’t decided quite how I’m going to handle it. I’m thinking about lugging the new bells down there and just doing bells for 2 hours.

Bells, bells, bells

Here they are, my kettlebells. The latest and greatest and the two on the righ 32K and 40K and the third from the left 12K for my wife. I have to say, I was kinda down on these bells before I got them, based on the way I thought they looked on the website, but I really like them. They have a great feel about them and they look good. They have pound and kilos marked on them so that should make some folks very happy and they are cheaper than other brands. All in all, I like ’em so far.