| Kettlebells |
|
| Other Pages |
| The Rack |
|
| Recommended RKCs |
B.J. Bliffert Shaun Cairns Kristine Gill Marvin King Laura McCabe Brad Nelson Delaine Ross |
| Military Press |
|
| Local Facilities |
| Lady Lift |
|
| Goblet Squat |
|
| Double Kettlebell Press |
|
My Story
How I Lost 100 Pounds, Kept it Off, and Continue, After Years, to Enhance my Fitness
I'll be honest: I was an extremely cocky teenager. I was in pretty good shape after spending up to 20 hours per week on martial arts and weight lifting. I never thought that would change. I was rather contemptuous of those who were not up to my standards. I would look at the “fat, balding, middle-aged guy mowing his lawn across the street” and think that I would never, ever get that way. No, it was not my most endearing personality trait.
Then came college and the death of my father, and I kept the same bad eating habits while working and going to school full time to make ends meet. In my freshman year, I didn't gain the “freshman fifteen.” I gained a freshman fifty. It kept going up. I tried the workout routine and diet I had learned from my coaches and health teachers: strength training on a machine circuit and a low-fat diet. I would make progress, losing a few pounds, and then plateau.
I kid you not: I was in the gym killing myself for 90 minutes, and all for nothing.
By the time I graduated, I was 260 pounds. I started graduate school and kept climbing. By the time I left with my master's degree, I was 288 pounds. We moved across the country for work, and I was able to work fewer hours and restart my fitness program. By this time, I had learned a few things about diet, and was able to get down to the 250s by the time I was transferred six months later. I was still using hamster-wheel cardio, but I had at least added dumbbell work to the machines.
Fitness took a hiatus as I moved across the country again, but I had resolved to quickly get it back. Within a month, I got a gym membership and started back up. Yet, I know I would stall after three months without some kind of change.
I told a co-worker about my dilemma, and he lent me a book titled Power to the People! (PTTP) by a strange Russian guy. I was ready to try anything at this point. PTTP was not a body composition program, but a “wiry strength” program: it would build strength without adding muscle.
It got the results that it was supposed to get: I got stronger, and cut my gym time down from 90 minutes to less than 20 minutes. But I was still around 245 pounds and needed to focus on body composition, so I got Enter the Kettlebell and also ordered a kettlebell.
I fell in love with the iron ball on day one. Forty sloppy, amateur swings with 20kg left me on the ground, trashed. Two months later, I competed in my first tactical strength challenge, snatching 24kg 99 times in five minutes. B. J. Bliffert, RKC, still has the video on YouTube.
I continued to refine my diet over time, adopting a fusion of two particular authors. I was RKC-certified to teach kettlebells by chief instructor Pavel Tsatsouline in June of 2009, about two years after first laying hands on the iron ball.
| RKC St. Paul, June 2009 |
|
My bodyweight has fluctuated from the high 180s to the low 210s since then, depending on what goals I was working on, but I've always stayed in that range.
My “Short List” of Essential Reading
Health and Fitness
Power to the People! by Pavel Tsatsouline
This is the book that started it all for me. Before I read this, I had concluded for the umpteenth time to get in shape. I was a good 80 pounds overweight and starting to get mad at having let myself go so badly. Resolving to restart my old treadmill-cardio-and-isolation-machine-circuit routine, I knew that I would plateau after about a month. As I was telling this to a friend at work, he let me know there was another way and lent me a copy of this book.
Starting on page one was a revolutionary theory of strength and strength development. My first reaction was shock. After years of lifting weights and wrestling, why hadn't anyone told me this before? My next reaction was awe. The book packs in a lot of information, and Pavel's sense of humor and concise writing makes it a quick read. Yet, the depth becomes apparent when you go back to read it a second and third time and keep picking things up.
I can not overstate how powerful this book is. Read it, practice it, and get strong.
| Pavel Tsatsouline Evaluating my Kettlebell Swing |
|
The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler
What Power to the People! was for my knowledge of exercise, The Warrior Diet was for my knowledge of dietary principles. When I plateaued at a bodyweight of 210, the Warrior Diet helped get me down to 188. When I am on the Warrior Diet, I generally lose five pounds of body weight per week while still taking in the calories and nutrients necessary to sustain me through a busy workday and a hard training schedule.
There are two eating systems that I recommend to clients, and the The Warrior Diet is generally the first among them.
Education, Career, Business
How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Novels and Fiction
Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Resistance by Vin Suprynowicz
Ethics and Philosophy
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged was the first book on a reading list compiled by radio talk show host Larry Elder, so I picked it up. The pulp paperback was over 1,000 pages of small type, but it looked very interesting. The first page was very curious, and I wanted to know more. I tore through the book furiously during lunches, evenings, and weekends and finished in 14 days, absorbing it at a rate of about 75 pages per day.
I divide my life into two portions: before and after reading this book. I will not write here about the plot, theme, or characters. To read this book fresh, without preconception, will make it an experience, and, possibly, a transformation.
Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault by Pierre Hadot
This book discussed the evolution of philosophy from a Way of Living in classical Greece to a modern method of mere discourse and commentary: a stale practice engaged in by professors who publish journal articles read by other professors and ignored by the public.
| Christmas on Tybee Island |
|
Sign up for my mailing list and receive periodic training tips and updates on seminar dates and events. Your information will never be given away or sold. A confirmation e-mail will be sent to the address you enter.