Murder Your Darlings

I love trees

 

"Murder you darlings", is a phrase attributed to Quiller-Couch, (a gent of sorts from a century ago), and basically means one needs to take an objective view on their personal work (in this context anyway), or at least gain some emotional distance so as to accurately judge their own work, to see what’s really there, as opposed to what they want to see. My affinity for Steve Justa’s work, as mentioned previously, led me to experiment with my training program. Well, that kind of failed, but also resulted in some valuable insights. I say kind of failed because whilst I was getting stronger overall, my press was lagging. Heavier kettlebells were genuinely feeling lighter, but the overall volume, or lack of, saw little progress in pressing. True, it takes more than a month and a bit to appraise a system, but my press hadn’t improved, and at worst felt more difficult.

Further reasoning as to change of plan is that it took me away from my goals of wanting to eventually certify as an SFG. There, a half dozen lifts are taught and honed to perfection. Me practicing dozens of random lifts was a distraction. Remember, one of my all-time favourite quotes belongs to Saint-Exupery, “Perfection is finally attained not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. Makes sense. In training, specific stimulus produces specific adaptation, thus, I need to focus on the core lifts of the SFG, if I want to really excel at them, and nought else. This is also my approach with my clients, and I was leading away from that.

To rectify, I shall practice the necessary lifts. They are;
-Double Swing
-Get-Up
-Double Clean
-Double Press
-Double Front Squat
-Snatch

As you can see, quite bare. In addition, five pullups are required to pass the entry test, so those will be trained also.

I have settled into a 5 x days per week frequency nicely, so I’ll keep that. The basic outline will be revealed over the coming weeks when I post my weekly sessions.

Masterpiece

I am further experimenting with my training template (because it’s in my nature to constantly improve). This time, I want to try Fatigue Cycling, as outlined in Pavel’s masterpiece, Beyond Bodybuilding. This is another one of my favourites. There is so much training knowledge in here that most people will never truly absorb its total contents. Anyways, I won’t do too much talking about it as I’d rather just get stuck in and then analyse the results, whether favourable or not. I am using the principles with kettlebells so it’s definitely something new.

So that’s that. My snatch training, on the other hand, has been progressing well. Details will be revealed further on. I also need to clarify that I also have chronic issues with my arms. I have hypertonic muscles in both arms, which basically means I have very tense muscles as a result of insufficient restoration. I experience pins and needles sensation in both hands constantly. If I went to a doctor I would in all likelihood be diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Continual self-massage has helped enormously, so I’ll keep that up and see how that turns out. On the other hand (get it?), current treatments are corticosteroids, wrist splints, and if those fail then surgery.

 

F**k that.

If anyone thinks I am dismissive of medical intervention then they’re right- for myself, I am, and only for myself. For clients, my professional recommendation is to listen to the doctors. There is no double-standard here, I simply take responsibility for my own health. I now realise the musculature in both my arms have been chronically stressed for over a decade, and with the increase in training my arms have now had enough. It means just as it took a long time to arrive at my current condition, it will probably also take a long time to rectify it. Surgery and splints, also anti-inflammatories, in my opinion, are treating the symptoms and not the cause, and is reflective of the medical/pharmaceutical community in general. The cause is the hypertonicity of the muscles, as evidenced when I “release” the muscles via self-massage, resulting in a feeling of ease of movement and disappearance of symptoms.

To sum up;
-  My initial Justa Singles/kettlebell adaptation wasn’t quite as successful as I had envisioned; it works, just not what I was after
-  I will experiment implementing Fatigue Cycling with kettlebells
-  I’m hammering my arms, as they suck