Happy New Year folks! It is my sincerest hope that you find your way toward maintaining your Independence until the day you die. I believe that to be the sincerest form of Freedom we have left. With New Year’s resolutions staring back at you as we speak, there can be a lot of anxiety and pressure to regain your health, especially if you haven’t been active for a while. Maybe you are a former athlete coming back from a long hiatus or someone who spent years building a business and family, but neglecting strength and wellness. Perhaps you were ‘lucky’ and never really had to do anything because your job kept you in shape, but now you’re retired and starting to feel the aches and pains? Where do you start?
Well, the athlete, being true to their competitive nature will most likely rustle up the last program they were following and ‘get to work.’ The working crowds, well-meaning in every way, will Google the closest gym, buy a membership, ride the treadmill with the other hamsters and maybe even following a program clipped from the newest ‘Pump” or ‘Shapely’ magazine. Our retiree, possibly weary from years of work, will pick up an old hobby, golf let’s say and play, until some soreness crops up. Or worse, they have some injuries and are afraid to get hurt, so they do a whole lot of nothing. Now, before your curse me and say I’m generalizing or lumping together, I’m merely providing an abstract of a large population, bear with me.
None of these people are doing anything wrong! In fact, I sincerely applaud any effort above none. If you love riding the treadmill, I support you. If you are trying to relive some glory years and want to train like your athletic former self, Bravo my Friend. And if you just want to play a little golf and live out the good ole years, who the hell am I to even suggest that’s not correct? The goal of coaching is coaching the goal, Your Goal! Not Mine.
That’s where the picture can get a little clear. My concern, for those, coming off the Bench, if you will, is not truly appreciating Point A, as Dan John would say, or where you are right now, in regards to your Health and Fitness. Old Injuries cause muscle imbalances or joint problems, Skills diminish, Posture changes, Ability is restricted. If you cannot be brutally honest and assess your baseline, how can you ever know if you’re improving toward your goal, or Point B? Even more horrific, is possibly shortening your life with choices that break your body down, not build it up.
Now, in all fairness, the ‘regular ’ person will know more about Point A, because they have no idea about Point B, or even how to get there. Average John knows he’s busted up, carrying some extra cheese love handles and can’t touch his toes. Average Jody has the ‘thunder thighs’ or ‘jiggly arm thing’ and it’s embarrassing, frustrating and extremely hard to want to change, Especially reaching out and admitting it to a complete stranger like me. Athletes, on the other hand, know exactly where they want to go, higher vertical, faster 40, lift more or Bigger, Faster, Stronger, right? However, athletes can deceive even themselves about their own abilities, possibly leading to injury and lost training due to that.
So, before we get to training, know where you are, your Point A and where you want to go, Point B. We can use SMART goals, as the acronym goes: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Repeatable and Timely, because ‘I just want to tone up’, ‘I just want to drop a few pounds’ or ‘I just want to feel better’, while noble, have no direction. As the saying goes, ‘if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.’ A SMART goal is: Lose 10lbs in 3 months, I’m 190lbs now, That’s 3.3lbs per month, or less than a pound a week, use proper training and dial in nutrition. You can do that in a safe, effective, repeatable and timely fashion, with the parameters you just created.
You can you find that information, with an Assessment of Course. Find someone, who can assess your fitness capabilities, limitations, muscle imbalance, asymmetries, postural deviances etc. with something like the Functional Movement Screen, but also a Nutritional Assessment and Mental Assessment about your level of commitment and ability to stay true to the task, and give an honest evaluation of Point A. (I do Online Coaching with Virtual assessment, wink wink)
From there, Point B is fairly simple, as we reverse engineer the goal. I can now build a map to from A to B in the safest, most efficient manner. This is where the Kettlebells and Proper Movement come into play as we all have primary movement patterns. The Push (Horizontal/Vertical) Pull, (Horizontal/Vertical), Hinge or Bend, Squat, Rotation, Single leg and Locomotion (a few others but these are the most important, especially at the start again.)
The assessment will find out the weakest pattern and that is where you should start. Some of you may need to just Breathe and Walk, that’s it. If we find out you can’t breathe well, do you really think I’d be in business long if I told you to run a mile as a warm-up? If your nutrition is out of whack, intense training is hellacious and borderline criminal. If you can’t touch your toes, should I ask you to squat with a lot of weight, or any? What if your shoulders are dinged up and I told you press a heavy kettlebell? See my point? Good.
Now, the exercises we do before the Kettlebell and Lifting stuff can be called corrective exercise, but a better term is to call them assistance exercise, as Marc Andresen has said. They assist in the long term picture of your goal. At first, learning to breathe, re-educating your hips and moving your shoulders can be very taxing and tiring. Guess what, if you’re muscles are fatiguing, you’re breathing hard and maybe even sweating when you learn the movement properly then that’s the workout!
Before lifting stuff and doing all the fun things, we have to make sure your body is capable of handling it. The hierarchy is:
- SMART Goals – Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Repeatable, Timely
- Adequate Nutrition which includes Hydration
- Breathing well, mobility and patterning natural movement
- Stability and Cementing those patterns with strength like Goblet Squats, Turkish Getups, military presses
- And then we can do the fun dynamic stuff like Kettlebells Swings, Cleans and Snatches which just incinerate fat but also strengthen muscles in the most important places
- Followed closely by Recovery including Sleep, Massage or Foam Rolling, Yoga and Brisk Walking (as Pat Flynn has reminded me is so effective!)
You don’t need all kinds of crazy intense stuff, especially if I lay you on your back, have you stick your legs straight up in the air and you can’t even hold them there because you’re legs cramp and abs shut down. Proper exercise should mimic you’re goal and keep you healthy in the process, so you can go do the thing that you’re training for!
If it’s to run a 5k, you’ve got to move well, transfer the force of pounding the pavement and have the strength to do it. If it’s to lose 10lbs, your muscles have fire properly in a sequence, producing enough stress to force the system to burn the fat. Want to have joints that don’t ache and play with your grand kids? Maybe even Dancing with the Love your life in the pale moon light? Then breathing and moving well, with the strength to enjoy those experiences, may be all you need. Take the time to find out Point A and every decision you’ll make just became exponentially easier because every choice will either move you closer, or further from your Point B.
- If you’re ready to put it all together, but don’t know where to go, you’re in Luck. Wherever you are in the World, I can help: with my Online coaching program
- If you’re local to me, Montgomery County PA and would like to work closer with me, please contact John@BairKnuckleStrength.com with the Subject line ‘Kettlebell Training’ and I will get back to you ASAP.
- If you’ve been assessed and have been given the green light and you’re aching to try something like Kettlebells, then this video, the first in a series of 6, is for you, Start Here!
- Again, I truly want you have the Best year of your Life and If none of those options work for you, then grab my free report, The Top 5 Red Flags to Fix: Before Training, do the exercises and Follow my videos. This is as close to an Assessment as you can get from me without having to pay for it!
At any time you need assistance, Email me John@BairKnuckleStrength.com and I’ll be there.
Let’s catch this year off guard, kick it where the sun don’t shine and take control of your Destiny!