I’m not exactly sure how the University of Delaware’s football team allowed a 20 point come back in the last 14 minutes of a championship football team, or how the Seahawks beat the Saints on Saturday; all I know is that both of my teams lost. I am impressed with Jet’s kicker Nick Folk, who is a total bad ass for screaming as soon as he realized this kick was good. I’m surprised it was loud enough to be heard on TV.
While the football of the weekend wasn’t what I hoped for, a few other things went really well. After making some photocopies for a class project, I headed to school on Saturday morning to learn all sorts of blasphemies. From 9am-3pm, my class consisted of a variety of fitness assessments and training modalities, all part of developing a proper fitness education curriculum. While it’s certainly never a bad idea to be active, the vast majority of the material we’re covering is outdated, and the information is certainly limited. Don’t worry though, I’ll review the entire class at some point, once it is over (and grades are in!) Now let’s get in to some good things from this weekend:
I trained a new client for the first time yesterday, immediately after my class. He was an absolute pleasure to work with, and I can honestly say it was the best first time training session I’ve had with somebody. Henry was equally as excited to be working out, and I have faith that he’s going to be making strides every week and moving closer to his goals of getting stronger and improving his body composition.
After the session was over, the trainer on the floor noted to me, “You really kicked that guy’s ass!” Sure, he was sweaty and tired, but he worked hard! He SHOULD feel tired. What kind of trainer would I be if we babied around for an hour with leg extensions and BOSU ball curls? I would suck! While I have years and years of learning in front of me, I feel comfortable leading somebody through basic strength exercise. In my opinion, many of the exercises I used with Henry should be part of everybody’s workout. During the hour we spent together, Henry performed goblet squats, facepulls, planks, deadlifts with the trap bar, body weight rows with the TRX, push-ups, and 90˚/90˚ split-squats (you can learn about these at THIS link from Mike Robertson.) He performed a number of other exercises as well, but these are exercises that he’s going to be using for a while, and were selected for their abilities to make you stronger and move better. I can confidently say that both Henry and I are looking forward to our next session together!
Over the weekend, the world’s best composer asked me this question on facebook: “If I wanted to buy a kettlebell, what weight should I choose?” Now, I know very little about the kettlebell, and I use mine for only a few exercises. However, I absolutely love my 44lb purple ‘bell, and plan on earning a kettlebell certification in the future. I’m also infinitely smarter than Jillian Michaels, who put out the world’s worst ketllebell DVD. This qualifies me to answer his question, and I have some great information to share. Each of them makes slightly different recommendations, so there still isn’t a definitive answer. For example, recommendations for beginning males range from 16kg to 24kg, while woman’s ‘bell sizes range from 8kg to 20kg. These lists take in to account previous activity levels, current strength levels, and athletic abilities as well. If intended to be used as a conditioning tool, I’d suggest sticking towards the light and middle end of those ranges; that’s why I’m content with a 20kg kettlebell. It’s the only thing that let’s me achieve a kick-ass workout in 15 minutes, in only 10 square feet of space. It’s perfect! For Eric, I’d suggest the 16kg bell, which is 35lbs. For most guys, I think this is a good starting point if you’re only buying one bell. If you’re buying two, I like the recommendation made my Dr. Mark Cheng; a 12kg kettlebell and a 20kg kettlebell. (Ladies, the good Dr. recommends 14lb and 16kg (35lb) kettlebells.) You can read his recommendations at THIS post, which went up just yesterday. Additionally, you can read THIS article which gives a very brief overview of kettlebells, as well as THIS get-started program from DragonDoor. If you’re very interested, I’d suggest watching the following video from the guys at Underground Wellness, where they give a ten minute introduction with Steve Cotter, one of the worlds most respectable resources on Kettlebells.
I’ve been waiting for a while, and I finally made the plunge; I got a smart phone. Today I headed to Verizon wireless with my mom to pick up a Droid 2. It’s global ready, which I’ll probably never take advantage of, but it’s white and looks super classy. I immediately put it into a protective case, because I’m drop happy, but hopefully it’ll last for a very long time. In my first hour of ownership, I set up every account I have online, so now I’ll be able to do some pretty cool things such as upload videos from the gym to my blog in a matter of minutes. I’ll also be able to Google the answers to questions I have whenever I want to! I wonder if my professors will be happy about this…
There are only two days left for my intersession class, and I’m looking forward to wrapping it up. I’m also looking forward to the exercise prescription case-study that we need to hand in with our final exam; apparently Billy the 10th grader has 6 weeks of weight training to get ready for football season. For now, I’m going to watch the end of The Cape, and figure out why Summer Glau is so good looking.
Harold Gibbons 